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Ty threw back his head, proud and unshaken as he glared at the Four Riders. “Are any of you going to come down here and fight us on a level playing field?”

Ethna laughed again, a tinny, empty sound. “There’s no need for a battle, little one. We merely need Christopher Herondale to accompany us. Peacefully. The Queen wishes to see him.”

“Now’s not a good time,” said Kit. “I have a lot going on personally.”

Ty said, “The four of you should go to the Queen. Tell her when she returns Drusilla Blackthorn and Clary Fairchild, then we’ll meet with her.”

Eochaid’s cheek gaped open to show the bone underneath when he spoke. “We don’t take orders from you, necromancer. We take orders only from the monarchs of Faerie.”

Kit felt almost as if he were floating. He already knew what he had to do. No matter what Jem said, he had never had a choice. Not when he’d been born, not about becoming a Shadowhunter, not about keeping Jem and Tessa—or Ty—safe from the consequences of his heritage. He had run away from it for so long, he hadn’t noticed when there was no longer a road to run on. When saying no was no longer less dangerous than saying yes.

When the required sacrifice—because there was always a sacrifice required—would be his.

Ty nudged Kit’s shoulder. Trying to look as casual as possible, Kit looped his hands behind his back. His heart was beating triple time, but the Riders were muttering among themselves. They didn’t seem uneasy. If they had been afraid of him before, as Ty and Hyacinth had thought, things had changed. They had changed. Whatever they had become, they were clearly more powerful now than when Kit had faced them in Idris.

Little Heir. The words echoed in Kit’s ears as Ty passed something to him behind both their backs. He closed his hand around it—heavy, rough, circular. Ty had known what Kit had to do without Kit saying a word.

He lifted the crown in his hands, no longer caring if the Riders saw what he was doing. As he held it up, it shimmered like a circle of fire, and though it seemed to burn, the metal was cool against his skin.

“If you take orders only from the monarchs of Faerie,” Kit said, and all the Riders turned to stare at him with varying expressions of puzzlement and shock, “then you will take orders from me.”

And he set the crown on his head.

—

The Queen moved toward Ash and Dru, slow and deliberate; she wore a dress in overlapping shades of deep emerald, moss, and jade green, traced with gold embroidery. The train of it dragged over the stones of the riverbank as she approached. Her head was held high, and she wore her elaborate crown, dark gold against her dark red hair.

“My little Ash,” she said, nearing them. “I had hope for you, after our last conversation, I really did. I thought you had embraced your responsibility, your destiny. But the Shadowhunter side of you continues to poison your veins with disobedience and folly.”

In one swift movement, Ash drew Phaesphoros. The dark blade, stamped with silver stars, made it look as if he were clutching a shadow. “Do not come near me,” he said, “nor near to Drusilla, either. Stay back.”

The Queen glanced at Dru with a dry contempt. “What is it about this girl? How could a Shadowhunter make you abandon all common sense?”

Ash said, “As my father made you abandon yours?”

Real rage flicked across the Queen’s face. Ash stumbled back like he’d been shoved, though his grip stayed tight on his blade. Dru’s hands itched to grasp a blade as well—a longsword or a seraph blade, she wasn’t picky.

“You cannot stand against me here in my land, child,” said the Queen. “And do not imagine I will not use my power against you just because you are my blood.”

“I would never imagine that,” said Ash.

“You are becoming a great disappointment,” said the Queen. “I am beginning to think I whelped a fool. That only the strictest discipline might make something of you.”

Dru tensed. She could hear something, a very faint noise like distant footsteps. Was someone coming? Perhaps the Queen had ordered her guards to follow her? Either way, she had to draw the Queen’s attention away from Ash, before she struck out at him again.

“Ash is not a fool,” she snapped, and both the Queen and Ash looked surprised to hear her defend him. “I can’t say the same of you, my lady, entering into a bargain with the Princes of Hell. They cannot be tricked or outsmarted. You cannot control them; they will control you. And they will always win.”

The Queen laughed. “Was it not one of your own mortal scholars who said that if you must kill, do so with a borrowed knife? Theirs is the vengeance, mine only the hand that steers my son to the throne.”

Dru said, “The same scholars advise us to hide a knife behind a smile. The Princes of Hell may seem benevolent to you now, but they will cut your throat later.” That’s right, she thought. Don’t you quote The Thirty-Six Stratagems at me.

The Queen sneered. “Be quiet,” she said. “What are you? A Shadowhunter, the last remains of a dying people—”

“Leave her be,” snapped Ash. “This is between you and me; Dru has nothing to do with it.”

The Queen looked coolly at her son. “If you wish to keep your own will and thoughts past this moment, kill the Shadowhunter,” she said. “Do it now.”

Dru felt herself freeze; she glanced at Ash, who still held Phaesphoros, and saw his eyes turn almost black. “You are no different from the Unseelie King,” he said to his mother. “Do you remember your own words, when the King demanded I cut Kieran’s throat? You called him a deceiver. You told him what the cost of murder would be to me. But now—when it is your own vicious wishes you want to see enacted—now the cost does not matter.”