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Kit felt a very small spark of hope. If they could be invisible to both the Riders and the basilisk, they had a chance, a small chance, of making it out of all this alive, and with the artifact. The names of everyone they might be able to save ran through his head: Tessa-Mina-Jem-Dru-Clary.

He started to leave, then paused and turned back. “We can’t just leave you here, Round Tom,” he said. “You deserve to be back out in the world.” I can probably undo whatever spell trapped you in here. Or at least, I can try.

“Oh, I’ve no desire to be set free,” Tom said. “Now that you’re off to hunt the basilisk, I’m safer waiting in here. Come back and get me if you survive. And if you don’t survive, Heir…” Tom looked as bleak as Kit had ever seen him. “Well, if the Queen of Seelie has her way, there won’t be that much of this world for me to come back to.”

Nene

Let me tell you a story. A tale of Faerie, but not a fairy tale.

Once upon a time there was a faerie Prince whom nobody loved. His father had not loved him, and his mother did not love him, and his people did not love him: They feared him, for he was not like them.

His mother placed him in the care of a nursemaid who had turned her heart against love, for she had been betrayed in the past. The nursemaid was a healer, and she told herself that she would see to it that the child grew up healthy, but she would not love him, for he did not belong to her, and how could she care for something she could not keep?

She fed the child and she clothed him, put him to sleep and roused him in the morning. She sang to him and when he cried she told him, “Fear not the night, for the stars are with you.” She told him stories, and they played games together in the shadows of the Court. And she came to know him by his look and by the sound of his voice and by his laughter, for not many were laughing in the Court in those days.

And even so, she told herself she did not love him, that she was doing the duties of a healer and nothing more.

Then came the day she could not find him. She looked for him in all the Court, in the caverns and by the lakes, even in his mother’s chambers, but he was not there. A great fear gripped her, stronger than any she had ever known. It was only when she returned to her own rooms, torn with despair, that she found him hiding. When she asked him why he had chosen to hide there, he said, “Because I wanted you to find me.”

“I would always have found you,” she told him. “Even if you hid somewhere very far away. I would never stop looking for you.” And she knew it was true, for she realized in that moment that she did love him, and she always had.

In the years that would come, he would be taken far from her, even to other worlds. Though she grieved, she did not regret her love, for she knew that loving him had saved the boy, and also saved her too. And she could not but believe that one day love would save them all.

20

Through a Keyhole

Dru walked quickly along the corridor, her head down, the hood of her velvet cloak raised. She hoped the shadow of the cloak would keep her face invisible; it wasn’t as if the halls of the Seelie Court were particularly well lit. She wore a pair of gold slippers, and a long gray-green silk dress, and hoped against hope that if she kept her head bent and her pace quick, anyone who passed her would assume she was gentry fey.

She’d let herself out of her room using her bent pins after Nene had left. Nene hadn’t been too pleased that Dru planned on going through with her spy mission alone—she’d intended to go with her to the Queen’s chambers—but Dru had refused. She would not have Nene risk herself. This was Dru’s mission.

Nene had muttered something about Shadowhunters and stalked out of the room.

The golden door that Dru remembered loomed in front of her now. She glanced around to make sure no one was watching before she pushed it open and slid inside.

A soft rush of air greeted her, smelling of lichen and stone. The corridor beyond was dark. Torches had been lit here when she’d come with the Huntsman, but now the only light came from phosphorescent moss, growing high on the walls overhead.

Dru moved as quietly as she could down the hallway. Never had she wished so badly for a Soundless rune. She tiptoed past the mosaic door that led to the Queen’s anteroom; as she went on, the air grew colder, the path wilder. Stone walls gave way to packed earth, ribboned with mossy, sap-green roots.

Dru stepped carefully around a bulging root, her eyes scanning the darkness, when suddenly a hand shot out from the shadows, seizing her wrist in a viselike grip. She found herself spun around and crowded up against the wall, a hand firmly over her mouth.

Ash was in front of her, his face set and pale, his mouth a narrow, angry line. His other hand came up beside her head, palm flat against the stone, his body close enough that she could feel the tension humming through him as he held her pinned in place.

“I cannot believe you,” he snarled, eyes brilliant with anger. “I cannot believe you would risk your life for this foolishness. What were you thinking?”

Dru wondered if he was actually expecting her to answer with his hand clamped over her mouth. She considered biting his fingers, but he seemed to read the thought in her eyes, and slowly lowered his hand.

“Keep quiet,” he said softly. “The penalty for approaching the Queen’s chambers unasked is death.”

“Of course it is,” Dru muttered. She could feel fury radiating off him like heat. “Are you really so surprised? In the training room, you told me that you knew I was going to try to find out your mother’s plans—”

“I knew you had the stupid idea in your head that you could. Lots of people have stupid ideas, however. Most don’t act on them. You, of course, have to be special.”

“This is not a game to me,” Dru hissed, so sharply that she saw him jerk back, as if she’d stuck him with a pin. She could barely breathe around the tight knot of rage and frustration and fear inside her chest. “This is my family. The people I love the most in the world. I would do anything for them. Do you know what that means?” She saw a flicker of something in his eyes. “You know what they say about you? ‘The Prince has no heart. The old King took it.’ ”

He gave a little gasping laugh. “Do they say that? Good. Better for them to think I have no weakness.”

“They think you have no feelings.” Dru bit at the words. “I at least thought you understood that other people do. You cannot honestly have expected me to stay in my little prison room and do nothing while everyone I love is in danger—while Kit and Ty are being hunted. Even if you can’t love—”