“Well, I don’t much care for Mother Hawthorn,” said the stranger.
“And I doubt she’s as attached to your miserable hides as you seem to think.
But I’m perfectly happy to find out.” He lifted his hand, his palm open.
For a moment, bright flame seemed to run along the edges of his fingers, the pale color of witchlight.
Like warlock magic, Dru thought. Surprise after surprise.
“Shall we see if she misses you once you’re gone? ”
It wasn’t Snaggle who gave way first. The rest of the goblin clutch squeaked and fled as one, their taloned toes scraping the ground. A moment later, Snaggle followed them, and they disappeared into the shadows of the tunnels.
The faerie boy—faerie prince—watched them go, with an air of faint satisfaction. He turned to Dru, who was still huddled against the wall, clutching her torch.
“Drusilla Blackthorn,” he said. “Once again you appear in my life. Always you, out of all the Shadowhunters.”
Dru wanted to gape at him. She restrained herself—it was very hard to be afraid of someone who was gaping, and she wanted him to be at least a little afraid of her.
A little nervous. She’d take nervous, though he was the least nervous-looking person she’d ever seen in her life.
“How do you know my name?” she demanded.
His eyes narrowed. “You must be joking,” he said. “You’ve forgotten? You can’t have forgotten.” He sounded genuinely surprised. “It was only once, but I’m extremely memorable.”
Dru frowned. Something was stirring at the edge of her mind.
Some memory, just out of reach. But it was like trying to remember a dream, long after you’d woken up.
The shape of a memory was there, but none of the details.
Still, that didn’t necessarily mean she’d actually met him before; faeries were eternally deceitful.
“Did Luke put you up to this?” she said. “Is this part of the test?”
“Luke?” He sounded puzzled, as if he genuinely didn’t know the name. “No one puts me up to anything. Nor did I think there were enough of you Shadowhunters outside Idris to be so reckless. A test that demands students enter into the realm of the wild fey is assigning them death.”
Dru knew she ought to be afraid. Faerie royalty were powerful, uncannily so.
And she was afraid—she could feel it, like a cold pebble in her belly—but she was also starting to become irritated.
She knew she ought to listen to the part of her that was afraid, not the part that was irritated, but in her opinion that just wasn’t how irritation worked.
“The assignment,” she said, “was just to find a sign of faerie presence near the school. Luke didn’t ask me to climb into the hole in the tree. I did that on my own.”
“Shadowhunters find the oddest things to brag about.” His voice was cold music.
“I’m getting the sense you don’t like Shadowhunters all that much,” Dru said.
He took a step toward her. The flickering light of the torch played over his face.
There was something unusual about him, something not quite entirely faerie.
She knew what faerie blood mixed with human blood looked like, knew how they blended, the mortal heritage softening the icy sharpness of fae beauty.
His mouth was full and softly curved, for all that it was set into a hard line.
“You Nephilim have too much power,” he said, “and turn too easily to darkness. I have seen it happen.”
“What do you mean, you’ve seen it?” Dru looked at him defiantly. “How could you possibly know anything about Shadowhunters? Much less ones who’ve turned to darkness.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you mean the Nephilim in Idris?”
Nothing changed in his gaze; it was as cool and considering as it had been before. “More than that,” he said. “I mean—”
“Ash!” A man’s voice echoed down the corridor. “Ash, where are you?”
The prince—Ash—cast a glance over his shoulder.
For a moment, he looked less like haughty faerie royalty and more like a teenage boy who had been caught borrowing the family car without permission.
(Dru had watched a lot of mundane movies, and had formed the idea that this was something that happened constantly.)
“Ash,” she said slowly. “I know your name—”
A frown flashed across his face. He caught her lightly by the wrist; the gesture startled Dru so badly that she dropped her torch. It hit the ground and sputtered.
She felt him press something into her palm. The dying torch was sending up an odd, sparking light that flecked his green eyes with gold. “Take this,” he said. “Proof of faerie presence.”
He closed her fingers over it. His touch was surprisingly warm, for all he seemed carved out of ice. Ash, Dru thought. Ash, I know you. I know who you are—
The flecks of gold in his eyes seemed to fill her vision. Everything seemed to turn to shadowy metal, and she could no longer see the tunnel around her, no longer hear the man’s voice calling for Ash. All she could see was his eyes, and then even those were gone in the darkness.
—
Dru awoke in a field of grass. It was dawn, and the grass was wet with dew.
She sat up, shivering. Her gear had kept out most of the dampness, but her hair was wet and curling, stuck unpleasantly to the back of her neck. She was cold, and her right hand ached.
She glanced around. The last thing she remembered was walking away from Thais toward a copse of trees. They had been in a field—this field, she realized—but that had been not long after sunset, and now it was morning. She could tell by the position of the sun that it had only just risen.
She rose to her feet, wincing. The pain in her hand again. She looked down at it, and saw that her fingers were clenched around a bright object.
She unfolded them slowly. In the center of her palm glowed a brooch in the shape of a scarlet poppy flower.
Curling around the blossom were leaves and vines, beautifully enameled in green and white.
They were so delicately worked that it seemed impossible any hands had made them, and indeed, Dru knew instantly this was no human work. This was a faerie brooch.
Proof of faerie presence. The words whispered in the back of her mind, and were gone. Uneasiness had taken their place. What on earth had happened? The blank spot in her memory was frightening. Hours she could not account for. And where was Thais? Thais must be incredibly worried.
Slipping the brooch into her pocket for safekeeping, Dru started to run across the rocky field, clambering over the fence at the far side and dropping down onto the familiar dirt road that she knew would take her back to the farmhouse.
The air grew warmer as the sun rose higher in the sky, drying the dampness of her clothes.
By the time she was in view of the Academy, her hair had dried into a straggly halo.
The sun was directly behind the big old clapboard house, nearly blinding her; she didn’t see the crowd of people spilling out of the back door until she was only a few feet away. She froze, blinking, half wondering if she were dreaming, or having some sort of bizarre vision.
The first person out of the door was her brother Julian. Julian, who was meant to be in London with Emma. He was looking down at his left hand and saying, “The rune, it just activated—she’s got to be nearby, somewhere—”
Emma came out of the house behind him, and Mark followed. Mark, who was meant to be in Faerie. And then Helen with Dru’s sister-in-law, Aline, and after them, Ty, his dark hair a mess, his expression anxious.
Emma saw Dru first, and she caught at Julian’s shoulder, her eyes widening. “Jules,” she said. “She’s here.”
Julian looked up. And a second later he was running, and Dru was swept up in her brother’s arms. He held her so tightly she thought she might asphyxiate, but she didn’t mind.
She could feel his heart hammering, hear the crack in his voice as he said her name over and over.
“Dru, Dru, Dru.” He pulled back, his hands on her shoulders, his blue-green eyes—so much like her own—searching her face.
She knew what he was looking for: bruises, cuts, any signs of harm. “Dru, where were you?”
And then the rest of them were surging around them both, everyone hugging and crying indiscriminately except Ty. He stood at a little distance, away from the fray of emotions, but Dru could tell he was glad to see her. Not just glad—relieved.
“I’m okay,” she said, over and over, as Mark and Emma and Helen seized and hugged her and suddenly Thais was there, and her eyes were red and clearly swollen from crying.
She unleashed a torrent of Portuguese before seizing Dru by the hand and bursting into tears.
And Luke was there too, with Jocelyn, looking very grave and serious and as if he’d aged a year since Dru had seen him the night before.
“Guys,” Dru said. “Guys.” She waved her hands. (She could still see the marks the faerie brooch had made against her palm, a strange stark reminder of what she had forgotten.) “Okay, I don’t understand. What are you all doing here?”
She looked from face to face, all of them clearly bearing the marks of sleepless nights. There were shadows under Julian’s eyes. Mark hadn’t shaved; there was pale gold stubble on his cheeks. Emma looked exhausted.
“We tracked you to the edge of the property,” Luke said. “After that, the Tracking broke down. You were gone, Drusilla.”
“Gone?” Dru said. “But I don’t get it. I know I was out all night, but—”
“Dru, you weren’t just gone all night,” Julian said gently. She knew that tone of voice. He was afraid, and trying not to worry her, too. She braced herself for whatever he might say next, but even so, when he spoke, it was a shock. “You’ve been missing for three days.”