Chapter Text
Asmodeus’s eyes are different from Magnus’s. That’s all Alec can focus on as he sits across from the demon, whose true eyes and voice are bleeding through the veneer of the old Warlock whose body he’s inhabiting.
They’re the same—shimmering gold, slit-pupiled, catching the light just so as he tilts his head—but different. Magnus’s eyes are warm and brilliant, shining with his kindness and intelligence. They don’t have this cold, cruel glint, this calculating and superior sneer.
Staring into Asmodeus’s eyes is deeply unsettling.
Seeming to know this, the demon bores his gaze into him as he says, “End your relationship. Break his heart to save his life.”
It takes a second for the words to compute, but once they do, a wave of nausea and horror climbs Alec’s throat, threatens to suffocate him. Before he can think through his response, he’s saying, “No.”
Asmodeus watches him passively, considering.
Alec swallows down the bile and continues, “No. We love each other. I wouldn’t just abandon him.” He— he can’t. He can’t do it. It’s what Magnus needs, but— Alec can’t do it. He’s too selfish. Just the thought of losing Magnus—he can’t breathe.
“Love,” Asmodeus drawls, “you don’t understand love. Love is born of fire. Love is this—” he points to his eyes with one sharp finger “—when he is a part of you.”
Alec does understand. It’s perhaps the one thing they have in common: the willingness to burn down the world for Magnus.
“This mortal dalliance,” Asmodeus waves a hand towards him in dismissal, “can never be true love.”
“You say you love him,” Alec counters, “but you won’t give him what he needs.”
“Love is not only giving,” Asmodeus sneers. “It is not what’s best for him. You say you love him, yet you won’t walk away.”
Love is only giving, Alec thinks. It’s giving and giving and giving. Whatever is taken is freely given from the other side.
The thought clicks something together in his mind. Something freely given…
He says, “I have an alternative proposal for you.”
Asmodeus’s eyes flash. “You dare to negotiate—”
“Just hear me out,” Alec interrupts, and there must be something interesting in his gaze, for the demon stills, head tilted.
“I think I can offer something you’ll be interested in,” Alec says.
Magnus’s phone vibrates as he’s stretching up on his tiptoes to put a vase on one of Maryse’s shelves. He pulls it out of his pocket and looks at the caller ID.
Jace. That’s never a good sign.
“Where’s Alec?” Jace demands without even saying “hi.”
An ugly feeling settles in Magnus’s gut.
“He said he had a Clave meeting,” Magnus tells him.
Jace is breathing heavily into the phone. No, not just breathing—hyperventilating.
“Magnus, I—” Jace struggles to speak. Finally he gets it out: “I can’t feel him.”
Magnus drops the phone as his heart careens into his stomach. He staggers back, crashing into the bookshelf behind him. Something knocks over and shatters on the floor. He pays it no mind.
If Jace is right, that means— oh, he can’t breathe.
Maryse comes out from the back of the shop, having heard the crash, worry in the crease between her eyebrows. “Magnus, honey, is everything—”
The bell on the shop door rings, and it swings open.
A chill runs down Magnus’s spine. At first he attributes it to Jace’s news—news that Alec is—
But then he sees their visitor.
In the next half-second he’s jumping in front of Maryse with reflexes he didn’t know mundanes had, pushing her back—never mind that he’s as helpless as her—and staring into the golden eyes of—
“Hello, son,” Asmodeus says. “I have a gift for you.”
“I don’t want it,” Magnus barks. “I don’t want anything from you.”
Asmodeus smiles. “You don’t want a gift from your Shadowhunter?”
Magnus freezes, confusion and pain curling through him. And then anger. If Asmodeus touched Alec, he’ll kill him, magic or no magic.
“I’d love to keep it for myself,” Asmodeus continues. “But a deal’s a deal.”
Then he strides forward, grabs Magnus by the shoulder, and presses his other hand flat to his heart.
Magnus’s whole body jolts as power surges through him—his power, he realizes with a start. It rockets through his veins, filling every part of him, a blazing, glorious inferno of life.
For a second, after Asmodeus pulls his hand back, Magnus forgets everything else. All that exists is inside him, setting his nerve endings alight, trickling out of his skin, banishing the cobwebs from his mind. He watches it curl out of his palm, royal blue. “My magic,” he gasps in awed rapture, overjoyed.
Then reality crashes back in on him.
“What deal,” he demands. “What did you do to Alec?”
Asmodeus merely smiles smugly at him and turns to walk away.
“What deal!?” Magnus yells.
But his father is gone.
Maryse’s hand clamps onto his arm, and he turns to her, to the fear in her eyes. “Magnus,” she says, voice wavering, “where’s Alec?”
“What do you think you could do,” Alec says, “with angelic power?”
Asmodeus narrows his eyes. “I’m already an angel.”
“Fallen.”
Asmodeus leans back in his chair. “I have more angelic power in my pinkie toe than you’ll see in your life, Nephilim.”
“But it’s corrupted,” Alec says. “What do you think you could do with pure angelic power?”
Now, Asmodeus steeples his fingers under his chin, a glint of interest in his uncanny eyes. “You’re offering?”
“Yes.”
“What, exactly?”
“Whatever’s in my body. Runes, blessing, all of it.” He pushes from his mind just everything he’d be giving up. His job. His connection to his family. His parabatai. His ability to make a difference.
This is for Magnus. Nothing else matters.
“You’d blaspheme your angel in such a way?”
“I’d do anything for Magnus.”
“But not walk away from him.”
“No,” Alec concedes. “He wouldn’t want that.”
“And he’d want this?” Asmodeus presses. “You think he’d still love you? Someone who’s no longer part of his world?”
Alec doesn’t know. He can only hope that the fact that Magnus has loved mundanes before means he’ll love Alec, too.
“The offer’s on the table,” Alec says instead of answering. “Do you accept?”
“Magnus’s magic is extremely powerful,” Asmodeus says, “The exchange should be—”
“I know the value of what I’m offering,” Alec interrupts. “I know what it can do for you, and I know how hard it is to get. You can’t just take it whenever. A Shadowhunter’s power has to be—”
“—freely given, yes, yes. You’ve made your point.” Asmodeus considers him. “One magic for another,” he muses. “Very well, little Nephilim. You have yourself a deal.”
Alec wakes with a start in the loft, golden sheets tangled around him like he’d been having a nightmare. And for a second he thinks it was a nightmare. Did he really do that? Meet with Asmodeus? Trade him—
His runes are gone.
Alec forces himself to take a deep breath. In. Out. He chose this.
Magnus should have his magic back soon, if he doesn’t already. Alec may not trust Asmodeus an inch, but he knows the demon can’t break a deal. Magnus will be whole again.
And if Alec’s life falls apart, well. That’ll just have to be the consequence.
His phone is buzzing in his pocket. He’s still dressed in the clothes he met Asmodeus in, which means Asmodeus dropped him here, which is strange. Alec had expected to wake up in an alley or something.
They aren’t even supposed to have the loft. But everything around Alec looks undisturbed, exactly how he and Magnus had left it that fateful day. Did Asmodeus restore it? And what did he do with Lorenzo? He needs to talk to Magnus about that—
Alec presses his fingertips to his temples, trying to stop his brain from spinning. Breathe.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up. He starts for the living room, and immediately careens to the side, nearly running into the wall.
He has to stop for a moment to take stock of himself. His body moves differently. He feels heavier without his runes to buoy him. Not by much, but enough that he can notice.
He swallows. He’ll get used to it. He’ll have to.
His phone buzzes again, and he pulls it out. Magnus is calling him. Alec watches as the phone stops ringing. He has several missed calls from Magnus, Jace, his mom, Izzy—
Oh, god. Jace. He must have felt Alec lose his runes and been thrown into a panic.
He needs to call all of them. But first he just needs a second. Just a second to compose himself.
Just a second.
Magnus can’t stop his hands from shaking. Even the warmth of his magic flowing through his veins isn’t enough to still the tremors. Isabelle is saying something, probably her newest plan for tracking down Alec after their normal methods failed, but Magnus can’t understand a word.
Maryse takes his hand and squeezes it, and Magnus wants to tear himself away from her touch, this woman who’s trying to comfort him when her child is likely lying somewhere de—
Magnus doesn’t deserve her comfort. This is his fault.
It’s clear to all of them that Alec struck some kind of deal with Asmodeus to win Magnus’s magic back. What they can’t figure out is what he gave in return.
His life? But if so, where is his— his body?
Magnus is holding out hope that Asmodeus took Alec to Edom with him, because no matter how horrifying the prospect, nothing could be worse than Alexander being—
Magnus sucks in a harsh breath.
This is his fault. If he’d just been more convincing, done a better job of pretending everything was okay, Alec wouldn’t have felt the need to go to such lengths.
There’s anger simmering somewhere, too, deep in Magnus’s chest. Fury that Alec went behind his back, and to his father of all people. But he won’t let himself feel it.
All he really wants is his Alexander back in his arms. If he can have that, he knows the anger will melt away like it was never there at all.
Everyone’s staring at him. Magnus blinks back to awareness.
His phone is buzzing in his pocket.
Slowly, not daring to hope, he pulls it out.
Magnus’s heart flips in his chest as he reads the caller ID.
It’s Alec.
Still shaking, Magnus swipes the call open. “Hello?”
He’s not sure what voice he expects on the other end of the line. His father perhaps, or some mundane police officer asking him to identify a body.
Certainly not the quiet and tremulous but very much alive voice that croaks, “Magnus?”
Magnus chokes out a strangled breath. “Alexander?”
Everyone starts clamoring at him at once, but Magnus holds up a hand to quiet them, stepping away so he can hear better.
“Darling, are you alright? Where are you?”
“I— I’m at home. Can you come?” he sounds shaky, on the verge of tears. Magnus’s hand clenches around the phone.
“I’ll be right there.”
Then he’s opening a portal, ignoring the shouts from behind him. He can tell that the last thing Alec needs right now is to be bombarded with his entire family. Magnus is more than happy to shoulder the guilt of locking them out, at least for a little while.
They know Alec’s alive. It’ll have to be enough for now.
When Magnus first slips into the loft, he’s not even sure Alec is there. Everything seems quiet and pristine, undisturbed.
“Alec?”
No response, but—wait. There’s a light on in the kitchen.
Magnus makes his quiet way in to find Alec standing at the counter, his back to him, pouring coffee. Magnus breathes a silent sigh of relief that he’s at least here, and in one piece.
“Alexander?”
Alec stiffens, then turns around to face him, leaning back against the counter. “Hi.” His voice cracks.
For a brief, terrifying second, Magnus can’t figure out what’s wrong, why Alec’s so upset, though he’s clearly trying to hide it. He doesn’t—
Magnus sucks in a breath.
His neck. The rune.
Something sharp shears through Magnus’s chest. “Oh, darling.”
Alec swallows, and Magnus makes his way around the island to stand across from him. It takes him a moment to figure out what he wants to say, because this is too big, he doesn’t know how he allowed this to happen.
And in that moment, Alec speaks. “Do— do you have it back?”
Oh, darling.
Magnus reaches out to take his hand from where it’s twisting in the hem of his shirt. He lets a flicker of magic twine around their joined hands, and Alec sighs, put at ease.
“Good. That’s—good.”
Magnus looks back up into his eyes, and the relief he sees there nearly makes him scream. He shouldn’t be happy about this. Magnus isn’t happy about this.
He doesn’t scream. Instead, he pulls Alec forward into his chest, wrapping him up in a hug. Alec tucks his face into Magnus’s shoulder. He’s shaking a little.
Magnus is going to use his newly recovered magic to kill Asmodeus.