Quite magical

Chapter Thirty-One

POV Alec

Alec felt that his mouth was standing open, so he quickly closed it again, not wanting to look like an idiot. He had thought that he was slowly getting used to all this Shadow World stuff already but this ... this was something that he definitely had not expected. The scars on Magnus's back looked horrible and Alec didn't want to imagine what pain he had to go through.

"Not many warlocks have wings but I'm different because of my father ... or maybe I should rather say because of the monster who raised me" Magnus continued to explain and Alec realized that he wasn't looking at him any longer while he was talking. "He's very powerful and only the most powerful demons have wings. I'm his son so I have them too. Or at least I had them until he took them away from me."

Took them away? How did this work? What did he mean by that?

Alec swallowed because he suddenly had a sense of foreboding and he was to afraid to ask the questions inside his head, not wanting Magnus to have to live through this again. But maybe he needed to talk about it so he had to make sure that he was there for him. Magnus had told him right in the beginning that it wouldn't be a fun story he was telling him this time and Alec couldn't possibly leave him alone with all this.

Carefully he took Magnus' hand and held it, showing him that he was still there. "What did he do to you, Magnus?" he asked quietly. "And why?"

Magnus seemed to fight an inner battle for a moment but eventually he started talking again: "What he did ... he did it because I was a disappointment to him" he said and the hard expression on his face broke Alec's heart. He had never seen Magnus like that. Usually he was somebody who was almost constantly smiling and trying to hide his pain behind a mask but now he just looked so broken and vulnerable.

He squeezed his boyfriend's hand tighter and apparently the gesture motivated him to go on: "Asmodeus always said that I was too soft, too nice to be his son" he said, his eyes still glued to his feet. "I refused to use my powers in the way he wanted me to and he got very angry about it."

"But he was so obsessed with power and greed that he didn't give up that easily. One day he said that he was giving me a second chance. The last chance to prove myself to him. He said that he would forgive me my 'childish behavior' if I agreed to rule by his side and share my powers with him. 'We would be so powerful that we could rule not only over all of Edom but over all the other dimensions of hell as well'. That's what he said." Magnus took a shaky breath. "He wanted me to prove that I was worthy of being a demon, but I refused and that eventually made him snap. He said that I wouldn't earn my wings then because I was not a real demon so he ripped them off and took away some of my powers so he could use it for himself. 'It's not like you would have ever really been using them in the first place' he said. That's the story of where the scars are coming from."

Alec felt his heart ache in his chest when he heard what Magnus was saying and at the same time there was hot anger boiling up inside of him. How could this monster do this to him? How dare he doing things to him that he still couldn't talk about hundreds of years later without looking like he was in pain? That were still physically hurting him now?

But before he could say something Magnus already continued: "After that Asmodeus said that he never wanted to see me again and he kicked me out of Edom. Don't get me wrong, I was glad that I wasn't stuck in that awful place any longer but losing my wings ... it was so much worse than I thought it would be. I always hated them when I had them because they reminded me of my demonic nature and I didn't want to be a demon. I didn't want to hurt people. I wanted them gone so many times but I was too scared to cut them off so I didn't do it. And then, when I actually lost them and thought I would be happy about it and feel better, I just realized how important they are, that they are a part of me, whether I like it or not. It felt like a part of me was missing and sometimes it still feels like that."