The Land I Lost Read online

  “I’ve been getting to know Rafe,” said Magnus. “He told me that was what he liked to be called. We’ve been doing up a bedroom for him. See?”

  “I do,” said Alec.

  “Rafe,” said Magnus. “Rafael. Do you have a last name?”

  Rafe shook his head.

  “That’s all right. We have two. How would you feel about a middle name? Would you like one?”

  Rafe broke into a stream of Spanish. From all the nodding, Alec was fairly sure he was agreeing.

  “Um,” Alec said. “We probably need to talk.”

  Magnus laughed. “Oh, do you think so? Excuse us for a minute, Rafe.” He moved toward Alec, then stopped short. Rafe’s hands were clenched hard on the edge of Magnus’s robe. Magnus looked startled.

  Rafe burst out crying. Magnus cast Alec a wild glance, then ran his hands distractedly through his own hair. Between torrential sobs, Rafael began to eke out words.

  Alec couldn’t speak Rafael’s language, but he understood nonetheless. Don’t let me see you, and then have to go away into the loneliness that is the world without you. Please, please keep me. I’ll be good, if you would just keep me.

  Alec started forward, but before he was even in the room, Magnus dropped to his knees and touched the child’s face with tender hands. All trace of tears disappeared with a shimmer of magic.

  “Hush,” said Magnus. “Don’t cry. Yes, of course we will, my darling.”

  Rafe put his face down onto Magnus’s shoulder and sobbed his heart out. Magnus patted his shaking back until he was quiet.

  “I’m sorry,” Magnus said at last, and rocked Rafe in the curve of one red-silk arm. “I really do need to talk to Alec. I’ll be right back. I promise you.”

  He stood and tried to move forward, then cast a rueful glance downward. Rafe was still holding onto his robe.

  “He’s very determined,” Alec explained.

  “So, completely unlike any other Shadowhunters of my acquaintance, then,” said Magnus, and swept off his robe.

  Underneath he was wearing a tunic shirt shimmering with gold thread, and loose ratty gray sweatpants.

  “Are those sweatpants mine?”

  “Yes,” said Magnus. “I missed you.”

  “Oh,” said Alec.

  Magnus settled the robe around Rafe’s shoulders, wrapping him up so he was a red silk cocoon with a startled face on top. Then Magnus knelt down by Rafe again and lifted Rafael’s hands in his, holding them together. Inside Rafe’s cupped palms, a tiny fountain of glitter leaped in a shining loop. Rafe gave a hiccuping laugh, full of surprised delight.

  “There, you like magic, don’t you? Keep your hands together and it will keep going,” Magnus murmured, then made his escape while Rafe was watching the fountain.

  Alec took Magnus’s hand, pulling him out of the new room into the main loft and through into their bedroom. He shut the door and said: “I can explain.”

  “I think I might understand already, Alexander,” said Magnus. “You were away a day and half and you adopted us another kid. What happens if you go away for a week?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” said Alec. “I wasn’t going to do anything without asking you. Only he was there, and he’s a Shadowhunter, and nobody was looking after him, so I thought I could take him to the Institute here. Or to Alicante.”

  Magnus had been smiling, but now he stopped. Alec felt even more alarmed.

  “We’re not adopting him?” Magnus asked. “But—can’t we?”

  Alec blinked.

  “I thought we were,” Magnus said. “Alec, I promised him. Do you not want to?”

  Alec stared at him for another instant. Magnus’s face was tense, intent but confused at the same time, as if Magnus was baffled by his own vehemence. Suddenly Alec was laughing. He’d thought he was waiting to be sure, yet this was better, as all the best things in his life were better than any dream that had come before. Not Alec knowing right away, but seeing Magnus know right away. It was so sweet, and so obvious that this was exactly the way things should be: seeing Magnus experience the instant instinctive love as Alec had with Max, as Alec learned with Rafael the slow, sweet, and conscious way of love that Magnus had learned with Max. Opening a new door in their familiar beloved home, as if it had always been there.

  “Yes,” Alec said, breathless with laughter and love. “Yes, I want to.”

  Magnus’s smile returned. Alec pulled him into his arms, then turned so Magnus had his back to the wall. Alec cupped Magnus’s face in both hands.

  “Give me a minute,” Alec said. “Let me look at you. God, I missed home.”

  Magnus’s fascinating eyes were narrowed slightly, watching Alec back, and his smiling mouth was a little startled as it often was, though what surprised him Alec didn’t know. Alec couldn’t just look at him. He kissed him, and that mouth was against his own, the kiss making every tired muscle in Alec’s body turn to liquid sweetness. To Alec, love always meant this: his shining city of eternal light. The land of lost dreams reclaimed, his first kiss and his last.

  Magnus’s arms went around him.

  “My Alec,” Magnus murmured. “Welcome home.”

  Now when Alec asked himself Is this how you want to live your whole life? Alec could answer yes, and yes, and yes. Every kiss was the answer yes, and the question he would get to ask Magnus someday. They kissed up against the bedroom wall for long bright moments, then both stepped away from the other with a wrench.

  “The—” Alec began.

  “—kids,” Magnus finished. “Later.”

  “Wait, the kids plural?” asked Alec, and became aware of what Magnus had heard: the stealthy sound of tiny feet exiting Max’s room.

  “That hellborn brat,” Magnus muttered. “I read him eight stories.”

  “Magnus!”

  “What, I can call him that, it’s you who can’t call him that, because it’s infernally insensitive.” Magnus grinned, then squinted at his own stained hand. “Alec, I know you don’t really care about your clothes, but you don’t usually come home covered in soot.”

  “Better see to the kids,” said Alec, ducking out of the bedroom and the conversation.

  In the main room was Max, in his triceratops footie pajamas and dragging his fuzzy blankie, regarding Rafe with wide eyes. Rafe stood on the woven rug before the fireplace, wrapped in Magnus’s red silk robe. His eyes narrowed into the death stare that had frightened the other kids at the Shadow Market.

  Max, who had never felt threatened by anything in his life, smiled guilelessly up at him. Rafe’s scowl faltered.

  Max turned at the opening of the door. He padded swiftly over to Alec, and Alec knelt down to embrace him.

  “Daddy, Daddy!” Max caroled. “This the brother orra sister?”

  Rafael’s eyebrows went up. He said something quickly in Spanish.

  “Not a sister,” Magnus translated from the door. “Max, this is Rafe. Say hi.”

  Max clearly took this as confirmation. He patted Alec’s shoulder as if to say: great job, Dad, finally you deliver the goods. Then he turned back to Rafe.

  “What are you? Werewolf?” Max guessed.

  Rafe glanced at Magnus, who translated. “He says he’s a Shadowhunter.”

  Max beamed. “Daddy’s a Shadowhunter. I’m a Shadowhunter too!”

  Rafe regarded Max’s horns with an air suggesting: Can you believe this guy? He shook his head firmly, and attempted to explain the situation.

  “He says you’re a warlock,” Magnus translated faithfully. “And that this is a very good thing to be, because it means you can do magic, and magic is cool and pretty.” Magnus paused. “Which is so true.”

  Max’s face screwed up in rage. “I’m a Shadowhunter!”

  Rafe waved a hand, his attitude one of deep impatience.

  “All right, my b
lue-ringed octopus,” Magnus interposed hastily. “Let’s continue this debate tomorrow, shall we? Everybody needs sleep. Rafe has had a long day, and it is incredibly past your bedtime.”

  “I’ll read you a story,” Alec promised.

  Max dropped his fury as swiftly as he’d assumed it. His blue brows knit. He seemed to be thinking deeply. “No bed!” he argued. “Stay up. Be with Rafe.” He sidled up to a stunned-looking Rafael and gave him a big hug. “I’m love him.”

  Rafe hesitated, then hugged Max shyly back. The sight of them made Alec’s chest hurt.

  He cast a glance back at Magnus, who had an equally smitten expression.

  “It’s a special occasion,” Alec pointed out.

  “I was never very good at discipline anyway,” said Magnus, and threw himself down beside the kids on the rug. Rafe edged closer, and Magnus looped an arm around him. Rafe cuddled up. “How about you tell us all a bedtime story about what happened in Buenos Aires?”

  “It wasn’t that exciting,” Alec said. “Other than: I found Rafe. I missed you. I came home. That’s it. We’ll have to go back and forth to Buenos Aires a few times to finalize the adoption, before we can make it official and tell everyone. Maybe we can all go together sometime.”

  Rafe said several swift sentences in Spanish.

  “Is that so?” asked Magnus. “How extremely interesting.”

  “What are you saying?” Alec asked Rafe anxiously.

  “You aren’t getting away with this one, Alec Lightwood.” Magnus pointed at him. “Not this time. I have a spy!”

  Alec went over to the rug, knelt down, and made earnest eye contact with Rafe.

  “Rafe,” he said. “Please don’t be a spy.”

  Rafe gave Alec a look of firm incomprehension and burst into a torrent of Spanish for Magnus. Alec was certain at least some of it was Rafe promising to be a spy anytime Magnus wanted.

  “Sounds like you did some pretty impressive things in Buenos Aires,” said Magnus at last. “A lot of people would have given up. What were you thinking?”

  Alec picked Max up, tipped him upside down, then sideways, then returned him to the rug, grinning when Max crowed with laughter.

  “All I did was think about being worthy of coming home to you,” said Alec. “It was nothing much.”

  There was a silence. Alec turned, a little concerned, to find Magnus staring at him. That surprised look was on his face again, and there was a softness along with it that was rare for Magnus.

  “What?” said Alec.

  “Nothing, you stealth romance attacker,” Magnus said. “How do you always know what to say?”

  He leaned forward easily, keeping Rafe held comfortably against him, to give Alec a kiss on the jaw. Alec smiled.

  Rafe was studying Max, who seemed gratified Rafe was taking an interest.

  “If you want to be a Shadowhunter,” said Rafael, in careful English, “you have to train.”

  “No, Rafe,” said Alec. “Max doesn’t need to train.”

  “I train!” said Max.

  Alec shook his head. His baby was a warlock. He would train Rafe, but Max didn’t need to learn any of that. He looked to Magnus for back-up, but Magnus was hesitating, his lip caught between his teeth.

  “Magnus!”

  “Max wants to be just like you,” Magnus said. “I can understand that. Are we going to tell him he can’t be whatever he wants to be?”

  “He’s not—” Alec began, and stopped.

  “There’s nothing to say a warlock couldn’t physically fight,” said Magnus. “Using magic to substitute for Shadowhunter attributes. It might keep him safe, because people don’t expect a warlock to be trained that way. It wouldn’t hurt to try. Besides . . . we found Max on the steps of Shadowhunter Academy. Someone might have wanted him to have Shadowhunter training.”

  Alec hated the idea. But he’d thought, hadn’t he, that he wished he could train a kid? He’d promised himself that he would never be the kind of father who made the walls of home feel like a trap.

  If you loved somebody, you trusted them.

  “All right,” said Alec. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to show them a few ways to stand and fall. Might get them tired enough for bedtime.”

  Magnus grinned and snapped his fingers. Practice mats suddenly covered the floor. Max scrambled to his feet. Rafe, head pillowed against Magnus’s chest, seemed uninterested until Magnus nudged him gently, but then he got up willingly enough.

  “Maybe I can teach Rafe a few magic tricks as well,” Magnus mused. “He can’t be a warlock any more than Max can be a Shadowhunter, but there are magicians around. He might be a very good one.”

  Alec recalled a story about a magician with Shadowhunter blood, known as Roland the Astonishing, who had lived a long, happy life with his best beloved. He thought of the Market and the Institute mingling in the streets of Buenos Aires, of Jem and Tessa, of love and trust in a changing world, and showing his sons they could be anything they wanted, including happy. He rose and walked to the center of the room.

  “Boys? Follow the moves I make,” said Alec. “Stand with me, now. All together.”

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  About the Authors

  Cassandra Clare was born to American parents in Teheran, Iran and spent much of her childhood traveling the world with her family. She lived in France, England and Switzerland before she was ten years old. Since her family moved around so much she found familiarity in books and went everywhere with a book under her arm. She spent her high school years in Los Angeles where she used to write stories to amuse her classmates, including an epic novel called “The Beautiful Cassandra” based on the eponymous Jane Austen short story (and from which she later took her current pen name).

  After college, Cassie lived in Los Angeles and New York where she worked at various entertainment magazines and even some rather suspect tabloids. She started working on her YA novel, City of Bones, in 2004, inspired by the urban landscape of Manhattan, her favorite city.

  In 2007, the first book in the Mortal Instruments series, City of Bones, introduced the world to Shadowhunters. The Mortal Instruments concluded in 2014, and includes City of Ashes, City of Glass, City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls, and City of Heavenly Fire. She also created a prequel series, inspired by A Tale of Two Cities and set in Victorian London. This series, The Infernal Devices, follows bookworm Tessa Gray as she discovers the London Institute in Clockwork Angel, Clockwork Prince, and Clockwork Princess.

  The sequel series to The Mortal Instruments, The Dark Artifices, where the Shadowhunters take on Los Angeles, began with Lady Midnight, continues with Lord of Shadows and will conclude with Queen of Air and Darkness.

  Other books in the Shadowhunters series include The Bane Chronicles, Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, and The Shadowhunter’s Codex.

  Her books have more than 36 million copies in print worldwide and have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Visit her at CassandraClare.com.

  Sarah Rees Brennan was born and raised in Ireland by the sea, where her teachers valiantly tried to make her fluent in Irish (she wants you to know it’s not called Gaelic) but she chose to read books under her desk in class instead. The books most often found under her desk were Jane Austen, Margaret Mahy, Anthony Trollope, Robin McKinley and Diana Wynne Jones, and she still loves them all today. After college she lived briefly in New York and somehow survived in spite of her habit of hitching lifts in fire
engines. She began working on The Demon’s Lexicon while doing a Creative Writing MA and library work in Surrey, England. Since then she has returned to Ireland to write and use as a home base for future adventures. Her Irish is still woeful, but she feels the books under the desk were worth it. Sarah is also the the author of the Lynburn Legacy series, and the novels Tell the Wind and Fire and In Other Lands. Visit her at sarahreesbrennan.com.