Valentine's Arrow

38: An Unwilling Savior

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

ALEC

Rebecca slowly rose to her feet. She made no move to wipe the silent tears streaming down her face. "He's gone," she said to the others. Her voice was flat and empty. She started down the steps, but then suddenly sat down, like she couldn't hold herself upright any longer. She buried her head in her arms and began to cry - not silently, as she had been doing so far - but heartbroken sobbing.

Alec slowly walked over to his sister. He didn't fully understand how Rebecca could weep for someone who had caused so much death and destruction, but he knew he couldn't try to. Whatever she and Sebastian - Jonathan - had had between them was special, and if Rebecca wanted to cry for him, she had every right to. All Alec could do was hold her in his arms. So he did precisely that.

Isabelle brushed past the rest of the onlookers and knelt down beside her sister. Rebecca drew away from Alec for a moment and threw herself into her sister's arms.

"I'm alright," she said, after a minute, gently disentangling herself from Isabelle. She looked up at Alec and repeated, "I'm alright."

Alec gazed into his little sister's eyes. Her irises were still black. And they would remain that way. Forever.

"I wish you'd told us," Isabelle said. "About your plan."

"It wasn't my plan," Rebecca said in a hollow voice. "It was Clary's. She didn't want to tell you because she was afraid it wouldn't work." She glanced at Clary, who was standing beside her mother and Luke. Upon catching Rebecca's eye, she gave her a small, watery smile, which Rebecca returned.

"Becca," Isabelle said, "I hate to ask, but did Seb-did Jonathan say anything about how to unseal the borders?"

Rebecca swallowed. "He said it wasn't possible. That they're closed forever."

"So we're trapped here," Isabelle said, her dark eyes shocked. "Forever? That can't be. There must be a spell- Magnus- " She whirled around to face Magnus.

"He wasn't lying," Magnus said. "There's no way for us to reopen the paths from here to Idris."

There was an awful silence. Then Alec, whose gaze had been resting on Magnus, said, "No way for us?"

"That's what I said," Magnus replied. "There's no way to open the borders."

"No," said Alec, and there was a dangerous note in his voice. He walked over to stand beside Magnus. "You said there was no way for us to do it, meaning there might be someone who could."

Magnus drew away from Alec and looked around at them all. His expression was unguarded, stripped of its usual distance, and he looked both very young and very, very old. "There are worse things than death," Magnus said.

"Maybe you should let us be the judge of that," said Alec, and Magnus scrubbed a despairing hand across his face and said, "Dear God. Alexander, I have gone my whole life without ever taking recourse to this path, save once, when I learned my lesson. It is not a lesson I want the rest of you to learn."

"But you're alive," said Isabelle. "You lived through the lesson."

Magnus smiled an awful smile. "It wouldn't be much of a lesson if I hadn't," he said. "But I was duly warned. Playing dice with my own life is one thing; playing with all of yours-"

"We'll die here anyway," said Jace, who had walked over to join the conversation. "It's a rigged game. Let us take our chances."

"I agree," Rebecca said.

Magnus glanced towards the other side of the dais, where Luke and Jocelyn still stood and sighed. "Majority vote," he said. "Did you know there's an old Downworlder saying about mad dogs and Nephilim never heeding a warning?"