The Iron Daughter recap

Meghan Chase is living in the Winter Court as Mab's hostage, the price of the bargain that got her brother back, while Ash, the Winter prince she has fallen for, treats her with public contempt. When Iron fey ambush the ceremony that passes the Scepter of the Seasons between the courts, killing one of Mab's sons and stealing the Scepter, Winter blames Summer and declares war. Meghan escapes to the mortal world, finds Puck, and reaches Leanansidhe the Exile Queen, in whose mansion she discovers her long-missing human father, alive and stripped of his memory. Allied with Puck, Grimalkin, Ash and the Iron fey Ironhorse, who insists the Iron crown is hers by right, she steals the Scepter back, learns that Ash's brother Rowan has been the traitor feeding Winter's secrets to the Iron fey, and survives an attack on her own school in which Ironhorse sacrifices himself. Meghan returns the Scepter at the Reaping Fields and stops the war, but does it by wielding iron glamour in front of both courts. Oberon banishes her from the Nevernever, and Ash, who has chosen her over Winter, is exiled with her.

Previously: Meghan Chase learned on her sixteenth birthday that her four-year-old brother Ethan had been stolen and a changeling left in his place, and that her best friend Robbie was really Puck, the trickster, set to guard her by Oberon, Erlking of the Summer Court, who is her true father. Crossing into the Nevernever, she was acknowledged as Oberon's half-human daughter, made an enemy of his queen Titania, and struck a bargain with Ash, youngest son of Mab of the Winter Court: he would help her recover Ethan, and afterwards she would go with him to Winter as Mab's hostage. The kidnappers turned out to be the Iron fey, a new breed born of human faith in machines, whose iron kills traditional fey and whose existence both courts refuse to admit. Meghan destroyed their king, Machina, and freed Ethan, and Machina warned her as he died that the Iron fey would outlast him and that his crown would not stay empty. Meghan took her brother home, and Ash came to collect what she owed. She travelled with him to Tir Na Nog, and somewhere on that road whatever the two of them feel for each other stopped being deniable, which in Mab's court is the most dangerous thing either of them owns.

Meghan is living in the Winter Court as Mab's hostage under the terms of her bargain, a Summer half-blood at the heart of Winter, watched constantly and secure only while the queen finds her useful. Ash treats her with public indifference bordering on cruelty and offers no explanation. His brothers Rowan and Sage make their own use of her presence, Rowan by needling everyone within reach. The court is preparing for the exchange of the Scepter of the Seasons, the token that passes between Summer and Winter as the seasons turn and carries the power that holds them. The ceremony is ambushed. Iron fey attack, one of Mab's sons is killed, and the Scepter is taken. Mab, who will not admit the Iron fey are real, blames Summer for the theft and the death, and Winter goes to war.

With war declared and Meghan a Summer prisoner in a Winter court, staying is not survivable. Ash will not break with his mother where she can see it, and he denies outright everything that passed between them on the journey to Tir Na Nog; Meghan takes him at his word. She gets out of the Winter Court and back to the mortal world, discovering along the way how far the Iron fey's reach now extends and how little either court intends to do about it. What she has worked out is simple and unwelcome: the Scepter is in Iron hands, the two courts are about to destroy each other over a theft neither of them committed, and nobody with the power to stop it believes a word she says.

Back in the mortal world Meghan finds Puck again, and the two of them go looking for a way to reach the Iron fey. The road runs through the Briars, the thorned wildland between the worlds, and out the other side into the domain of Leanansidhe, the Exile Queen: a fey thrown out of the Nevernever who rules the exiles and half-breeds of the mortal world from a mansion full of human musicians and artists whose talent she feeds on. Leanansidhe trades in favours and information and is willing to help, at her own rates and on her own schedule. Among the humans kept in her house, Meghan notices a quiet pianist the household calls Charles.

The pianist is Paul Chase, Meghan's father, taken out of the mortal world on the day he vanished eleven years ago and left without a memory of his own name. She can neither restore him nor take him home. That leaves the Scepter. Ironhorse, once Machina's lieutenant and Meghan's pursuer, seeks her out as an ally rather than an enemy: with Machina dead he holds that the Iron crown became Meghan's when she destroyed him and that the one wearing it now is a usurper. Meghan, Puck, Grimalkin and Ironhorse move against the Iron fey to steal the Scepter back, and Ash finds his way to them. Inside, they meet Virus, an Iron fey who infects others with something that leaves them obedient and empty, and they learn who has been handing the Iron fey Winter's secrets. Rowan, Mab's own son, has been working with them from the start.

The Scepter is recovered, at a cost, and the fighting follows Meghan into the mortal world. Ash stops performing indifference and breaks with Winter openly rather than privately. Meghan comes out of the confrontation with the Iron fey badly hurt, and getting her healed costs her allies time the war does not leave them. What she discovers about herself is more dangerous than the injury: she can wield iron glamour, the power that kills every other fey in the Nevernever, and neither court will be able to see that as anything but a threat.

The Iron fey follow Meghan into her own life, attacking her school during the winter formal, and Ironhorse fights them there. When ending it means destroying Virus and the Iron fey's grip along with her, Ironhorse gives his own life to do it, dying in the service of the queen he chose. Meghan reaches the Reaping Fields, where the armies of Summer and Winter have met, and returns the Scepter of the Seasons in front of both courts, proving the theft was never Summer's doing and stopping the war before it begins. She does it by using iron glamour openly, in front of Oberon, Mab and everyone else present, which settles the argument about whether the Iron fey exist and makes Meghan herself the thing the courts are now most afraid of. Rowan's treachery is exposed and he does not come back. Oberon banishes his daughter from the Nevernever, and Ash, who has already chosen her over Winter, is cast out too. The book closes with Meghan home in the mortal world, exiled from Faery, with Ash beside her.

Meghan ends the war by walking onto the Reaping Fields between the assembled armies of Summer and Winter and returning the stolen Scepter of the Seasons, proving that Summer never took it and that the Iron fey both courts deny are real. She does it using iron glamour in front of Oberon and Mab, which saves a great many fey and simultaneously identifies her as the most dangerous creature on the field: a half-human princess who can wield the one power lethal to every full-blooded fey alive. Ironhorse does not survive. He gives his life destroying Virus and breaking the Iron fey's hold on the fight, serving Meghan as the queen he believed the Iron crown belonged to. Rowan is exposed as the traitor who sold Winter's secrets to the Iron fey and does not return to his mother's court. Ash has broken with Mab openly and stopped pretending to feel nothing. Oberon then banishes Meghan from the Nevernever, protection and precaution at the same time, and Ash is cast out of Winter for choosing her. The book closes with the two of them exiled together in the mortal world, the Iron fey still ruled by whoever took Machina's crown, and the Iron Realm still spreading into Faery with nobody willing to stop it.