The Iron King

The first book in The Iron Fey series is set in a world where faeries, born from mortal dreams and imagination, inhabit a parallel realm called the Nevernever. Two rival faery courts, the Seelie Court of Summer ruled by King Oberon and the Unseelie Court of Winter ruled by Queen Mab, maintain an uneasy truce. Iron is deadly to faeries, burning their skin and draining their power.

Meghan Chase, a teenager on a pig farm in rural Louisiana, is about to turn 16. Her father vanished when she was six, leaving only his shoes at the edge of a park pond. Her mother later remarried Luke, a disengaged farmer who barely notices Meghan. Meghan's four-year-old half brother, Ethan, claims his stuffed rabbit delivers warnings about "the man in the closet." Meghan dismisses these fears, though she catches a fleeting glimpse of a pale-eyed figure behind Ethan's door.

At school, a computer screen activates on its own and scrolls the threatening words "Meghan Chase. We see you. We're coming for you." Meghan spots a tiny, spindly creature with glowing teeth perched on the monitor before it vanishes. The next day, her crush Scott Waldron, the football captain, lures her into a public humiliation, and she flees to the nurse's office. While semiconscious from a sleeping draught, Meghan overhears her best friend, Robbie Goodfell, a red-haired prankster, and the nurse discussing her "protection" in baffling terms.

Ethan tells Meghan she can see through "the Mist and the glamour," illusions hiding Faery from human perception. On her birthday, Meghan arrives home to find her mother unconscious and Ethan standing over her, smiling. He devours a frozen pizza in seconds and bites Meghan hard enough to draw blood. Robbie arrives and reveals the creature is not Ethan but a changeling, a faery offspring swapped for a human child. Robbie discloses his own identity: He is Robin Goodfellow, the Puck of A Midsummer Night's Dream, assigned by Oberon to guard Meghan. She refuses mistwine, a drink that would erase her memories, and follows Puck through a portal in Ethan's closet to rescue her brother.

The Nevernever is a twilight forest of enormous trees and curling mist. Puck explains that glamour, magic fueled by mortal imagination, is how fey wield power and disguise themselves. They shelter with a woodland faery who warns that parts of the forest are dying. That night, Meghan is lured by a will-o'-the-wisp and nearly drowned by a kelpie. A wild hunt led by a dark fey boy pursues them through the wyldwood, the wild forest between the courts. Puck transforms into a horse and bucks Meghan into a tree to draw the hunters away.

A large gray cat named Grimalkin, a cait sith or magical faery cat, agrees to guide Meghan in exchange for a future favor. Goblins capture and cage her, but she bluffs her captors long enough for Grimalkin to free her. Struck by a poisoned spear during their escape, Meghan collapses in a grove, where a luminous creature heals her and says her father awaits.

Seelie knights bring Meghan before King Oberon, who reveals she is his daughter, half-fey and half-human. He has punished Puck by transforming him into a caged raven and refuses to let Meghan leave. When Meghan sees her reflection, she discovers pointed ears now jut from her head. Queen Titania, Oberon's wife, despises Meghan as proof of Oberon's infidelity and sends her to work in the kitchens. A small creature like the one from the computer lab visits her, speaking in static-laced words about an "Iron Court," a new faction of iron-based faeries, and her brother.

At Elysium, a diplomatic gathering of both courts, Queen Mab arrives with her entourage, including her youngest son, Prince Ash, the same boy who hunted Meghan in the wyldwood. Ash asks Meghan to dance, and she finds herself drawn to him. A chimera bursts in and attacks; Ash saves Meghan's life, and both courts kill the beast. Mab blames Oberon and threatens war. On the chimera's body, Meghan finds a tiny metal bug, evidence of something unnatural.

Meghan escapes with Grimalkin through a trod, a magical passage between realms, into Detroit. They reach a club hiding a trod to Tir Na Nog, the Unseelie realm, guarded by a Winter sidhe, or noble faery, named Shard. Meghan outsmarts Shard by giving the false name "Buffy Summers." Puck, freed by Oberon, arrives to fight off Shard's forces. They escape into Tir Na Nog, where Ash waits with his sword drawn.

Ash and Puck duel, driven by old enmity: Ash blames Puck for his beloved Ariella Tularyn's death. Before either can win, hundreds of gremlins, small iron fey, swarm from the darkness and carry Meghan into a cavern. There, Ironhorse, a lieutenant of King Machina, the Iron King, demands she come to the Iron Court. Puck and Ash rescue her. Meghan proposes a binding contract: If Ash helps her find Ethan, she will go willingly to the Unseelie Court afterward. Ash agrees.

The group discovers iron fey are killing the guardians of the trods. Meghan theorizes these iron fey are born from humanity's dreams of technology. In New Orleans, an oracle reveals Machina cannot be slain by mortal or fey and that "the Keepers of the trees" hold the answer. A lieutenant named Virus attacks with mind-controlled humans, and Puck is critically wounded. The dryads of City Park take Puck to heal. The Elder Dryad offers Meghan a piece of Witchwood, the living heart of her ancient tree, lethal to iron fey; accepting it will kill the tree. The Elder reveals Meghan possesses latent Summer glamour inherited from Oberon: the power to command the natural world.

Meghan and Ash enter Machina's realm, a toxic wasteland of scrap metal and acid rain. Ash weakens as iron drains his power. They share their first kiss. Ironhorse and his knights capture them and confiscate their weapons, including the Witchwood arrow. In the mines, small hoarder faeries called pack rats free them. As gremlins pursue, Ash turns to fight alone so Meghan can escape. The pack rats collapse the tunnel with dynamite, and Meghan believes Ash dead.

The pack rats lead Meghan to Ferrum, the deposed first Iron King, who warns Machina is invincible. She refuses to turn back. Guided beneath the fortress, she recovers Ash's sword and the Witchwood arrow, climbs the iron tower, and finds Ash chained in a garden at its summit, barely alive. She frees him.

Machina, surrounded by living metal cables, reveals he kidnapped Ethan to lure Meghan and proposes she become his queen. Meghan fires the Witchwood arrow, but Machina's cables deflect it, snapping it in two. Ash stabs Machina, but the cables heal the wound. Meghan reaches into the earth with her Summer glamour, commanding roots to erupt and entangle Machina, then drives the broken arrow into his chest. Machina's body transforms into a giant oak, and his fortress collapses. Grimalkin leads Meghan, Ash, and the freed Ethan through a trod to the mortal world.

Three months have passed. Meghan brings Ethan home, and the changeling vanishes. Her mother reveals she has always known about the fey. Meghan shows her fey features and says she must leave. She says goodbye to Ethan, who asks if she is "one of Them now" and promises not to forget her. Ash arrives, and Meghan honors their contract, following him into the moonlight toward the Winter Court.