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“Ten minutes, maybe. Julian found it in a book. A lot of neurodivergent people have trouble getting to sleep. I don’t always, but sometimes, when a lot’s happened, I need to go through a sort of list in my head. Process things, check them off. It’s just—I do it out loud, and I didn’t do it last night because I didn’t want…”

“Want to bother me?” Kit said softly. “Go ahead. It won’t bother me.”

Ty’s gray eyes were luminous in the dark. He looked as if he were about to say something—almost as if he wanted to correct Kit—before he nodded and pulled his arms out from behind his head. He closed his eyes, laying his hands on his bare stomach where his thermal shirt had ridden up.

He began to speak, very softly: His lips moved, but Kit couldn’t hear him. Not really, just a word here and there, like library, and artifact, and Dru. The soft whispering was like the sound of water, strangely soothing. Kit closed his eyes and fell asleep to the sound of Ty’s voice.

—

There was nowhere to hide.

Instinctively, Dru backed away from the sound of footsteps, but it was already too late. A phalanx of redcaps, led by Bonecrusher, turned a corner and the corridor was suddenly full of them.

Dru bent her head, hoping the hood of her linen cloak hid her face. Maybe they would think she was a servant like Elara, and pay her no mind.

And for a moment, it seemed to be working. The first wave of redcaps passed her by without a glance as Bonecrusher shouted orders at them. Dru pressed herself against a wall of densely packed earth, wishing they’d all just vanish, but that, it seemed, would have been too much luck.

She felt a hand descend on her shoulder, felt her hood being pulled away, revealing her face. Bonecrusher was glaring down at her. His breath stank of metallic blood and decayed flesh.

“Prisoner,” he growled. “By whose permission do you wander the halls unaccompanied?”

Dru narrowed her eyes at him. She knew she should be terrified, but what she felt instead was fury. I am a Shadowhunter. How dare he lay hands on me. “Let me ask you something,” she said. “Did your mother call you Bonecrusher, or is that more like a nickname you picked up later in life?”

Bonecrusher bared sharpened teeth. “It was the name of my father, and of his father before him.”

Dru clicked her tongue pityingly. “So you never had much of a chance, did you? Like, say you hadn’t wanted to be a guard who stomps around scaring people. No one would want to hire someone named Bonecrusher as a kindergarten teacher, would they?”

“Stupid mortal,” Bonecrusher hissed. “I will take you to the Queen. She will end your mockery along with your life.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Dru protested, as the gloved hands of redcaps reached for her, grasping at her sleeves. “I’m sure we can work something else out—”

“Let her go.” A familiar voice, cool and collected.

Dru turned in surprise and saw Ash. He wore a black tunic fastened with ruby clips. They looked like drops of blood. He carried a decanter of wine in one hand, the contents of which resembled ink.

“That is my prisoner,” he said. “She is in my charge.”

To Dru’s surprise, Bonecrusher pushed back. “It seems late for a prisoner to be wandering the halls.”

“I thought she needed dancing lessons,” said Ash. “You know how mortals are. All flailing limbs and wobbling. A terrible danger to the fine china.”

Dru glared at Ash. It wasn’t that he could lie that annoyed her; it was that in a land where almost no one else could tell untruths, Ash did it so well.

“It is against the rules the Queen laid down,” Bonecrusher muttered.

Ash raised an eyebrow. “If you are troubled, dear Bonecrusher, we can go before my lady the Queen now, and have her settle this. I admire your confidence in thinking she will side with a redcap guard over her own son.”

Ash spoke smoothly, without a hint of concern. Bonecrusher shrugged and barked something in a guttural language at the guards surrounding him. A moment later, they were marching off down the corridor. Dru barely had time to sag with relief before Ash had taken her arm and was steering her down a corridor, away from the guards.

“What are you doing?” Dru demanded. He was walking fast, so fast it was an annoyance to try to keep up.

“Taking you back to your room,” Ash said in a clipped voice. “Do you have any idea what kind of risk you just took? After I warned you at the banquet?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“It’s like I said, Please keep a low profile so the Queen isn’t bothered by you and by the time you got back to your room you recalled it as, Please do what you can to bother the Queen, she loves that sort of thing.”

They turned another corner and now they were in a corridor that Dru recognized by the designs on the passing doors. Her room was here.