So Ilsa started matching lieutenants to the numbers and symbols. Oren’s, she knew. Cassia and Aelius could be narrowed down to two of three, but if the shape in the middle represented what she thought it did…
Sickness roiled in her gut as she pieced together an answer she desperately didn’t want to find; that the real reason Gedeon had fled the Zoo was that he had done some investigating of his own, and this diagram was the proof.
The symbol meant morning or evening, the number beside it was a date, and every one of them had been a trap.
IV
THE GREEN SEA TURTLE
Chelonia mydas
A marine reptile found in tropical and subtropical seas worldwide. Like all members of the family Cheloniidae, this turtle will only come ashore to mate and lay eggs. They are known to migrate many thousands of miles to return to the beach on which they hatched.
35
A fake trip. Six different times. Gedeon had invented the perfect opportunity to attack the Zoo; a few hours when he would be away, most of the wolves on guard with him. Then he’d quietly fed conflicting dates and times to his lieutenants to see who would leak to the Heart rebels.
And one of them had.
Sitting in the meeting room, staring at the oval table where they all would meet, the shape in the centre of the diagram had suddenly made sense. Hester, Eliot, Oren, Cassia, Aelius and Fyfe. Six lieutenants flanking their alpha. Gedeon’s place was between Hester and Cassia, at the bottom of the diagram. He had drawn the table as he saw it, and crossed off his lieutenants, his friends, as the mornings and evenings rolled by. The first had been Cassia, on the evening of the twenty-seventh. Perhaps he’d been most desperate to know, most afraid, that his traitor was the Sorcerer he loved.
Fyfe – who sat in the third seat on his right – had been the morning of the twenty-eighth, and Aelius, who sat next to him, that evening. Then Gedeon had stopped crossing off lieutenants. On the morning of the twenty-ninth, he found his traitor.
There was a thunk from the door as someone tried to enter, and Ilsa jumped. Her hands were still shaking uncontrollably as she stashed the diagram under her mattress.
“Ilsa?” came the call. It was Eliot.
She felt herself go to the door, move the chair, and turn the lock. She took several large steps back as he barrelled into the room.
“We’ve got him,” he said.
It was then she heard the commotion in the rest of the house. Footsteps rattled up and down the stairs. Hester was calling orders from somewhere.
But she couldn’t form the proper reaction.
“Did you hear me?” he said. “We found Gedeon. He stormed the portal and—”
“You’re a spy.”
It was little more than a whisper, but Eliot cut off, and they were plunged into silence. The footsteps faded away; Hester’s voice stopped echoing. And in that moment, taking in his shock and horror, Ilsa lost the dwindling hope that she was wrong.
“Ilsa—”
“You’re a traitor.”
“I’m not a traitor.” His voice was fierce, the denial real. He made to move towards her, but she backed away. He paused, a war raging behind his storm-blue eyes, and when he spoke again it was with new resolve. “It’s not like that—”
“You told the rebels when to attack,” she said, not lowering her voice when Eliot shot a harried glance at the hallway. “And Gedeon knows, don’t he? The other day when we spoke to Aelius, you realised what he’d done. That’s why you were so worked up.”
The longer Ilsa thought on it, the worse it got. The very night they’d met, he showed her how to leave the Zoo without being seen. He would have designed the guard duty himself. He had engineered that weakness, those fifteen seconds, so that he could meet with Camden’s enemies. He had told her everything he’d worked out about Gedeon’s movements before he had any reason to trust her, taking her into his confidence to earn hers. He’d tried to persuade her to stop looking for Gedeon – had told her that her brother was never coming back; wanted nothing to do with her – because he’d realised Gedeon knew, and it would cost him his skin. And what else had been a lie? That he was fighting to protect his people? That he ever wanted her at all?
“You” – an unnameable emotion turned her stomach – “you manipulated me.”
Rage and remorse hardened Eliot’s features. He was shaking his head, but the denial wasn’t real.
“You’re just like Alitz.”
Something in him snapped. The look he gave her was desolate and broken, the accusation one too far. “No,” he whispered. “Ilsa, I would never hurt you.”
“Right. Just my family.”
Before Eliot could respond, Oren appeared at the door.
“Downstairs, both of you,” he said, breathing heavily. “We need to move fast or we won’t catch him.”
Then he was gone again. Eliot made to follow, but Ilsa yanked him back by the arm and slammed the door.
“I should’ve known sooner,” she growled. “You din’t want me trusting the others. You did everything you could to stop me involving them, because you wanted to find him before anyone else did, in case he knew.”
“I wanted to find him first so I could explain!” He heaved a breath but it didn’t calm him. He ran a shaking hand through his hair, and when he spoke again, his voice was strained. “All I have ever wanted was to protect Camden. All that’s ever mattered to me is serving these people, this house, your family. I love Gedeon like a brother but he’s never understood. He can never know what I’ve given.”
Pain – the kind carved
