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Ty was there, staring down at Kit with wide and terrified eyes. There was a silver knife in his hand. He ducked his head and started cutting away the rope around Kit’s waist. Hovering just behind him was Livvy, half translucent, her hair floating around her as if she were underwater just as Kit had been.

“Kit, you have to get up,” she was saying. Kit had seen a lot of ghosts in his life, but never one as clearly panicked as Livvy was now. “They’re here, they followed you—”

The words echoed inside Kit’s head, all sound and no sense. Follow, follow, follow. He caught at Ty’s wrist just as the rope fell away. Ty’s skin was burning hot, and Kit wanted to lean into him, into what felt like the only source of warmth in the cold.

“Who followed us?” Kit said.

Ty said, “The Riders. The Riders of Mannan.”

Kit had two swift thoughts: One, no wonder Ty looked so terrified. And two, maybe hypothermia was making Kit hallucinate. “But they’re dead,” he said. “They died in the battle in Idris.”

“I know,” Ty said grimly. “They seem to be back, or at least four of them are. Looking the worse for wear, according to Livvy.”

“They look like revenants or zombies.” Livvy shuddered. “I followed Jinfeng when she ran out to the bridge to try to hold them off. They almost killed her.” Her voice pulsed in Kit’s ears, its rhythm fearful. “She barely got back to the Tower.”

“She made it down here,” Ty added. “She was bleeding pretty badly. She said we had to follow her through the Portal as soon as you came out of the water, whether you had the artifact or not. This place is a Sanctuary, but that won’t hold them back forever—”

Kit tried to grasp Ty’s wrists, but his fingers weren’t working. “Then we need to go,” he said hoarsely. “Help me stand.”

A second later Ty had his arms under Kit’s and was hauling him up, and Kit could feel the heat of Ty’s body like a furnace as Ty struggled to help him walk. But as badly as Kit wanted to put one foot in front of the other, his body wouldn’t cooperate.

He felt his knees sag toward the floor as his vision narrowed, blackness seeping in around the edges. He tried to brace himself to hit the ground hard, but it was too late. Everything had gone dark.

—

“Take this,” hissed Mossbeard, the hobgoblin with cavernous ears who served as chief steward. He thrust a silver pitcher into Dru’s arms with enough force that some of the liquid sloshed over the sides, staining her gray dress. “Go serve. And try not to spill more wine, mortal. This is from the Queen’s best stores.”

Dru rolled her eyes and stalked out of the pantry and into the vast banquet hall. It was beautifully decorated, as always, with golden ivy winding around the stone pillars and dangling chandeliers formed from glowing will-o’-the-wisps. The air was full of the sour-sweet smell of wine and fruit.

A gentry faerie with dark skin and pale silver eyes snapped his fingers in her direction. “Mortal! Bring the wine over here.”

It hadn’t taken long for Dru to find out what punishment the Queen had decided would be fitting. Elara had come to Dru’s room that afternoon, with a gray dress and a grim expression. Dru was to attend that night’s banquet, Elara had informed her, but not as a guest. She would be serving the Court as a lowly maid.

Of course that was the Queen’s idea of punishment, Dru thought now, as she carefully filled the silver-eyed faerie’s crystal goblet. Serving others. At least the room was only half full; most of the Court had turned up the other night to gawp at Dru and Clary, but whatever was going on tonight had drawn considerably less interest.

There were also considerably fewer servants. Dru recalled at least a dozen of them at the last banquet. Tonight there was only her and a single other attendant, a weary-looking nixie carrying platters of candied meat out of the kitchen. Dru assumed the Queen had sent the other servants away to make sure Dru had as miserable a time as possible.

Another snap came from across the room; another faerie wanted wine. Dru gritted her teeth as she hurried over. She passed the brown-eyed twins, Callen and Cuan, who were sitting with Rathna. Rathna chanced a small wave, but the twins ignored Dru. How quickly things change, she thought, and wondered why Ash wasn’t with them.

He wasn’t at the High Table either, where the Queen sat, attended by several of her handmaidens. She seemed to be ignoring Dru, but Dru guessed this was a pretense. Inside, she was no doubt smirking.

At least she could eavesdrop, Dru thought, hurrying from table to table. Servants were as good as invisible to the gentry fey; they gossiped openly, as if she weren’t there.

“Have you seen the wall? It is quite a sight. It must run a thousand miles across.”

“Built in a night, they say. But not who built it. The Huntsman takes credit, yet he has no magic such as that.”

“He has allies, though. Great powers, older than even the wild fey recall.”

“I heard they summoned the Riders of Mannan from the cold earth, to make them serve the Queen.”

That froze Dru in place. The Queen’s voice echoed in her ears: I shall discover him if I have to raise the dead to do it. She hadn’t known what the Queen had meant at the time, and she would never have imagined that she was referring to the Riders of Mannan. They were fierce, deadly faerie warriors. In the time before Janus, they had hunted the enemies of the Unseelie King. They had died in the Battle of the Imperishable Fields. In fact, Emma and Julian had been the ones to kill them. It couldn’t be true. It had to be a terrible rumor. Or maybe they were all just drunk. Jaime had told her faeries had a very low alcohol tolerance, for all they enjoyed their wine.

A faerie woman whose hands resembled delicate deer hooves scoffed. “They only serve Unseelie. And they’d be no use at building a wall, anyway.”

“Don’t be so literal, Aminta. Anyway, I’m sure the Huntsman has a plan,” said a familiar faerie with ram’s horns, black hair, and a doublet of dark red velvet. Lord Byrne, Dru recalled, the one Ash had told her about at the last banquet.

“But one that will benefit the Court? He is no faerie; his loyalties do not lie with us,” said Aminta, as Byrne gestured for Dru to come and fill his glass. “We all know he’s allied with the Shadowhunters of Idris, who are not trustworthy. And trapped as they are in their little kingdom, it is hard to imagine what use they could be.”