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“Perhaps if you would stop fighting in class, I could stop pulling you out,” Luke said.

Dru sat up, swinging her boots off the desk. “I wasn’t fighting in class. I didn’t hit anybody—”

Luke looked at her, his eyebrows raised. “It’s my understanding that you raised your hand as Professor Wrayburn was teaching and said that you felt it was important for everyone to know that Paige Ashdown was in a hate group. Which you must have known would cause Paige to lunge at you.”

“Well,” said Dru, “she was in a hate group.”

Luke pushed his glasses up his nose. “So was I,” he said. “I was a part of Valentine’s Circle, a group arguably just as bad as the Cohort.”

But that was so long ago. Dru didn’t say the words out loud. Valentine’s Circle seemed like history; it had happened before she was born. But for Dru, what the Cohort had done—their ugly beliefs in Shadowhunter superiority and dominance, their betrayal of every Shadowhunter who wasn’t in their group, the battle on the Imperishable Fields that left so many dead—felt like yesterday.

“That’s different,” she said, with a wave of her hand. She noticed her black nail polish was chipped. She’d have to beg Thais to fix it before they went to New York. “You saw the error of your ways. You got out, you got away from Valentine, you even tried to stop what he was doing. And you’ve lived your whole life trying to make up for it.”

Luke sighed. “I changed because someone believed in me,” he said. “Because I was given a second chance. Paige, whatever you may think of her involvement with the Cohort, walked away from them. She deserves a second chance.”

“She walked away to save her own skin.”

Luke passed a hand across his face. “Maybe. Maybe not. I know you have a history with Paige, and you may not be able to forgive her. But that doesn’t mean you should stand between her and forgiveness. Can you understand that?”

Dru didn’t reply, just kicked at her chair with the heels of her boots. After a moment, she said, “Would you give Zara and Manuel a second chance?”

Zara Dearborn and Manuel Villalobos were the leaders of the Cohort. It had first been Zara’s father who had founded the hate group. Who had believed that friendship with Downworlders had weakened the Clave, made it corrupt. After his death at the Imperishable Fields, Zara had taken over for him, with Manuel by her side. Instead of accepting defeat, she and Manuel had locked their group of true believers into Idris with them. Magical wards had been raised around the whole country, cutting it off completely from the rest of the world.

Shadowhunters and Downworlders had once been able to pass freely into Idris. No longer. They couldn’t get in, and the Cohort couldn’t get out. It wasn’t a tenable situation for a host of reasons—the Cohort was probably starving in there, and the Clave couldn’t be cut off from their homeland forever—but no one was sure how to change it.

“I was thinking about grounding you for the weekend—” Luke began.

Now Dru sat up straight. “No,” she said, horrified. “Not this weekend. There’s a concert in the city—Simon’s band is playing—and Thais and I were going to go down and see everyone—”

“But I decided it was too harsh a punishment,” Luke finished, waggling his eyebrows. “I know how much you’ve been looking forward to this weekend, and barring you from it wouldn’t really be fair. But I do want you to answer me honestly—are you all right? This is a stressful time for everyone, with the upcoming peace talks, and the whole situation is closer to you than it is to most of us. You know Alec and Magnus, Jace, Clary, the rest…”

His voice faded in Dru’s ears. Alec Lightwood, as the Consul, led the Clave and, by extension, spoke for all Shadowhunters. For four years he’d been trying to get the Cohort, silent behind their wards in Idris, to respond to his messages and agree to peace talks. For the first time, it seemed it might actually happen. “I guess,” she said, slowly, “that I don’t understand exactly what we’re hoping for. If the Cohort agrees to peace, and to leave Idris, are we expecting them to rejoin the Clave like nothing happened? Like they didn’t cause a war and get a bunch of Shadowhunters killed? Like they didn’t try to round up and register Downworlders? I understand wanting Idris back, but I don’t understand wanting these people back.”

Luke nodded. “For many people, the Cohort is something abstract, an obstacle to a united Clave. But for you, it’s more personal. They harmed a lot of people you love.”

Dru’s rage, once hot, had turned to ice, but it was no less fierce when she spoke. “Why shouldn’t I want justice? If the Cohort hadn’t goaded Annabel into killing Livvy, my sister would still be alive.”

Annabel. Even her name made Dru feel a little sick.

Luke’s eyes widened behind his glasses. But before he could respond, the door opened again and Jocelyn, his wife—and Clary’s mother—stuck her head into the room. She had her hair up in its usual bun, kept in place by paint-stained pencils. “Luke, darling, did you ever make it into town? My art supplies—” She broke off, registering Dru’s presence. She smiled. She had Clary’s smile, one that lit up her whole face and made her freckles stand out. “Dru! How lovely to see you.”

Dru just nodded. She wondered if Jocelyn could sense the tension in the room.

“Are you heading to the city tomorrow?” Jocelyn hadn’t lived in New York all her life, but she’d definitely lived there long enough to refer to it as “the city,” as though there were no other metropolis in the world.

“Thais and I are taking the train down,” Dru said. “We want to get better at using mundane public transportation.”

“I wish I could go,” Jocelyn said. “I’d so love to see everyone. But I’m desperately trying to finish six paintings in time for my gallery show.”

Dru rose to her feet. “I’m sure the show will be great. Can’t wait to see it.” She glanced over at Luke. “Are we done here?”

She thought she saw a flicker of defeat in his eyes. “Yes, we’re done here. But remember, Dru—my door is always open.”

“Is it?” Dru said, already squeezing past Jocelyn on her way out. “You should probably get that fixed.”

—

In the dream, Kit Herondale was in the middle of a war.