The Most Important Things We Know About ‘The Last King of Faerie’

Posted on November 1, 2026 by Cathrin in Book News, Cassandra Clare, The Wicked Powers // 0 Comments

Happy November, everyone! ♥
The release of Cassandra Clare’s The Last King of Faerie, the first book in her The Wicked Powers trilogy, is two days away so as it is tradition here on TMI Source, I have compiled a list of pretty much all the things Cassie has shared about her upcoming book.
Please bear in mind that some information given by Cassie could have changed during writing and might no longer be in the book!
This list is not complete because Cassie has been sharing information for many years now, one post I found was from 2020, so it’s likely that I’ve missed things, but I tried my best. 😊

Happy reading!

Synopsis

It’s Drusilla Blackthorn’s fourth year at Shadowhunter Academy when a chance encounter at a nightclub turns into a kidnapping. Dru finds herself held prisoner by Prince Ash Morgenstern in the land of Faerie, a place that proves just as dangerous as it is beautiful. Despite herself, Dru is drawn to Ash and the darkness that seems to surround him—but one false move could cost her life.

Meanwhile, a shocking disappearance rocks the foundations of the Shadowhunter world. Kit Herondale and Ty Blackthorn must set aside the bitterness that lingers between them and join forces on a perilous quest to save everything they cherish.

Chapter titles
Sadly, we do not have all of the chapter titles, but here are some:

One
In Dreams Begins Responsibility
(W.B. Yeats, from his play, “Responsibilities”)
Two
His Sudden Vengeance
(Also Yeats! From the poem, “The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland”)
Three
Our Just Inheritance
(from Paradise Lost)
Four
Among the Disappearing
(Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Sonnets to Orpheus,” Book 2, XIII)
Five
This Great Journey
(Jack London, from the Call of the Wild)
Six
Feast of Offerings
(Edmund Spenser, from The Faerie Queene)
Seven
Of All Kingdoms, King
(Shakespeare, from As You Like It)

Another chapter is called A Cruel Feast (a poem by Virgil).

As usual, there is also a book trailer!

Furthermore, Cassie shared the prologue of The Last King of Faerie as a comic (art by Cassandra Jean). You can check out her first post here and then work your way through her Instagram.

General information

The Last King of Faerie is 576 pages long.
Words to describe the book:
One word: “Suprising.”
Three words: “Romantic, dark, twisty.”
One sentence: “It’s a super exciting adventure that brings together all of the magic and the storylines of the previous Shadowhunter books into a thrilling conclusion.”
30 seconds: “This is a romantic, slightly dark fantasy about a girl, a Shadowhunter, who is kidnapped by a Fae prince and brought to the land of Faerie, where she has to figure out how to survive and thrive. And then there’s this second protagonist, who is Kit, who we know from earlier books, and he finds out that […] Dru, our main character, is missing, and he and Ty, Dru’s brother, go off on a massive adventure to try to track her down that takes them through all of Europe and various major magical sites, as they attempt to piece together the clue about how they can get to her.”
It is set four years after the events of Queen of Air and Darkness, so 2016. Cassie “wanted the characters to be older, considering what they go through.”
“[T]he books deal with some more adult themes: loss, yearning, parenting, processing grief, what we owe each other, what we owe ourselves, the requirement to weigh personal needs against what you owe others, and what it means to build a life after trauma.”
“TWP is something of a return to the biblical/demonic mythos of The Mortal Instruments. A lot of what happens turns on various pieces of biblical mythology (since we’re dealing with Lucifer!) and references to Paradise Lost/Dante.”
“The entire world is having a very bad time. The cats are fine, but are probably annoyed.”
Dru, Ash, Kit and Ty are the four main characters.
There will be two POVs: Dru and Kit, but there’ll be short segments from other characters’ POVs like Clary, Ash, Ty (Cassie shared this during her London event with Holly on 21^st October 2025 which I attended), and also Kieran, Thais, one of Ash’s friends. Kieran’s POV is about “what’s happening in the world of Faerie in this very … unusual time. Some of it follows on from The Judgement of King Kieran in Better in Black, but it’s not a problem if you haven’t read that, the book catches you up.”
“I won’t be (and am not currently) going to be writing any parts about Ty (whether he narrates them directly or not) without multiple sensitivity readers consulting before they’re edited.”
“I ended up staying out of Ty’s head a lot in LKOF because 1) he has a secret, too! and 2) there are things I want the reader to know about him that he can’t know or be aware of and there is no way to convey that from his POV. We have to see it from outside because we know what he doesn’t know. And 3) It’s about the romance, too. I wanted there to be things Kit didn’t know about Ty’s feelings, and I wanted the reader not to know them either — not yet.
“[T]here are interstitials [between each chapter]. These can be anything from pages from a book of Faerie history to the viewpoints of characters we haven’t seen much in the main narrative stories or an alternate perspective on a scene we’ve already experienced. There is one big flashback I can think of but it’s more like a vision of something that was forgotten than a journey into the past.
“One half of the book takes place in Faerie (Dru) whereas Kit and Ty are on a kind of road trip all around Europe” (Cassie shared this during her London event with Holly on 21^st October 2025).
“In book one, Dru is not with Kit and Ty. They are in different places, both of which have their own stories that are significant to the plot” and “neither Ty nor Dru nor Kit spends much time at school or home at all.”
“Dru and Thais travel to New York to see Simon’s band at Pandemonium (and everyone is there — Jace, Clary, Simon, Isabelle, Magnus, Alec…)”.
“[W]e start off the Kit and Ty storyline at Cirenworth in TWP, so we will see Kit with his family”.
We will visit London, Bruges, Budapest and two new cities.
There is “a revel with masks, but the attendees don’t get to choose which mask they wear, they get assigned them, based on what the individuals holding the revel think of them.”
“There are LOTS of funny scenes.”
There will be a lot of kissing. (Yay!)
Kit and Ty “know these are romantic feelings they have, not confused friendship feelings or something, and that yes, this [the book] is a romance pretty much from the beginning.” ♥
“In the first book we will see the death of a character that we have known since the first three Mortal Instruments books.” (Instagram Live with @GaleraRecord and @IdrisBR on 15 April 2025 @ 34:20.)
Cassie about the end: “I think the end is a bit of a cliffhanger, and the characters are left in emotional places that are … non-ideal?”

The characters

Dru

Dru is seventeen in the book and she is at Shadowhunter Academy.
She “has at least one love interest as the books begin but she’ll add at least one more before they’re over!”
Dru is “known for her sense of humor, she has anxiety and panic attacks that she keeps to herself.”
At the beginning of the book, Dru and Luke talk about about the Cohort and redemption for its members. Paige Ashdown, who used to be part of the Cohort, is also at Shadowhunter Academy and Dru is fighting with her. “[S]should Dru forgive her, does she deserve a second chance”?
Dru spends most of the book in the Seelie Court. She doesn’t get along with the Queen. (From a panel at Lucca Comics in 2025. My friend Rossella from shadowhunters.it was on stage with Cassie so she’s my source.)
Dru about Ash: “she is VERY upset about who he really is, very upset about Sebastian, and very suspicious.”
Cassie described Dru as “so sharp and so funny” and Dru is annoyed “that you cannot find a bra in Faerie”.

Ash

Ash is “around eighteen” in the book.
He “has no Shadowhunter training or experience”, but he “can bear runes. His feelings about Shadowhunters are complex and they do get explored in the books!” Ash does have “his own training room and weapons”, though. Ash carries Phaesphoros and “Dru definitely has a reaction when she sees it.”
“he loathes lies, and yet must lie all the time.” Furthermore, “he has a very very very hard time falling in love, as that requires trust and his has been broken many times.”
Ash’s feelings for Dru are “[c]onflicted” at the start of the book.
“Ash does have friends, but the whole “has the power to make people like him” doesn’t just affect romantic relationships. It affects friendships, too.” Also “his power doesn’t work on everyone, or all the time. But he doesn’t even think he can actually have friends, as their feelings for him would not be real.”
Ash “seems to have a strong loyalty to Janus”, but Cassie also said that their relationship was “[d]eteriorating.” His relationship with his mother is “[m]anipulative“.
“He remembers [Nene] well though he won’t necessarily admit it at first. She certainly changed him, as he has only known otherwise terrible role models.”
Ash meets Clary in the book.
“Ash can see [Livvy] — and he can see more than that; he can see darkness all around Ty that’s invisible to everyone else.”
Ash’s “chinchilla did not make it into the book, though there is a hint about it if you’re looking closely.”

Kit

Kit “does use some Britishisms” and he is “very funny.”
“A limited amount of people know Kit is the Heir, but Ty is among them. Kit doesn’t tell him, he already is aware.”
It comes up why Kit was able to fire James Herondale’s gun in Secrets of Blackthorn Hall.
“Kit and Ty have countless scenes together. Other than maybe the first chapter or two of the book, before Ty arrives at Cirenworth, they are together in every scene that either one of them is in. Except sometimes one of them goes to the bathroom.”
Kit and Ty “definitely discuss the whole “How long will you be mad” “I’m also mad” stuff, they kind of can’t not discuss it. They do decide to put it aside in the pursuit of what they need to find, but that’s temporary, as it has to be.”
Kit’s ex-girlfriend Hazel won’t be seen, but she “does get a mention in TLKOF when Ty asks about her. I believe he simply wishes to know if she turned out to be a werewolf or not. :)”

Ty knows about autism and “[i]n the first scene with him, he discusses what it means for him in terms of his work at the Scholomance, and we later see him thinking about and discussing what it is like in terms of being a neurodivergent Shadowhunter. Kit has also read a ton about it as has Ty’s whole family.”
Ty does self-study at the Scholomance and we “find out some of the things he’s interested in […] and projects he’s been working on with Anush”.
Ty has scars on his back and “they have been there in some form from the time before the book started. They actually are getting worse.” There is even a snippet (#15) about Ty’s scars.
He still loves animals and “a mouse in his pocket for some reason. Kit thinks it is cute, annoyingly so.”
We learn that Ty likes cheese sandwiches (he also likes rain).

Livvy

Livvy “totally floats off to do ghost stuff. Sometimes she comes back with useful information (“there are demons in that train station!”) and sometimes we don’t know what she’s up to or she’s giving Ty privacy.”
“She is separated from [Ty] a time or two, and the separation does affect them both. It’s very clear that their bond is under a lot of pressure, magically speaking.”
Livvy “does think [Kit & Ty] should work things out, but she isn’t really meddling. She at some point does warn Kit not to break her brother’s heart (again) but otherwise she doesn’t interfere, probably because she realizes that if they were to mend things with each other, it would have to be their decisions on their own terms.”
She is going to be in a graveyard in Europe with “Ty and co. They’re looking for something, but of course a graveyard is full of restless spirits and a tense place for Livvy to be.”

Janus

“Janus is not the Seelie Queen’s new romance“, but we will meet the character who is.
“[D]ue to his nature, there is some angelic magic Janus cannot access.”

The Seelie Queen

We will learn “[q]uite a bit” about the Seelie Queen and her backstory. “Faeries and Shadowhunters are more weirdly connected way back than you might imagine.” This is possibly related to this snippet.
“She doesn’t interact with Kit in LKOF but she does talk about him. She has some concerns.”
“[W]e find out the Queen put members of the Seelie Court under a geas that prevented them from saying certain things about Ash to outsiders/non-Seelie Court members. We find this out from a different faerie under the geas, who tells it to Kit, and it’s mentioned in relation to Nene as well. We haven’t explored the concept of the geas much before, but it’s an old part of Faerie folklore and would supersede the “not lying” — especially since most of what Nene says in TDA (that she doesn’t know exactly how old Ash is now and wouldn’t recognize him) — is true.”

Thais

Thais is “very worried about Dru” since she doesn’t go to Faerie with her.
She has “her own plotline and romance (which I cannot talk about either) and certainly, without her, the world would not be saved.”
Thais is pansexual (IG Live @ 36:40, shout-out to IdrisBR!)
About her love interest: “I think you may well suspect who it is the first book.”

Other characters

Jaime is still missing at the beginning of the book.
Jace is “[a]live; he does get visited by a Prince of Hell unexpectedly!”
Zara “is still mad at everyone” and she “has bigger problems than Emma” in the book.
Some characters are aware of Kit and Ty’s “Important Secret Quest“.
“Alec does not get told what is going on with Team Good in TLKOF, but not because they don’t trust him or Magnus is hiding anything from him. It is for a completely practical and unscandalous reason.”
” Alec and the others have managed to be in touch with Zara and the Cohort in Idris, and they’re desperately trying to set up some kind of peace talks.”
“We do see Simon and Izzy, but not enough in TLKOF to learn anything new except that Simon is still in a band and it still sucks.”
“Emma and Julian are fine; we see them in book one. Still happy, still together. :-)”
We will see Jocelyn and Luke. “We do not spend a huge amount of time at Shadowhunter Academy (or the Scholomance) but we do see Luke doing some instructoring”.
Hyacinth “does make an appearance in TLKOF and does something fairly important.”
Barely there characters that Cassie liked in the book: “There’s a redcap named Bonecrusher who is always in a bad mood, but it’s probably Ash’s friends Callen and Cuan, who are twins and while not unhinged, they are not entirely hinged either.”
Characters we won’t see: Pickles, Elyaas, Anush and Lily. Anush and Lily do get mentioned, though, and the latter has a “very very weird role.”
Cassie’s cat Reginald gets a shoutout in the book. 😀