The blow landed. Eliot reeled back, hurt flickering across his face before vanishing again.
“You hate me too, then.”
Ilsa opened her mouth to deny it, but backtracking in the middle of a fight felt like weakness. In the end, nothing came out.
Eliot drank in her silence with diamond-hard indifference. Then that vicious, dazzling smile fell into place. “Gedeon is never coming back. The sooner you realise he wants as little to do with you as he does the rest of us, the better.”
The words stung like a blade missing its mark; searing one moment as they grazed her flesh, and gone the next, leaving her stunned, but still on her feet.
Eliot was storming back towards the house, and she swung around. “P’raps I should just go back to my London, then.”
“Perhaps you should,” he said without missing a beat.
Then he was gone, and despite the crickets chattering and the breeze tickling the leaves, the garden was suddenly far too quiet.
30
Aelius wasted no time.
When Ilsa went down to breakfast the next morning, the carriage was already gone, bearing him south to the Heart. It was little surprise that Eliot was absent too, but she’d be damned if she’d ask after him, and when Fyfe did as much, she shrugged and crammed another slice of toast into her mouth.
She’d fought with Bill Blume dozens of times, and when he was drunk, he sometimes said vicious things. She had hardened herself to the point of not caring – from the theatre that had told her once when she overheard, it wasn’t about her.
And as she had lain in her bed for several long hours, unable to sleep, she had reasoned that the same was probably true of Eliot. It did nothing to cool her anger, or stop her rehearsing all the comebacks she wished she had thought of at the time, but it did make her wonder.
Eliot felt betrayed. He was losing hope over something that mattered desperately to him. But the shades of undulating horror that had crossed his face as he absorbed Aelius’s confession had felt like something more. This suspicion is what she chewed over to keep from wishing she could go back to the garden and hear him tell her that he hadn’t meant it, he was just trying to hurt her, he didn’t want her to leave. Suspicion felt better than all those other things.
Her brain foggy from too little sleep, she drank nearly as much coffee as Fyfe before setting about her mission for the day. She was on the stairs, heading bravely for the small laboratory in the attic, when a shot rang out from the park.
Ilsa’s blood chilled. Fyfe bounded from the dining room, eyes wide, but Oren emerged behind him, polishing his glasses.
“We’re not under attack,” he said. “It’s only Cassia. She’s nurturing a new… passion.”
As another round was fired, Ilsa pushed down her hackles and followed the sounds past the garden and into a grove of trees beyond the duck pond.
Cassia stood in a side-stance in the unkempt grass, one arm at a perfect right angle to her body and a revolver in her hand. A target had been rigged up ahead of her, a spattering of nicks already clustered around the centre.
And a boy Ilsa only knew from his portrait was with her.
Gedeon.
Ilsa clapped a hand to her mouth. It was him, here, back. But how? She’d taken two stunted steps forward before she understood the truth, a split second before her brother shifted with a jerky movement akin to shrugging on a coat. It was a movement Ilsa recognised, and all her giddy alarm rushed out of her.
It was Ferrien, one of the wolves who frequently guarded the bridge. He cringed, gaze darting hesitantly between the gun and the target, as Cassia let off another round. But Cassia didn’t wince, or blink, or give an inch to the kickback. The shot landed three rings shy of the bullseye.
“Drat,” she said, her arm dropping. “One more time, please, Ferrien. And could you hold it just a moment longer?” The wolf mumbled his dissent. “Please, Ferrien?”
Ferrien’s shoulders sagged, but he did as he was asked, and the chestnut-haired, stocky young man ceased to be, replaced once more with the taller, leaner form of the boy Ilsa had never met. It was no less jarring the second time. Ilsa’s mind wouldn’t quite believe he wasn’t who she wished he was.
He saw her and shrugged apologetically.
“What the bloody hell,” she began, swinging towards Cassia, but the Sorcerer’s face made her halt.
Normally so distant and fragile – a living porcelain doll, who would sooner shatter than smile – Cassia’s expression had taken on an alarming degree of passion. The mist in her eyes hardened to ice; the tension in her mouth turned hot and feral. She dipped her chin and trained her eyes on Ferrien like an animal coiled to pounce.
Looking at Gedeon was making Cassia furious.
She lined up the revolver again with a graceful, chilling surety and fired off three rounds. They all hit the bullseye.
When Ilsa turned back to Ferrien, he was already shrugging back into his own skin. Ilsa shook off the twinge of longing as Gedeon disappeared. She wanted a moment to be with her brother in the flesh; wanted to hear his voice for the first time. But it wasn’t him – it was some perverse copy, a violation – and she daren’t ask.
She turned to Cassia. “How long you been practising?”
Cassia reloaded the gun. “A little every day this week. I have a knack, it seems.”
“You planning on shooting some poor bastard?” She tried to keep her tone light, despite fearing Cassia already had a target in mind.
“It wasn’t my first objective, but perhaps it’s crossed my mind.” Her gaze fluttered to Ferrien, who blanched. “It’s just the most incredible release. I suspected it when I shot that Oracle, circumstances aside. Mechanical weapons are awfully fun.”
Ilsa had
