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“You really think she’s such a monster? She’s your mother.”

“She is my mother, and a monster,” Ash said. “I do not delude myself otherwise. She may have brought you to this banquet to put a good face on things for the Court, but that does not mean she likes you any better than before.” He glanced over at the Queen, as if he couldn’t help the gesture. She was deep in conversation with the faerie man with the ram’s horns. Dru frowned. There was something about the man she didn’t like.

“That’s Lord Byrne,” Ash said, clearly reading her expression. “He has long been in charge of the borderlands between Seelie and Unseelie, but my mother has recently summoned him to the Court. She spends a great deal of time with him. I suppose she trusts his opinion.”

“Maybe. Maybe she thinks he’s hot,” said Dru.

“Most likely,” said Ash, as if the idea was faintly repulsive. Dru supposed it would be—the Queen was the Queen to her, but to Ash she was his mother.

Time to change the subject. “It must be hard, not having anyone you can trust.”

“I trust Janus,” Ash said.

“Do you?” Dru couldn’t keep the dubious tone out of her voice.

“I know he isn’t charming,” Ash said, with the ghost of a smile at his own understatement. “But you don’t know the whole story. In Thule…he was the only real thing I had, and I was the same for him.”

Dru was startled by the vulnerability in his voice—Ash was ordinarily so guarded. “I guess you had to be there,” she said.

Ash broke her gaze, looking across the room toward Clary. His smile disappeared. “I would have trusted my father.”

“You mean Sebastian, the Sebastian in this world?” Dru asked.

“Yes.”

“Why do you consider one Sebastian your father, and the other one not your father?” Dru asked.

Ash looked at her sharply. “Sebastian in Thule was different from my father. Being in that demonic world twisted his mind.”

Didn’t the world of Thule get twisted by him, and not the other way around? Dru thought. Thule exists as a world where Clary died at the Battle of the Burren, fighting Sebastian’s forces—a world where demons and evil triumphed, because of him. Because of Sebastian.

Ash continued on, unfazed by her silence. “From the time I came to Thule when I was quite young, Janus told me over and over again that the Sebastian of this world had been capable of love and even regret. That he would have treated me very differently.”

I don’t think the two Sebastians were all that different. “The Sebastian who existed in my world had Thule in his heart, even if he never had a chance to create it,” Dru said carefully.

“You believe what you were told. You were only a child during the Dark War.”

“Yeah, I was eight years old. But some things you don’t forget. I remember seeing him destroy my father and leave a demonic shell in his place. I remember seeing him kidnap my brother, and kill my tutor, and laugh while he did it—”

She wanted to add, Clary killed Sebastian because she had to. If she hadn’t, our world would look like Thule. But surely that would be pushing past the bounds of what would allow Ash to believe in her loyalty and desire to please? That was her armor, she reminded herself. His belief that she was under his spell.

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to sound meek but only managing to sound like she’d accidentally stepped on a stranger’s foot. “I just don’t want you to be lied to.”

Ash’s cool green gaze swept over her, chilly but indifferent. “We should return to the table,” he said. “I cannot be seen to be giving you particular attention.”

Bit late for that, Dru thought, wondering at his abruptness. Perhaps she’d pushed him too far about Sebastian? But surely he wouldn’t see it as disloyalty, just her enspelled desire to please him. Probably he was just bored with her.

Back at the table, Ash went to talk to the Queen. Dru found the twins in the middle of an inexplicable argument. Rathna was finishing off what had to be her sixth goblet of wine.

“You’ve returned,” she said, sounding pleased.

“I have,” said Dru, and leaned closer to the faerie girl. “The man in the golden mask—is he the consort of the Queen?”

Rathna’s eyes widened. “The Queen has no consort,” she said. “That is the Huntsman. He hunts for the Queen.”

“Animals?” Dru said, thinking of the heads she had seen on the walls when she’d first woken up in Faerie. “And—creatures?”

The twins had stopped arguing the moment Dru sat down. “Sometimes,” said Callen. “But more often he hunts the enemies of the Queen. Those who have displeased her might try to flee the Court, perhaps to join Mother Hawthorn and the wild fey. But if the Queen sends the Huntsman after the fugitive, the Huntsman will pursue them, never sleeping, never pausing, until they are found and slain. He has never failed her.”