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Her hands found his back and savored the feeling of muscles and sinew and, when she discovered the rips in the back of his linen shirt that had been made by his wings, the smoothness of his skin. He felt like silk over stone, hardness and softness at the same time, and as she cupped her hands around the nape of his neck, he deepened the kiss with a kind of frantic intensity.

She kissed him back just as hard. If this was a storm, perhaps she could obliterate herself inside it, inside the chaos that was Ash. She slid a hand into his hair, the strands like silk, the silver of his circlet cold against her palm. When she tugged on his hair he moaned, his hands sliding up from her waist to her breasts. She leaned into him, letting him, allowing the touch, and felt him shiver as if he’d brushed his hand against a live wire.

His fingers traced the curve and rise of her breasts, the neckline of her dress. He bent to kiss the hollow of her throat, and his mouth did not stop there, but began to trace a path downward.

A pain shot through Dru’s foot. She gasped, and for a moment felt Ash’s touch intensify, as if the pain and the pleasure were twinned somehow, like Cuan and Callen’s cursed cherries. Ignoring the pain, she pulled him up for another kiss, his lips fastening over hers hungrily. She shivered all over and then the pain came again, worse, and she flinched back.

“Ouch,” she said, peering down at her foot.

“Dru?” Ash sounded bewildered and, for the first time perhaps, like an ordinary mortal boy, half worried and half disappointed. “What happened?”

“I think it’s the brooch,” Dru said breathlessly, putting her hands against his chest. She pushed him back, lifting her left foot off the ground. She could see the blood blooming across the torn silver sole of her slipper. “I stepped on it.”

“Come here.” He lifted her up as if she weighed nothing, and carried her a few feet away, closer to the wall. He put her down with the air of someone who had fixed a vexing problem. “Now. Where were we?”

His voice was brusque, but his hand came up to cup her cheek. When she glanced up at him, she saw that his lips were stained red with her lipstick.

“Ash.” Her voice came out strained, almost a squeak. “We can’t.”

“Can’t what?” His finger traced a line from her cheek to her mouth, and Dru cursed the melting feeling inside her. “Ravish each other here in the grass? Possibly not. I have never made love with an owl watching me, and I am not sure I wish to begin the tradition today.”

“Ash.” She stepped back, out of his embrace. “We can’t do any of this. This”—she waved a hand—“kissing business. And what comes after.”

She sensed the shift in his mood immediately. He took a deep, slow breath and raised a hand to wipe the lipstick off his mouth. It came away like a bloodstain on the back of his hand. “Why,” he said, reasonably, “not?”

“Because,” said Dru. “I don’t want to.”

For a moment, Ash looked utterly lost. His face—usually so composed—was open, almost raw with confusion. And then, as quickly as it had come, the vulnerability vanished. His expression hardened. “Was all this also a lie?”

Thank the Angel, Dru thought. Now that he seemed furious, it was easier. Anger she knew how to deal with. “No. I like kissing you,” she said. “I like kissing generally. But it’s a bad idea.”

He seemed to flinch, but before he could speak, the trees at the edge of the forest rustled. Three guards emerged from the shadows—tall and silver masked, their white armor like overlapping leaves.

Ash turned toward them. His demeanor changed again; now, no longer an angry prince, but a haughty one: Despite his torn shirt, despite the presence of a mortal girl in a slight state of undress, he was still the heir to the Seelie throne. “Guards,” he said, clipping off his words. “What are you doing here? Who bade you follow me?”

“The Queen, Your Highness,” said the broadest of them, clearly uncomfortable. “There was some concern at your absence from the revel.”

“Fuck the revel.”

“As you desire, Your Highness,” said the guard.

Ash shot one look at Dru, a harsh, bright look, like sunlight reflecting off ice. The kind of light that burned. “Then again,” he said, “perhaps it is best you are here. Would you escort our Shadowhunter guest back to her room? She has grown weary of the pleasures our revel provides.”

“Ash,” Dru said in a low voice, not sure what she meant to say—that surely, he too saw what a bad idea they were, if there even was a them? That she couldn’t trust him, and surely he could not trust her?

But it didn’t matter. He bent to catch up his ruined coat, before straightening to look at her one final time.

“You may not be loyal to me,” he said in a low voice, and she felt her skin prickle, “but you want what I can give you.”

He moved back, and the guards came toward Dru, silent as ghosts in the shadow of the wall. Ash didn’t look in her direction as they led her away into the dark.

Clary

Even inside her golden cage, Clary felt the odd energy that seemed to be gripping Faerie today. Earlier, when she’d rung the bell to summon one of the serving women who had the task of freeing her and following her to the washroom, she’d seen crowds of fey in the corridors, gentry and the lower classes alike, carrying various elaborate decorations—bouquets of vines and gems, baskets of cherries dusted in sparkling powder, decorative mirrors—and realized they must be preparing for a revel.

She’d seen revels before, when she’d been in Faerie with Jace. They were the wildest of wild parties, complete with frenzied dancing; food and drink that brought vivid, terrifying dreams; spilled tears and spilled blood. She remembered the shadows of fey folk moving in the grass, not knowing if they were making love or murdering each other.

She rolled her shoulders back, willing the tension to leave her aching muscles. She knew Janus might appear at any moment, demanding she attend the revel with him. He liked to show her off, though not for the same reasons that the Queen enjoyed displaying her captive Shadowhunters to the Court.