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He licked honey off his thumb and said, “Why would I like it?”

She looked at him the way she’d looked at Mason when she wanted something. Up through her eyelashes, pitching her voice low, as if she was telling him something only he was allowed to know. “Because it means that whatever I feel about you,” she said, “it’s real.”

Ash caught his breath. His pupils were wide, the black eating up the field of green all around them. She knew the expression well enough. Desire.

But there was something else. For a split second, it seemed as if he wanted to tell her something, communicate something to her that she didn’t yet know—it was there in his expression, in the look behind his eyes—but at that moment a sound rang out. A delicate, flutelike chime.

Ash sat back as the door opened and Mossbeard slipped into the room with two more faerie servants. Within seconds, they had removed the plums and replaced them with dishes of lamb cooked with pomegranate syrup, lying beside chunks of cut honeycomb. The servants were gone as quickly as they’d appeared, shadows vanishing at sunrise.

Dru glanced at Ash, but could read absolutely nothing unusual on his face now. His expression had been wiped clean of anything but mild interest, like a blackboard cleared of chalk. He caught her glance and raised his glass as if in a toast. “Drusilla,” he said. “Let us eat together, like civilized folk. Talk to me as you would to anyone else.”

I’m not sure you’re civilized. “What would you like to hear about, Your Highness?”

The flash of anger in his eyes was unmistakable. “You no longer need to behave as if you wish to please me. So don’t.” He picked up his fork. “Tell me about the place you grew up. Los Angeles. In your world.”

The question caught Dru off guard. For a moment, she just stared at him. She could invent any story; he’d never know, but something about the way he was looking at her made her hesitate.

So she told him the truth. She told him about the sunsets over the ocean, how each one was different, each beautiful. The way the water turned to a silvery mirror, and you could see the dolphins leaping as the green flash of sunset spread across the sky. She told him about jacaranda trees, blooming purple in the spring. She told him about dry tinder and fire warnings and wildfire smoke. About boulevards lined with glittering lights. About the Santa Ana winds, how they came hot from the desert to drive people out of their minds. How they were called the “murder winds,” but Dru loved them, loved the soft glide of the warm air against her bare skin, loved the way they caressed her hair like a lover’s hand.

He was a good listener. Court life had probably trained him. He focused entirely on her when she spoke, as if there was nothing else in the room, and when she was finished, he said, “Los Angeles in Thule is quite different. Our beaches, for instance, were full of cannibalistic lobsters.”

Dru frowned. “Does that mean they eat people or just other lobsters?”

“Both, really.” He was playing with his fork, tapping the tines against the palm of his hand. He hadn’t eaten a bite of food yet, but then, Dru hadn’t either. She was too distracted: by the strange ease of talking with him, by the fact that she couldn’t tell if she was amusing or annoying him. Or a little of both.

“Have you remembered?” he asked, his voice low but level. “Any of our previous meetings, before your current sojourn at Court?”

“Not really,” Dru said, with real regret, but he only glanced away, the tension of his shoulders easing slightly.

“Where did you live, in Thule?” she said, casting about for something to ask. She felt at sea, disconnected. She’d had a plan for how to interact with Ash. This wasn’t it. “With Janus and Sebastian?”

“Above a nightclub. The music didn’t bother Sebastian, but Jace—” He broke off and frowned. “My apologies. Janus. He was Jace to me for a long time.”

“And he protected you from Sebastian. He cared about you.”

“As much as he could, he did.” Ash’s expression flickered briefly. “He was like your Jace once, but he has been cut over and over, and scars have formed where the wounds once were. And scars are tougher than skin, and feel less pain.”

“And when you feel less pain,” said Dru, “you feel less of everything.” An old memory came back to her, of being told about Thule, told what Ash had once said about the Jace there. He’s been under Sebastian’s control too long. He isn’t what you think. He can’t go back.

He had known Janus was broken, even then. But he had still come with him to Faerie. Had still been his companion. Had it been enough for him that Janus loved him, even if he was fundamentally ruined?

She tried to read Ash’s face—did he still trust Janus? She went on, carefully: “Janus is hiding things from you, though. His plans. Who he’s working with, besides the Cohort—”

“Dru.” He set his wineglass down on the table, hard, and for a moment she feared she’d pushed him too far. “Stop. I know of his plans, even if I do not like them.”

“Do you know what part you play in them?” she asked, keeping her voice even and low. “He’s using you, Ash.”

“Everyone does.” The pale light of the wisps overhead caught at bits of silver in his hair as he shook his head. “My mother has only ever seen me as a weapon; I was kidnapped by the Unseelie King so he could perform dark magic on me. Annabel wanted a thing she could own and love like a doll. In Thule, Sebastian hoped I would become what he was. I have only ever been a vessel for the expectations and ambitions of others.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Drusilla.” Ash raised his eyes to hers, a slow stare, full of light. “I don’t feel things the way that other people do. The way mortals do.”

He was looking at her as if he couldn’t look away. Remember the plan, she thought. Remember Mason.

She leaned close to him, her lips almost against his ear, her voice a whisper. “You could learn.”

He was silent, his long-fingered grip tight on his wineglass. Dru got to her feet. She felt a little as if she were in a dream, as if her body was telling her what to do, and her mind was following along.