The letter Magnus included in the notebook he gives Alec at the end of City of Heavenly Fire containing The Bane Chronicles.
I once told you that you were not trivial. It broke my heart that you would think so. I should have known then that one day I must tell you this.
It was never your fault that I didn’t talk to you about my past. Centuries are not easy to speak of, and they were not easy to live. There have been people I loved who thought that because I laugh so that I don’t weep or break, that I was trivial.
There have been people I loved who learned more of me, and thought I was evil incarnate who must be destroyed. I didn’t know how to make those I loved think of me as more than nothing, or less than a devil. I have seen the hearts of warlocks go hard and fragile as glass over time, seen them shatter and destroy the world around them.
I have seen hatred and evil in Shadowhunters and Downworlders and mundanes. I never dreamed that I would meet a son of the Angel who could love me. Once I met you, so many feelings seemed made new: love, and hope, and fear you would see me for what I truly was, and turn your face away. That you, steadfast and clean-hearted and clear-eyed, would be right to turn away.
I never doubted your heart. Only my place in it.
I hoped for a long time to meet someone like you. I didn’t know I had almost stopped hoping, until you came. Whether you choose me tonight or not, whether you want me for always or never again, thank you for being all that you are. Alexander Gideon Lightwood, archer boy who never misses, my hope past hope.
You will know me better after you read these stories. I don’t know what you will think of me then. I only hope you know this one truth about me, with all the good and all the bad. I spent days dying in chains, thinking you would never know this, so let me tell you now.
I will love you as long as I live. However long or short my life may be, it seems to me that I could never find time enough to love you as you deserve. Loving you made me believe in eternity.
