“Be quiet!” snapped Adaon. “Enough chatter, prisoners!”
They had emerged from the underground tunnels into the lower levels of the tower. Seelie and Unseelie faeries streamed by, hurrying to and fro. A passing redcap gave Adaon a broad wink.
“Good work, Prince,” he growled. “Round up those Nephilim!”
“Thank you,” said Adaon. “They’re very rowdy.”
He glared at Cristina and Emma.
“Still think he’s hot?” Cristina muttered.
“Possibly more so,” whispered Emma. She felt an insane urge to giggle, despite the awful situation. She was just so happy to see Cristina again. “We’re going to get through this, and we’re going to get back home, and we’re going to tell each other everything.”
“That is enough. The two of you, move apart,” Adaon snapped, and Emma sheepishly went to walk next to Clary. They had reached the less crowded, more residential part of the tower, with its rows of richly decorated doors.
Clary looked exhausted, her clothes stained with blood and dirt.
“How did you get caught?” Emma murmured, keeping a weather eye on Adaon.
“The Riders of Mannan,” said Clary in a low voice. “They’ve been set the task of guarding Ash. We tried to fight them off, but they’re more powerful here than they are in our world.” She glanced sideways at Emma. “I heard you killed one of them. That’s pretty impressive.”
“I think it was Cortana, not me.”
“Don’t underestimate the power of the right blade,” said Clary. “I miss Heosphoros sometimes. I miss the feel of it in my hand.”
Heosphoros, like Cortana, had been forged by the legendary weapon-maker Wayland the Smith. Every schoolchild knew Clary had carried the sword into Edom and slain Sebastian Morgenstern with it, and that it had been destroyed in the resulting conflagration.
Was Clary thinking about Sebastian? Without being able to stop herself, Emma whispered, “I don’t think Ash has to be like his father. He’s still a little kid. He could grow up better—kinder.”
Clary’s smile was sad. “So he got to you, too.”
“What?”
“?‘A perfect leader, inspiring of perfect loyalty,’?” Clary said. “The King has already done things to Ash, using his blood, I think, to make him like the First Heir. When you talked to him, you wanted to follow him and protect him, didn’t you?”
Emma blanched. “I did, but—”
“Prince Adaon!” called a rough voice. Emma looked up to see that they stood in front of the rows of redcaps guarding the throne room. The leader of them—the one with the bloodiest, reddest cap and uniform—was looking at Adaon with some surprise. “What is this?”
“Prisoners for the King,” Adaon barked.
“These were caught a week hence.” The redcap pointed at Jace and Clary.
“Aye, but I discovered these others in the prison, attempting to free them.” Adaon indicated Cristina, Julian, and Emma. “They are Nephilim spies. They claim they have information for the King, which they would trade for their miserable, wormlike lives.”
“Wormlike?” Julian muttered. “Really?”
“Hold here a moment,” said the redcaps’ leader. He ducked through the archway. A moment later he had returned, a faint smirk on his face. “Prince Adaon, pass through. Your father would see you, and prayed me give you the expectation of a familial reunion.”
A familial reunion. The King could just mean himself, of course. But he could also mean Kieran—and Mark.
Julian had reacted too, if silently. His hand tightened as if he could grip an imaginary blade, and his eyes fixed on the dark archway.
“Thank you, General Winter,” said Adaon, and began to lead them all forward.
This time they weren’t walking into the throne room invisible to all eyes. This time they would be seen. Emma’s throat was dry, her heart pounding.
Unlike the Seelie Queen’s ever-changing throne room, the inner sanctum of the King was unaltered. The massive Portal still covered one wall. It showed a blowing desert landscape, where trees poked out of the ground like skeleton hands clawing for air. The yellow-bright desert light lent an unnatural tint to the room, as if they stood in the light of invisible flames.
The King was upon his throne, his one eye blazing red. In front of him were Mark and Kieran, surrounded by redcaps. Mark’s hands were manacled together; Kieran knelt, his bound wrists connected to a metal chain sunk into the stone floor. When they jerked around to see who had come in, shock and relief flooded across Mark’s face, followed by horror. There was a bloody cut across Kieran’s forehead.
His lips formed a single word. Cristina.
Cristina gave a ragged gasp. Emma reached to catch her friend’s wrist, but she was frozen in place.
It was Julian who bolted forward, his gaze fixed on Mark. Adaon caught him with his free arm and yanked him back. Emma remembered what Julian had said about the atavistic need to protect Ty. It seemed he felt it for his other siblings too: He was still struggling as Adaon turned and said something to Jace. The Strength rune on Jace’s forearm flashed as he flung an arm around Julian’s chest, immobilizing him.
“Keep him back!” Winter, the redcap general, pointed the tip of his pikestaff at Julian. More redcaps had streamed in to stand between Adaon’s captives and the King, a thin crimson line.
Julian’s body was a taut line of tension and hate as he stared at the King, who was grinning his odd, half-skeletal grin. “Well done, Adaon,” the King said. “I hear you foiled an attempt to escape our prisons.”
Mark’s shoulders slumped. Kieran gazed at his father with loathing.
“Look your fill, my son,” the King said to Kieran. “Your friends are all my prisoners. There is no hope for you.” He turned. “Let me see them, Adaon.”
With the tip of his sword, Adaon urged Emma and the others closer to the throne. Emma felt her chest tighten, remembering the last time she had stood before the King of Unseelie, how he had looked into her heart somehow and seen what she had most wanted, and given it to her as a dose of poison.
“You,” said the King, his eyes on Emma. “You fought my champion.”
“And she won,” said Cristina proudly, her back straight.
The King ignored her. “And you slew a Rider, my Fal. Interesting.” He turned to Julian. “You disrupted my Court and took my son hostage. His blood
is on your hands.” Lastly, he gazed at Jace and Clary. “Because of you we suffer the Cold Peace.”
Adaon cleared his throat. “Then why are they still alive, Father? Why have you not killed them?”
“Not helpful,” Jace muttered. He had let go of Julian, who stood poised like a runner waiting for the starting gun.
“Leverage against the Clave,” said the King, caressing the arm of his throne. The stone was carved with a pattern of screaming faces. “To us they are enemies. To the Clave, they are heroes. It is ever the way with war.”
“But do we not seek an end to the Cold Peace?” said Adaon. “If we return these prisoners to the Clave, we could reopen negotiations. Find common ground. They will see that we are not all bloodthirsty murderers, as they believe.”
The King was silent for a moment. He was expressionless, but there was a look of apprehension on Kieran’s face that Emma didn’t like.
At last the King smiled. “Adaon, you are truly the best of my sons. In your heart you long for peace, and peace we shall have—when the Nephilim realize we have a weapon that can destroy them all.”
“Ash,” Emma whispered.
She hadn’t even meant to speak aloud, but the King heard. His ghastly face turned toward her. In the depths of his cavernous eye sockets, pinpoint lights gleamed.
“Come here,” he said.
Julian made a noise of protest—or maybe it was something else; Emma couldn’t tell. He was biting his lip hard, blood running down his chin. He didn’t seem to notice, though, and he did nothing to stop her as she turned to go toward the King. She wondered if he even knew about the blood.
She approached the throne, moving past the line of redcaps. She felt utterly naked without a weapon in her hand. She hadn’t felt so vulnerable since Iarlath had whipped her against the quickbeam tree.
The King thrust out a hand. “Stop,” he said, and Emma stopped. There was enough adrenaline coursing through her that she felt a little drunk. She wanted nothing more than to fling herself at the King, tear at him, punch and kick him. But she knew that if she tried, she would be dead in an instant. The redcaps were everywhere.