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Frau Neidorf seemed to notice him for the first time. Her observant gaze swept over his damp hair, his cheeks, pinkened by the heat of the water. “Well, you look much better than you did when you arrived,” she said briskly. “Rest and let your boyfriend take care of you. You’ll be well by the morning.”

Kit nodded and said something meaningless and polite. A moment later, she was headed out of the room, promising to wake them in the morning so they wouldn’t miss their train. Before the door shut behind her, Kit could hear the sound of a radio blaring somewhere in the house; an announcer was reporting a story about a bizarre natural phenomenon in Bangkok in which nearly a million bats had gathered in the skies, blotting out the sun.

Hmmm.

Kit sat down at the table. Ty had poured the soup into two separate mugs; Kit took one and started to gulp down the contents. He barely noticed the taste, just that it was food, hot and salty. He tore off a piece of bread, dunked it in the soup, and popped it into his mouth. He looked over at Ty to find the other boy watching him.

“You should eat,” he said to Ty. “Who knows when we’ll have another meal.”

“I haven’t been hungry lately,” Ty said. “So, how did you solve the riddle?”

“I thought about what you said. About Auraline. I thought about how she had no good choices. And I thought about something Jem said to me once.” Kit remembered the training room in the barn at Cirenworth. He’d been sitting with his back against a wooden wall, dried hay scattered at his feet, his face in his hands while he battled a wave of rage and resentment that threatened to turn the whole world black. And he remembered Jem’s voice: gentle, calming. As if Kit were not the first angry young man he’d ever cared about. “I was angry about all this Heir stuff. I said that either I would spend my whole life running, or I’d end up taking over a throne I really didn’t want. And Jem said, ‘Sometimes when it seems that you are caught between two impossible choices, there’s a third one you haven’t imagined yet.’ ”

Ty finally took a piece of bread. Kit followed suit. They ate in silence for a moment, before Ty said, “It sounds like the Seelie Queen is pretty determined to make sure her son takes the throne.”

Kit sat back. “I don’t want to rule Faerie. The idea—” Seems ridiculous, he wanted to say. Instead, he said, “But I don’t like the idea of Ash Morgenstern having it either. If he’s anything like his father—”

“We don’t know that he is,” Ty said. “In Thule, he helped Emma kill Sebastian.”

Kit blinked. “Yes, but…” He found the corner of his mouth curling up slightly. “I’d forgotten that. It’s a lot to keep track of, you know, who saved who, who killed who, who’s related to who…”

Ty smiled, that rare bright smile that made Kit feel as if he’d been in a dark room and suddenly all the lights had been turned on. “If it helps, Ash is Clary’s nephew.”

“No, still confusing,” said Kit. “But even if Ash isn’t a monster, he came to Faerie with the Jace from Thule. And that Jace is the one who kidnapped Clary, and probably Dru as well.”

“Which I don’t understand. Why take Dru?”

“So there wouldn’t be any witnesses to what he’d done,” Kit said. “We were wondering what the connection was between evil Jace and Faerie. And now we know. Jace couldn’t have gotten into Faerie in the first place without Ash at his side, much less have wound up at the right hand of the Queen. And he probably grabbed Clary when he did because he knew Faerie was about to be sealed off. Although—she isn’t his Clary. Not the one from his world.” Kit shook his head. “That part, I don’t understand.”

“I think,” Ty said slowly, “that any version of Jace would seek out any version of Clary. He probably doesn’t think of it as kidnapping—he thinks of it as being reunited with a person who loved him. Someone crossing the barriers of worlds to find the person they love is in a lot of books. It’s an old story, and people understand it…because it feels true.”

Ty was looking past Kit, into the dark shadows that gathered in the corners of the room. Kit knew what Ty was talking about, without him having to say it out loud: He was thinking about Livvy. He could remember Ty talking to Livvy, just after he’d raised her from the dead.

That’s why I did all this. I want you with me in any way you can be.

In the past, thinking about that night by the lake—when Ty executed the necromantic spell he’d been planning for weeks, despite Kit begging him not to—had made Kit angry. Now, he realized, that anger was gone. Swept away like ash in a grate. Now, he was only sad, with the kind of sadness he knew he couldn’t talk about. They’d promised not to discuss the past.

He forced a neutral expression. “That makes sense. Look, I’ve been thinking—should we be keeping all this to ourselves? About Ash, about the Riders of Mannan having returned? Shouldn’t we at least let Ragnor know?”

Ty frowned. “Ragnor told us not to contact anyone. Even him.”

“He also told us not to use Portals, and we just did.”

“We had no choice,” Ty said. “You would have died otherwise. Besides, we needed to get out in front of the Riders. It’ll take them a while to figure out how to find us again.” He glanced toward the window. “Livvy’s outside, keeping watch for them. She’ll warn us if they track us down. Besides,” Ty added, “maybe it’s a good thing that they’re after us. This is usually the part of the detective story when some goon shows up and tries to stop the detective from finding anything else out. Which is how the detective knows he’s on the right track.”

Despite everything, Kit couldn’t help smiling. “Are the Riders of Mannan the goons in this scenario?”

But Ty just stood up. “We should go to sleep,” he said, stretching. Kit looked away as Ty’s T-shirt pulled up, showing a strip of porcelain-pale skin, the sharp points of his hip bones, the shadowed indents beside them. A black rune trailed down from the top of his left hip bone, disappearing under his waistband. Kit thought it was a Courage rune, though he couldn’t be totally sure without, well. Seeing more of it.

Kit shivered. Which made Ty stop stretching, unfortunately, and look hard at him. “We can switch beds,” Ty said. “The one you were in is pretty wet from your clothes. And you still need to stay warm.”

“So do you,” said Kit. “How about we share the other bed? Conserve body heat?”

The moment the words left his mouth, Kit felt exactly as he imagined someone who had just gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel might feel. A lot of What did I just do? mixed with I don’t think this is going to end well.

But Ty just nodded. “Good idea,” he said, and kicked off his shoes. He gestured for Kit to get in first. The bed wasn’t that big, so Kit pushed himself to the very edge and lay on his side, trying to take up as little space as possible.

A moment later, Ty had turned off the lights and crawled into the bed beside him. He curled onto his side, too, fitting himself carefully into the space behind Kit.