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Her heart thudded, but she didn’t look back. She kept her mind on the wall, and on the awful sense of fear she’d felt when she saw Kit and Ty. She had to get to them. And that meant getting out.

Somewhere, water trickled over stones. Silver moths flickered in the dark like Christmas tree lights. When she passed a tree with a face carved in it—a twisted mouth curled into a grimace—she quickened her pace.

At some point she lost track of direction. Every tree looked the same, knotted and crowned with leaves like curled fingers. She came to a dried streambed where the water appeared to have been replaced with a thick white mist. A series of stones crossed it, clearly placed there as a sort of bridge. When she stepped onto the first one, the mist surged around her ankles and whispered her name.

Drusilla.

It sounded like Julian’s voice, and though she sensed it was a trick and a lie, the sound made her catch her breath. A jolt of awful homesickness pierced through her.

She gritted her teeth against the pain. Another voice joined Julian’s, and then another and another. Ty. Helen. Tavvy, his child’s voice lilting. They called for her to stop running, to join them. The mist thickened, trying to coil around her, to draw her into itself. She couldn’t help it—she looked down, in the direction of the voices. Down into swirling white shadow, and where the shadow parted there were faces.

Not faces. Skulls. The grinning skulls of inhuman creatures, jagged teeth in their empty mouths, bone crowns circling their heads. In horror, Dru scrambled across the bridge, tripping over the last stone and landing hard on the far side.

The voices stopped.

She knelt there for a moment, shaking. The forest stared back, mute and impassive. The warmth she’d felt near the revel was gone; the air here was cold and strange. A shadow of frost clung to the nearby leaves. It was exactly the kind of atmosphere she loved in a horror movie, but not at all in real life.

And then—up ahead—light. A real, steady glow, like witchlight, though not as sharp and glaring. Dru rose to her feet, silk petals falling from her dress to scatter among the real leaves on the ground.

She ran toward the light. Now that she had escaped the mist, the forest seemed more willing to let go of her. Or perhaps it was just that as she reached the forest’s edge, the trees widened out, no longer so thickly clustered.

She emerged at the edge of the forest to find a long, narrow strip of grass running parallel to the wall. Her heart sank. Even in the dark, she could see how massive it was, rising like a frozen tsunami overhead. Its surface rippled faintly, reminding her of the mist in the forest. There were no bricks, no signs of joinery—just a single, seamless expanse.

The lights she’d spotted before had come from inside the wall. She remembered Los Angeles; the way that in the mornings, you could see dolphins moving inside the waves that crashed on Leo Carrillo Beach. Now, when she looked at the glassy wall, she could see lights moving inside it, as if clumps of will-o’-the-wisps had been trapped within.

She turned her head, looking left. Then right. The wall stretched in both directions, disappearing into the dark distance. No breaks. No doors. Only the endless surface of the barrier, as far as her eyes could see.

There was no way past it and no way anyone could climb it. In desperation, she moved as close as she could to the wall. She put her hands against it, palms flat, and realized that though it looked like moving, shifting water, it was as smooth and hard as black glass.

She could run, of course. Pick a direction and keep to the wall, hoping for a break in it. But she had no idea if that would take her into fatal danger. The forest had been bad enough; there were worse, darker parts of Faerie. It would be idiotic to venture there alone and unarmed. And yet—

A noise from behind made her whip around. At first she saw only the forest some yards away, and the expanse of grass all around her. Then the noise came again, and she realized what it was.

The rush of wings.

She barely had time to suck in her breath. A shadow flashed over the treetops, speeding toward her. Even at a distance, she could not mistake those wings: black as night and tipped with silver. Ash’s wings, unfurled behind him, catching starlight in their pinions.

Ash. He would bring her back to the Court, and this time she’d probably end up in a cage like Clary. She’d never have another chance to escape.

She turned and ran.

The pounding of blood was high and hard in her ears. Grass tore beneath her shoes, which were already bloody and shredded. And the sound of wings grew louder and louder as they beat against the air, louder than a flock of gulls all launching themselves into the sky at once.

And now the air was moving; she could feel the ripples all around her, the gust whipping her hair, and the sound was like a train bearing down on her. This is what it must be like to be a rabbit in the last moment before the eagle strikes. This is what it’s like to know you can’t get away.

A cry ripped from her throat when Ash reached her and caught her up, as lightly as if she had been a rabbit. Ash’s face was inches from hers, eyes alight with fury. “Drusilla,” he said, the wind tearing the words from his mouth. “Stop—”

She struck out wildly, her palms slamming against his chest, but his body was hard and unyielding as iron. He was shouting something at her, but she couldn’t hear him as she reached for his left wing and seized a clump of black feathers in her fist. She pulled on them with all her strength, tearing them free in a welter of feathers and blood.

He screamed in pain, his body jerking. His wing seemed to curl in on itself involuntarily, and they tilted wildly to the side, like an airplane that had lost an engine. She saw his eyes widen as he tried to steady them both, but they were already falling, hitting the ground hard and tumbling along the grass. She heard him cry out in pain again and then his wings retracted, folding themselves back along his body. Momentum carried them over and over, Ash swearing and cursing until he ended up above her, knees braced in the dirt, hands planted on either side of her shoulders.

They were both breathing hard, feathers and silk rose petals falling all around them like ash from a fire. There was fury in his green eyes, but something else too. Something that looked alarmingly like triumph.

“I knew it,” he said, panting. “I knew you’d try to escape the first chance you got. My power doesn’t work on you, does it? It never has.”

His gaze burned like faerie torchlight. She felt her body tighten and tasted metal in her mouth. She must have bitten her lip when she fell.

“You were waiting for this,” Dru said, her chest heaving from exertion and shock. “This—the revel, wanting me at it—it was a test. You wanted to see if I’d run.”