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He looked away then, as if he couldn’t bear to keep looking at her; the faint scar at the side of his throat shone like dull silver. “The Riders of Mannan have not found Kit Herondale, nor your brother,” he said, anger sharp as crystal in his tone. “I heard my mother say it. Perhaps you do not need to rescue everyone, Dru. Perhaps they have their own agency.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “And perhaps you’re just telling me what I want to hear.”

“I’m taking you back to your room,” he said. “At knifepoint, if I must.”

“If you do that,” she said, “I will scream. The guards will come.”

He shook his head as if to wake himself up. “You’re not serious. They’ll kill you.”

“I don’t care.” Dru was breathing hard; she could feel the rise and fall of her chest against his.

“You are reckless to the point of insanity,” he said, and at that moment, she knew she’d won.

“There’s no need to be insulting,” Dru said. “It won’t help.”

He swore under his breath—something creative, involving hobgoblins and sticks. A second later he’d pushed himself away from the wall, abruptly freeing her. He turned and strode off down the corridor. Dru darted after him, slamming her toe against a tree root in her haste to catch up.

“You know why I came now, right?” she whispered, hurrying along next to him. “The Queen is having a meeting with Byrne—”

“I’m aware,” Ash said dryly. “It’s how I knew you’d be here. Don’t imagine I spend all my hours lurking in this bat-infested tunnel, waiting for you to fall on top of me.”

He stopped suddenly, and Dru realized they were almost at the end of the corridor. The light she’d seen was emanating from a mirror that hung on the wall, half hidden by trailing root tendrils. The surface was dull and spotted, and words had been etched into the glass, the letters decorative and curlicued.

“This is the back way into my mother’s rooms,” Ash said. “It can only be opened by the solution to the riddle.” His mouth set in a hard line. “Go ahead. Solve it.”

Dru remembered something Jaime had told her once, while they were sitting on the back porch of the Academy. When it comes to faerie riddles, look for the meaning beneath the words.

And the words were few:

Born of flame, I never burn,

I am the dust to which we turn.

I hid the girl who lost her shoe,

And blood revealed what was not true.

Dru gave a little gasp of laughter. This was the Queen’s brand of cruel humor, all right.

“Ash,” she said.

She turned to look at Ash himself, beside her, but he was expressionless. If it bothered him to be called pale and cold, a ruin, he didn’t show it.

The mirror began to shimmer, the surface dissolving away until there was nothing left but a doorway, an arched hole in the wall. Ash stepped through and Dru followed him into the Queen’s private rooms.

Even though the door remained open behind them, Dru felt the shift in temperature immediately. The air was warm and heavily perfumed with the scents of jasmine and peat, sweet and smoky. They were in a dim chamber, its walls lined with tapestries of silk so fine it seemed to glow in the faint light. The floor was covered in rich rugs woven with intricate patterns of vines and leaves. Up at the top of a short flight of steps, Dru could glimpse a massive white bed, its posts carved with swans, the image of a crown decorating the headboard.

Dru turned away from it, uncomfortable. It wasn’t that she felt bad invading the Queen’s personal space; it was that she had no desire to see her private things, to imagine her getting up in the morning and going to sleep at night as if she were anything other than a monster.

“Come here.” Ash was standing at the opposite wall, near the set of narrow doors Dru remembered: the ones carved with stags. On the other side, she knew, was the Queen’s antechamber; she could faintly hear the sound of voices beyond the doors.

She joined Ash and found that he had drawn back the corner of a tapestry, exposing a small hole in the wall, just at eye level. “A spy hole,” he murmured. “The Queen has used it in the past to observe her handmaidens in secret.” He glanced at it, and indicated Dru should come stand beside him. “Since you’re so determined—have a look.”

Dru moved closer. She was upsettingly aware of Ash—the tension in his body, the brush of his sleeve against her arm—even as she raised herself up on her toes to peer through the spy hole.

She could see directly into the Queen’s familiar antechamber. There were the deep velvet chaises and darting will-o’-the-wisps, the billowing draperies and high ceiling. Two great chairs had been drawn up before the fireplace. The Queen sat in one, wearing a dress of layered fabrics in shades of blue that rippled over her body like water. Her scarlet hair was braided high on her head, fastened with sapphire pins.

Across from her was Byrne, all in dull burgundy, his black eyes sleepy. His golden horns gleamed as he gazed into the fire.