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.

Once upon a time, a child was lost—or, at least, such is the story as told by those foolish enough to lose him. No one is ever lost to himself.

The child was simply hiding. As his child, and his child’s child, learned to hide, and on through the generations, evading those who hunted them—some seeking forgiveness, some seeking annihilation—until, inevitably, that which had been hidden was revealed. The lost child was found.

And that was the end.

Later, when Jem Carstairs tried to remember how the end began, he would remember the tickle of Tessa’s hair on his face as he bent close, breathed deep the scent of her, which that day carried a hint of lavender. They were in Provence—so, of course, everything smelled like lavender. But Tessa was alive with it; breathing her in was like breathing in a sunlit meadow, a sea of purpling blossoms, springtime itself. That was what Jem would remember, later. The desire that time stop, freeze the two of them inside this perfect moment; he would remember thinking, with wonder, that this was how it felt to be perfectly satisfied.