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“Well, that’s welcoming,” Kit said. He saw Ty glance at him, that quick, sharp look, weighing and measuring sarcasm. “Maybe we should go somewhere else?”

“We can’t. This is the address Ragnor gave us,” said Ty. “If Ragnor thought we would be safe here, we have to assume he was right. After all, this whole mission was his idea.”

“We’ve trusted him this far, we might as well keep trusting him?” Kit hesitated a moment, then shrugged. “Fine. If there turns out to be an army of demons at the top of the stairs, I get to say I told you so.”

There was not an army of demons at the top of the stairs. There was a room, small but clean, with two decent-sized beds, both with white duvets folded at their feet. And a separate bathroom, with a shower and fluffy white towels and soap that smelled like freesia.

Kit’s desperate desire to feel clean—he was grubby, sweaty, even a little bloody where he’d scratched himself landing in the alley—won out over his desire to eat. He disappeared into the bathroom, letting hot water sluice over his body. If he closed his eyes, as the steam rose up, he could imagine he was home at Cirenworth, taking an ordinary shower on an ordinary day. That he’d leave the bathroom and get dressed and find Tessa picking strawberries in the garden, or Jem ready to train with him in the carriage house, or Mina waiting with her arms out, hoping to be picked up.

Would you love me if I was a pencil?

Kit tasted salt in the back of his mouth and choked it back. Lock it down.

Out of the shower, he threw on jeans and a Henley shirt and went out the door to find that Ty had laid out their food from the train station—cheese sandwiches, cans of soda, cookies—carefully on the small table in the room. Everything had been divided exactly in half, even the packet of crisps.

Ty looked up at Kit as he came out of the bathroom, his hair wet, shirt clinging to him damply. Ty blinked rapidly and said, “You should sit down and eat something. And,” he added, as Kit took a seat, “I think we should set some ground rules.”

Kit, halfway to picking up a cheese sandwich, paused. It was his turn to blink. “Ground rules? For what?”

“For us,” said Ty. “Livvy reminded me I do better with—parameters. You and I haven’t spoken in years. There are reasons for that. And I wouldn’t have come to you about Dru if I thought I had another choice.”

Despite everything, the words hurt. “Okay,” Kit said slowly. “We’re both on this quest and we both want it to work. We already know there are some things we can’t talk about without fighting. But fighting won’t help us here. We need to get along if we’re going to find Dru and Clary.”

Ty frowned. It was his considering frown, the one that went along with him touching his two index fingers together. It meant he was thinking; Kit remembered the gesture so well it was like an ache.

“ ‘Get along’ as a ground rule seems a little vague,” he said.

Kit almost smiled. “Okay. I mean we can’t talk about the past. It’s not up for discussion.”

Ty cocked his head to the side. “When does the past start?”

“What?”

“Dru and Clary were kidnapped in the past. Ragnor sent us on this mission in the past. Can we not talk about those things?”

Kit knew that with anyone else, he’d think they were being difficult. But Ty meant what he said. He wanted clarity. Kit appreciated that. It made conversations like this easier.

Kit took a deep breath. “I don’t want to talk about necromancy,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about things that happened before the Clave split. I don’t want to talk about disagreements we had before.”

“Does that mean you’re going to pretend you haven’t been mad at me for the past four years?”

Kit set down his can of soda so hard he could hear it fizz. “Yes,” he said. “I’m going to pretend like I haven’t been mad at you for the past four years.”

“Then I guess,” Ty said softly, “that I’ll pretend I haven’t been mad at you either.”

The words sent a surge of something through Kit. He wanted to ask Ty what Ty thought he’d done wrong. He wanted to defend himself. But Ty was right. Ground rules mattered, if they were going to do this together. Not talking about the past mattered. It wasn’t that it was the right thing to do, it was that it was the only way to go forward.

So Kit just nodded, and while Ty went to shower, he crossed over to the window and looked out onto the street. It was deserted except for a man in a low-brimmed hat reading a newspaper under a streetlight. The whole scene felt lonely and dark, and Kit couldn’t stop himself from thinking of Cirenworth.

By the time Ty came out of the bathroom, Kit was lying on his side in the bed he’d chosen, trying to pretend he was asleep. He watched Ty slip into bed without a word, and reach out to turn off the lamp. And in the resulting darkness, Kit watched Ty curl up around his pillow and close his eyes. He knew in the back of his mind that he shouldn’t be watching like this, that thinking about Ty too much was a mistake. But they had set the ground rules, put up the guardrails. Surely, Kit thought, those would keep him—would keep both of them—safe.

—

The Queen was tall and slender, her scarlet hair running like a river of fire down her back. She wore a gold crown, more elaborate than Ash’s circlet, and her dress seemed as if it had been sewn from an opal: It was smoke gray, but as she moved, color sparked within its swirling folds, flame red, jade green, sapphire blue. Beside her, Janus stood tall and remote in his Huntsman regalia, wearing his gold hawk’s mask and a long sword buckled at his waist.

Dru looked over at Clary—she was white-faced—and wondered if it was a shock to her, every time she saw Janus and thought first of Jace.

The music stopped. The Queen swept her gaze across the room, a slight smile touching her lips. Then she spoke.