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Ash had expected anger, but her tone, the way she looked at him, was sickly sweet. There were two sides to the Queen, his mother: Silk and steel. The bribe and the blade. She could smother him with affection one moment, then lash out ragefully at another. In many ways, he preferred the anger: It seemed more true.

“I can see why,” Ash said. “I imagine you didn’t want to break the news that you were working with Hell until you had to. Although I have certainly seen the signs in the way Janus has changed.” Which was caused by magic. It was not some flaw in me that changed him. Ash felt a terrible sort of relief at the thought. “No mortal being can stay that close to the heart of evil without being altered.”

“I am no mortal being.” The Queen tossed her hair. “We fey have always paid a tithe to Hell. You know that. Now we call in our favors.”

“So you and Janus plan to kill all the Shadowhunters? Not just turn them into mundanes?”

For a moment, the Queen said nothing, and in that moment, Ash allowed himself to hope that this was the Queen’s plan alone, her attempt to work against Janus behind his back. Perhaps even corrupted by the Princes, he was not capable of such monstrosity.

“It must be done,” the Queen said, as though it were the most natural thing on earth. “The world where they are free to condemn us is ending. A new world begins.” She leaned back in her chair. “I should not have let Janus tell you so many lies. It has left you, I think, regrettably attached to falsehoods about Shadowhunters and the mortal world.”

“Falsehoods?” Ash felt the last remnant of his tattered hope begin to fade away, a sandcastle sinking under waves. “You mean—”

“I should not have let him lie to you about your father,” the Queen said crisply. “Janus wanted you to believe that Sebastian would have cared for you. But he was a monster, incapable of feeling pity or empathy or love. No different here than he was in Thule.”

Ash almost closed his eyes. He thought of what Clary had said to him, and the way Dru had looked at Phaesphoros the first time she’d seen it, strapped across his back that night under the moon, when everything had changed. He had glimpsed the real fear in her eyes, and he had known. He had known, even when he argued with Dru, that Janus had lied to him about his father; known that the worst things said about Sebastian Morgenstern were all true. Dru would not lie to him in such a way; she was not petty, and though his mother was petty, she could not lie.

Perhaps unnerved by his silence, the Queen sighed irritably. “But if the Nephilim mean so much to you, you can keep one as Janus plans to do. A special pet.”

Dru. The stubbornness in her blue-green eyes, the determined set of her chin, the way she bit her lip when she was angry. How it had taken all his strength in the Juniper Room to walk away from her.

He thought of her single-mindedness. She was no one’s special pet.

She was his hope and his weakness. The best and the worst of him. Poison and antidote all at once. And he could not think of her now. He had learned long ago to hide anything vulnerable from those who claimed him as family.

“But if the Nephilim are gone,” he asked, reasonably enough, “won’t the demons overrun everything?”

“They can have the mortal world. Let it be overrun. It is not our concern.”

“We are not so separate from it as all that,” said Ash. “In Thule, the land of Faerie sealed itself off from the mortal world, for the earth had been destroyed and poisoned by Sebastian. But the walls between worlds are porous. We heard word that the faeries themselves were sickening and dying, for the infection Sebastian had begun in Thule could not help but spread to them. I would not,” he finished, “so quickly dismiss the mortal world.”

If he’d hoped the Queen would listen to him, he was disappointed. She shrugged lazily. “The demons and their doings shall not trouble us. For Janus has promised to give me something few can use, the Ring of Solomon, and with it, I will bring all lesser demons under my control.”

The Ring of Solomon. Ash knew exactly what it was: Sebastian had been fascinated by the legend of the ancient King and the seal ring that had given him power over demons. And that before him, Valentine had shared the same obsession. There were good reasons the ring was lost, Ash recalled, but had no desire to mention that to his mother. Knowledge was dangerous in her hands.

“The Ring of Solomon?” he said instead. “Isn’t that just a legend? One of the great lost treasures of Heaven?”

“Nothing is lost forever,” said the Queen. “And nothing is hidden from my scrying bowl.”

She was lying, Ash thought, in that way that faeries lied—she had not said that the scrying bowl had found the Ring, only expressed her opinion of the bowl’s power. As if I wouldn’t know, he thought, and realized, with a flash of surprise, that for the first time in his life he had thought of his mother not with resentment or disappointment, but with contempt.

“And what will my role be in all of this?” he said. “According to Byrne, I am expected to cooperate. But with what plan?”

The Queen’s eyes flashed a sulky look. “With the plan as it has ever been. For you to sit upon the united throne of Faerie.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Who would refuse the offer of such power?” said the Queen. “Only a fool, and my son is no fool.”

“Is it foolish,” Ash said, “not to wish to be the first King of Faerie beholden to Hell?”

“You know nothing of Hell.” All the false sweetness had gone from the Queen’s voice and expression. “You are ungrateful. For what I have done for you and what Janus has done for you. You will fall in line; you have no choice. But before that, you need to learn a lesson.”

Ash gritted his teeth. Another visit to the Whipping Tree, no doubt. More pain. More blood.

But his mother surprised him. Her expression was one of avid interest, of anticipation. It filled him with dread. “You could not have known the time and place of my meeting with Byrne unless one of my handmaidens revealed it to you. You will tell me which it was.”

Ash began to shake his head.