The Iron Daughter

What's inside (9 sections)

1. The scepter and the exile
2. Leanansidhe and the price of help
3. Back in the mortal world
4. The 29.5 floor
5. What Meghan chooses
6. The cost and the road ahead
7. A note on the edition
8. Key takeaways
9. FAQ

I came back to The Iron Daughter because The Iron King left Meghan in a strange spot. She had killed Machina, saved her brother, and walked out of the Nevernever with something iron inside her that she did not ask for. I wanted to know what that cost her. This second book, published in 2010 by Harlequin Teen as The Iron Fey book two, answers that pretty directly. It is longer in feeling than its page count suggests. The 2010 Harlequin Teen edition runs about 359 pages. Meghan spends most of it cold, tired, and caught between two boys who both think they know what is best for her.

Fair warning the way I always give it with this series. This is young adult fantasy with kissing and battles and some blood, but nothing graphic. The romance is central. If love triangles annoy you, this one will test you. If you like faery courts, clever cats, and heists that go wrong, you will have a good time.

Meghan starts the book in the Winter Court. That choice surprised me the first time. After everything in book one, she agreed to go with Ash to Tir Na Nog to face Queen Mab. Part of it was the bargain she made. Part of it was that she wanted to see him again. She tells herself it is about honor. It reads more like a crush she cannot shake.

Tir Na Nog is miserable for her. It is always winter there in the way only the Unseelie Court can manage. Ice on the steps. Blue light through tall windows. Courtiers who look at her like she is a stain on the floor. Mab is polite in the way powerful people are polite when they plan to use you. She keeps Meghan close, gives her a room, dresses her for court, and makes it clear that Meghan is a guest who cannot leave.

Ash is distant. He is Mab's third son, and he brought Meghan in as ordered, but now he does not know what to do with her. He is formal. He trains. He disappears for hours. When they do talk, he warns her not to trust anyone, including him. I found those scenes frustrating in a way that felt true. He cares about her and his whole training tells him not to show it.

Then the Scepter of the Seasons is stolen.

The scepter and the exile

You need to understand what the scepter is because the whole plot turns on it. The courts keep a fragile peace by passing control of the seasons back and forth. The scepter is the object that lets that handoff happen cleanly. Without it, weather slips. Summer bleeds into Winter lands and Winter creeps where it should not. Crops fail in Faery. Wild fey get restless. Old grudges flare.

When the scepter vanishes from Tir Na Nog, Mab needs someone to blame. Rowan, one of her courtiers with ambitions of his own, points at Ash. There is a fight, accusations, and a death among the guards that makes Ash look guilty. Mab exiles him on the spot. No trial worth the name. Just cold words and swords drawn.

Meghan does not believe Ash stole it. She saw enough of him in book one to trust his stubborn sense of duty. She leaves with him. That decision costs her whatever thin protection Mab offered. They walk out of the Winter city with almost nothing, in the snow, with enemies on both sides.

Puck finds them. Or rather, Grimalkin finds them and Puck is not far behind. Puck is Robin Goodfellow, still loud and joking and hurt that Meghan picked Ash over him. Grimalkin is the big talking cat who only helps for a price and then complains about the price. I was glad to see both of them. This series is better when the group is together and bickering.

They cannot go to Summer. Oberon is Meghan's father, but Titania hates her, and Summer would hand her over or lock her up just as fast. They cannot stay in the wild. Winter knights are hunting Ash. So they go to the one person who owes nobody loyalty. Leanansidhe.

Leanansidhe and the price of help

Leanansidhe is the Exile Queen. She takes in fey who cannot live under Summer or Winter law. Her hall is full of musicians, exiles, redcaps trying to behave, satyrs, and artists who traded too much for inspiration. She is beautiful and terrifying and funny in the same conversation. Kagawa writes her as someone who always knows more than she says.

She agrees to shelter them, but her help has hooks. She wants the scepter found because chaos is bad for her business. She also wants Meghan to learn to control the iron glamour waking up inside her. That thread is the most interesting part of the book for me.

In book one Meghan picked up iron magic by killing Machina with an ironwood arrow and surviving contact with iron power. Normal fey sicken near iron. It burns them. It scrambles their glamour. Meghan can touch it. She can even shape it a little. In Leanansidhe's hall she practices in secret and it scares her. Her hands tingle. Machines buzz when she passes. Lights flicker. She hides it from Ash because she knows how Winter views iron. She hides it from Puck because she does not want another lecture.

Leanansidhe sees through her right away. She tells Meghan plainly that iron is growing in her and that pretending it is not there will get people killed. The training scenes are short but good. Leanansidhe has Meghan hold small iron objects, then larger ones, then try to push glamour through them without letting it snap back. Meghan fails a lot. She gets nosebleeds. She gets headaches. One time she almost drops a chandelier on Grimalkin, who never lets her forget it.

While they train, word comes in about the Iron lands. After Machina died, someone new is pulling the Iron fey together. The reports are confused. Some say a new Iron King has risen. Some say it is a council. Some say it is a girl with bugs. Leanansidhe's spies say the scepter was taken into the Iron territory through a mortal doorway in our world. That means the group has to go back to the mortal world to chase it.

I liked this pivot. The first book was mostly Faery forests and courts. This one spends a big chunk in our world, in a city, around offices and warehouses and servers. It makes the Iron fey scarier. They do not live in a far castle. They live in the wiring.

Back in the mortal world

Meghan, Ash, Puck, and Grimalkin cross over and land near Leanansidhe's mortal contacts. Meghan gets to check on her family briefly, and those pages hurt. Her mother does not remember clearly. Her brother Ethan is home but changed by what happened to him. He sees things now. He draws pictures of thin men with too many joints. Meghan wants to stay. She cannot. She promises herself she will finish this and come back properly.

The trail leads to SciCorp, a tech company that hides something else behind a normal front. From the outside it looks normal. Glass building. Security badges. Bored receptionist. Inside, the elevators skip floors. There is a floor numbered 29.5 that does not appear unless you press the right code. Iron glamour hides it. Meghan can feel it humming through the walls the way other fey cannot, which is both useful and awful for her.

Getting the code takes time. Grimalkin steals memos. Puck flirts with office workers and steals badges. Ash hates every minute of it. He stands out too much, too pale and too still, and modern clothes sit wrong on him. There is a funny scene where Puck tries to get him into a hoodie and Ash looks like he wants to stab someone. I needed that laugh because the stretch around it is tense.

Meghan also runs into normal life in a way that stings. She sees kids from school. One boy who used to ignore her notices her now. Puck makes jokes about it. Ash goes quiet. Meghan realizes she has changed too much to fit back into hallways and dances, even if she wanted to. That sense of being between worlds never leaves the book.

They figure out the elevator code and plan a break in. Leanansidhe sends help in the form of Iron Horse. If you remember him from book one, he was a Wyldwood fey who let iron into his body to survive and became something half iron himself. He is huge, blunt, and loyal in his own way. He agrees to cause a distraction while the rest slip inside.

The plan is simple. It goes wrong fast, as these plans do.

The 29.5 floor

The break in is my favorite long sequence in the book. They ride the elevator to the hidden floor, step out into a white corridor that smells like ozone, and find labs full of iron fey constructs. Not soldiers in armor. Things built from wire and glass and old computer parts, with eyes that click when they turn. Some wear human faces badly. Some do not bother.

They find the scepter. It sits in a containment rig, throwing off heat and frost in turns because it does not belong in that place. Summer and Winter magic was never meant to sit inside iron walls. The air around it shimmers. Pipes frost over, then steam. Ash moves toward it like it burns him just to look at it.

Then Virus steps out.

Virus is an Iron fey who wants to rule. She is not Machina. Machina wanted to replace the old courts. Virus wants to control minds. She has built tiny iron bugs that crawl into ears and sit against the brain and let her steer people. She has already turned some of Leanansidhe's exiles. She has already turned guards. She smiles at Meghan like they are sisters.

She springs the trap. Doors lock. Bugs pour from vents. Iron Horse smashes through a skylight and starts tearing constructs apart, which gives the group room to move, but Virus has a worse card. She has Ash.

Earlier, during a scuffle in the tunnels, one of her bugs got into Ash. He hid it because Winter pride would not let him admit weakness. Now Virus speaks a command and Ash turns his sword on his friends. His eyes go flat. He moves fast and clean and tries to kill Puck first, then Meghan.

This fight upset me more than the big battles in book one. Puck will not hurt Ash badly because Meghan begs him not to. Ash will not stop because he cannot. Grimalkin yells instructions no one follows. Meghan tries to reach Ash by talking, by saying his true name, by stepping into range, all the things that should get her killed. She gets cut. She keeps going.

She stops him with iron glamour. She pushes her new power out in a wave and freezes the bugs midair. It hurts her to do it. Blood runs from her nose. Her vision grays at the edges. But the bugs drop and Ash blinks and comes back to himself for a few seconds, long enough to tell her to run.

They run. They do not get the scepter. Virus keeps it. Iron Horse carries an injured Puck partway. Grimalkin herds them through service tunnels while alarms scream. They come out in an alley, breathing hard, covered in dust and blood, with nothing to show except that they are alive.

Back at Leanansidhe's, the mood is grim. Exiles who were bugged have to be isolated. Ash locks himself away because he is ashamed and because iron poisoning is spreading from the bite of the bug. His skin shows dark lines near the wound. He shakes. He refuses food. Meghan sits with him even when he tells her to leave, which is most of the time.

What Meghan chooses

The middle of the book gets criticized for the triangle, and I get it. Puck tells Meghan he loves her. He says it plainly, without jokes for once. He kisses her. She kisses him back. Then she pulls away because she is thinking of Ash. Later Ash softens toward her, holds her hand, almost says something real, then pulls back because of duty. Meghan cries. Both boys brood.

I rolled my eyes at parts of it. At the same time, it felt age appropriate. Meghan is sixteen. She has never had a boyfriend in the normal sense. Now two ancient fey boys want her and both are bad at talking about feelings. She likes Puck's warmth and history with her. She likes Ash's steadiness and the way he tries to be good inside a cruel system. She does not want to hurt either of them and hurts both anyway.

What saves this stretch is that Kagawa keeps the plot moving under the romance. Leanansidhe pushes Meghan to practice iron glamour daily. Grimalkin brings news that Virus plans to use the scepter at a gathering of Iron fey to declare herself ruler and then march on both courts. Rowan, the Winter courtier who framed Ash, turns out to be working with the Iron side for protection against iron sickness. He wears an iron ring that is slowly killing him, which tells Meghan how desperate some Winter fey have become.

Meghan decides to go back for the scepter even though she is not ready. Ash tries to forbid it. Puck tries to joke her out of it. She insists. It is her fault the scepter is exposed, in her mind, because she is the only one who can sense iron clearly. If Virus uses it, both courts burn and the mortal world gets caught in the middle. She will not sit safe in Leanansidhe's hall while that happens.

They make a second plan, leaner and meaner. No more sneaking through lobbies. Iron Horse will break the skylight again as a signal. Puck and Grimalkin will cut power and open a path. Meghan and Ash will go straight for the scepter chamber. Leanansidhe gives Meghan a charm to shield her briefly from iron feedback. She warns that it will only hold once.

The second raid works just enough. They get inside. They fight through constructs. Meghan reaches the scepter and grabs it with both hands. It shocks her, hot then cold, Summer then Winter, and her iron glamour flares to meet it. For a moment she holds all three powers at once and it nearly kills her. She screams. Ash catches her. Puck clears the bugs swarming them. Iron Horse holds the door by himself against impossible numbers.

They escape with the scepter. Virus does not die. She retreats into the vents, promising to return. Rowan flees. The new Iron King, whoever he truly is, stays hidden. Kagawa leaves that thread open for book three, which is the right call. This book is about stopping the immediate disaster, not solving everything.

The cost and the road ahead

Getting the scepter back does not fix things cleanly. That is what I respected about the ending.

Ash brings the scepter to the courts and clears his name, but Mab does not welcome him back with warmth. She accepts the scepter, notes his service, and keeps him at arm's length. Exile leaves a mark even when lifted. Oberon offers Meghan shelter in Summer, but Titania makes it clear she will never be safe there. Leanansidhe will take them again, but her prices keep rising.

Ash and Meghan say goodbye, or something like it. He tells her he cannot be what she wants while Winter law binds him. She tells him she is tired of being told where she belongs. They do not break cleanly. They promise to find each other again. Puck watches all of this with his usual grin missing. He tells Meghan he will wait. She does not ask him to, but she does not tell him to stop either.

Meghan returns to the mortal world briefly. She sees Ethan. She sees her mother. She knows she cannot stay long because iron magic hums under her skin now and draws attention. The book closes with her heading toward the next fight, scepter secured for now, Virus still out there, and the true Iron ruler still waiting.

What did I take from it after a second read. The plot is busier than book one and less tidy. The heist sections are strong. The court scenes drag a little when Rowan schemes at length. The triangle takes up more pages than it needs. But Meghan grows. In book one she was mostly reacting. Here she trains, makes plans, and pays for them. She chooses to carry iron even though it marks her as strange to both courts. That choice gives the series its engine going into The Iron Queen.

If you read The Iron King and liked Grimalkin, Puck's jokes, and Ash trying not to feel things, read this. If you bounced off the first book because Meghan felt passive, give this one fifty pages. She still cries and second guesses, but she also grabs a burning scepter with bare hands while bugs swarm her friends. That counts for a lot with me.

A note on the edition

The facts I cite are for the original English edition. First published in 2010 by Harlequin Teen. ISBN 9780373210138 for the Harlequin Teen paperback. Page counts vary by printing. The 2010 printing scans at about 359 pages, while some retailer listings round the same ISBN to 304 pages because of typesetting differences. I use 359 here because it matches the physical scan of the 2010 Harlequin Teen text. The story itself is the same either way.

FAQ

Is The Iron Daughter part of a series?

It is book two in The Iron Fey series, published in 2010 by Harlequin Teen. It follows The Iron King and leads into The Iron Queen.

What is The Iron Daughter about?

Meghan chases the stolen Scepter of the Seasons into the Iron stronghold with Ash, Puck, and Grimalkin, while a mind controlling Iron fey named Virus hunts them.

Who should read The Iron Daughter?

Readers thirteen and up who enjoy faery courts, quests, and love triangles will like it most. The middle romance slows the plot, so impatient readers may skim those chapters.