Magnus and Alec dance in new ‘The Red Scrolls of Magic’ snippet

Pride Month continues with a new and super sweet snippet from Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu’s The Red Scrolls of Magic! Cassie took to her tumblr yesterday to share this intimate scene between Alec and Magnus:

A slow sweet song with a shivery beat began. Alec would not have thought the dance floor could become more crowded, but it happened. Dozens of masked Downworlders in formal wear who had previously been standing near the walls converged on the floor. Alec found himself standing awkwardly alone in the center of the room as couples twirled around him in unison. Crowns of thorns and towering multi-colored feathers blocked his vision. He looked around in alarm for an escape route.

Instead he saw Magnus. Magnus all in silver and black, like the night sky. “May I have this dance, sir?”

“I was coming to find you,” said Alec, a little breathless.

“I saw you coming.” Magnus’s gorgeous lips curved beneath his shining mask. “We found each other.”

He moved in close to Alec, one hand settling on his lower back, lacing their fingers together with the other, and kissed him. The glancing touch of his mouth was like a ray of light on water, illuminating and transforming. Alec moved instinctively closer, longing to be illuminated and transformed again, then remembered they had a mission. He should remain on task.

“I met a Shadowhunter here called Helen Blackthorn,” he murmured against Magnus’s mouth. “She said—”

Magnus kissed him again.

“Something fascinating, I’m sure,” he said. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“What question?”

“May I have this dance?”

“Of course,” said Alec. “I mean—I would love this dance. It’s only that I know we should work this out.”

Magnus drew in a breath and nodded.

“We will. Tell me.”

He had been smiling before, but the smile had faded. Instead there was a certain burdened set to Magnus’s shoulders. Magnus felt guilty, Alec realized for the first time, with shattering dismay. Magnus felt as if he was spoiling Alec’s vacation when the truth was that there would be no holiday without Magnus, no shine of magic and no shocks of joy, no lights and no music.

Alec reached up and touched the bright silvery mask Magnus wore. He could see his own face reflected in the mask as if it were a mirror, eyes wide and blue against the glittering carnival of the Venetian ballroom. He almost did not recognize himself, he looked so happy.

Then he pushed the mask up and he could see Magnus’s face. That was better.

“Let’s dance first,” he said.

Aw, these two! ♥

Cassie also talked about the new release date (April 2, 20119) for the first The Eldest Curses book and shared her thoughts about the book cover:

The new RSOM cover is lovely! I’m incredibly excited 🙂 First I want to preface this by saying that I know none of this has anything to do with you, you are lovely, we all know you don’t control release dates. That being said, I see RSOM was pushed to April, right? I was wondering if this will also push CoG2 at all?

Yes it was a bit of a shock for me to find out the publication date for Red Scrolls had been changed, even by three weeks or so. I had no idea. The book has been turned in for a while and is well and truly out of my hands — we’re working on Book Two — so this is entirely a publisher thing.

Anyway, having now communicated with The Powers That Be, I’ve been told the date was moved so they’d have more time to make ARCs for Red Scrolls and promote the book. I’m all for promoting Eldest Curses — I know it’s going to need more promotion and more specialized, targeted promotion that my usual books do, due to its LGB+ content — and having my publisher support it heavily is what I want. That said, of course I’m not thrilled it’s been moved (again.) Hopefully it will stick at April 2.

I’ve checked several times and this should have no effect on Chain of Gold. This was a marketing decision about Scrolls that was made a couple weeks ago. It’s got nothing to do with me, and all my TLH due dates remain the same. I guess an iceberg could hit the boats bringing Chain of Gold to American shores, but let’s hope not. 🙂

I have a question about the cover for “Red scrolls of Magic”. Is there a particular reason you didn’t use human models like in your other books?

That’s crediting me with a lot more control over these covers than I actually have. 🙂

I do know the story, though: so, when the covers of these books were designed, they were designed to be the covers of adult books, not YA books. So the publisher naturally wanted a different-looking cover so the books wouldn’t look out of place in the adult section. This artist was hired before I turned the book in: she was hired because she’d done an amazing illustration for Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere which is, also, adult fantasy. What you’re talking about — covers featuring extremely realistic photos of people — is very rare in adult publishing and S&S wouldn’t have done one.

When S&S decided to publish the books as YA instead, they already had this beautiful cover (below). Everyone loved it and no one wanted to lose it. We’d also had big problems before with trying to squish two photographic models onto a cover with the latter three TMI books. It was a big reason the TMI covers were redesigned — booksellers and bookstores disliked those later covers — and if you notice, S&S has never done two people on a Shadowhunters book cover since.

Keeping this cover was a way to get both Magnus and Alec on the cover together, because had the cover department done a redesign with photos, it would only have been one of them at a time. Cliff will never do two people on one cover again.

I know not everyone loves change, but I like that the book looks different and special — having a new kind of cover is a great way to get a new kind of attention when you’re writing a long-running series, and I think we can all agree we want Red Scrolls to get as much new attention as possible for Magnus and Alec! I also think it’s important to have Magnus and Alec on the cover together — both for reasons of representation, and since they share the story and the narration.

Anne’s cover is gorgeous and dreamy and romantic and beautiful, and I feel very lucky to have it.

I really like the cover and hope that Cassie is going to share the jacket copy with text before The Red Scrolls of Magic is published on April 2, 2019!

What do you think of the snippet and the cover? Sound off in the comments below!