Reading Time: 108 Minutes

Title: Dark Angel
Series: Morning Star
Series Order: 3
Author: Lalaith Quetzalli
Fandom: Shadowhunters
Genre: Angst, Action Adventure, Established Relationship, Family, Femslash, Menage or More (aka Threesome), Slash
Relationship(s): Alec Lightwood/Magnus Bane, Izzy Lightwood/Lydia Branwell, Will Herondale/Tessa Gray/Jem Carstairs
Content Rating: R
Warnings: Canon Typical Violence, Somewhat Graphic Violence, Low Gore, Minor Character Death , Discussion of Suicide, Discussion of Child Neglect/Abuse, Explicit Language, Religious themes, Implied Homophobia (slurs are never outright said, but they’re made obvious).
Author Note: This story has references to the “Infernal Devices” and “Dark Artifices” trilogies, though there’s no need to have read any of those book to understand the fanfics.
Word Count: 26,807
Summary: War is coming to the nephilim, a war they won’t be able to win on their own. But who’s there to help them fight? When their numbers keep dwindling and the Clave’s running out of allies, who might be willing to face the Mother of all Demons in battle? Years have passed, and it’s time some people face, once and for all, who they are now, what they have become…
Artist: Izzy Hound

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New York

The day begins with the loud ringing of a red alert. Not exactly Izzy’s preferred wake-up call. Lydia always having been a morning person far more than she, it’s not surprising when the blonde’s the one to react first and seek to find out the reason for the alert. Her letting out a string of curses in a mix of English, Spanish and Portuguese… that’s uncommon enough to make the brunette not just open her eyes but sit up on the bed, eyes searching for her wife right away.

The wedding of Interim Head of the New York Institute, Lydia Branwell to her bride was a small, intimate affair. Much simpler than her wedding to Alec Lightwood would have been. Then again, that wedding had been planned by the elder Lightwoods, and all along it was less about the wedding itself, and more about their desire to attract the attention of the ‘right people’ back in Idris. All which turned out to be for naught when Alec Lightwood was accused and found guilty of High Treason, deruned and exiled days before the wedding would have taken place.

It took quite a few people by surprise when, the day after the younger Lightwoods were cleared of any culpability in things, a new engagement was announced. Robert Lightwood tried to stop the wedding from taking place, claiming the existence of a prior accord with Victor Aldertree. Yet, since there was no document that proved it, his complaints went unheard. In the end all he could, and did, do, was disavow Isabelle, taking the Lightwood name away from her.

“He thinks this will stop the wedding from taking place.” Izzy muttered as she received the documents notifying her of her loss of the Lightwood name. “That you won’t marry me if I’m no longer a Lightwood.”

“That makes no sense.” Lydia stated. “On the same vein, he can no longer force you to marry Aldertree, since you’re no longer his daughter.”

“I’m coming to realize my fa… Robert, is not who I thought he was.” Izzy admitted grimly. “He probably expects that calling off the wedding will cause either one, or both of us, to try and marry Aldertree, if only to avoid the scandal of a second engagement being canceled, and the risk of people claiming a woman alone cannot be Head of an Institute.”

Which was absolutely ridiculous. Everyone knew that the Head of the Beijing Institute: Jia Penhallow, pretty much ran things on her own, as her husband spent way too much time in Idris to be of any help… much like Izzy’s own parents actually, and how they left the responsibility to Alec. Though Madam Penhallow at least had the full authority to get things done, unlike Alec, Izzy was coming to realize that too. In the past she’d never paid attention to things like ‘Acting Head’, or ‘Interim Head’, not realizing that they were more than mere words, that there was a world of difference between either of those titles and Head…

“How do you feel about the Branwell name?”

“What…?” Lydia’s question took her completely by surprise.

“I know, not as well-known as Lightwood, not one of the Original Twelve…” Lydia murmured.

“It’s perfect.” Izzy cuts her off.

Because really, considering all the things the Lightwoods are well-known for nowadays… And it’s not just the mess with Alec but… her parents were in the Circle, and that’s but the tip of the iceberg! Truth is, the more she thinks about it, the more Izzy likes the idea of dropping the Lightwood name once and for all.

“Isabelle Branwell…” She tries out the name, smiling. “I like the sound of it.”

“So do I.” The smile the blonde gives her is… it actually makes Izzy’s heart skip a beat for probably the first time in her life.

Which is how they came to be Lydia and Isabelle Branwell, instead of Lightwood. Which was just fine with the both of them. Apparently Lydia had enough allies and enough of a good name back in Idris, that she was confirmed as the fully vested Head of the New York Institute the day after the wedding, with Izzy taking the position of Co-Head. They were also made to sign a contract promising there would be at least two children in the following five years (either one from either of them, or both from Lydia, as it was her name they would carry).

The best part, at least as far as Izzy was concerned, was when they got to kick the Lightwoods and Aldertree out of Their Institute and back to Idris. Victor Aldertree had the gall to offer himself as the father of their children, in such a way that he managed to insult both of them. Which only made the whole ‘kicking him out’ all the sweeter.

Lydia getting off the bed and dressed in record time before bursting out of their bedroom, calling for people and giving orders before she’s even made it to the end of the hallway tells Izzy all she needs to know about the urgency of the red alert. So the brunette jumps out of bed as well, reaching for her own clothes. She also starts to mentally consider the path to take in order to drop by the kitchen before making it to Ops. Whatever might be going on, they’re both going to need their coffee… probably a lot of it. Izzy hates so much when the Clave makes demands…

It was only hours after their official appointment to the Headship of the Institute (they’d only just finished sending the Lightwoods and Aldertree away) when the first of orders from the Clave came in. They were to investigate whatever mess had taken place in Lower Manhattan and deal with any and all guilty parties. There was no doubt in any of their minds’ that the Clave expected to be able to blame Downworlders for the mess, the more the better. Izzy thought it far more likely that Valentine would be behind things.

The investigation was completely derailed though when Carlos Angelborn, the oldest and thus more experienced of the shadowhunters Izzy chose to take with her to Manhattan, approached Izzy where she was standing, studying the ruins of the pier and trying to find some clue to what caused the destruction exactly. While a lot of the carnage was clearly caused by the cerberuses, there were some things that just didn’t fit that pattern (and she really, really hoped that her growing suspicions of a Greater Demon being involved wouldn’t prove to be true…).

“Miss Ligh… I mean, Ms. Branwell…” Carlos began.

“Isabelle is still just fine with me, Carlos.” Izzy smiled at him.

Carlos Angelborn was, in many ways, a completely average shadowhunter, with honey-brown eyes, dirty-blonde hair and tanned skin; what made Carlos stand out, in a way, was his status as an Ascendant. Part of the last generation to have graduated from the Academy before its forced closure upon the loss of the Mortal Cup. Carlos was the last mundane to drink from the Cup in order to become a shadowhunter. Also, because his skills were perfectly average, he hadn’t been offered an invitation to join any of the established shadowhunter families; and so he’d been given the surname of Angelborn. Most Angelborn sought to join families, if they couldn’t convince them to adopt them, marriage was always a possibility. It’d been known to happen, especially with families that had only daughters, who wanted to ensure their own family name was carried on onto the next generation. Carlos didn’t seem to care about such things. Even after so many years since his Ascension he seemed content to remain as he was, an Angelborn.

Something else Izzy remembered was how much Alec liked him. Her brother never cared about Carlos’s origins, insisting that even as someone considered ‘average’, he was a decent fighter, organized and loyal, that was enough. Izzy was trying to learn from her brother, all the things he tried to teach her in the past and she failed to pay attention to…

All of that was abruptly forgotten when Carlos extended his arms and presented her with what, at first sight, looked like nothing more than pieces of wood and metal. It’s what she saw, what her mind insisted on seeing. It refused to translate those pieces into something, anything else, into what had been. The mere thought of it… And yet, even refusing to properly process it, Izzy could not truly deny the truth: the fact that Carlos was holding the broken pieces of a bow, one she knew like the back of her own hand (she ought to! She designed it, helped build it, and gifted it to her brother on his 21^st birthday!).

Izzy was on her knees, body curled up around the broken pieces of the bow, her soul wailing at what something like that must mean…

“ALEC!!!”

Izzy hadn’t wanted to accept that her brother was dead. Even after such a long time, there were still days when she couldn’t help but build stories in her mind. Of her brother surviving, of him being somewhere, either in NY or maybe Europe, or even an island in the Caribbean, enjoying his life in a way he never could while as a shadowhunter. She doesn’t really believe it. Her brother isn’t the kind to make his life an endless vacation.

It was during the course of the investigation that they found out Magnus was gone. He and Ragnor had been to the Institute to wake up Jocelyn Fairchild while Izzy and Jace were in Idris, and no one had seen him since then.

Lydia sent a fire message addressed to the High Warlock of Brooklyn, requesting a consultation on a case. The man who arrives is someone they’ve never seen: with tanned skin, long dark-hair in a ponytail, well-groomed goatee, and dressed all in black, a bespoke suit. His name was Lorenzo Rey and he introduced himself as a deputy for Magnus.

“Deputy…?” Izzy blurted out, shocked. “Where’s Magnus?”

“I am sure, Madam, that if Magnus Bane intended for you to know his whereabouts, he’d have told you when he left.” Rey stated evenly.

Izzy couldn’t help but flushing.

“O-of course.” She agreed, hesitant. “I just wished… he knew my brother and I thought he’d like to know that…”

She trailed off as she was left wondering. Would he? How long had Magnus really known her brother? Yes, the warlock expressed his interest, a lot, but with Alec proposing to Lydia… maybe Magnus decided to cut his losses and leave. And what good would it make, him learning that Alec did not marry Lydia, but had been deruned, exiled and was now presumed dead?

In the end it was believed that some wannabe occultists had attempted to summon a Greater Demon and failed. According to Rey, while the summoning circle was like none he’d ever seen before, in that it had some elements he wasn’t familiar with, it also had all the elements necessary for a successful summoning. In the end, the only thing that really made him somewhat agree with the ‘failed’ qualification, was that if there were a Greater Demon in the human world, they would definitely know.

There was also the fact that none of them really knew who it was that handled the cerberuses, since only one shadowhunter survived, and it wasn’t him. Rey was also pretty sure that if it had been a downworlder, he’d know, as most would be crowing about something like that. Which meant that no one really knew who killed the creatures. The Clave didn’t seem to really care, as long as there was no present risk they’d rather just move on from things.

That wasn’t the last time things went wrong in NY. As Jocelyn and Clary both died before the end of the month, days apart from each other. The situation wasn’t the best at the Institute, with over half a dozen shadowhunters lost, they needed all the active ones they could get. Clary insisted she was ready, and after several spars, Jace agreed, so she was sent out on patrol with a team.

No one knew how it happened exactly. Somehow a demon possessed Clary, the wards at the Institute failed to sound the alarm and then… by the time anyone realized something was wrong it was much too late. Three more shadowhunters were dead, including Jocelyn. Clary somehow managed to fight the possession, but that might have been even worse, as she came to with her mother’s blood on her hands… It was too much. Clary took her own life the same day of her mother’s funeral.

“It’s my fault.” Jace muttered.

Luke was at the Institute, he’d be taking Clary’s body, to be buried at a mundane cemetery. Because she’d committed suicide she couldn’t have a shadowhunter funeral, and Luke wanted her to be able to visit her grave.

“Your…” Izzy blinked, trying and failing to find the logic in that. “You weren’t even there!”

“Exactly!” Jace kicked at the ground. “I wasn’t there, wasn’t with her. And I should have! She wasn’t ready for missions…”

“You said…” Izzy began.

“I know what I said!” Jace cut her off. “And clearly I was wrong. Alec… he said it. He said she wasn’t ready. And stupid me, I thought I knew better…”

“Jace, this isn’t on you…”

“Isn’t it? I’m the one who approved of her joining patrols!”

Izzy tried to help Jace deal with the guilt, but in the end she just had too much to do. Being Head of the NYI, even with there being two of them, was a lot of work (she honestly had no idea how Alec had managed it all on his own, especially with how she, Jace and Clary kept making things all the harder for him…).

Izzy never fully forgave herself for not being there more for Jace. Not realizing when he started spiraling, became self-destructive. It was just… there was so much work. And the tensions in the Shadow World kept growing. She didn’t know how they found out about what had happened to Alec, exactly. But suddenly there were all sorts of rumors going around: not just about the circumstances in which Alec was deruned and exiled, but also other things, stories Izzy had never heard before: like how Alec was the ‘young tactical genius’ who gave Raphael Santiago the idea of how to handle the yin fen shipment that almost came to NY years prior. Or how he saved a little girl and at the same time led the warlocks to discover a heinous criminal (though no one knew who that was, or what their crimes were exactly). An even more insane rumor claimed that he’d once killed a fully-grown dragonidae (weren’t those supposed to be mostly extinct or something like that?!). There were even whispers of him having once fought a Greater Demon, though that one Izzy was fairly sure had to be a lie, it had to. There’s no way her brother could have gone against such enemies and them not have known it, right? Right?!

It all came to a head when Jace did… something (Izzy doesn’t even remember what), and was taken to the Silent City for it. Izzy wanted so much to help him, to go to Idris and fight for him, but things were falling to pieces all around her and Lydia right there in New York. With the growing tensions in the Downworld, they had a job to do, and Isabelle would be damned if he failed Alec in yet another way!

So she stayed in New York with her wife, the two of them fighting together to keep order. The news from Idris came in bits and pieces. Apparently Jace was interrogated, he wasn’t accused of anything, really, but the Silent Brothers were concerned about him, that his downward-spiral might somehow be connected to his broken parabatai bond, so they insisted that he stay a few days so they could check up on him. Those news were very closely followed by a red alert, warning them of an attack taking place in the Silent City, lead by none other than Valentine. Several Silent Brothers and prisoners, including Hodge Starkweather, were dead, Jace was missing. There were some dark whispers that claimed he might have been involved in the attack, as a surviving witness claimed to have heard Valentine calling Jace ‘son’… Jace was most definitely gone, though no one knew if he’d gone with Valentine, or just chosen to leave that same night for whatever the reason.

And yet again, Izzy couldn’t focus on that particular mess, because along with that piece of news, came another one, one that chilled the very blood in her veins: the Soul Sword was missing… Valentine had the Soul Sword.

“How bad is this?” Lydia asked.

It was just the two of them, in their bedroom (more privacy than their office, especially with all the soundproofing and privacy runes on their door).

“I…” Izzy swallowed. “I apprenticed with the Iron Sisters for a while, years ago.”

“You, really?” Lydia blinked. “You were going to become a Sister?”

“Oh! Not at all!” Izzy giggled. “According to Sister Magdalena I don’t have the correct disposition for it. Not enough… restraint, on my part.”

It was the truth, Isabelle was always one to enjoy life’s pleasures. Too much, perhaps.

“In any case,” Izzy continued. “They still taught me the basics of weapon maintenance, it’s how I became Weapon Mistress,” And not because of her name and nepotism! “and in charge of the weapons in this Institute. I learned a few things, while with them like… the Soul Sword? It… it doesn’t just compel the truth out of others, it also… well, it’s ultimately a weapon. If used a certain way, it’ll kill all with demon-blood in a certain radius. Downworlders included.”

“That… that’s incredibly dangerous.” Lydia realized. “Do you know what the certain way is?”

“I know a power source is needed, like, a lot, shit-load really, of energy.” Izzy pointed out. “The kind that isn’t easy to get. Like from a lightning strike, or something.”

“Or a concentrated burst from an angelic core…” Lydia pointed out grimly.

Like the kind the oldest Institutes, including the one in New York, possessed.

“Or that, yes.” Izzy’s eyes went wide as her mind started doing calculations, considering possibilities, consequences. “Shit.”

“This is dangerous.” Lydia stated the obvious. “Such a weapon, in Valentine’s hands…”

And that was without taking in consideration that Hodge delivered the Mortal Cup to him before eventually being caught (it was the thing that kept NY in Idris’s good graces thus far, that they managed to capture the traitor, even if too late to recover the Mortal Instrument).

“What are we going to do?” And wasn’t that the question.

In the end what they chose to do was be honest; think of their people, the people of New York: mundanes, nephilims and downworlders, all of them. They called a meeting of everyone in the NYI, and presented the situation to them. They also warned about what they’d be doing next. Calling a meeting with representatives of the Downworld and warned them of the theft, and what it meant exactly, all the risks. There were of course those who did not agree with their call: like Raj and Lindsay. Those people were given the option of requesting transfers to either other Institutes or Idris and having them fast-tracked, the Heads wouldn’t be changing their minds.

Of course there were consequences, the girls had always known there would be. It still took them somewhat by surprise what they ended up being:

“Signed, Jia Penhallow, Consul of the Clave.” Lydia finished reading the missive they’d received earlier that morning.

“Okay,” Izzy let out a breath. “So we’re still shadowhunters, still Heads of the New York Institute even. They’re not going to try to take their anger out on any of our allies in the Downworld either?”

“No to any of those.” Lydia confirmed.

“What’s the punishment then?” Izzy didn’t understand.

“I suppose we’re essentially exiled, or well, they’re calling it partially exiled.” Lydia shrugged. “It’s just from Idris really. We’re not welcome back for the time being. Aside from that, we retain our power and rank. Much like…” Izzy’s parents. Lydia didn’t dare say it, but then again, she didn’t have to.

“You mean they’re giving the two of us, for revealing a secret that should have never been such, that put everyone, shadowhunters and downworlders alike in danger, the same punishment they gave to known Circle members who participated on unsanctioned missions against the Downworld, and even shadowhunters?!” Izzy had learned about the fate of the Whitehalls.

Lydia shrugged because, really, what else could she say? It’s not like she could agree. But at least they weren’t losing anything. Or at least not anything they truly cared about. They still had each other, and their Institute. They would deal with anything else that came at them.

“Wait,” Izzy realized something else then. “Consul Jia Penhallow? What happened with Dieudonné? Wasn’t he the Consul?”

“I asked about that.” Lydia admitted. “It would seem that things are beyond messy in Idris right now. Officially, Consul Dieudonne was killed during a confrontation against the Circle, while preventing Valentine from finishing the ritual to claim the Angel’s wish. Valentine is officially dead. It was during that same fight that the Soul Sword was recovered, which Jace delivered back. He’s been pardoned of any prior crimes and will be returning tomorrow.”

Some good news, at least.

“Okay, so that’s the official version, what’s the unofficial one?” Izzy knew how politics worked, and regardless of anything else, Lydia had a fair amount of contacts in Idris still.

So had Alec had, and some were even willing to talk to Izzy.

“Unofficially,” Lydia nodded, “Consul Dieudonne was a Circle member himself, he was killed by Jace.” Which might be the real reason he was being pardoned. “Regarding Valentine, while there are several accounts of him being dealt a potentially fatal blow, his body hasn’t been recovered. Some say there was some kind of portal at one point, apparently, it is believed he might have fallen through. The chances of him surviving, either the wound, or whatever dimension he ended up in, since they do know for a fact it wasn’t our world, are negligible; hence them choosing to declare him dead.”

“Not like it’d be the first time.” Or the first time they were wrong.

“Well, let’s hope this time it sticks,” Lydia understood her wife’s doubts, but still. “Anyway, the more… interesting rumors, are regarding Valentine’s activities before the fighting began. As there are some who insist that rather than interrupting him before he could do the ritual, they managed to catch him off-guard when it failed.”

“It failed…?” Izzy wasn’t expecting that, at all. “Why?”

“No idea.” Lydia shrugged. “Of course, that’s but a rumor, so there’s no way to actually ask the question but…”

“But you trust the person who passed on this rumor to you.” Izzy finished for her.

“I do.” Lydia nodded.

“So, what could make the ritual for the Angel’s wish fail?”

“Logically, there are only three real possibilities: there was no more wish,” though they did believe if someone, anyone, had asked already, they’d know; especially considering how harsh the penalty was, for the wish being asked in any circumstances but the end of the world… “The Angel refused to grant any wish Valentine might have asked, or intended to ask for,” which, if the Angel were so willing to take sides, the Circle wouldn’t be a problem at all, they never would have been, would they? “or…”

“Or one of the Instruments was a fake.”

Isabelle finally makes it out of the bedroom in skinny jeans, high-heeled boots and a loose sweater that covers the thin-strapped camisole she slept in (and judging by the wide neckline, it might be Lydia’s sweater, rather than hers); pulling her long hair into a twist while already walking down the hallway. She still has no idea what made her wife curse, whether that’s because the message was for her eyes only (which isn’t common) or she simply forgot to leave it behind for Izzy (much more likely, especially which how rattled she was), the brunette knows she’ll only get answers once she makes it to the Ops Room. So that’s where she heads.

The first person she comes across is Nathan, lightly tanned skin, blue eyes and blonde hair. He’s their demonology expert, and as good as Jace’s second in command. He’s also Jace’s lover.

“Hey Nathan,” She greets him with a small smile. “Know what’s going on?”

“Hey boss lady.” He greets her.

That’s what he calls both her and Lydia, ‘boss lady’. A very ‘mundane’, term to refer to them. Strange, though perhaps not that much when one considers how little Izzy, or any of them really, know about Nathan’s origins…

“Hey Izz, Lydia.” Jace greeted them upon his return.

“You stupid, foolish…” Izzy broke off her rant as she threw her arms around Jace and hugged him, tight. “Don’t you ever do that to me again! You hear me? You cannot…”

She trailed off as she fought back her tears. Which Jace dried without calling attention to them, being at least kind enough for that.

“I hear you Izz, I hear you.” He did his best to reassure her.

Lydia shifted, calling the attention of both of them. The blonde for her part, her attention was focused on the young man who’d arrived along with Jace: he has slightly tanned skin, very short hair or a blonde a few shades lighter than Jace’s, and blue eyes; dressed in what was pretty much the usual shadowhunter get-up: dark jeans, thick-soled boots, a t-shirt and jacket, though in his case the jacket was brown leather instead of the more traditional black.

“Oh right!” Jace jumped to his side right away. “This is Nathan! Nathan, this is my sister, Isabelle, and sister-in-law: Lydia.”

“Nathan…?” Lydia said questioningly even as she offered her hand to shake. “Family name?”

“No family name.” Nathan stated, easily but with a tone that made it quite obvious he wouldn’t be saying more on the topic.

Which… wasn’t normal exactly. All shadowhunters had family names, because they all had families, one way or another. Even the Ascendants who weren’t adopted, they were Angelborn, and thus a family, in their own way. Not Nathan apparently.

“He saved my life.” Jace piped up right then.

And that was that.

Lydia did still send his picture around to several of her contacts, just to make sure there were no standing warrants against him somewhere. But there was nothing to be found. Almost as if the young man had popped out of nowhere. Or perhaps… perhaps he’d simply been completely unremarkable until the day he came across Jace in the Silent City.

That was how they met, according to Jace. Nathan found him in the aftermath of Valentine’s attack on the place; when Jace was still so shocked by it all and didn’t know what to do. It was his idea for them to go after the psycho, stop him, and retrieve the Mortal Instruments. It was made obvious from the start that Nathan hated Valentine with a passion. A kind of hate that, to both girls, spoke of grief, and loss, and heart-ache.

“Who did you lose?” Izzy asked, rather bluntly, at one point.

“My mother and little sister.” Nathan seemed surprised that she’d guessed that much, but still answered. “I… there was nothing I could do.”

“It wasn’t your fault Nathan.” Jace sought to reassure him, a hand on his shoulder. “That’s the kind of monster Valentine was.”

“Yes, a monster…” Nathan’s face twisted slightly, strangely, at the word even as he said it, but no one commented on that.

“Well Nathan, welcome to the New York Institute.” Lydia finally greeted him.

“Thank you,” Nathan nodded at her. “I’m very happy to be here.”

“Idris has sent out a call to arms.”

The words, Nathan’s answer to Izzy’s earlier question, repeat themselves in the brunette’s mind, before she’s able to fully process them, to comprehend what she’s just heard. She cannot believe it, but more than that, she doesn’t want to. Because, how many of their own people would Idris ask for, or rather, demand? How many were they going to lose?!

Izzy only heard about Max’s death when Jace returned from the funeral. The excuse was that she wasn’t in the Institute when the fire message came in, and she couldn’t have attended anyway, exiled as she was from Idris. Jace himself barely made it in time.

“I just wanted to say goodbye…” Izzy sobbed. “I… couldn’t they have given me the chance to say goodbye to my baby brother?”

“We can hold a memorial for him right here.” Lydia promised her. “It won’t be the same but…”

“No, I know, thank you Lyds.” Izzy kissed her on the cheek.

Truly, it wasn’t the same, but still better than nothing.

“I thought you were coming.” Jace told her. “I honestly thought that they’d sent fire messages to both of us and you’d be arriving separately. It was until the rites began and you weren’t there that I realized you weren’t coming.”

“It’s not… it’s not just about me not being able to attend the funeral.” Izzy murmured quietly. “Even if I couldn’t be there physically, I’d have wanted to know. To hold my own rites. I… I didn’t even know Maxie was dead! They didn’t even think to let me know!”

Because she wasn’t their daughter anymore. They disavowed her, when she decided to marry Lydia, and it was like she simply stopped existing to the both of them.

Max, her baby brother, was dead, he hadn’t even been a real adult yet! Still in his teenage years. And yet he was dead, because Idris insisted on sending shadowhunters out on patrol, on fights, younger and younger every year. Too young to know what they were doing, to even be properly trained. Izzy herself was but twelve years old when she was first teamed up with Alec and Jace, and while at the time she was so, so proud of it, of being named a full-fledged shadowhunter… she knows now she was much too young to have been out there, fighting demons.

Max too was too young. Max, her Maxie… he’s remembered as a hero. Because when his teammates failed to fight properly, when they fled in fear at demons that turned out to be stronger than expected. Max stayed. He stayed and fought them. He killed the monsters, protected the mundanes… but his injuries were just so bad, and there was no one that could help him, or get him to help, in time. Her little brother died, in pain and alone…

Alec would have never allowed that to happen…

The most terrifying thought is that, just like the Clave first sent her out to fight when she was still so young, just like they sent Max… Izzy has no doubt that they’ll seek to send her children. Her precious children and that… Isabelle cannot stand it! Sandra and Harry are just little kids! Haven’t even received their first runes yet. And the thought of them getting such one day, being considered full-fledged shadowhunters… They’re the greatest treasures Izzy and Lydia have in the world, and the thought of them going out, fighting, possibly dying…

While in NY, and with the two of them being in charge, they’ve been able to control who gets to go on patrol. Few shadowhunters under 15 are sent on patrol in their Institute, and never at night, or in areas where especially dangerous demons are known to appear. Their numbers might not be ideal, but as long as they can help it, the Branwells will not be sending children to their deaths! They will keep them safe, just like Alec used to. Like someone should have done for Max.

Lydia finishes the speech she’s been giving about then, and Izzy realizes belatedly she didn’t hear a single word that was said. Lost in her own thoughts.

“How many?” She asks Nathan. “How many of our own is the Clave demanding?”

Somehow, the blonde doesn’t seem surprised that she’s asking. Still, the look he directs at her tells her, before he’s said a single word, that she’s not gonna like the answer.

“Everyone.” Nathan answers grimly, clearly understanding where her thoughts have gone. “Idris is recalling every single nephilim, all around the globe.”

“What?” Izzy’s eyes go very wide. “Why?”

What can possibly be going on that Idris would want them all. Every single nephilim? It’s one thing for them to demand a number of soldiers, or teams; whether it be specific shadowhunters, specialized teams, or anything else. But for them to call for everyone… even those who, like Lydia and her, are supposed to be semi-exiled…

“War.” Nathan states. “We’re at war. With Edom.”

Mexico

In many ways, Mexico is nothing at all like New York. The streets aren’t the same, the buildings certainly aren’t, the air smells very differently (whether that’s the altitude, the smog, the plants, the trash or something else entirely is up for debate), even the colors seem to be different. In other ways though, Mexico seems, at least at first glance: entirely the same as New York. A mundane place, filled with mundane people running around, living their lives, with no idea of the whole other world existing all around them.

When Magnus and the Losses first arrived to Mexico they didn’t actually arrive to Mexico City, contrary to what Alec was expecting (which was probably a good thing, the more distance they kept from shadowhunter territory, the better, in his opinion). They arrived at Tula, where the High Warlock: Xochiquetzal, lived. Only Magnus and Catarina really met with her. Magnus to explain why he, as a fellow High Warlock, was going to be staying in her territory for some time.

Contrary to what the Clave believes, there aren’t High Warlocks in every city, state, not even in every country. In fact, there are only nine High Warlocks in total across the world (there used to be ten, but that was a long time ago!). The High Warlocks live in places that are relatively central to the areas where more of their own race concentrates (which explains why there are three in Asia alone, two in Africa, yet only one in East Europe, and none in the Western half of the continent). Also, not just anyone can be named High Warlock, they’re some of the most powerful warlocks in the world, and that tends to mean age and/or bloodline.

Magnus himself, even gone from New York (his actual territory being North America, or at least, the Continental US and Canada), he’s technically still High Warlock, just… on a bit of a sabbatical. He even made sure to leave a deputy of sorts in his place, someone who while not having what was needed to be High Warlock, was not slouch and could be expected to handle most of what might come up in Magnus’s absence (he could also contact Magnus if something truly huge happened). It’s not like it was the first time a High Warlock needed a bit of a vacation.

Once notifications had been given, Magnus guided them to a property he owned in the Gulf. A ‘proper beach house’ and everything.

“Magnus, are you crazy?” Cat asked at some point. “The wards on this property are insane!”

“I know!” Magnus giggled. “But Cat, you’ve no idea the kind of damage hurricanes can cause!”

“Yeah, but with wards like this, a hurricane won’t be able to come within several hundred miles.” Cat pointed out tersely.

“Exactly!” Magnus was extremely proud of this fact. “They’ve worked quite well. Better than even I expected, to tell you the truth.”

“And how are humans supposed to explain why no hurricanes ever touch land on this specific section of the Gulf?” Cat asked in a bit of a drawl.

“Aliens.” Magnus deadpans.

When faced with the three Losses’ disbelieving expressions, he explained:

“It’s the truth!” He was really animated. “Everyone in town, and in the surrounding area, they have a huge subculture on it. They believe aliens live here, or at least landed in this town, and thus they keep it shielded. Protecting their interests and what-not.”

“Magnus…” Cat began, rolling her eyes.

“Trust me, my dear, this is far from the strangest thing you’ll find in Mexico, or really, anywhere in Latin-America.” Magnus pointed out. “In these countries you’ll find people who still believe in gods, and in monsters. Who, if they were to come across downworlders, are as likely to believe them people wearing costumes as they are to acknowledge them as real, and then move on like it’s all perfectly normal and nothing to think twice about.”

It was Alec who had to blink twice then because, what? He’d heard time and again, all sort of speeches and horror stories about the things that would happen, were the mundanes to ever find out about the existence of the Shadow World; and to think there was actually a place (or a lot of places, actually, Magnus did say it was like that in a lot of Latin-America, didn’t he?) where people could see werewolves, vampires, seelies, and just… just nod and keep on with their lives. Like it was… like it was perfectly normal?!

Alec could hardly believe what he was hearing. And it was just the first day!

Life in Mexico was definitely nothing like life in New York. Or really, anywhere else that Alec had been before (and alright, it’s not like he’d been to many places, but Idris and Beijing did still count, didn’t they?). Though Alec supposed it might not be the place that made life so different exactly, but rather the kind of life he was living. He wasn’t a shadowhunter anymore. Wasn’t sure if he counted as nephilim even! He was deruned, his stele taken away, even his bow ws gone… And yet he still has his staff, and the invisible Trueblood runes. It’s not just the ones that bind his staff and used to bind his bow to him, he has others, battle runes, and protection ones; very few, compared to the more traditional ones he used to have, but still no less important for it. And of course there are the wings…

Alec didn’t bring the wings out for a long while. He refused to. Even when he sometimes… when he could almost feel them, like an itch in his back, just beneath his skin. More than once, when Magnus insisted on turning the ‘putting some sunscreen’ into an outright massage (one of his many attempts at getting Alec to relax, and also one that more than once he turned into seduction attempts), there would be something, almost like sparks, like static electricity, but not quite… yet neither of them ever talked about it.

And then one day Magnus went looking for Alec and found him on the rooftop, wings out; one of them bent and pulled close, he seemed to be studying the feathers critically.

“Oh…” Magnus breathed out.

Alec didn’t even look all that surprised as he turned his head from his wing to Magnus.

“Alexander…” Magnus looked absolutely enthralled. “They’re gorgeous… you are gorgeous.”

“Thank you…” Magnus blushed brightly, but he did not look away.

“May I…?” The warlock extended a hand, unsure.

“Yeah, just…” Alec hesitated for a moment.

“I promise to be very, very careful.” Magnus promised, stopping with his fingers still an inch or so away from the wing.

“It’s not that.” Alec assured him. “It’s not… I’m not ashamed of them, or afraid, of them or of you. I just… the wings don’t feel…” He didn’t know how to explain it. “You’ll see.”

Magnus did see. Or rather, it wasn’t so much what he saw, but what he felt. Alec’s wings, they looked to be made of feathers, but they didn’t feel like that, at all. They felt like power, pure, unadulterated, power. Also, while at first sight they looked dark enough to be confused with black, on a closer look Magnus realized they weren’t. They weren’t black, or white, or any single color really. More like a mix, not even a gradient, or anything smooth like that, but like small sparks of one color and another here and there; and they seemed to shift along with Alec.

“Like I said, I’m not ashamed of my wings.” Alec said quietly. “I just… I feel I need to know them, understand them, before doing anything with them. I was lucky… beyond lucky really, that night. When I managed to control them just enough. I cannot always count on luck.”

“Have you tried flying again since that night?”

“No. I… The wings, they might look like wings, but they don’t Feel like it. I don’t… I feel them, but I have no idea how they’re actually connected to me. There are no bones, or muscles or… human bodies aren’t made for having wings!

“No, they’re not, but you’re not really human… angel.” Magnus smirked as he shaped the last word, slowly and full of meaning.

“Magnus!” Really, as much as he might enjoy Magnus’s flirting sometimes, it wasn’t the time!

“Really Alexander. Have you considered the possibility that maybe you’re overthinking things?”

He… hadn’t actually, which… well, it’s not like he hadn’t done something like that before, had he? His hesitation on the day of his and Jace’s parabatai ceremony came to mind. Truly, he was always so decisive, so confident, when it came to actions taken out of duty or (and especially) when it was about protecting someone. But when it was solely about him… then he tended to think and overthink and hesitate so much…

Perhaps it was time to change that? After all, he was a whole new man! Alec Lightwood was a shy boy, ashamed of his preferences, trying so hard to please everyone, never able to do so, constantly berated for not reaching impossible goals, terrified of making a life of his own, of being himself… But he was not Alec Lightwood anymore. Alec Lightwood was as good as dead. He was Alec Loss, and his new life was beginning. He’d make sure it started the right way.

Magnus was left shocked as the young man smiled at him, a dangerous smile, before planting a kiss on him (too fast for Magnus to be able to respond!).

“Trust me.” Alec whispered, practically against Magnus’s lips, before sprinting away.

He was tall enough, he reached the edge of the rooftop in just three steps. Then he took a fourth one, which almost made Magnus scream, until he realized Alec wasn’t falling, no… he was flying! Madzie’s shriek from somewhere nearby told them that she’d already seen Alec, and she was very, very excited. Almost as much as Alec himself.

Something else that Alec found to be incredibly easy once in Mexico, was his relationship with Magnus. They flirted, and teased and joked… after that kiss on the rooftop things progressed: more kisses, light touches, which eventually turned into more touches, petting. They never did talk about it. They didn’t have to. It was all so natural, so… easy. Though Alec did realize that at least had little to do with the place they were in and more the circumstances, and himself. The absence of the Clave, and of his parents, even of his sister and parabatai and other shadowhunters in general; the lack of stringent rules, endless tasks and impossible expectations made other things, made life in general feel so incredibly easy…

It was that which made Alec realize, for real, that he was never the problem. His likes, his preferences, everything that makes him who he is… those things aren’t, were never a problem, they aren’t wrong. It was everything else, the people that had surrounded him until recently, the world he used to live in. He supposes that, in some ways, he’s incredibly fortunate to have been able to get away from all that. Even if the circumstances were barely a step or two short of a ‘worst case scenario’, even if it could have so easily ended up in death… he was, and still is happy to be where he is now…

Something Alec never planned was to get involved in any significant way with the Shadow World again. He was a part of it, of course, simply by existing. Being the adopted son of one warlock, and dad of another. He knew most people assumed he was a warlock, or perhaps half-seelie, in no way powerful or extraordinary, just there. And Alec was happy that way. He still had a hell of a lot of money (from the sale of the dragonidae); he’d learned a bit about investments in the mundane world, and did some low-risk ones to ensure the money wouldn’t run out any time soon. They worked better than expected. So he didn’t actually need to work for a living.

Early on in their arrival to Mexico he made a habit of running every morning on the beach, then doing some workouts right there. People saw him, and that somehow led to a bunch of people exercising with him, and he’d even started teaching self defense to a bunch of kids, teenagers and young women (free of charge, of course!). Madzie loved attending those classes too.

Madzie was absolutely delighted with their new life in Mexico. And it wasn’t the beach house, or all the other awesome places Magnus would take them to every other week.

“All that’s really awesome, of course, but not what I love most.” She informed her grandma when she asked the little girl what she thought about their move.

“Then what do you love most about our moving here?” Cat asked, truly curious.

She did know that the girl was happy (it’d be impossible not to see it, Madzie’s smiles were so bright, and contagious); but she, like Magnus, thought it was about the new places, perhaps even the fact that they were living on the beach.

“Daddy.” Madzie answered promptly. “That he’s here all the time, with me, with us. And he’s happy! He smiles a lot more than he used to. And he’s teaching me how to throw a punch, and he’s promised he’ll teach me how to shoot a bow just like he does and…”

Alec couldn’t wait anymore, he swooped the girl in his arms, holding her tight.

“Love you, little fish.” He whispered against her hair.

“Love you too daddy, very, very much!” Madzie whispered back, holding him with all the strength her small arms were capable of.

And really, what else could Alec possibly ask for?

So Alec was happy. He went running every morning, taught informal self-defense classes once or twice a week, went to see new places with his mama, daughter, and boyfriend. As far as he was concerned, life was as good as it could get.

And then a building fell. It happened in the next town over. A pretty small town, with a main street and dirt roads; nothing like the cities Alec was used to. No one even knew what had happened. Other than a building had fallen, there were people trapped under the ruins and time was running out for them. When Alec saw Cat getting ready to go, hearing that volunteers were very important as there was no way of knowing how long it’d take for emergency services to arrive, he decided to follow her.

Cat joined the doctors and nurses setting up nearby, treating those who’d managed to make it out of the collapsed structure on their own, or with a little help, having been the closest to the edge. Alec for his part joined those working to move the debris to get to the people still trapped. It wasn’t an easy job. None of them were emergency workers, or engineers; though at least two of the men worked in construction and had enough experience to be able to point out where some things shouldn’t be moved, lest they risk making things worse.

Alec had to do a double-take when he realized that he and his mama were far from the only non-humans helping. There were several werewolves, in their wolf-form, wearing bright-colored vests proclaiming they were rescue dogs or something like that, working with other wolves in human form, taking advantage of their enhanced senses to be able to tell where to go. A few warlocks and half-seelies were using their respective magics to assist, careful not to call too much attention to themselves. Still, there were a handful of times when one of them intervened just in the nick of time: to keep a wall from dropping right where a bunch of survivors seem to be, or to secure a beam that almost fell and blocked the way out for an old man, or pulling several people out of a hole who should have been too heavy for any one person to carry on their own. Yet Alec realized that even though a few people seemed to notice these instances, none of them mentioned them. As if there were some silent accord to keep everything non-human secret.

“I told you.” Magnus stated when it was all said and done and Alec got to talk to his boyfriend about things. “That’s just the kind of place Mexico is. And a lot of Latin-America. There’s such a rich culture here. Such a wide range of beliefs. A lot of mundanes will see something connected to the Shadow World and just keep going, not because they’re in denial, but because they see it, accept it, and move on. It’s not something they’re a part of directly, but it exists, they accept that, and move on.”

“Just like that?” Alec still had trouble believing it.

“Just like that.” Magnus confirmed.

That was the first, but certainly not the last time Alec joined a group of volunteers to help during some emergency. Not by far. In fact, he made a habit of it. Since he had so much free time. Whenever there was some kind of emergency somewhere in the country (or at times even in other countries) he’d open a portal and go there. Cat joined him when she could, but she did still have an actual job at the local hospital.

He’d open a portal, because Alec could do that now. It wasn’t magic exactly, or at least, he didn’t think so. He, like all the Truebloods before him, had learned the language of the angels in a much more comprehensive way than most shadowhunters did. He understood that runes weren’t just symbols, they were a written form of Angelic. Each rune was a word or a phrase, each twist, twirl and trace representing letters. In many ways, runes could be considered the angelic version of spells. While shadowhunters were only taught the runes in the Gray Book, and only as specific runes (without going into why or how they worked exactly); Truebloods were different. While most shadowhunters (the Clave as a whole included) might have forgotten it at some point, the Truebloods were the original nephilim, predating even Jonathan Shadowhunter himself! (in fact, Jonathan was a Trueblood, before changing his surname to Shadowhunter, but that was a whole other story). The Truebloods were the only family to still learn Angelic, and as such, the only ones capable of truly understanding the language of the angels. It was where their ‘secret runes’ came from; the same could be said for their ability to activate runes without a stele.

While without a stele Alec might not be able to draw permanent runes on himself, he could still use Trueblood-runes in a non-permanent manner, either on himself, or objects. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but at least he no longer felt useless, defenseless… He also used runes sometimes when working with volunteer groups; and of course, that was how he made portals to go places.

It was his volunteering during a big earthquake that hit Mexico City a few years later that led to him finally meeting the local High Warlock, Xochiquetzal. There were a few things Alec knew already before meeting the warlock: that she was old, possibly even the oldest warlock alive; over a thousand years old, the natives of the continent believed her to be a goddess and treated her as such. She was petite, with golden skin, chocolate eyes and ebony hair cascading down her back; the day Alec first met her she was wearing a long forest-green skirt, an off-white peasant blouse with colorful flowers embroidered and tanned-leather sandals. Her looks were a mix of youthful and mature that made Alec confident she could pass for anything from a girl in her early twenties to a woman in her early fifties with just the right clothes, hairdo and makeup. When she looked at him Alec felt an almost physical weight settle on him, like her presence alone, her mere attention being on him, was heavy.

“Ah… you must be Alejandro.” She murmured as she looked at him.

Alec couldn’t help but notice her accent, so different from anyone else’s there in Mexico. Even those from native communities.

“My lady,” he bowed deeply in respect. “I’m Alec Loss.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Alec.” She said to him. “You may call me Xochiquetzal.”

“It’s an honor ma’am… Xochiquetzal.” He flushed a bit.

She just smiled at him, not a mocking smile, but a gentle one. It reminded Alec a bit of the feeling he always got when Cat acted motherly towards him. Xochiquetzal had a bit of that to her. Alec had heard the whispers, that she saw all in her purview as her children; he had a feeling that, at least for the time being, that included him.

“I’ve been wanting to meet you.” She informed him.

“You have?” Alec blinked, truly not expecting that, at all.

“I do.” She nodded, tilting his head to a side, as if contemplating something, as if contemplating him in some unfathomable manner. “I wonder, do you know what you are?”

“What I…” Alec trailed off, expression becoming guarded. “I don’t know what…”

“I do not mean your scars, young one.” She waved a hand dismissively. “I don’t mean in relation to what you might have once been, in another life. I wonder if you know what you are now. What you have become.”

Alec blinked again. It was true, the scars where his runes used to be were still there. With the years that had passed since his deruning they’d become thin, barely visible silver lines. They were probably only visible at all because of his tanned skin, the slight discoloration clear under certain lights. He usually paid them no mind, having long since put his past behind him. What she was talking about however… she could not know about his wings, could she? Alec hadn’t used them at all, not any of the times he’d worked with volunteers. He only ever pulled them out and used them while at home, behind the safety of Magnus’s wards. And his runes… they were a secret even the Clave did not know, so… what then was she talking about?

“No, it’s clear to me that you do not know.” Xochiquetzal nodded, more to herself than to him. “Tell me child, why did you Fall?”

He knew, instantly, that she wasn’t talking about the normal kind of fall. Not about tripping, or falling from some place. No, she was talking about The Fall. About the thing that had made him… well, what he was now. Which meant that she did know, somehow.

“How do you know about that?” He blurted out, shocked.

“Because of what you are.” She explained, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I can see it in your shadow, and in your aura. You’re a Fallen.”

“What… what does that even mean?” Because the fact that he’d been referring to what had happened to him as Falling, didn’t mean that he actually understood it, or what it meant, exactly.

“You know, like the Angels…?”

“I’m not a demon!” Alec felt as if he’d been slapped.

“No! Of course not! I didn’t say that. You’re not a demon, child. You’re a Fallen.”

“But… isn’t that the same thing?”

Really, weren’t the Fallen Angels the ones that became demons? Greater Demons even? The ones who came to be known as the Princes of Hell?

The string of curses in a mix of Spanish and at least half a dozen Prehispanic dialects (more than half of which Alec had never even heard) was enough to tell Alec that no, those two things were most definitely Not The Same Thing.

It’s not that surprising really. The Clave has always liked keeping things simple, making the world seem very black and white (even though it very much is not). For them, if it’s connected in any way with demons, it’s black, evil, and thus must be destroyed; nevermind that the thing that makes vampires and werewolves such isn’t technically demon blood, but viruses, and that while warlocks do have demon blood, they’re also half human.

Likewise, while the Princes of Hell, the Greater Demons, had once been angels, those who’d been thrown out of heaven for turning on the Creator and raising arms against Heaven. The Fallen were another thing entirely. The Fallen were those angels who, as their name implied, Fell from Heaven. Fell, they weren’t thrown out, weren’t exiled from Heaven. They just… became lost. Examples of such angels were Azazeal, and Ithuriel, both who’d ended up on Earth. The first lost himself to the chaos of humanity, and eventually became a victim of the temptations wrought by demons, he became one himself. Ithuriel on the other hand, fell in love with humanity in many ways. Even with one woman in particular, which was where the Truebloods, the very first nephilim lineage, came from.

The biggest example of a Fallen however, was Samael. Like the other two, he wasn’t expelled from Heaven; unlike them, his Fall wasn’t accidental, something that happened in the course of battle. Samael was betrayed by another angel. No one knew the exact reasons, but it was for this reason that even when given the chance, Samael refused to return to Heaven, refused to return to one who betrayed him thus. He made a new home for himself, a new kingdom. He still sought to serve his Father, took control of Hell to ensure that the threat to both Heaven and Earth would be as small as he could make it. He made his choices, and the world cursed him for it.

“Lucifer…” Alec gasped in disbelief. “You think I’m like Lucifer?”

And wasn’t he? One with the blood of angels, betrayed by brother, sister, by the angels themselves and thrown out of… well, the Institute might not have been heaven exactly, at all, but it was still the only home he knew back then.

“You need to stop thinking of Lucifer as your old teachers described him.” Xochiquetzal pointed out. “Just like I’m not a goddess of beauty, love and sex, the Morning Star is not the vicious demon you angels have been taught to fear and hate. Truth is we, all of us really, are much more complex than any of that.”

It made sense actually. People always were more than a single descriptor. Just like how he was more than just his parents’ son, more than Isabelle’s older brother, or Jace’s parabatai, or the New York Institute’s Acting Head, more than a shadowhunter…

“What does it mean?” He finally asked. “Beyond comparisons to Lucifer?”

“It means that you’re… more.” Xochiquetzal made an effort to find the right words to explain it. “It’s like… do you know why he’s called Morning Star? A morningstar is one that appears on the sky when it’s still dark, it announces the coming of sun and light to the earth; it’s a herald of the dawn… That’s what you’ve become. You’re not a demon Alejandro, nor are you an angel; you’re both and neither at the same time. You’re… you.”

He was Alexander Loss, adopted son of Catarina, adopted father of Madzie, lover of Magnus Bane, known across Latin America as the ‘Buen Samaritano’ (Good Samaritan). A Trueblood, a fallen nephilim with dark wings made of pure energy, a warrior, a protector. He was Alec. He was himself, and for the first time in his life he realized that truly was enough.

The fire message comes to them mid-morning. It’s been a decade almost to the day since their patch-work family first came to Mexico, and they’ve never gone back. At times they (especially Alec and Magnus, while on dates or short vacations) will travel to other countries, often to Asia, Europe, even Africa once or twice, but they’ve never gone back to NY, or even to the US at all. They have been talking recently, about their long-term plans. While it’s been a while since Alec and Magnus officially married, at the time that ceremony, as beautiful as it was, was little more than a formality. It didn’t really change anything about their relationship, or their family.

Magnus is still technically the High Warlock of North America, and while he insists that doesn’t mean he has to live in Brooklyn, neither can he stay forever in Mexico. Xochiquetzal has absolutely no problem with him, with all of them, being there, not at all. She cares deeply about all of them, dotes on both Alec and Madzie like they’re her own, even Magnus she’ll treat sometimes like he’s her nephew or something like that. Despite looking so small, and almost young, they’re all well aware of the fact that the High Warlock of Tula is ancient in a way that most cannot possibly comprehend.

So they’ve been considering going back to the US. Magnus offered them making a home in a place other than Brooklyn, but Alec does love NY, that city was his home in so many ways. The place he grew up in, beyond the sometimes stifling four walls of the Institute itself, and the hazel eyed man feels like doing that, settling somewhere else, is giving some intangible power to the Clave, and he doesn’t want that. They haven’t made up their minds yet.

And then the fire-message comes. It’s from Lorenzo. Short, and yet also incredibly shocking:

Shadowhunters are at war against Edom.

The shocking message is confirmed in the following hours as both Magnus and Catarina get in touch with contacts in different parts of the world. They also learn a few more things: like the fact that all shadowhunters are being called to Idris to join the war: Every Single One.

“This is bad…” Alec mutters.

“How bad?” Magnus feels the need to know.

“Institutes are being emptied.” Alec points out. “This hasn’t happened since… well, back in the 1800s things were very different. Only the Head, their family and staff truly lived outside Idris. They acted like… guards, I guess one could say. Keeping watch over the places where rifts to other dimensions had the potential to open. They’d patrol, but it was mostly for something to do.”

“And what if something happened?” Cat wants to know. “Like a portal? Or demons?”

“If it was more than they could objectively handle then they’d call for a team to be sent from Idris.” Alec shrugs. “Things were very different back then, from what I’ve been told. The human population much lower, and the witch-hunts had apparently left most with little interest in anything that in any way related to magic, or the supernatural. Of course some still did it. And of course the strategies the Clave had didn’t always work. It’s why things eventually changed. How the Heads went from being informal guards to Commanders of anywhere between a dozen to several hundred soldiers. That happened in the early 1900s, I think.”

Magnus is absolutely fascinated. He noticed that things had changed in the Institutes, of course he had. He does still remember the London Institute in the 1870s, nothing like the NYI under Alec Lightwood, or even his parents. He had never known when things changed though, or why.

“In any case.” Alec states. “What I mean is that, ever since traditions changed regarding how Institutes are staffed, they’d never been emptied like this. It means that whatever is going on in Idris. This war… it’s huge.”

It definitely is. They get a call, rather than a fire message from Sakura Li, the High Warlock of Tokyo. From all the High Warlocks she’s the only one who has a somewhat good (at the very least non-confrontational) relationship with her demonic father. According to Magnus, this is because she, unlike most warlocks, wasn’t the result of rape (either knowingly, or by the demon glamouring himself as someone else). Sakura’s mother knowingly bore the child of a demon, a Prince of Hell in fact, as part of a deal she and her husband made with him, one that allowed her to live longer despite her incurable disease, and kept her human son safe from the dangers of the Shadow World.

“It’s Lilith.” Her voice can be heard through Magnus’s phone. “She’s apparently decided that the ancient rules to leave the Human World alone, do not apply to her.”

“What about Asmodeus?” Magnus wants to know. “Why isn’t he doing something to stop her?”

On the other end of the line they can hear another voice, not quite close enough to the phone to be fully heard, but still. They all guess it must be Sakura’s husband: Xiao Lang Li.

“He’s probably the sole reason Lilith didn’t do something before now.” Sakura eventually says.

Magnus snorts at the thought of his father being helpful in any way. Though he does know he’s been the one to keep Lilith mostly under control for ages. Not anymore though.

“There’s no way the shadowhunters will be able to win against Lilith and her army.” The High Warlock eventually states. “However many of their warriors they pull together. They don’t stand a chance. The edomites… they’re the kind of creatures that cannot be defeated, not fully. If Lilith manages to open a rift to Alicante, that’s it, she’s won. It won’t matter how long the nephilim fight, or how many demons they kill, they’ll just reform in Edom and cross the rift again. If Lilith manages to do that, she can just sit back and wait. Sooner or later she’ll have won.”

“We cannot let that happen.” Alec declares.

He might be the one to speak up, but he’s not the only one thinking it. It’s not even about the shadowhunters. None of them believe that Lilith will have enough with defeating them. No, there’s no doubt that once she’s destroyed Idris, she’ll move onto the rest of the world. They cannot have that.

“What can we even do?” Cat asks, at a loss of how to handle it.

“If the shadowhunters cannot handle Lilith, that just means we’ll have to do it ourselves.”

It doesn’t even matter who says it in the end, they all know it’s the truth. They also know it’s most likely going to be absolutely insane.

Idris

“Isabelle!”

Izzy hears the voice calling to her right as she’s stepping out of the permanent portal and straight onto Angel Square, in the middle of Alicante. She doesn’t even need to ask why they’re calling her. The human yells and demonic shrieks make the answer to that question obvious enough. A look at her wife confirms Lydia will keep an eye on their children, and with that Izzy’s running, across the square and straight to where the action is taking place.

The ‘action’ being a relatively small rift that has been opened on the ground, a few streets away from the Square, where a number of demons are coming out of. Izzy starts twisting her wrist to uncoil her electrum whip, until a second look tells her that they don’t actually need her to fight the demons. No, the other shadowhunters present have those well in hand. The problem is the rift itself. It needs to be closed.

“I’m here!” She yells as she makes it to one side of the hole in the fabric of reality.

On the other side is Aline Penhallow in her usual attire, the white sparks of angelic magic already dancing between her fingers.

“Good.” Aline nods at her. “Help me, Helen will keep those bugs off our backs.”

Izzy takes a deep breath, centering herself, before calling on her own magic, silvery white sparks appearing on the tips of her own fingers. Aline is whispering things in Angelic under her breath, at the same time she traces shapes in the air with her fingers, the sparks taking the form of the runes she calls on. Izzy for her part doesn’t need to say any words or trace any shapes, she just wills her own magic to follow Aline’s as what looks like a sparkly net takes form over the hole in the dimensions. Then the two women use all the force of their will to slowly, but surely, pull at the edges, until they manage to close the rift.

At the end of it all Aline’s left panting, hands braced on her knees as her wife (her own fight finished as well), helps hold her up.

Izzy in comparison doesn’t look quite as bad off. She traces an invisible rune on the side of her wrist and a couple of water bottles pop out of a pocket dimension. She offers one to Aline, who takes it grateful and chugs down half of it in seconds.

“Thanks,” She speaks up before drinking the rest of the water more slowly. “I’ll never understand how you manage to be so fresh, even after such a spell.”

“You had already started when I arrived.” Izzy points out. “You took the brunt of things.”

Aline nods. Truth is, they both know it’s not like that. While they both might be shadowmages, Izzy’s by far the more talented of the two. Will and Jem even said it, when they started training the two women, along with Jace, Carlos, as well as Helen’s brother Julian and his wife (then best friend) Emma. On the latter two they, just like Will and Jem, had chosen to become parabatai, at the same time as training to become shadowmages, which gave them certain perks. In fact, Izzy’s the most talented of the whole new generation of shadowmages, surpassing even Jace; only Jules and Emma can match her, and they need their parabatai bond to do so.

More than once Izzy has wondered how things might have been like, if Alec were still with them. If he’d been able to become a shadowmage with them. She has no doubt he and Jace would be unstoppable. Also, she’s fairly certain that it’s her Trueblood lineage that’s given her a certain advantage in things, and Alec was always so much better than her at utilizing the gifts that came with their bloodline. Izzy herself didn’t pay much attention to any of it until much, much later.

Lydia isn’t a shadowmage. When Will, Jem and Tessa first showed up at the NYI to check if Izzy and Jace were still interested in becoming shadowmages (they were), they proceeded to test all who expressed an interest. There weren’t quite that many, but of those there were still a few that failed the test. Lydia was one of those. When asked if she knew why she claimed ignorance, Izzy suspects though. While the two women are happy in their lives, in their marriage, with their family, they just… They love each other, but aren’t in love with each other. Izzy still believes that love is a fairy-tale for the most part; to her, there’s no such a thing as perfect soulmates and eternal love. For Lydia though… Izzy’s seen her on the anniversary of the death of her ex, it’s clear to Izzy that Lydia loved John Monteverde dearly, a part of her still does. So it’s perhaps no surprise that she would want to reunite with him some day. Something she cannot do if she becomes a shadowmage, and thus immortal.

Aline’s own wife, Helen, isn’t a shadowmage either. But in her case that’s because her half-seelie status makes her incompatible with that level of angelic magics. Instead though, she’s been developing her seelie side more, gaining access to the kind of magic seelies possess. It’s not the kind of thing she’d have dared do before, but with Aline having made the choices she did… Helen feels more comfortable with herself than she ever thought she could be.

“Where are the guys?” Izzy asks, only then catching up on that.

“Dealing with another rift on the north sector.” Helen says with an exhale. “It was bigger than this one, actually.”

Which explains why they went to deal with that one and left Aline to the one Izzy found her at.

“Jules and Emms are coming with the LA contingent in a few hours.” Helen adds, expecting Izzy to ask after them next.

The Carstairs are the latest to join the shadowmages ranks. The pair originally met the trio when Brother Zacariah insisted that they talk to them about their interest to become parabatai, shortly after the death of Emma’s parents. The trio sat them down and forced them to confront the feelings they had, even back then, for each other, the depth of their attachment. In the end, the pair still became parabatai (Brother Zacariah did the ceremony, as the others refused when learning the trio were involved), they also started training to become shadowmages. It was a huge scandal when they made their relationship public years later, with so many still believing in the existence of the parabatai curse.

Even though they were forced to accept they’d lied about the curse, the Clave still had their ‘revenge’ in that they semi-exiled Julian and Emma (much like they had Lydia and Izzy). The joke was on them though, as the pair just seemed to take that as an excuse to go traveling around the world, like the shadowhunters of the past. They hadn’t been back in LA for long when the call to arms from Idris came.

The group stays in the area for a while longer. Izzy at one point adding a second seal to their patch, just in case. Eventually they feel their work fully take and the rift cease to exist entirely. Satisfied, they make their way back to Angel Square. The Penhallow manor and Branwell house await them once they’re ready to settle and rest, but the time for that hasn’t come just yet. Izzy really wants to talk with her teachers about that rift. It shouldn’t have taken that long to close, as if something were fighting against it closing; not actively, that would have been much harder for them to handle, and Izzy’s not certain she and Aline alone would have been able to handle it. But still, there was a resistance, one that felt almost… angelic. The brunette doesn’t know what that means exactly, but doesn’t like it.

They hear Will before they see him. He, Jem and Tessa are standing by the Gard’s entrance (and a part of Aline wonders which of them exactly decided to have that argument right there… because it was most certainly planned, judging by the growing crowd gathering).

“One thing I don’t understand is how, by the Angel, this keeps happening!” Everyone can hear Will ranting, loudly, as he approaches the group. “That’s two rifts today, and the day isn’t over yet! The second opened before the first was even fully closed!”

“It’s worse than that.” Izzy draws attention to them with just a few words.

“What…?” That takes everyone aback.

“The rift?” Izzy clarifies. “It fought back. Not actively. I’m not talking about the demons getting through, or demons waiting at the rift. No this was… the magic, the power used to open that rift, it fought our magic as we worked to close it. What’s more, there were angelic qualities to it.”

Just like with Izzy herself, no one can know what that means exactly, what everyone does realize is that it cannot mean everything good.

“Are we talking about traitors?”

“What? Like a traitor in Edom, helping the demons attack us?”

“You do realize nephilim cannot survive in Edom, right?”

The argument goes on around them for a little while. On that last statement, it’s not strictly true. Oh, shadowhunters cannot survive in Edom, shadowmages on the other hand… (they’re still nephilim, no matter what some might try to claim!). Still, the mages in question would rather not call attention to that little fact, the last thing they need is Clave officials getting it into their head that They might be the traitors. Things are hard enough already for the shadowmages, they do not need to make them even worse.

“We may know something about that.” A voice calls.

All eyes turn to the pair of newcomers: a blonde, brown-eyed young woman, walking side by side with a blue-green-eyed young man with messy brown hair; they’re both dressed in dark, sturdy clothes, well armed, runes visible on what bare skin there is. And even those who might not have known them beforehand for whatever the reason, ever since the scandal, there’s not an adult in Idris who does not know their names: Emma and Julian Carstairs.

“What are you doing here?” Some nameless old man in the vicinity asks in a derisive tone.

“We’re nephilim, you calledn All Nephilim to Idris, to war, remember?” Emma rolls her eyes.

“We’re also shadowmages, and from what we can tell, judging by the state of the protections in Alicante, you need more of those than you’ve got, or are likely to get.” Julian adds before the same man, or someone else, could muster a response.

That probably makes more than one of the old bastards bite their tongues, for however much they might hate to admit, truth is they do need the shadowmages. Now more than ever. It’s perhaps unsurprising that due to the campaign that certain people kept going against the practice, less people showed interest in being trained as shadowmages than they could have and now… now they risk losing their nation, their civilization as a whole, unless they find some new way of fighting back and protecting themselves.

“What’s going on?” Jem asks the pair.

“Have you heard about the missing nephilim?” Julian asks straight out, though he already suspects the answer.

The answer is of course no. He hasn’t. Not many have.

“Shadowhunters have been going missing and it wasn’t reported?” Tessa’s horrified at the idea.

“Not shadowhunters…” Someone mutters in the back.

“No,” Emma agrees, grimly. “Not shadowhunters, nephilim.”

Which really, makes it all the worse.

Turns out, nephilim children have been going missing around the world. One or two in any given city. A few of those cases had been classed as terrible tragedies, children being lost in one way or another. Those that couldn’t be classed as that, the cases were seen as kidnappings, investigated as such, yet the cases all eventually went cold. With no sign, no clues as to their fates. No one ever thought to connect the cases: no one until the Carstairs.

“Nephilim children,” Emma explains. “They possess the blood of the angels, yet are too young to have earned their first rune yet. It would be much easier to kidnap them, to… use them, than an actual shadowhunter.

They’re also harder to track. Idris doesn’t really keep a record of nephilim as such, only of active shadowhunters. Which is another reason why not much was being done about the cases, little could be done when no one even knew how many people were actually missing!

“The blood of the angels…” Tessa whispers suddenly.

Her voice is so low it can barely be heard amidst the chatter going all around. Yet the horror in each and every word is so strong, almost visceral, that it manages to draw the attention of all who actually hear her.

“What…?” Julian blinks.

There’s something about those words, and the tone, he knows he’s missing something.

Tessa opens her mouth to say something, probably to explain, but in the end all that escapes her is a low, mournful whine as she pressed a closed fist against her middle, wrapping her arms around herself, as if seeking comfort. Jem moves to offer it as best he can, whispering nonsense into her ear, trying to calm her down.

“Fuck!” Will snarls.

“What…?!” More than one person demands.

It’s clear the two men have understood something the rest haven’t. Something important.

“That’s how the demons are opening the rifts.” Jem explains quietly, at the same time his wife shakes and sobs in his arms, and his husband curses yet again, loud and harsh. “They’re using nephilim blood to force their way through the wards.”

Which explains why Izzy felt like something in the rift was fighting back, and the angelic qualities. Izzy’s horror is as big as Tessa’s own. Both for the children in general, but also because she cannot help but think of her own kids: Sandra and Harry, what if it had been them?! She’s far from the only one to have such thoughts. Along with another very important one: how in the name of Raziel did the Clave not know this was going on?!?!?!

xXx

Things get progressively worse in the following days. There being two rifts a day becomes the norm. The mages work in teams, make a schedule for themselves, to ensure none are too tired or drained when they need to be in action. They also make sure to always have others around to shield them (like Tessa, Helen, Lydia, Nathan, Julian’s siblings).

There’s an ongoing argument with Consul Penhallow and Inquisitor Herondale. Regarding the calling in of reinforcements. When Imogen stated there was no one, as all shadowhunters had been called already, more than one pointed out the Downworld, the Inquisitor refused, loudly, to even consider the possibility. Tessa’s the only downworlder allowed in Idris, and she’s quite certain that the only reason they don’t keep her out is because they all know she’s a package deal with her husbands. Also, Lydia’s quite certain that the Clave believes that her having some nephilim blood somehow makes her less of a downworlder than others.

“We cannot keep going like this indefinitely!” Will yells at one point.

“We are shadowhunters, we’re warriors, by the blessing of the Angel.” Imogen declares. “We will fight Hell, or die trying!”

“Is that what you want?” Izzy snaps.

“Isabelle!” Maryse snaps. “Show respect!”

“Respect?!” Izzy demands. “Like the one she’s shown me? Shown us? And what respect could I possibly feel for someone who’s condemning us all, our children, to death? And for what? Her own fucking pride!”

The argument is ongoing, seems like it will never end. No matter how many people support the idea of asking help from the Downworld, Imogen and Jia, as well as the ruling council, all refuse to even consider it. And then things take a different turn, whispers start among the younger generation, that if it’s those in power that are the problem, maybe it’s time for someone else to call the shots… Lydia’s quite sure that those particular rumors haven’t reached Imogen yet, or if they have, she doesn’t believe them capable of carrying out such a coup; otherwise, her reaction would not have been pretty. It’s easy to see how disenchanted pretty much the entire younger generation has become with the Clave. And even if they might not be ready to carry out a coup just yet, Lydia suspects it won’t be long… that is, if they survive the next few days.

And then a shadowmage is killed.

Three rifts open in a lapse of less than six hours. The last two so close together, and while the first is still being closed, forcing the mages to be practically all working at the same time. The Carstairs are sent to deal with one of the rifts, despite the fact that they were sleeping, having had the previous shift; but it’s necessary, with the four mages from that shift (Izzy, Aline, Jace and Carlos) working already on the other rifts.

It all happens very fast. Too fast. Carlos and Jace are fighting against the edges of the rift, trying to close it. Trusting Nathan and Duncan to keep the demons off their backs. And then… Duncan is falling. It’s too sudden for anyone to do anything about it. Other shadowhunters are nearby and jump in to help deal with the demons, yet none of them are used to acting as guards for the mages and it shows. Mostly in the fact that there’s no one to cover Carlos when the same cloaked figure that slayed Duncan goes after the mage. All of Carlos’s magic is focused on the rift, there’s no time for him to fight back, to shield himself, not even to move. The same blade that took down Duncan runs him through.

Shadowmages might be immortal, but they’re not invulnerable. Carlos Angelborn is dead before his body ever touches the ground.

Jace lets out an involuntary yelp when the rift proves too much for him to handle on his own, a feeling like an electric shock the consequence of losing control of the spell. He turns to find out what went wrong, and that’s when he sees Carlos on the stone ground, blood pouring from a hole in his chest. Feeling a bit disconnected from his body, Jace’s warrior instincts kick in as he tracks down the blade that killed his partner, finding it in the hand of one that looks more like a man than a demon… or at least, than the creature-like demons that have come through the rifts until then… The figure is tall, about Jace’s own height, dressed in pieces of leather-like armor; Jace would think it human except for the fact that almost every visible patch of skin (all but one hand, and the side of the neck, really), looks horribly blackened, and what isn’t, looks an equally awful read. Almost like… like burns.

“Hello Jace,” A voice he knows well, horrifyingly so, comes out of the being’s mouth. “Did you miss me, son?”

“Valentine?!” He blurts out in disbelief.

He’s still trying to wrap her head around the fact that Valentine is there, that he’s alive (sort of)! When his attention seems to shift, from Jace to Nathan, who’s joined Jace, blade in hand.

“Except no, he’s not my son, not really.” Valentine continues. “Did you miss me, Jonathan?”

Jace would vehemently deny anything Valentine said, would laugh it all off, if it weren’t for his lover’s almost violent flinch.

“What?” Valentine continues in a taunting tone. “Didn’t think I’d survive after you threw me into Edom? If a weakling such as you could survive, why shouldn’t I?” His tone turns sharper, harder. “You were always such a weakling. And now to find you’re also a…”

“What do you want Valentine?” Jace cuts him off before he could say the insult (though he suspects already what it’d have been).

Jace tries to sound imposing, strong. Truth is, he has no idea what to do. The rift is still open beside them. He cannot close it on his own. And even if he could, it’d be a huge mistake (quite likely the last of his life) to turn his back on Valentine. And the other shadowhunters are barely managing with the demons, there’s no way they can handle someone like Valentine!

“Valentine Morgenstern!!!” A new voice calls loudly.

Jace would feel better about the knowledge that reinforcements are coming, if it weren’t Imogen of all people leading it.

“My dear Imogen,” Valentine says in a drawl, voice dripping poison. “Are you enjoying the family reunion?”

Jace is unable to fully stop the way his expression twists, just slightly. Valentine notices that. Along with Imogen’s blink of confusion.

“Oh!” The bastard laughs, loudly. “You do not know! That’s hilarious! Your grandson stands right in front of you, and you do not see him!”

Imogen’s eyes go wide as her head snaps to Jace, then back to Valentine. As if seeing it, finally, seeing it, yet refusing to believe it. Because it cannot be possible. Her grandson cannot possibly be alive, be someone that she knows, has known for so long, and she not have known. And yet… and yet, she can tell by his expression that he did know… What?! Why? How long, and why did he not tell her?! She then remembers something else: Jace Wayland… Morgenstern, he’s one of the shadowmages, from the New York Institute. He was involved in the Soul Sword fiasco, and before that, she interrogated him regarding the breaches of the Accords in NY. He… he was the parabatai of Alexander Lightwood…

“They baby you so mourned, the son of your beloved son, little St. Stephen!” Valentine’s voice is cruel, mocking, as he talks about Imogen’s son. “Did you know, he only joined me because of you? More than anything, Stephen wanted to prove to you that he could be strong, as strong as his father. When truth is he was weak, so, so weak…”

“My son wasn’t…” Imogen begins, absolutely furious.

She doesn’t get to finish her statement. When Valentine moves… he’s fast, too fast. One moment he’s standing by the rift, posture casual, almost relaxed; the next he’s by her, close, too close… She only feels the pain when she tries, and fails, to breathe in. The blade’s in her stomach.

Imogen falls, unable to do anything else, even stand.

“So, where was I?” Valentine turns away from her, like she doesn’t even matter anymore, like she never did. “Oh right. My son!” He focuses entirely on Nathan. “The monster.”

Again, Nathan flinches.

Jace growls under his breath. He wants to stop what’s happening, more than ever. Wants to stop Valentine before he can continue, before he can hurt Jace’s lover more than he already has. Yet Jace knows he cannot. He’s not strong enough to take on Valentine, not on his own. And that knowledge burns him inside.

“Oh, did you not know?” Valentine takes obvious delight as he turns to Jace again. “Remember those papers you found about JC? Jonathan Christopher? That was never you. No you, your name was supposed to be William James, Stephen said he was going to heal the chasm in his family, was gonna bring them all together. Bunch of abominations that they are!” He spits on the ground as if to emphasize his disdain for the shadowmages.

Jace inhales sharply. William James… William James Herondale, that’s his name, his real name. Or rather, that was supposed to be his name. He’s Jace, he’s happy being Jace. And yet… it does soothe something inside him, to learn that he had a name that was truly his, a name his father picked. A name meant to honor two of his ancestors (his teachers)…

“No, Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern was my little monster of a son.” Valentine continues in an almost conversational tone. “See, I did some experiments. His mother knew nothing about them. Or at least, not while I was doing them. When the kid was born… it didn’t take long for her to realize there was something just… wrong about him. She knew he was a monster since he was a baby. Refused to love me. But then again, what else could one expect? What angel could be expected to love one of demon blood?”

“Valentine Morgenstern!!!” A new voice booms.

Someone seems to have woken the trio, and it’s Will rushing straight to Valentine, seraph blade shining brightly in his hand.

Valentine has the gall to laugh at him. He does seem to notice Julian, Emma, Izzy and Aline approach, each pair from one side, throwing their magic at the rift the moment they’re in range. He throws himself to the rift and through it before the net fully blocks it.

“Fuck!” Jace curses loudly when realizing that he was so thrown by all the revelations he failed to move in time to assist, to help in any way.

With four mages working together it doesn’t take quite as long to get the rift to close.

“Jace!” Izzy cries out as soon as she can take her attention away from the rift. “Are you alright?”

“I…” Is he? He’s not even sure.

“Wait,” Izzy looks around, seemingly confused. “Where’s Nathan?”

Jace snaps to attention at that, soon realizing what Izzy means: his lover’s not there anymore. Disappeared at some point around the time Valentine escaped.

“Fuck!!!” He curses yet again, even louder than before.

xXx

The argument that evening is even worse than any before. Imogen Herondale is dead. And while arrangements are being made for her funeral, as well as Carlos’s, Duncan’s, and the two other shadowhunters who lost their lives during the battle; they’re not the priority. Enough people heard Valentine’s words that by then everyone knows about his claims of Nathan being in truth his son: Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern, and having demon blood. It’s making quite a few of the old bastards call him all sorts of awful things, throw accusations about treason and worse, some even suggest he should be executed, for everyone’s safety.

Tessa, Will and Jem of course do not take that lying down. Laying claim to the young man and making it quite clear what will happen to anyone who so much as thinks of laying a hand on one of their own.

“Abominations, all of you!” One of the elders snaps at Will. “You should have never been allowed to live!”

“Idiot!” Will yells right back at him. “If it weren’t for us you, none of you, would be here to hate us and call us names! The wards would have fallen a long time ago and you all would be dead!”

No one has a response to that.

The revelation of Jace’s bloodline isn’t making things any easier. While, according to protocols and traditions Jace is much too old to change his name, there are some insisting that it ought to be allowed in this instance, to keep the Herondale line from ‘being lost’ (nevermind that Will is very much a Herondale and standing right there!). The blonde wonders what the bunch of old bastards would say if they knew that Sandra and Harry are his…

Jace has never cared for being a father, he’s quite convinced he’d be awful at it, actually. But when Izzy and Lydia came to him to request he be the biological father of their children… how could he tell them no? They did all agree that his name wouldn’t be in any records. The two women knew, of course, and when/if the children asked, they’d be told as well, but that was it. Jace wasn’t interested in claiming any rights or anything like that. The children were Branwells and had two amazing moms, that was enough for all of them.

And then someone gets the insane idea to use the Soul Sword! To activate it when the next rift is opened, and use its special power against those on the other side. Which they all think is absolutely insane. It’s genocide! Also, while the sword might work on downworlders, who says it’ll do much (if anything) against actual demons? What if they end up making things worse?!

Jace takes advantage of a moment when everyone’s busy arguing to slip out of the building. He’s going to find Nathan (Jonathan, Christopher, whatever his original name might be, to Jace he’ll always be Nathan, His Nathan!), and no one’s going to stop him. No one even notices him slip out; no one, except for Maryse…

Jace finds Nathan in the outskirts of town. Surprisingly, it doesn’t even take him that long.

“Nate…” Jace calls with an exhale.

“Jace!” Nathan snaps to attention, shocked. “What are you doing here?”

It’s clear he wasn’t expecting his boyfriend to find him so fast. Or maybe rather, he wasn’t expecting Jace to go looking for him at all…

“What do you mean what I’m doing here?” Jace retorts. “I came looking for you, of course!”

“But why?” Nathan insists.

“What do you mean why?!” Jace is clearly agitated. “You’re partner, idiot. What else was I supposed to do?”

For a moment neither seems to know quite what to say anymore and then…

“He isn’t wrong, you know?” Nathan murmurs, and at Jace’s lost expression, clarifies: “Valentine, I mean. I am a monster.”

“Don’t say that!” Jace refuses to accept that. “You don’t…”

“He would know.” Nathan talks over him. “Seeing how he was the one who dosed my mother with demon blood while she was pregnant. So, I might be nephilim, but I have demon blood. Ergo, monster.”

“Having demon blood doesn’t make you a monster, stupid.” Jace scoffs. “Look at Tessa, does she look like a monster to you?! What about Lorenzo Rey? I mean, personally I can barely stand the guy most days, but if Andrew loves him he cannot be that bad…”

“Jace…”

“And Magnus! You didn’t get to meet him because he left NY before you arrived, but he’s awesome. Quirky as hell, but still…”

“My own mother hates me!” Nathan practically roars, the revises. “Or no, it’s actually worse than that. She didn’t hate me. She was terrified of me. So much she abandoned me…”

“You said your mother died in a fire… and your sister…”

“I said I lost my mother and sister in a fire. It’s… not the same thing. I know what people tend to assume when I say something like that and it’s… easier than the truth.”

“Which is what?”

“There was a fire, you know? It wasn’t accidental, Valentine started it. It’s how he ended up faking his own death, I think. And mine for that matter. The thing is, when the fire happened, my mother knew. She knew I was supposed to be in the house right then and she… did nothing. She walked away. She left me to die in that fire!”

“And your sister…?” Jace begins, and then it hits him. “You’re Valentine’s son… which means your mother was Jocelyn and… your sister was Clary…”

“I didn’t know she existed for the longest time. When I was still young… my father always reminded me that I was a monster, that I was dangerous. That he was the only one who could, or would care about me… Except, eventually I became too much even for him. I’ve always had this… impulses. And for the longest time I saw no reason to keep them under control. When he realized he couldn’t force me to obey him, he sought to get rid of me. He sent me to Edom. I don’t know if he thought Lilith would kill me, or if it was supposed to be part of his deal with her… still, I spent years in Edom. When I finally came back… it was because Valentine summoned me, he had a job for me. I liked being out of Edom, and it’s not like I had anything better to do, so I did what he wanted for a while. Eventually he told me about Clary. The prodigal daughter! My baby sister… I wanted so much to meet her… I couldn’t help but wonder, would she hate me like mom? Try to leash me like my father? Or maybe, just maybe, she’d be able to love me, like no one else did…”

“Nate, I’m sure your mother didn’t hate you…”

“Oh Jace, you say that because you yourself have always been the prodigal son. You have no idea the kind of woman Jocelyn Fairchild was. I’m quite sure that if she had known I survived the fire she’d have sought to kill me herself!”

Jace had no idea what to even say to that, so he sought to change the focus of the conversation instead, at least a bit:

“I’m sure Clary would have loved you. I… I’m sorry you never had the chance to know her.”

“I’m sorry too. She’s what finally made me break free of Valentine, you know? The bastard was ranting about her, calling her weak for taking her own life, for denying him the opportunity to see what the additional angel blood gave her… All I heard was that he was such a monster, he sought to murder his wife, and ended up killing his daughter as well. And he wasn’t even man enough to admit it. He murdered my baby sister, maybe not with his own hands, but he might as well have! He took away the one person who could have learned to love me…”

“Oh son, you remain so weak… an utter disappointment, truly. Clarissa would have seen right through you, immediately, just like her mother. In the end, who could ever love a monster?”

The two blondes are fully surprised when they see Valentine stepping out of the shadows. How did he get there?! There’s no rift anywhere nearby! Then again, however long Valentine might have spent in Edom, however monstrous he might be, he’s not actually a demon, the wards shielding Alicante don’t actually protect from those like him.

“You’re weak.” Valentine spits at Nathan. “Utterly and absolutely weak. A…”

“Stop it!” Once again, Jace cuts him off before Valentine can finish. “Leave him alone.”

“Have you become even weaker?” Valentine mocks his son. “Do you now need someone else to fight your battles for you?”

“He may not need it, but it’s my honor and privilege to do so!” Jace snaps.

“Jace, Jace, Jace, yet another disappointment you turned out to be.” Valentine scoffs. “And to think that I used to believe that despite the weakness of both your parents, and you carrying the blood of those… those abominations, that you might be great…”

Jace lets out a wordless cry of fury, beyond reason. It’s always been a weakness of his, to let his emotions get the better of him. To lose his focus, his control… He moves to attack Valentine, but his moves are too wild, too unrefined, he leaves himself way too open, and in no time at all Valentine’s managed to get inside his guard, disarm him and throw him against a wall. It’s perhaps a miracle that the worst injury Jace gets through it all is a slight slash to his flank, one that while cutting into his clothes barely reaches his skin at all.

“See?” Valentine mocks him. “I told you. Weak…”

Valentine trails off, mouth open yet not so much as a whisper of a word more comes out. And then he coughs, blood and spit coming out of him.

Jace blinks in disbelief, not quite understanding what just happened. And then Valentine’s body drops, and behind him is Nathan. Only his right hand is drenched in blood, and his nails look black and more like claws than actual nails and his eyes are pitch-black, without even a spark in them. The eyes of a demon…

Slowly, purposefully, Jace stands up, holding himself against the demon tower he crashed into when Valentine attacked him. He half-absently presses a hand to his flank, confirming by touch alone that he’s barely hurt. He never takes his eyes off Nathan. It’s like he knows, instinctively, that if his eyes stray, even for a moment, his lover will bolt. He takes a step forth, then another, slowly, telegraphing his moves. Nathan eyes him almost warily. He can tell that Jace doesn’t intend to attack and yet he doesn’t understand… Nathan’s completely surprised when Jace grabs his face, not harshly but gently, never looking away.

“I love you.” Jace states, simply, almost artlessly. “No matter your name, no matter your looks, no matter your blood. I Love You.”

That… it’s almost more than Nathan can take, as he reaches for Jace in return and pulls the other man in for a deep, almost violent kiss.

Eventually they do have to break off for air.

“Come on, time to go back.” Jace states, entwining his hand to Nathan.

“What…?” His lover is thrown for a moment. “Jace, I cannot go back! You know what the Clave is like! They will never accept me…”

“Whatever they want is irrelevant,” Jace states. “You’re with me. I’m not giving you up. And you know Izzy and Lydia will have our backs. Same as Tessa, Will and Jem, and everyone else.”

The thing is, Nathan doesn’t doubt him. He has a family now, people who care about him, at least one that even loves him… perhaps his life isn’t so bad after all…

That’s Nathan’s last concrete thought before a piercing pain to his chest overtakes everything else. Somewhere nearby, Jace is screaming. And high above, the demon tower flickers…

Alicante

In the Gard, Izzy can feel something’s wrong. It’s… like a ringing in her ears, or that rush of vertigo to her head when she gets up too fast after laying down for too long, or… Several others looking around, as if searching but what’s going on, tells her that she’s not the only one sensing it. And then she sees it, it’s the shadowmages. They’re the one picking up on the fact that something is wrong. And Tessa. She seems to be able to pick up on more even, as she rushes out of the building. Her husbands follow her instantly, and behind them the rest of the mages.

They make it outside just in time to see one of the demon towers on the edges of Alicante flicker briefly, before losing its light entirely. Then… there’s no actual sound, yet their ears feel as if they’d just heard a very loud boom, a fraction of a second before the very night-sky seems to be torn right open. A rip opening right across it, and straight to Edom.

The demon towers go red, at the same time alarms ring across the city, though Izzy seriously doubts anyone needs either sign, as everyone should be able to see the hole in the sky. It’s… she honestly has no idea how the hell they’re supposed to survive, much less win, this fight. She half-absently traces the rune on the inside of her right wrist. Usually covered by the bracelet-form of her electrum whip, few people know it’s even there. It’s a variation of the Trueblood rune, a version only the Truebloods use. It’s how she’s chosen to honor her big-brother, whom she feels she lost before he ever died, and due to her own actions. Ever since she’s tried to live her life the way he’d have wanted her to, being mindful of things, of people, of the rules… not following blindly, but not being careless of the consequences, to herself and to others. And now…

“Well, we might be meeting soon, hermano…” She murmurs to herself. “I wonder, will you be proud of me? I will never be able to make amends to you, but are you satisfied with the things I’ve done, the ways I’ve changed? Will you forgive me for all the ways I hurt you, failed you, disappointed you, for not being there for you when you needed me most? Suppose I might get the chance to ask those questions soon…”

“Izzy…” Lydia murmurs as she approaches.

“I know,” They can both see what the odds are. “Stay with the children.”

That does take the blonde woman by surprise, as she turns to look at her wife.

“Stay with them.” Izzy insists. “Protect them for as long as you can.”

They know that, however much as she might want to, Izzy cannot stay back. She’s one of the shadowmages, she’ll be at the front of the line along with the others. The children are all being taken to the Accords Hall, which has been fortified as much as possible. After some thinking, Lydia agrees.

It’s not like it’ll make that big a difference, in the worst case scenario. If the warriors fall, it’s only a matter of time before the rest follows.

Aline goes to stand by Izzy’s side shortly after Lydia leaves, closely followed by her own wife. Helen refuses to be left behind, Jia’s the one staying with the kids. While usually the Consul would insist on being on the front-lines too, she was badly hurt during one of the first battles, and even all the iratzes weren’t enough to fully undo the damage. She’d be a liability on the battle-front, and so she stays back.

Isabelle and Aline haven’t always been friends. There was a time when they could barely stand each other, in fact. When Aline first learned of Alec’s fate, Aline rushed to NY to demand explanations. She refused to believe the official explanation of Alec having betrayed them all. When Izzy told her the truth… Aline hit Jace hard enough, taking him enough by surprise, to drop him, and would have done the same to Izzy if her girlfriend hadn’t interfered. Aline had always thought that Alec’s siblings weren’t there for him like they ought to, but never did she expect for things to go so wrong. Thing is, Izzy and Jace didn’t exactly disagree with her, which is why no charges were ever leveled against Aline, even when someone reported on seeing what happened and tried to push for it. Jace denied anything ever happening (she let some believe it was some macho bullshit, him not wanting to admit to having been bested by a girl; when truth was he believed he’d deserved it, deserved worse even.

When Tessa, Will and Jem visited to see if Izzy and Jace were still interested in learning angelic magic, it was Izzy’s idea to invite Aline and Helen. It was a bit of a surprise to find they worked so well together, but not an unpleasant one. It started simply as being compatible shadowmages, and eventually it turned into real friendship. The two women will never be as close as Alec and Aline once were, but that was okay. What they had was enough.

“Where is Jace?” Helen was the first to notice the absence of the other blonde.

“Looking for Nathan.” Izzy answered honestly.

Which meant, they couldn’t count on him. There was no way of knowing how far Jace might have gone, while looking for his lover, how fast he might be able to get back… if he even could. Izzy was worried, what if something happened to him? What if something already had? Yet there was nothing she could do to help Jace, and she still had a battle to fight. For her people, but more importantly, for her family…

The edomites start getting through the rift relatively quickly. They’re not very big, or even particularly strong. But with their form like critters with bat wings… they’re fast, agile, and being able to fight makes it much harder to destroy them. Also, as they soon discover, some blows while not killing them might force them to ground, and these edomites are more powerful than the demons they’ve been dealing with the last few times. Also, their numbers keep growing…

Things get insane in a very short amount of time. Most shadowhunters, no matter how skilled, aren’t used to fighting in close quarters; when there’s a chance that they might hit each other instead of the enemy, get in one another’s way. Also, most shadowhunters just aren’t used to fighting together. Patrol teams are three to four members (unless for a specific, and particularly dangerous mission) for a reason; and even in those, most shadowhunters tend to fight on their own, helping each other by accident as often as they might do so on purpose. Parabatai being one of the few exceptions; though there’s more than one reason why they aren’t common.

Her presence is announced by a terrifying shriek, followed by what most would insist had to be a hurricane… except it’s not, it’s the sound a pair of huge bat-like wings makes as the biggest wraith any nephilim has ever seen, approaches the rift.

“That’s Lilith!” Tessa yells, loudly enough for almost everyone to hear her.

Izzy swallows, eyes very wide and skin going pale under her tan. That’s Lilith?! The Mother of all demons? How are they supposed to defeat such a monster?!

However such a battle might have gone (that, Isabelle isn’t delusional, she knows exactly how it’d have gone, and that it’d have been bad, bad, very bad!) it never happens, for Lilith never makes it to the rift. Shortly before she’d have reached the spot, what looks like a bolt made of bright silvery light shoots across the ashen sky on the other side of the hole. Lilith manages to mostly avoid the attack in the nick of time, though it still comes close enough to leave what looks like a painful burn on the demon’s flank.

The sound that escapes Lilith’s mouth at that is loud and shrill enough to almost make the nephilims’ ears bleed.

And then comes another figure. Unlike the decidedly creature-like appearance Lilith has taken in her transformation into that wraith, the other figure they see still looks decidedly human… well, except for the huge wings on its… his(?) back. Some nephilim might even describe them as angel wings, except they aren’t the pure white they’d expect from such wings but instead a mix of white, black, and every shade of gray imaginable. The figure is tall, with wide shoulders but a slim figure, with tanned skin and messy raven-black hair, dressed in blue and black. He seems to be conjuring weapons, like warlocks would, mostly blades; but every so often he’ll put some distance between him and Lilith and make a set of very specific motions, like an archer pulling at a bow… and then a new bolt of silvery light, something that almost looks like coalesced electricity, will shoot at Lilith.

Izzy realizes after the third, that the bolts are arrows made of pure magic. What follows is… well Izzy isn’t actually sure what it is any of them are looking at. And it’s not like she can just stand there and watch the fight going on like some kind of show. The edomites are still getting through, there’s still a battle to be found in Alicante. Fortunate as they might be that someone else has chosen to take on Lilith, the battle isn’t won just yet.

Izzy doesn’t know how long they’ve been fighting (an hour? Two? Half the night?), hard as she’s tried to stay close to Aline and Helen, it’s not easy, and every so often they end up separated either by enemies or allies. Isabelle isn’t just fighting with her whip, but every so often she’ll call on her angelic magic, summon shields, throw concussive waves, even the equivalent of small knives made of pure power, both to take down edomites, and to protect as many of her fellow shadowhunters as she possibly can.

At some point there’s a shout, followed by a desperate cry. Izzy turns in time to see Aline on the ground, dominant arm hurt badly enough to leave her unable to use it. Helen’s calling for help at the same time she fights to protect her wife, but she alone just isn’t enough… and Izzy’s just too far away to be of any assistance. There’s a part of Izzy that, shameful as it might be, just wants to close her eyes, she cannot fathom the thought of having to watch someone else, another friend, die. But she cannot do that…

When the lethal blow comes, it’s not Aline that receives it.

“Father!!!” Her voice rips through the night, followed by pure magic.

Unsurprisingly, the demon that dealt the blow, which Patrick Penhallow took in protection of his daughter, is nothing but ashes a fraction of a second later. And not just it, but over a dozen demons all around Aline. Her desperation driving her power forth with little control and no restraint.

The rest of the mages coalesce on the spot as fast as they possibly can. Just in time to create a protective circle around Aline as she blacks-out (either her despair, grief, the sudden drain on her power, or just everything at the same time becoming too much for her to handle).

“You need to get her out of here.” Jem tells Helen.

Helen’s about to point out that such a plan is next to impossible when Izzy’s there.

“I’ll keep you safe.” She promises, dead serious.

Emma and Jules keep up with them for as long as they possibly can, but in the end it’s up to Izzy to get the Penhallows to the relative safety of the Gard. Not the Accords Hall, no one is coming in or out of that building until either the battle is won or they’re all dead.

It’s impossible to tell for how long the battle goes on, exactly. Everyone can tell when it ends, though. There’s yet another shriek coming from Lilith, this one piercing enough to make more than one person curse, a few ears bleed and the most sensitive cannot help but go down on one knee. Tessa herself sways and almost collapses in a heap, would have, if it weren’t for Jem.

“Will!” Jem calls as he’s forced to stop fighting, and even drop his own guard to focus entirely on their wife.

No more needs to be said, as Will jumps back to stand as close to his spouses as he possibly can. Shooting several bolts of magic before pulling out a second seraph blade, ready to protect his loved ones no matter what.

“Lilith is dead!”

Hard to know who says it first, but once Lilith doesn’t just disappear from the sky, where she’s been fighting the unknown male with the huge wings, but fails to show up again, everyone’s fairly convinced that it’s well and truly over. Lilith’s dead.

The edomites seem to fall faster after that. Some even do their best to flee, though the few that manage to cross the rift back to Edom are all destroyed by rushes of red battle magic before making it too far.

It takes a few minutes, but soon enough there are no demons left in Alicante. Then… the cheering is absolutely deafening. There will be a time to cry, to see to the wounded, to grieve the dead, for the time being though, they will celebrate that not only they managed to survive a war the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the Time of the Angels, but that they’ve won.

For a minute or so, nothing seems to happen in the sky and then… slowly but surely, the rift begins to close. Izzy takes a look around to confirm that, yeah, they’re not the ones doing this. Someone on the other side of that rift is working to close it. It takes some time, certainly longer than it took to open, but at least it’s closing.

Throughout the whole thing, Izzy never takes her eyes away from the winged male still floating high in the sky, in Edom. He hasn’t moved at all since dealing the final blow to Lilith. Izzy cannot help her curiosity, just who is this guy? Is he a warlock? An angel of some kind? (perhaps he’s a fallen angel and that’s why his wings are that color?) There’s a part of her that wishes she, that all of them, could give their thanks. The Clave most likely wouldn’t want to admit, but Izzy knows they’d have never won (would have never survived!) without him.

And then… right as the rift is about to finish closing, the figure turns. Izzy catches sight of him just for a moment, no more than half a second: oval face, high cheekbones, forebangs falling messily almost enough to cover one hazel eye…

“Alec?!” Izzy blurts out without quite realizing it.

But that’s not possible, right? It’s… it’s not. Alec… her brother is dead! He’s been dead for a decade and thus cannot possibly be right there, standing, or rather, flying, and in Edom of all places. It cannot possibly be him, right?

xXx

It takes days for the shadowhunters to even properly start to recover from the short (yet violent) war against Edom. The shadowmages mostly spend that time working their magic to ensure the rift will not be opening again, and then to rebuild the damaged wards. It’s discovered that it was Nathan (or rather Nathaniel Gray, as he’s chosen his official name to be, absolutely refusing to acknowledge the name of Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern as his own; he’s officially Tessa’s adopted son), or rather, his blood, that caused the power in one of the demon towers to fail, thus allowing Lilith to rip open that hole in the sky, far more effective that the ones used before. His blood was spilled by Maryse, who tried to kill him, supposedly for being a monster. Maryse who’s now dead and, despite what some might believe, it wasn’t at the hands of either man. She was killed by one of the edomites, having become incredibly out of shape after her many years of doing political work, rather than being an active shadowhunter.

Had such accusations been leveled at Nathan at any other point in time, there’s no doubt that a great many Clave officials would have been supportive of Maryse’s actions; and not only that, but they’d have called for Nathan’s execution, or exile ‘for the safety of them all’. However, that would have been before the war against Edom, before the Battle of Alicante, before the violent fight turned a good part of the Gard into rubble…

As it happens, most of the old ‘retired’ shadowhunters that comprised the highest echelons of the Clave, refused to take refuge alongside children and civilians in the Accords Hall, claiming to be ‘above such things’. So instead they were in the Gard. The Gard which, as sturdy as it might have been, it hadn’t been warded and shielded by the shadowmages to the same degree as the Hall (there were some rumors that some of them refused to be in the Accords Hall, precisely because of the shadowmages’ involvement in warding it, being among those who saw those with angelic magic as abominations). Thankfully the destruction wasn’t total, and Helen, along with a few more, managed to keep the last remaining demons at bay and protect the injured.

Still, in the aftermath of the war, less than a handful of the Council, and Jia Penhallow as Consul, remained of those who’d once occupied the upper echelons of the Clave.

“Maybe it’s better this way.” Jia said eventually.

A comment which surprised a good many people, especially her daughter, and daughter-in-law.

“Your generation has no faith in us.” Jia reminded them. “Perhaps you all will find a way to do a better job.”

At the very least, they’d realize it wasn’t quite as easy, leading a society such as theirs, as some might actually believe.

The funerals take place as soon as none of the wounded are in danger of joining them. In fact, by that point the only ones with more than some deep bruises and newly healed scars are those who refused the help of Tessa and the mages. While not all the shadowmages are particularly good at healing magics, they all know the basics, while Jules and Jem are especially talented, Helen too is fairly good at it, if with seelie magic rather than angelic one.

The mages of course handle Carlos’s rites themselves. The Silent Brothers might refuse to take them, but that’s why they’ve long since made their own plans. Carlos’s ashes are placed in an urn for safekeeping; they will later be used as part of the rituals to renew the wards protecting several places in NY, including the Institute, and a number of Downworld safehouses (that was his choice, to even in death be able to serve, to protect).

None of them miss when one more joins their number. Wearing a blue henley with rolled-up sleeves, dark jeans, comfortable shoes; his skin is pale, but not the pale of someone who doesn’t tan, but rather like someone who’s been away from the sun for a long time, with dark hair with what look like some graying here and there and small dark eyes, though not quite brown, more like a dark gray…

“Hey!” Jace looks him up and down. “I know you.”

“Brother Zachariah.” Aline murmurs with a bow of the head.

“Just Zachery, please.” He murmurs softly with a small smile.

No one misses that he’s talking out-loud, which isn’t normal; but then again, Brother Zachariah was never a normal Silent Brother, his mouth remaining un-stitched, and his eyes closed rather than sunken and empty.

“I’m not a brother anymore.” He adds. “I’ve been… released from my duties.”

No one misses the special emphasis he puts on the word ‘release’, yet at the same time, no one really asks for clarification.

“This is our son,” Tessa announces, and there’s such a big smile on her face.

And well, that says everything, doesn’t it?

After the funerals, elections take place. Jia voluntarily steps down from her position of Consul, Aline winning by a landslide. Lydia’s offered the position of Inquisitor but turns it down, as she’s happy enough as Head of the NYI and doesn’t really want to uproot her whole family. Also, she just doesn’t think she’s the right person for the job… Eventually the position goes to Joaquin Acosta Romero, originally from Buenos Aires. He agrees easily enough to move to Idris permanently, as long as he can bring his adopted son: Rafael, which is easy enough to agree to.

Izzy only tries to address her suspicions regarding the identity of their winged savior with Jace, once. She goes looking for him after the elections, when most people are busy packing up and getting ready to get back to their Institutes. To say that Jace doesn’t take it well, would be a huge understatement.

“It’s impossible.” The blonde practically spits almost as soon as Izzy finishes.

“Jace…” Izzy begins, trying to reason with him.

“No Izzy!” Jace cuts her off. “Impossible, you hear me? Alec’s dead! I mean, I understand if you’re still in denial or…”

“This is not about denial.” Izzy’s the one to interrupt him then. “I’m not in denial!”

“Alec is dead!” Jace repeats. “You… you saw it! You’re the one who told me the news, who told me what happened, remember?!”

“I saw his broken bow, not his body.” Izzy corrects. “While some blood of his was found on the scene, none of the… the remains were ever matched to him.”

“So his body wasn’t found. You do remember that cerberuses were involved, right?”

“Of course I remember!” Izzy’s almost sick at what Jace is implying.

“Then it cannot possibly have been him. Because Alec Is DEAD!”

Izzy stops insisting then. It’s clear Jace is never going to so much as consider the possibility. She doesn’t fully understand. Jace should be happy, shouldn’t he? The possibility of Alec, her brother, his parabatai, being alive…! And yeah, it’d be hard to accept that he’s been alive all this time and didn’t see fit to tell them. But then again, it’s not like they’re exactly innocent, are they? The things they, that she, Jace, even Lydia, their mother, the Clave as a whole, did to Alec, by condemning him, deruning him and exiling him for a crime he didn’t commit… they might as well have signed his own death warrant. Which is what Izzy’s always believed. Only, if he didn’t die… She understands Alec not having told them, she does, much as she might not like it, might make her hate herself a little, and feel sad (so sad!) she does understand. What she doesn’t understand is Jace’s absolute denial. Unless… has Jace still not dealt with his own guilt from everything that happened back then? That might explain it, she supposes.

She still doesn’t know how she can confirm, or deny her suspicions. Can such a thing even be done? It’s not like she knows the first place to look… Then again, she has quite a lot of time to find out, doesn’t she?

xXx

And so, a month after the call to arms was first issued, and over three weeks since the actual last battle took place, the Branwells lead their people back to their home: the New York institute. The place is a bit dusty, but nothing to really worry about. Also, thanks to messages sent and all the preparations made before their departure, what few ‘situations’ might have taken place in that month were handled by a number of downworld volunteers led and organized by Raphael, Meliorn, Maia and Lorenzo.

Izzy, Lydia, Jace and Nathan split up, each of them visiting one of the downworld leaders to talk about what went on in their absence. Izzy in particular chooses to visit Raphael, as the two get along well, despite some frictions early on in their acquaintance, the vampire leader had held her brother in high regard, respected him a lot, and didn’t like finding out what the Clave did to him, and especially the part those closest to him, like Jace and Izzy, played in things. Which is probably one of the reasons why Izzy likes the vampire so much. There seem to be few people who truly knew, who understood, her big brother, she values that. Also, Raphael is a good man, vampire or not, he’s been good for the Brooklyn Clan, since the disappearance of Camille. And he’s good for Simon…

Simon… Izzy wouldn’t say the two of them were ever friends. He was Clary’s mundane friend, who was turned into a vampire because he kept getting involved in things he didn’t understand and couldn’t defend himself from, and she, Jace and Alec were too busy trying to keep themselves and Clary safe, to look after him as well. After Clary’s death he was clearly at a loss, and once again, there was nothing any of them could do. Alec was gone, Lydia and Izzy had a huge responsibility with the Institute and Jace was in his own spiral regarding Clary, and to a lesser degree, Jocelyn’s, deaths. Thankfully, Raphael stepped up and gave Simon the help, the guidance, he needed.

The last thing Izzy could have ever expected is the figure she sees stepping out of the Dumort Hotel that night, as she goes looking for Raphael.

“A… Alec?!” She gasps, voice half strangled in her disbelief. “Alec! Alec!!!”

The figure doesn’t seem to actually hear her at first, and then… the tension on his shoulders, even under the royal blue button-up shirt he wears, tells her that he most definitely heard her, yet he not only doesn’t answer, he doesn’t even acknowledge her. Instead just saying something to Raphael before turning and walking away.

“ALEC!!!” She yells as she starts running.

It’s useless, he goes around the corner and by the time she makes it there all she can see are some stray sparks, possibly a sign of a portal having been used; though to where, she hasn’t a clue. She walks back to Raphael, who’s still standing at the Dumort’s doors, feeling more than a bit lost. That… that was her brother, wasn’t it? And he, he walked away from her. He pretended not to hear her and then went as far as walking away from her! Why?!

“Isabelle,” Raphael greets her, tone a bit colder than usual.

“That… that was Alec, that was my brother.” Izzy blurts out, too shocked still to try for politeness, or even a greeting. “He… he walked away…”

“You shadowhunters and your fucking entitlement.” Raphael scoffs. “Think you deserve it all!”

“You knew he was alive!” Izzy cries out as that part becomes clear to her.

Raphael just stares pointedly at her.

“You knew he was alive and you said nothing!” Izzy insists.

“And why should I have?” He asks in return.

“You knew how much I was grieving him!” Izzy snaps at him. “How I…”

“How you what?” Raphael cuts her off, deciding it’s time someone tells the shadowhunter a few hard truths. “There you go again making it all about you. Get this into your head, mujer (woman), this wasn’t, and still isn’t, about you. I owe you nothing. And neither does Alec.”

“But I…”

“But you what? He was the one who was betrayed by you, your family, even your Clave! But tell me how I should care more about your feelings, than his!”

Izzi opens her mouth, then closes it again, her teeth clicking together painfully because, well, Raphael isn’t wrong. Her feelings aren’t more important than Alec’s, they never should have been. Wasn’t she supposed to have learned this lesson already?!

“I just want to apologize…” She admits in a whisper eventually.

“If that’s true, it should still be on his terms, not yours.” Raphael states, uncompromising.

For a little while neither of them says a thing, though eventually it’s Izzy who caves.

“Do you think he’ll ever let me?” She asks quietly. “Talk to him, to apologize, I mean?”

“I don’t know.” Raphael shrugs.

Truth is, he doesn’t doubt that sooner or later, Alec will give in and talk to his sister. Whether he’ll forgive her, or the others, is anyone’s guess, though the vampire doesn’t think Alec’s the kind of person who can hold a grudge forever. He’s probably the kindest soul Raphael has ever met, and that’s saying something. Still, if, and when anything ever happens, it should be his decision, and no one else’s.

“Well, I suppose I have more than enough time to wait for him, don’t I?” Izzy shrugs, then takes a deep breath and forces herself to focus. “Now, how about you tell me what’s been going on in the last month, and if there’s anything that might require the Institute’s immediate attention?”

Raphael takes a moment longer to consider her before nodding and leading the way inside, and straight to his office. It’s time to talk business.

Izzy didn’t lie. She does have time, she can wait. She might not be the most patient person. But this is important. So she’ll do it. She’ll wait and hope that someday Alec will be willing to talk to her, might be willing to hear her out, perhaps even to forgive her, eventually. She knows now that he’s most definitely alive and that… that’s wonderful. There’s time for everything else.

Brooklyn

“Home sweet home!” Magnus announces theatrically as they cross the portal.

All it takes is a wave of his hand and the whole place is dusted and aired. They will need to go to the grocery store sometime soon as Alexander likes to cook breakfast himself, and sometimes dinner, but they have the basics in magically sealed cupboards and can get some take-out until then. Because his walk-in closet is a pocket-dimension in and of itself (there’s no way his whole wardrobe would ever fit in any closet known to man… or demon) he has no problem accessing it from wherever they might be. Alec’s things are already in his closet, of course, and while they will need to unpack Madzie’s he’s already promised his daughter that her own walk-in closet will be their next big project.

After the confirmation from Sakura about the war between Edom and the nephilim, and the realization of what they’d need to do, they got to planning. The first thing Alec decided was that there was no way Madzie was coming along. His daughter was fourteen-years-old, she was too young to go into war! Magnus completely agreed. Catarina, while certainly older, wasn’t very good at war-magics, so in the end it was decided that only Magnus and Alec would be going. They also decided to go see Asmodeus and try and negotiate with him (their chances were better if they didn’t have to fight on two fronts, like, Lilith and Asmodeus).

“Be honest Magnus, do you think your father will take the deal?” Catarina asked, dead serious.

“My father is nothing if not pragmatic.” Magnus pointed out. “We’ll be offering him the one thing he’s always wanted: absolute control of Edom.”

“I thought what he most wanted was getting you back.” Cat admitted.

“Oh no, me going back was what he saw as the only way of getting what he truly wanted.” Magnus clarified. “The question is whether he’ll believe that we can deliver…”

Asmodeus took the deal. There was some grandstanding, and enough theatrics from both Magnus and Asmodeus that Alec was left wondering if they realized how alike the two were, in some ways at least. But Asmodeus did accept relatively fast, even Magnus was a bit surprised.

“Oh, I still think it’s absolutely ridiculous, you preferring to live among mortals, having a mundane life when you could be a proper royal in hell.” Asmodeus stated. “But you’re not wrong, total control of Edom is something I’ve always wanted. Also, knowing my only son is the consort of the newest Morning Star…”

It seemed that, much like Xochiquetzal, Asmodeus could tell what Alec was at a glance. And he seemed to derive a certain pride and pleasure at the knowledge that he was, effectively, the father-in-law of one who, for demons, was as good as the ‘second coming’. Alec still wasn’t particularly comfortable with comparisons with Lucifer, despite knowing things weren’t as nephilim were taught. But if it made Asmodeus easier to deal with? He’d take it.

Of course, because Asmodeus couldn’t make things entirely easy on them, he still insisted on Magnus and Alec handling Lilith themselves, with him only getting involved the absolute minimum. His excuse being that if they failed that way he could claim not having been involved in any way. Magnus scoffed, but neither of them was really surprised at things. Also, once they found what Lilith had turned herself into… well, Alec was really the only one able to fight on her level… literally.

He very carefully did not look down, did not look through the rift. He had no doubt that his family would be somewhere on the other side. Or at least some of them. He knew Max was dead, same as Robert. But Isabelle, Jace and Maryse would still be in Idris, same as Lydia, and the children… Alec was well aware of things that had happened in his absence, more than most would expect. Some things it was impossible to not know. Like the Branwell wedding, or the Penhallow one. Still, Alec made sure to keep his eyes on the battle, on Lilith.

“Why are you fighting me little angel?” Lilith hissed at him. “Why take their side when they clearly betrayed you? Made you Fall?!”

“I’m not doing it for them.” Alec stated, perfectly calm. “I’m not here as a nephilim. I know what and who I am. And I’m choosing to fight you for the Shadow World, and the Human World, for all that you’d hurt. We both know you’d never stop at Idris, Lilith. Were you to win this war, the nephilim would just be the beginning. You’d raise the whole Earth if you could. And that? That I cannot allow. I will not.”

Lilith’s shriek of defiance was deafening.

In the end Lilith fell. Just like the dragonidae, the cerberuses and even Abaddon had fallen to him before. It wasn’t an easy battle, but neither was it impossible. With Lilith gone, and Asmodeus taking control of the remaining edomites, it was much easier for Magnus to close the rift between the different dimensions.

They were summarily kicked out of Edom almost the moment the battle ended. Not even getting the chance to get their breath back.

“Well,” Alec muttered as he sat up from the sprawl he ended up in when Asmodeus opened a portal to Earth and sent them through it. “That was abrupt.”

“We just defeated Lilith, Alexander.” Magnus pointed out. “The last thing my father would have wanted, was to risk Edom choosing one, or even both of us, as her new absolute rulers, rather than him. So of course he was in a hurry to get us out.”

But well, at least it meant that they got to leave Edom, no problem. There had been a part of Alec that worried Asmodeus would try to renege on their deal after Lilith was dead.

It was a few days after the battle that the family finally decided to return to New York. Of course, because Magnus is involved, he insists that they ought to take a long family vacation beforehand. A plan the women in the family immediately agree with. They take the time to visit a few friends around the world (some whom Madzie’s just meeting for the first time): Like Ardeth Bay, the High Warlock of Nubia, the stories he tells Madzie about tomb raiders, and curses and mummies make the adults roll their eyes, though Madzie is absolutely fascinated. And then there’s Roux, the High Warlock of Danube (the river, as he lives on a boat), who likes living like a gypsy and is a very talented musician, Magnus even manages to get Alec to dance with him and Madzie for a few songs. And Manaia, the High Warlock of Polynesia, who takes Madzie swimming and teaches her how to make it so the fish won’t swim away from her so she can get the chance to see them up close (she absolutely loves that).

The last stop in their little tour is London. Where they visit first Ragnor (who curses at Magnus for almost an hour straight when he hears about what he and Alec did) and then Tessa and her family. Who’ve only recently returned themselves.

“Tessa, my sweet honeycake, I’ve missed you so!” Magnus calls dramatically.

“Doesn’t seem like it, you haven’t visited in years, Magnus.” A brunette, gray eyed woman in a pink dress points out with an equally dramatic huff, before they both break into giggles.

Madzie is laughing right along with them, while Cat and Alec just look at each other and roll their eyes while smiling.

“Hey, hey!” A tall man with tanned skin, blue eyes and long-ish messy dark hair in a short sleeved polo and dark jeans calls loudly as he enters the room. “Hands where we can see them! Tessa already has two husbands, she does not need a third.”

Another man follows him, this one a few inches shorter, a bit less of a tan, with chocolate eyes and graying brunette hair. He’s wearing an off-white button-up with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and dark jeans.

Alec doesn’t fail to notice the fact that both men have permanent runes on their skin, as well as magical auras and while they look physically like they might be in their twenties, their eyes reveal an agelessness only ever seen in immortals who’ve seen their first century already (those who’ve lived, who’ve lost and grieved and learned how to keep on living).

“As beautiful as the fair Tessa might be, I’m afraid I’m taken.” Magnus announced as he showed off his wedding band.

“What?!” Both men seemed clearly shocked by that.

“When did that happen?!” Tessa demanded almost at the same time.

“A few years ago.” Magnus admitted. “I tried to invite you, but you’ve been remarkably busy.”

“Yes,” Tessa admits.

“We found ourselves a few apprentices.” The brown-eyed man commented.

“And family.” The blue-eyed added.

That seemed to throw even Magnus off.

“Uncle Magnus, you planning on doing the introductions?” Another man asked then. “Or should I ask Aunt Cat.”

“You rascal!” Cat said with a bright smile as she went to hug the newest addition to the group.

The newcomer was a young man who might have been able to pass as the brown-eyed one’s brother, except for his gray eyes… the exact same shade as the woman’s, actually.

“Zach, this is my granddaughter, Madzie,” Cat introduced the youngest warlock first.

“Hello!” Madzie smiled widely at him. “I’m Madzie Loss, and you can call me Madzie.”

“Hello, little lady.” Zach greeted her with a gentle smile. “I’m Zachery Carstairs, but you can call me, Zach.”

“Oh!” Madzie turned. “This is my dad…”

“Alec…?” Tessa called hesitantly.

All eyes turned instantly. Alec was especially surprised by that, how did she know…?

“That’s you, isn’t it?” Tessa asked as she stepped closer, extending a hand and almost, but not quite, touching him. “Alec Ligh…”

“Loss.” Alec cut her off before she could finish. “My name is Alec Loss.”

“How do you know that name, Tessa?” Magnus wanted to know.

“Remember how Jem mentioned apprentices, and Will family?” Tessa asked in turn. “One of our apprentices was Isabelle Lightwood, now Branwell. The other…”

“Jace Herondale.” Will stated gruffly. “Stephen’s boy.”

“What?!” Cat’s eyes went very wide. “But I thought… you said you didn’t make it to Céline in time to…”

“We didn’t.” Will admitted, in the tone of one confessing to a heinous sin.

“Valentine did.” Jem finished for him.

As it turned out, they all had some stories to tell. From Izzy, Jace, Aline, and a few others turning into shadowmages under Will and Jem’s tutelage (Alec hadn’t even known angelic magic was a thing! Though in hindsight, it was only logical), to Carlos Angelborn’s death in the Battle of Alicante. And of course Alec’s own story. The trio had known a few things already, from their conversations with their pupils, but they had had no idea that Alec still lived.

Tessa, while not quite able to see what Alec is with the same ease that Xochiquetzal, Sakura, and a few other warlocks have at times, does realize it eventually. She’s also able to explain to Alec why some warlocks recognize him, and others don’t: the training. The warlocks who know what he is on sight are those who were actually trained by their demon parent, enough to recognize the power in him. As for Magnus, while he was trained by Asmodeus, it was only ever about his magic, power, the ability to fight, nothing else (Asmodeus probably not wanting to risk Magnus eventually being able to surpass him). Tessa knows the things she knows because of how long she’s spent studying, doing research in the Spiral Labyrinth’s library, not wanting to be at a disadvantage, as the daughter of a Prince of Hell who never cared to educate her.

The most interesting however, is Zach’s own story:

“Wait, you were a Silent Brother?!” Alec wasn’t expecting that.

“Yes,” Zach nodded calmly.

“But you aren’t one now.” Alec didn’t need that part to be explained to him. “How did that happen? I didn’t even know such a thing was possible!”

“It usually isn’t.” Zach admitted. “Usually Brothers have to swear all sorts of oaths to join the Order. At the end of which they undergo a ritual which leaves them… well…” Without eyes and with their mouth sewn, he didn’t need to say it, and it was better that he didn’t. “I was never your normal brother. Didn’t undergo the ritual, didn’t take most of the oaths. And this was all because I was never part of the Order of my own will.”

“What…?” That seemed to be news even for Magnus and Cat.

“I was coerced into it.” Zach explained. “I was supposed to become a shadowmage, just like my fathers. But the day before that was to be made official, several Silent Brothers went to see me. I was told that the Clave was starting to feel… threatened, with the growing numbers of mages. It was suggested that my becoming a Silent Brother, instead of a shadowmage, might help appease them, convince them that the mages weren’t forming an army.”

“That… that’s ridiculous!” Cat says, horrified.

“Yeah well, when have you ever heard of the Clave being rational?” Magnus scoffed.

“This was at a time when there were considerably more shadowmages than now, of course.” Zach continued. “I’ve long wondered just how many potential mages have been lost, either to the Silent Brothers, the Iron Sisters, mundane life or even death, because of the Clave’s interference.”

It was a pointless endeavor, in the end, wondering. It changed nothing.

“Okay so, you were a Silent Brother, and now you’re not.” Magnus pointed out. “How did that happen, exactly?”

“Brother Jeremiah found out what I did to the Soul Sword a decade ago.” Zach revealed.

Magnus, Cat and Alec were all equally thrown by that revelation, if by different parts of it.

They all knew about Valentine having stolen the Soul Sword, of course; everyone in the Shadow World knew that part, and how the Branwell ladies had chosen to reveal this to the Downworld, their respect, as well as a semi-exile from the Clave. Somewhat lesser known (but something all those present were still aware of) was how Jace and Nathan were the ones to give back the sword after the fight with Valentine at Lake Lynn.

“I was the one who received it.” Zach explained. “I was well aware of all the powers the sword possessed. Including the way it could be used to kill downworlders without touching them. It… it was too much power, and with the Clave liable to turn as genocidal as Valentine at any given time… I decided it was better not to risk it. No one even realizes it. Not until very recently. The Brothers were horrified, of course. Me? I was just… relieved.” He shook his head. “They might have never acknowledged it, but I know the only reason the whole Downworld wasn’t lost a decade ago was because Valentine could never get his hands on the real Mortal Cup. Most might insist on believing that he intentionally had a fake with him at Lake Lynn when he did the ritual, but that’s absolutely ridiculous. Valentine was intending to call on the Angel to destroy the Downworld, he’d obviously have had the real thing on him. Unless he didn’t know the Cup he had was a fake…”

He trailed off when noticing the rather uncomfortable expression on one particular face.

“You…” Zach exhaled, shock giving way to fascination. “You know…”

“I have it.” Alec confessed. “I’ve always had it.”

When Clary Fray first handed over the Mortal Cup, Alec realized, not only how valuable it was, but also how dangerous. There was a reason why he didn’t hand it over to the Clave immediately. Even before all the revelations that came in the following days and weeks, even before being thoroughly and absolutely betrayed by everyone and everything, he’d known he’d need to be very careful where the Mortal Instrument was concerned. It was why he got the replica made, why he even got Clary to reproduce the tarot card and seal the replica in it, and then made a second decoy… Even Jace and Izzy only ever knew about there being one fake. They thought the one in the official institute safe was the decoy, with the real one being in his secret safe (the one they stole from). The truth is that both of those were fakes. The real one he always kept on him, in a third, invisible, Trueblood rune (this one on his clavicle).

When everything started going wrong, he knew he had the means to free himself. He had the real Cup, could have handed it in, have the whole case against him dropped but… maybe it was that a part of him wanted to believe either his siblings, or the Inquisitor, or someone, would realize he was innocent, would Not betray him! Or maybe it was because, even with the risk to his own person, he couldn’t fail to see that the risk to the whole of the Shadow World, were the Cup to fall into the wrong hands, was much greater. Really, if the Clave was so willing to condemn him for crimes he did not commit, then how could he expect them to be any better than Valentine and his Circle themselves?!

Alec did not regret his choices. Even with how bad things got, with how much worse they might have been. He did not regret it. Perhaps the day would come when he’d feel ready to give the Cup back, maybe with new people in charge, this might change among the shadowhunters enough for that to be a possibility. Alec didn’t know. But still, there was time to decide.

“Will you forgive them?” Tessa asked him quietly as they were about to leave.

Alec didn’t need to ask who she was talking about, or what, it was obvious enough. Alec understood why she asked, she liked Izzy, Jace and the others, felt a connection to them. Alec didn’t begrudge her that.

“You don’t have to, you know?” Her next words did surprise him. “I know some people talk about needing to forgive in order to move on, to be at peace and what-not. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I… I loved my brother, but I never forgave him for the things that he did that put not only me, but also Jem and Will, and everyone else in the London Institute, in danger, all those years ago. As sorry as I might feel for Imogen, for her losses, and her own death, I will never forgive her for keeping Stephen away from us, for taking from us the chance of knowing our descendant, and his family. Likewise, you can choose to forgive your family, or not.”

“I… I think I will forgive them, eventually.” Alec admitted, softly, like it was some huge secret. “But not yet. I… I’m not ready yet.”

“That’s fine too.” Tessa assured him. “You go at your own pace Alec.”

“I will,” Alec nodded, smiling at her. “Thank you Tessa.”

The two embraced briefly, and then as Alec was letting go Tessa swayed sharply, might have dropped to the floor if it weren’t for Alec’s sharp reflexes as he caught her.

“Tessa!” All three men in her family cried out, practically in unison.

“It’s alright, I’m alright…” She tried to reassure them.

In the end, Alec was doubtful enough about her state that he picked her up and carried her to the nearest couch, where her husbands and son practically swarmed her.

“The hell…” Will began, sharply.

“Nearly fainting is not a sign of being alright, love.” Jem pointed out, more gently.

“Mom…?” Zach murmured, suspicious.

“I…” Tessa took a deep breath, then dropped the bomb: “I’m pregnant.”

“WHAT?!” They were all absolutely shocked.

It was… Tessa hadn’t been pregnant in over a century. Zach was the youngest of their children. It’s not, it wasn’t that they ever decided not to have anymore, exactly. Just that… at first they wanted to give the children they already had the attention they deserved and then… with the losses of all three, for a while Tessa couldn’t even think about having any more children, about potentially one day losing them. And now… now they were doing it again. It made them both absolutely ecstatic, and incredibly terrified, at the same time.

When Magnus, Alec, Cat and Madzie eventually took their leave, they left the family to their celebrations. Magnus promising to organize the best baby shower ever for Tessa, soon. And then he opened the portal back home, to New York.

Magnus’s loud announcement of ‘home sweet home’ makes Alec and Cat both snort. Madzie for her part rushes past them to look at everything. She hasn’t been to New York since their initial move to Mexico a decade ago; even when they’d go on vacation, they never went anywhere near NY, and she’s thrilled to be back.

xXx

It’s good to be back. Alec’s convinced of that. Even if it means coming across people he wasn’t expecting to see again just yet.

“Alexander…?” Magnus calls softly to him.

His hesitation is probably unsurprising, Alec’s been standing on their balcony, hands on the stone railing, saying nothing, doing nothing other than stare out into the horizon, for a while.

Magnus talks for a while. Telling Alec how Cat’s fully moved back to her own apartment now, how Madzie insisted on staying the night with her, for old time’s sake (and probably to give her fathers some privacy), even about Lorenzo’s endless complaints about all the work he had to do in Magnus’s absence and that next time the High Warlock decides to go on a sabbatical he’ll need to find a different deputy (a bald lie, they both know Lorenzo totally loved his stint as Deputy, even if it was more work than he might have originally expected). Eventually though, Magnus just runs out of things to chat about.

“Darling?” The warlock murmurs, pressing himself to the younger man’s side.

He knows Alec can get lost in his head sometimes, though it hasn’t happened in a while, years even. Makes him wonder if perhaps returning to NY was a mistake.

“I saw Izzy today.” Alec eventually murmurs.

“What…?” Magnus wasn’t expecting that. “Where?”

“Outside Dumort’s.” Alec explains. “I went to see Raphael, convinced him to come for dinner tomorrow night.” He smiles. “I know you’ve missed him.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, I was just leaving when Isabelle arrived.”

“She saw you?” Magnus asks softly. “Did she…?”

“She saw me, and recognized me, yes.” Alec nods. “Called to me, I… I walked away. Walked into an alley a block away and portaled back home. I just couldn’t…”

“Hey!” Magnus calls, cradling Alec’s face between his hands. “Hey, hey, hey, sayang. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Talk to Isabelle, don’t talk to her. It’s your choice, and yours alone, alright? You don’t owe her, or anyone else, anything.”

“Tessa said the same thing.” Alec exhales with a small smile, head cocked to a side.

“She’s a clever lady.” Magnus smiles, placing a small, chaste kiss on Alec’s lips. “You’re what matters to me Alexander. You, nothing else. If you want to leave NY tonight, we will.”

“No! I… I don’t want that…” Alec bows his head slightly and exhales. “New York is… it’s home, you know? In a way Mexico, even with all its beauty, never was, not really. I might not have been ready to see Izzy tonight, I might still not be ready to talk to her, to… to forgive her. But I know I will one day. She… she’s still my sister. Much as she might have hurt me, years ago. She’s still family and… We have time, don’t we?”

“That we do darling, that we do.”

Time enough to forgive, to move on. To live and love. They have all the time in the world…

“Now my love, what do you say about a private dinner, followed by a cup of your favorite iced wine, some jazz music and then… who knows?” Magnus wags his eyebrows suggestively.

It’s absolutely ridiculous, really, and yet Alec totally loves it. He dearly loves Magnus. His beloved, his husband, the love of his life (his hopefully very, very long, life).

“Sounds perfect.” He says, mischief slipping into his expression as his hold on the other man tightens. “But if I could suggest a… slight shift in the proceedings…”

Before Magnus can ask for clarification, Alec’s kissing him. Not chaste and brief like before, but a deep, passionate, devouring kiss. It’s quite clear what he’s thinking when he talks about ‘shift in the proceedings’, and Magnus has no objections to the plan, none at all. Dinner can always wait.

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