Page 131

“Farewell?” Dru demanded. “To my friends and family? I’m supposed to accept that they’re going to—to be used in some kind of dark ritual? That they’re probably going to die? I don’t know how familiar you are with dark rituals, Ash, but they don’t usually leave a lot of survivors.”

Ash looked away; when he looked back, he was smiling a practiced smile. “Elara,” he said, “we have a potion here in Faerie, do we not, made with water from an enchanted spring? When you drink it, you forget.”

“Forget what?” Dru said.

“Everything that troubles you. You will recall only Faerie. In that way, you will not have to suffer. You cannot miss what you don’t remember having,” he added, and there was an odd note in his voice when he said it, odd enough to make Dru wonder.

“No,” Nene said. “Surely, Ash, you cannot be so under the sway of your mother as all that. Surely you understand that taking someone’s memories is a brutal theft.”

His eyes narrowed very slightly. “ ‘Ash’?” he echoed. “A handmaiden should use the proper form of address. That would be ‘Prince Ash.’ ”

Nene rose to her feet. Dru caught her breath as the glamour fell away from her, starting at the crown of her head and shimmering down her body to her feet. It looked as if she were rising out of the foam of the ocean.

In a moment she stood before Ash as the Nene that Dru had always known: pale, fair haired, with the long hands and straight posture of the gentry fey.

Nene took a ragged breath. Dru could see the fear in her eyes—fear that Ash no longer remembered her, or worse, that he hated her now. “Surely you cannot have forgotten me,” she said. “Even after all these years.”

“Nene.” Ash looked angry, but not at all surprised, as if he’d already guessed who she was. “What are you doing here? My mother exiled you.”

Nene looked shocked. “I came for you—”

“For me, or to spy upon my mother?” Ash’s mouth was a hard line. “To carry back tales of her to Mother Hawthorn and the wild fey?”

“I came to learn your mother’s plans,” Nene said. “Because I knew they would endanger you. Even destroy you. When I saw you at the Whipping Tree—”

Ash had been at the Whipping Tree? Dru wanted to demand an explanation, but Ash hastily interrupted. “All this time, you hid who you really were,” he said to Nene. “I suspected, of course, and when you said those words, Fear not the night—” He broke off. “But I thought to myself, no—the Nene I knew would not deceive me.” His ice-green gaze traveled to Dru. “You have played me false as well, I see. Though that is less surprising. I expect lies from you.”

Dru recoiled, stung. “It wasn’t my secret to tell. And I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you everything.”

“How faerie of you,” Ash said, but he wasn’t really looking at Dru. He was watching Nene as she approached him. His face was very pale, his lips bloodless, and for a moment something passed behind Dru’s inner eye, the flicker of a memory of Ash’s face like that, of looking at him and feeling afraid: of him or for him, she didn’t know. But the memory was gone immediately, as if a curtain had fallen between it and her conscious self.

“Don’t you see? It’s too little too late, Nene,” Ash said. “You thought I would be grateful to see you, that perhaps I had missed you. But you abandoned me—”

“I did not abandon you,” Nene cried. “The Unseelie King took you. I could not protect you from him, that is true—”

“Protect me from him?” Ash demanded. “You and Dru think of yourselves as on the side of good, but my mother is the one who cares for the best interests of the Court. Neither of you two think of aught but yourselves. Am I anything to you other than a way to get at my mother?”

It’s impossible, Dru thought. He can’t actually believe that his mother cares about her people. Unless—what did she do to him?

“Ash,” Nene whispered. Her face was stark with misery. “I love you. I have only ever wanted what was best for you.”

“That,” said Ash, “is exactly what my mother would say. Should I trust your word over hers? If you were wise, Nene, you would depart the Seelie Court. When my mother finds out you are here, she will kill you.” He turned as if to leave, then paused for a moment. His gaze flicked to Dru. “There is a banquet tonight,” he said. “I don’t care if the Queen demands your presence. I forbid you to go. I’ve no desire to see you.”

And he was gone, the door swinging shut behind him. Dru almost stumbled over herself to get to Nene; she caught the faerie woman’s hand in hers. Nene looked down at Dru, her face pale but blank. Dru knew that faeries did not show their hurt the way that mortals did, but she was still surprised by the look on Nene’s face: more thoughtful than sad.

—

Magnus was less than impressed with the hotel room. He flicked his cat’s-eye gaze around it, said, “A junior suite?” in a disapproving tone, and flopped onto one of the leather couches. “I would have thought the Order of the Briar could afford better accommodation for you.”

Kit was about to snap that they were supposed to be completing a quest, not touring hotel rooms, when he noticed something he hadn’t seen in the darkness outside. Magnus looked exhausted: clothes rumpled, eyes heavy-lidded, five-o’clock shadow on his jaw. Kit hadn’t even realized warlocks needed to shave.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Kit said, settling on the other couch. Ty sat down next to him. Livvy had vanished partway back to the hotel, telling them she needed to rest after the ordeal by the lake. “Not the hotel room. In the Shadowhunter world. Livvy’s checked out Institutes along our way. They’re all deserted. And Jinfeng told us Alec was—”

“Alec has disappeared.” The pain in Magnus’s eyes was almost too unbearable to see. “The New York Institute stands, but its Shadowhunters are gone. Every Institute is deserted. The few Nephilim left are scattered and largely unaffiliated with a city or Institute. But the structure of the Nephilim world, the Clave, the Consul—” His voice cracked. “They’re alive,” he added, almost as if he were reassuring himself as well as them. “They are alive in Idris. A pity the Silent Brothers are gone and the Iron Sisters have vanished from the Citadel. They might have been able to help us get into Idris otherwise. We’ve been trying, but the Cohort has put up new wards around the borders, and they’re some of the most powerful I’ve ever seen. The best of warlocks—by which I mean me—has not been able to find a way through.”

Kit said, “All these news stories about wild-animal attacks and bats and things, are those all demons?”

“Most. We warlocks have been doing everything we can to keep the demons under control. Other Downworlders are helping, too—I left Maia and Bat at the Institute to look after things. But we don’t have the specialized knowledge that Shadowhunters do. And there aren’t enough of us, honestly.” He glanced at Ty. “Speaking of specialized knowledge, where is your sister?”