“Yes,” said Jem. He rose to his feet and advanced on her. “We want to hear a story. We want to hear why you hate the Herondales.”

Mother Hawthorn’s eyes widened. Her eyes were colorless and pupil-less, as if her eye sockets were filled with water. For a moment Jem thought she would run, and he tensed to spring after her. Tessa and Alec were ready to come for her as well. Jem had waited too long to wait another moment.

Then Mother Hawthorn looked around at the children and shrugged her thin shoulders.

“Ah well,” she said. “I have waited more than a century to boast of a trick. I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Let me tell you the story of the First Heir.”

They found a solitary campfire, with no children to hear a dark tale save Rafael, solemn faced and silent in the protective curve of Alec’s arm. Jem sat down with his friends and his best beloved to listen. Light and shadows danced a long dance together, and by the strange fireside of the Shadow Market, an old woman wove a tale of Faerie.

“The Seelie Court and the Unseelie have always been at war, but there are times in war that wear the mask of peace. There was even a time that the King of the Unseelie Court and the Queen of the Seelie Court made a secret truce and had a union to seal it. They conceived a child together and agreed that one day that child would inherit both the Seelie and Unseelie thrones, and unite all Faerie. The King wished all his sons to be raised as pitiless warriors, and he believed this First Heir would be the greatest of them all. Since the child would have no mother in the Unseelie Court, he engaged my services, and I thought myself honored. I have always been fond of children. Once they called me the great faerie midwife.

“The King of the Unseelie Court had not expected a daughter, but when the child was born, a daughter she was. She was given into my hands in the Unseelie Court on the day she came into the world, and from that day to this day, the light of her eyes was the only light I wished for.

“The Unseelie King was displeased with his daughter, and the Seelie Queen was enraged that he would not, being displeased, give her back. There came a prophecy from our soothsayers that the day the First Heir reached for their full power, all of Faerie would fall under shadow. The King was murderously angry, and the Queen was terrified, and all the shades and shadows and rushing waters in my land seemed to threaten the girl that I loved. The war between Seelie and Unseelie raged all the more fiercely for the brief peace, and the faerie folk whispered that the First Heir was cursed. And so she fled, fearing for her life.