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

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

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

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

“I train!” said Max.

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

“Magnus!”

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

“He’s not—” Alec began, and stopped.

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

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

If you loved somebody, you trusted them.

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

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

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

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

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

Through Blood, Through Fire

By Cassandra Clare and Robin Wasserman

2012

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there was a child who should not have been born. A child of disgraced warriors—his blood the blood of the angels, his birthright forfeit while he slept, unknowing, in his mother’s womb. A child sentenced to death for the sins of his ancestors, a child spirited away from the Law that condemned and the family that couldn’t yet know how much they might someday need him and his progeny.