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Nene looked down at her long teal hands. She had remained in the form of Elara, as it was difficult to keep dropping and replacing the glamour. “Ash will not trust easily, Dru. The old King shaped him, and after that Sebastian, and then Janus. And we cannot forget Annabel.”

“Can’t we?” Dru didn’t want to talk about Annabel.

Nene said, “Ash has never been able to trust anyone, and that sort of thing does not simply go away. He wishes to trust you but finds himself unable to do so. The others got to him too early.”

“Is that all?” Dru said. “Because you got to him even earlier.”

Nene looked stricken, but before Dru could apologize, there was a knock at the door. Nene rose and went to answer it, and returned trailing exactly the person Dru didn’t want to see.

Ash.

Dru’s heart stuttered in her chest. He was dressed in his training clothes, his face unreadable. The sense of faint amusement that almost always hung around him was definitely present, and more annoying than ever.

“I need to train,” he said. “Elara, you may go. Dru, come with me.”

With a quick sideways look at Dru, Nene took her leave.

Dru stared at Ash blankly. She had no intention of showing him how tense his presence made her. She thought of Julian, his skill at lying when he had to, the way he held his emotions in check. She’d asked him how he did it, once, and he’d said he imagined picking up all the threads of his feelings as if they were dropped spaghetti and locking them up in a box.

Dru smiled politely at Ash. “I’m not sure I feel like training right now.”

“Really? You seem prepared for it.” He flicked his gaze over her training clothes. “Does the idea of my company trouble you?”

Dru bit the inside of her cheek. “Not at all.”

“Then there would seem to be no problem. It’s not as if you have anything else to do.”

Fuming, Dru went to get her shoes. There was no time for hesitation; Ash was already standing at the door, his arms folded across his chest, looking impossibly bored.

The journey to the training room was short and entirely silent. Dru concentrated on what was to come. The clash of metal on metal. The pain of stretched muscles. Maybe she was looking forward to it more than she’d thought.

When they entered the training room, the familiar smell of stone and steel clung to the air, but the weapons had been rearranged: Everything had been hung carefully on the wall, leaving the center of the room empty save for a pile of seraph blades, lying inactive, like piled strips of glass.

Where did he get these? Dru wondered, and then recalled what he’d told her about finding his copy of the Gray Book at the Shadow Market. She supposed an enterprising vendor might be selling seraph blades, too.

Ash picked up a blade and examined it with an almost detached curiosity. The pale light in the room sparked off the blade, turning it to a whitish silver the color of his hair. “Flame of the whirling sword,” he said, “or at least that is how it is termed in the Bible. The swords of angels were made of adamas, even if it was not called that. I wonder sometimes if you Nephilim understand the power you inherit in your blood.”

Dru bent to pick up a blade. It fit perfectly into her hand; they always did. “Do you understand yours?” she said.

He flicked his gaze up to her, a flash of green. “Better than you do.”

Don’t give him the satisfaction of arguing. Dru indicated the blade in her hand. “You want to learn how to use these?”

Ash lowered his seraph blade. “It is the last bit of Shadowhunter knowledge I lack,” he said. “Our lessons will be ending soon. I thought I’d better learn this while I could.”

Dru caught her breath. “What do you mean ‘ending soon’?”

“Janus plans to take me away from the Court,” Ash said, his voice betraying a hint of something dark. Anger? Regret? “I’m not sure when, or for how long.”

Dru felt herself freeze. Spaghetti in a box. “Don’t you have a choice? You’re the Prince.”

“Princes have less choice than those who are not princes,” Ash said. “It is not a matter of doing what I want to do, but of doing what needs to be done.”

“Does the Queen know?” Dru asked. “I can’t imagine she’d approve of Janus taking her little boy away.”

Ash’s lip curled, that small flicker that was almost a smile. “My mother and the Huntsman are aligned in their plans.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard you call him the Huntsman before. Only Janus. Or Jace.”