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Worst of all, there was a part of her that wanted to go find Ash. Ask him to help. He wasn’t totally indifferent to her, she knew that at least. But was it insane to think he might help her—against Janus and his mother, of all people? She knew he was absolutely the wrong person to go to, but somehow she didn’t feel it. Maybe she had Stockholm syndrome, if she was right about what that meant. And why was it even called that? What was wrong with Stockholm, anyway?

She wished she could ask Thais for advice. Thais wasn’t the sort of person who told Dru what to do directly; she just helped Dru sort out her own feelings and understand what it was she really wanted. And when the panic overtook Dru, when she was shaking and felt that she might die, Thais would hold her hand.

Dru missed her terribly. She missed everyone terribly; she had never been so lonely. She thought of the words in the scrying bowl, black against the dark blue of the water. I am the destruction that does not relent—

A knock on the door startled Dru out of her thoughts. She leaped up and ran to it, her heart thudding in her chest. There was a click as the door was unlocked from the outside, the squeak of hinges as it swung open.

A wave of relief and guilt washed over Dru.

Elara stood on the threshold. Her hair was disheveled, and her skin had paled to a light turquoise. There was a small cut on her lower lip where she had clearly bitten herself in distress.

“Elara—” Dru began.

But Elara was shaking her head. “Let me close the door,” she said, in a harsh whisper, and Dru did, bouncing on her heels with impatience until it was closed and locked.

“I’m so sorry, Elara,” she burst out, the moment it was safe. “You told me I shouldn’t go into the scrying room, but I insisted. I am the worst.”

Elara looked puzzled. “The worst what?”

“Person ever,” said Dru, following Elara into the main part of her room. “How badly are you hurt?”

“I will survive this night.” Elara’s dress was dirty, spattered with mud, soaked at the hem. Her slippers were stained with what appeared to be a mixture of blood and mud together. She looked around the room, her gaze flickering over the familiar space before her eyes settled on Dru again. There was something in them Dru had never seen before, a sort of demanding hardness.

“But are you all right?” Dru asked. “I know how bad whip injuries can be. You should sit down, let me help you—”

“I am not hurt,” Elara said, and it was very clear that she didn’t want to expand on the fact. She certainly wasn’t moving like someone who’d been whipped. Had Janus taken pity on her? Was he even capable of pity? “I do not require your concern. I require to know what you saw in the scrying bowl. Where are the Shadowhunters?”

Dru was caught off guard. “Not to offend you, but—why would you care about Shadowhunters?”

Elara looked down at her hands. They were streaked with blood, but uninjured. “I’m not an enemy, Dru. I only want to help.”

“You’ve never called me Dru before,” Dru said, softly. Something was strange, very strange, but she couldn’t put a finger on what it was. “Elara…what’s going on?”

Elara sighed. “I realized tonight I had to tell you the truth. That if a future is to be salvaged here, you must know. But I have hidden for so long…”

Anxiety prickled the back of Dru’s neck. “Hidden what?”

Elara closed her eyes. Then she raised her hands to cover her face. When she drew them back down, it was as if she were drawing down a screen. Glamour, Dru thought numbly, as Elara herself seemed to peel away, revealing something—someone—else behind the illusion.

A faerie woman stood before Dru; that hadn’t changed. But this faerie was familiar, with fair, curling hair and pale skin. Her eyes were blue, her chin pointed. Her body, her clothes, were Elara’s, but the teal skin was gone, and gone as well was the air of humble, frightened servitude. The woman who stood in front of Dru now had the look of the gentry fey, regal and proud.

“Perhaps you know me,” the woman said. “We have met before, Dru, though you were quite young. I am—”

Dru felt as if she’d been hit with a brick. “You’re Mark and Helen’s aunt. You’re Nene.”

Nene inclined her head. “So you do remember.”

Dru recalled Nene talking with Helen and Mark after the secret meeting Julian had held to gather their allies. “You—I mean—you fought at the Battle of the Imperishable Fields, right?” Dru felt as if she were babbling. “I thought—after that—you were exiled?”

“From this Court? Yes, I was. The Queen regarded my loyalty to Mark and Helen, my fighting alongside them in battle, as treason. I left and joined the wild fey.” Nene began to pace up and down the room, radiating a crackling, impatient energy. “Early this year, I returned here as a spy. Mother Hawthorn herself created my glamour. It had to be strong enough that even the Queen couldn’t see through it. The pain the first time I donned it was intense. But I knew I must come here for Mark and Helen’s sake, for the sake of all Shadowhunters. And for Ash.”

“For Ash?” Dru sat down hard on the edge of her bed. This was almost too much to take in. She’d never suspected Elara of being anything other than what she seemed to be. “Why Ash?”

“When he was a child, I was his nursemaid,” Nene said. “For the first years of his life, I had the raising of him, before he was taken by the Unseelie King. Though the Queen placed a geas upon the Court not to speak of Ash—not to outsiders, anyway—I never forgot him. I did all I could to teach him well, so that he would have a memory of goodness and kindness within him, even if it was deeply buried.”

“I would say it’s very deeply buried.”

“Perhaps,” said Nene. “When I joined the wild fey, Mother Hawthorn broke the geas upon me. Still, I have kept my knowledge of Ash as secret as I could, for his protection. I would not have offered to be a spy here were it not for Ash. At first, I just observed him, and I began to fear that he had been so sorely tested, so ill taught, that he had forgotten goodness. But when you came, that changed.”