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Pull it together, she whispered to herself. It’s okay. You caught yourself just in time. She lingered in the passageway and took a few deep breaths.

Calm now, she went into the kitchen, where she refilled her pitcher and switched her apron for a clean one before returning reluctantly to the banquet hall.

The main part of the meal had ended, and Mossbeard was helping the other serving girl set out platters of sweets: candied petals of roses and lilacs, sliced fruit sticky with honey, iced cakes shaped like crescent moons. Dru was glad when a bearded faerie with a thunderous scowl beckoned her over to fill his wineglass, allowing her to escape Mossbeard’s thunderous glare. He was probably furious about the wine she’d spilled.

Someone snapped their fingers, sharp and commanding. Dru turned slowly and saw Rathna waving at her. The twins were beside her, and sprawled into a chair opposite them was Ash. He smiled at her—more of a smirk, really—and snapped his fingers again. “Nephilim,” he called. “Some wine, if you think you can manage without spilling it all.”

A round of giggles rippled through the room. Dru felt her cheeks redden again, this time with fury. Bastard, bastard, she fumed silently, crossing the room to Ash’s table.

The twins followed her movements with their huge brown eyes, both expectant. Rathna looked pleased, as if Dru had simply decided to stop by their table of her own free will. “That dress is hideous,” she said, cheerfully, as Dru reached them. “I don’t know why they couldn’t give you something nicer to wear.”

“I think the hideousness is the point,” said Dru, trying not to look at Ash. She could sense him there regardless.

Staring past his left ear, she stepped forward to fill his glass. At the same time, Callen stuck out a velvet-clad leg, blocking Dru’s path. Dru tripped over him, and barely managed to steady herself without falling. The wine was not so lucky—half of it sloshed out of the pitcher and all over the front of Ash’s chest.

“Callen!” wailed Rathna. “I’m trying to make friends with her and you’re ruining it.”

Dru was too furious with Callen to really note this new information. “We could settle this with a duel,” she suggested, glaring at the doe-eyed boy. “Me and Callen. Swords at dawn.”

“No,” said Ash. “A duel will not amuse me.” He reached up and tugged off Dru’s kerchief; her blue-streaked hair tumbled down around her shoulders.

He handed her the kerchief. “Clean up the wine you spilled,” he said. “Specifically, clean up the wine you spilled on me.”

There was something new in his eyes when he looked at her. Challenge. Was he daring her to do it, or not to do it? Either might amuse him for different reasons, but the thought of amusing him made her hands tremble with rage.

Dru moved to stand closer to Ash, the kerchief gripped in her hand. She knew there was laughter in the room, felt the weight of the Queen’s gaze on both of them. But Dru shut it all out: the noise, the stares, everything but herself and Ash.

She let the kerchief fall to the ground at his feet. Reached forward to place her hands on his shoulders. The wine had spilled on his chest and neck, pooling in the hollow of his throat. Slowly, deliberately, Dru leaned forward, though she did nothing to block the assembled guests’ view of them. Let them watch. That was what Ash wanted, wasn’t it? And she had to seem as if she wanted to please him, especially after she’d refused to give him Kit’s name.

He put up a hand to catch at her shoulder, but not to push her away. Not that at all. He held her there, steadying her as she leaned closer to him, her lips brushing his throat. She felt him stiffen, and then she was running her tongue over the collar of his tunic. Over the skin above it, tasting the sharpness of the silver in the chain around his throat.

She could also taste the wine that had soaked the linen of his collar, like bitter blackberries, and the salt of Ash’s skin. He smelled of metal and honey. She brushed her lips against his neck, a teasing gesture, and Ash inhaled hard, his fingers curling in against his palms. She glanced up at him through her eyelashes. He was staring at her, something wild and dark in his eyes.

Then Dru heard the Queen say, sharply, “That’s enough,” and she felt Ash’s hands on both her arms, setting her back on her feet. His eyes were glittering like emeralds.

A ripple of shocked laughter tore through the room. Dru could see Rathna and the twins looking at her in something like admiration, and Lord Byrne was openly chuckling—but across the room, the Seelie Queen was glaring. She had been the one to angrily call That’s enough, but now, even as Dru looked at her, the fury vanished from her expression, replaced by a look of cool superiority.

“That was foolish, Dru,” Ash said, in a harsh whisper. “A servant may not touch the Prince without permission.”

Dru could only nod. It probably had been foolish. But for those brief moments, with her hands on his shoulders, her mouth against his skin, she had felt…in control for the first time in so long.

“Drusilla.” It was Elara at her shoulder, a worried expression on her face. She took the pitcher from Dru and set it down on the table. “Come. The Queen wishes me to take you back to your room.”

—

As they made their way from the banquet hall to Dru’s room, Elara remained quiet. Dru didn’t mind. She was lost in her own thoughts.

She wondered if she had pushed things too far with Ash. It had been instinct—show him how he thinks you feel, show him you’d do anything for him, even humiliate yourself. She hadn’t felt humiliated, though. She’d felt—powerful.

She wondered if he could tell.

She wondered, too, about the snips of conversation she’d overheard. Just the name of the Riders of Mannan was a horror. Could the Queen really have raised them from the dead to find Kit? The thought made her sick. She’d been thirteen when they had hunted her family; she remembered how they had threatened a human child to force their way into the London Institute. It had been a huge relief when they’d been killed in battle. But the Riders were clearly having trouble finding Kit, so that was something.

And the wall? What had they meant by a wall? It wasn’t a wall that was blocking Faerie off from the mortal world, only a closing of all the ancient ways built to traverse the two worlds. Walls did not divide worlds; magic did—

“I am sorry,” Elara said, “that the Queen treated you in that way. Perhaps I did not prepare you enough for what would be expected of you at the banquet.”

Dru glanced at the teal-skinned faerie beside her. There was no question it was a sincere apology; Elara could not lie, after all. “It’s not your fault. She didn’t bring me in there to serve; she brought me there so she could enjoy laughing at me. It’s nobody’s fault but hers.”