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The Queen. Dru felt Clary tense beside her, though she followed Ash toward the table with a blank and neutral expression that Dru did her best to copy. It felt strange to be here with Clary, who she’d always thought of as a hero, unassailable. And yet Clary had no more power in the Court than she did.

Ash guided Clary to a seat close to the empty royal chair, then returned for Dru. She was deposited into the chair beside Ash’s, across from a pair of eerily identical twins. They were both boys of about sixteen, with pale skin, curling dark brown hair, and enormous brown eyes fringed by long lashes.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Dru.”

They looked identically horrified. “No, no,” said one of them. “We are gentry. We introduce ourselves first. Then you.”

“Okay, dude,” said Dru, aware that Ash, who had slid into the seat beside her, was listening intently. She couldn’t stop wanting to annoy him. “No harm meant.”

“ ‘Dude’?” echoed the twin on the left.

“A mortal honorific, I believe,” Ash said. “Like ‘sir.’ ”

Dru wondered if he was smirking. She couldn’t tell; she was afraid to look at him.

“Ah.” The twin looked mollified. “I am Callen Whitehart.”

“And I am his brother,” said the other one, unnecessarily. “Cuan. Our father was the Great Stag, our mother a princess of the southern woodlands.”

The Great Stag. Dru assumed this was a sort of title, like calling someone the Inquisitor or the Prince of Wales, and not an indicator that their father had been a large deer. Although with their slender bodies and huge brown eyes, they did look a bit like deer.

“And I am Rathna,” said the girl sitting on the other side of Ash. Her hair was the color of seafoam, her skin and eyes the same silvery green. Her dress looked as if it had been sewn together out of shining scales. “I am a handmaiden of the Queen.”

Dru and her siblings had spent extra time learning about the fey because of their family connections to Faerie, and Dru recalled that this was a place of honor. “That must be…fun.”

“She confides in me,” said Rathna, looking very pleased. “And she only picks the prettiest of her subjects to be her handmaidens. You could be a handmaiden,” she added, to Dru’s surprise. “For a mortal, you are very pretty.”

“Huh,” said Dru. “Thank you, I think?”

“Quite true,” said Ash, as if he were talking about something very distant, not a person at all but a range of mountains or a sunset. “Her eyes are the precise color of the ocean. Most unusual.”

“I find it difficult to think of mortals as attractive,” said Cuan thoughtfully. “The way they age…” He shuddered. “From the moment they are born, they are rotting from the inside.”

“Not exactly how that works,” said Dru, “but noted, I guess.”

“Ignore Cuan,” said Rathna, rolling her eyes. “Even the King of Unseelie has mortal consorts. If they are beautiful enough for him…”

“One of them at least is half fey,” said Callen.

“Like me,” drawled Ash. “Half fey, half human.”

Cuan went white. “But you are different,” he said hurriedly. “As long as you remain in Faerie, you are immortal, my Prince. You are not…”

“Rotting from the inside?” Ash said.

Callen cleared his throat. “It has always fascinated me that the Unseelie King’s consorts spend half the year at least in the mortal world. Once granted a life in Faerie, I cannot understand why anyone would leave it for long.”

“I rather envy them,” sighed Rathna. “I find the mortal world fascinating. It is where you dwell, is it not?” she added, looking at Dru. “All Shadowhunters save those in Idris must.”

Dru had never thought of Idris as not part of the mortal world, but there was no point correcting one of the Queen’s handmaidens. “We don’t mix too much with mundanes,” she said, “but yes. We are part of the mortal world.”

Rathna leaned forward, her shoulder bumping against Ash’s. He didn’t seem to notice. “Mundanes are the ordinary folk, then, the ones without magic?” Ash was watching Dru with a sly, amused expression. “I am most fascinated by cars,” Rathna said. “They are the steeds of mortals, are they not, fashioned all of iron?”

This time Dru actually felt Ash look at her, the brush of his cool green eyes and the question in them: How would she answer?

“That is,” said Dru, “one way of putting it.”

“Are they charmed to be tame? Do they roam wild if left untethered?” Rathna asked.