Imagine Magnus Bane when he’s just coming into his own as a warlock in the Downworld.
Powerful, charismatic, handsome. He’s compelling, he draws people’s eyes when he walks into a room and he knows it. It’s so different than when he was a child, when he was unwanted, when he was abandoned or hurt or ridiculed just for existing.
When he was blamed for surviving.
There’s such joy in this freedom, in this extravagance. The whole world is open to him, anything is possible.
Everything is possible.
Anyone is possible, and they flock to him, they do, and it first it’s amazing, exhilarating, validating. They see him, they’re drawn to him, to the lift of his voice and the flash of magic between his fingers, and they stay.
But the first time he kisses someone who isn’t a warlock, the first time he feels his heart sing against their lips and he opens his eyes to smile at them... they flinch.
He practices his glamour more the next day, over and over until he holds it without thinking, without feeling, without doubt. He’s careful now not to lose control, not to feel too quickly. He always kisses with his eyes closed, takes his time before he opens them, so the cat-eyes don’t show in the flicker as he blinks.
He spends more time with his own kind now.
He dislikes the way that phrase rubs in his thoughts, under his skin, but he can’t refute it. Warlocks understand. They’re all children of deception, of violence. Werewolves and vampires are too, of course, but a warlock’s demon blood is different than the taints the other Downworlders carry. It’s virulent, chaotic, an endless possibility of expressions rather than just a werewolf’s shifted form and fury, or a vampire’s speed and hunger. Warlocks feel that fire in their blood, the power they have to ride, so carefully, day after day after day.
Until the day he realizes that most of them don’t. It’s the day he catches the edge of a Greater Demon’s spell and he realizes it feels like his own magic, it almost feels like home, even as it sears, even as it tastes like poison in the back of his throat. The day he feels his own magic surge, and he almost loses control, and the other warlock’s know. They look at him sideways now, whisper behind his back.
He’ll meet some new warlock travelling around the world and they won’t flinch at his eyes, no, but at the deep red of his spells, the hiss of his power as he draws it from the ley lines, the echo of his magic subtly but unavoidably different than their own.
They flinch when they learn his name.
It takes time to figure it out. No one wants to help, no one wants to explain this new world he lives in, this new mystery in what was supposed to be his refuge, his home. He has to research, finds old books and older rumors and he learns, and knowledge like that can never be unlearned.
Asmodei. He is of Edom, only a single generation removed from a literal Prince of Hell. He’s closer to hell than human, further from angelic than anyone else he has ever met. Not that he wants to be angelic. No one likes a Shadowhunter.
No one trusts a demon.
He has no kind, not really. He is alone.
They still flock to him, of course, mundanes and Downworlders alike. They want his charm, his power, his spells on their side, his anger directed at their enemies.
They want to fuck him. He’s as beautiful as any fallen angel.
They want him, always. But only if he doesn’t get too close. Only if they don’t have to see his eyes and think about who they just let help them. Only if they don’t have to feel the way his magic tugs too deep, too strong, and know what exactly it was they just let touch them.
He learns exactly how far it’s safe to go, how far is a tease, how far might make them shiver, but won’t scare them too much. The knowledge he has can never be unlearned.
No one loves a demon.