Ilsa peeled her wrist free. “What d’you want?”
“To know what’s wrong.” Though his voice was soft, his gaze was stormy as ever. This time, all that intensity was on Ilsa’s side. It was for her. She toyed with the lace sleeve of her dress.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Is that so?” He ducked his head to try and catch her eye, but she stepped away from him. “If you’ve lost your enthusiasm for this chase, I might understand. But you declined an opportunity to start an argument. It’s out of character.”
“You can talk.”
Eliot smiled. “That’s better. But something’s upsetting you.”
She was about to speak when a servant appeared from the lounge opposite. Catching onto her wariness as he passed, Eliot angled his head in the opposite direction. “Come with me.”
She followed him through a set of glass doors and into the garden. They wove between the orderly lines of flower beds, in which roses of every colour were perpetually in full bloom, thanks to a spell Cassia had cast on them. The scent was heavy in the late summer warmth; it was rising from the velvety rose heads like heat haze. She had never seen blooms as vibrant and large until she came through the portal, and she came to a stop among them, entranced.
Eliot was still and patient as he watched her lower her nose to a crimson flower.
“Cogna knows ’bout me,” she said.
“Yes. You said Cogna sent the messenger who told us you were alive.”
A fist clenched around her heart as she forced out the next words; the thought that had been festering in her mind like a disease since Whitechapel. “Cogna’s with Gedeon now. They’re working together. So Gedeon probably knows ’bout me too. I think p’raps Cogna told him I was alive and back here and he… doesn’t care.”
Eliot’s face only registered surprise for a heartbeat before it melted into something else. Fearing it might be pity, Ilsa looked away.
“Gedeon doesn’t know about you.”
“Hmm. You and him are trading secret messages, I s’pose,” she teased.
“Who told you?” She could hear the smirk in his words.
“Just a guess.”
“Well, you guessed wrong. If I knew how to contact him, your being here would be the first thing I’d’ve told him. He deserves to know his sister is alive, and that she’s clever and capable and brave. That she’s someone he would be honoured to know.”
Ilsa glanced up to find Eliot standing closer than she had thought, his face betraying how ardently he meant every word, and her pulse kicked. Eliot swallowed, blinked, but mastered his nervousness.
“I know Cogna hasn’t told him you’re alive. Because if Gedeon knew the first thing about you, if he had any idea how… he would be back in a heartbeat.”
Despite the sun, a wave of cold trembled down her spine. Her body wanted her to close the gap between them, was pushing her forward with an icy touch. She gave into it at the same moment Eliot did, her mouth meeting his halfway, her fingers travelling up his neck to tangle in his hair. He tugged her closer desperately, until their bodies were flush against one another – Ilsa’s every nerve singing – and deepened the kiss.
Ilsa had been kissed before; a handful of clumsy fumbles that had done nothing to answer the question of what all the fuss was about. But kissing Eliot was like hearing her call in the dark answered. She swallowed his breath like this was the air she should always have been breathing. His fingers kneaded the nape of her neck in a way that travelled down her spine and knocked every muscle along the way out of action.
It was only when their lips disconnected, both of them breathing hard, that there was any space for another thought to push its way into Ilsa’s mind: Fyfe.
She gasped and stepped back, out of Eliot’s embrace. He was startled back to his senses. His hands went into the air.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No, it ain’t you. I—” Ilsa shook her head. She didn’t have the words to explain. She wouldn’t have told him even if she could. The truth of why she didn’t want Eliot kissing her like his life depended on it – even though she really, really did – in the open of the garden, with everything she had learned that day, wasn’t hers to share. So she murmured an apology, slipped past him – at a safe distance – and practically ran back to the house.
27
Ilsa was a coward.
She might also have been a bad friend. It was difficult to know for sure when her head was still spinning from the feeling of kissing Eliot.
The fact was, Fyfe couldn’t have him, and nothing Ilsa did or didn’t do could change that. You’re not his type, Jorn had said. What was more, Jorn knew what Ilsa’s next mistake would be, and he had made it seem a lot more dire than an ill-advised kiss, meaning that she was as confident as any non-Oracle could be that kissing Eliot was a good decision. Perhaps she should have kept doing it while she was still protected by that knowledge.
Then again – what did not his type mean? Was Eliot Ilsa’s type before he’d flirted with her in the chemist, or let his fingers linger on her skin, or his eyes linger on her face? If Eliot had never thought of Fyfe that way, how was anyone to know how he might feel about him? And if Eliot was busy kissing Ilsa, when would he ever find out?
But no, Eliot deserved more credit than that. He had made his choice. In fact, it was all his fault. He was the one who had started soliloquising about what an honour it was to know her. He was the one who had come just a little too close, and muddled his words, and let his eyes flicker
