No, she had seen one just like it. Its twin.
“Bill,” she said through gritted teeth, fury swelling until it threatened to burst out of her. She thought she couldn’t hate him any more. “You were the one who killed him.”
Pyval’s face twisted, halfway between a grimace and a smile. “He was only supposed to be bait,” he called over the groaning house. “If you hadn’t brought Tarenvale and that Sorcerer bitch with you, I might have spared him.”
Gedeon’s grip on his sword had tightened the moment Pyval mentioned Cassia. As its blade drew Ilsa’s attention, so did the familiar pouch strapped to his belt. Fyfe had one just like it.
“Wait, I’m lost,” said Gedeon conversationally. “You tried to kill my sister?”
“The Sage wished not to.” With the men fixated on one another, Ilsa went entirely unnoticed as she made her move. “She does not like to act too rashly. When your obliviously trusting lieutenants told her of the message from the Docklands, she thought a Ravenswood pup raised away from the litter might prove a useful tool one day. That is, until she met her.” Pyval sneered and cocked his pistol. “Hold it there, princess! I said from the first you’d be too hard to control.”
Ilsa had crept from behind Gedeon, and been caught. Thankfully, while part of being a magician’s assistant was knowing how to go unseen, it was equally important to know how to be noticed. Pyval’s gun swung from Ilsa to Gedeon and back again, torn between two targets.
It was just the hesitation she had needed. Ilsa raised her hands so he saw they were empty; that she wasn’t a threat. As he levelled his weapon and his attention back on Gedeon, she whispered, in a voice only her brother could hear: “Nothing up my sleeve.”
Gedeon glanced her way, as she had hoped he would, and she indicated her formerly empty hand – and the small blue pellet she had lifted from his pouch.
Just like magic.
Gedeon took his cue, falling to all fours and disappearing under a coat of sandy fur and a ragged, golden mane. He was twice the size of a real lion, as tall as Ilsa at the shoulder.
Simultaneously, Ilsa tossed the pellet. It exploded in a swell of dark blue smoke. There was no time for Pyval to notice his magic was missing before one massive paw slashed across his chest, and he was thrown down the stairs.
A scream went up from the attic, and Gedeon transformed again. “Cogna!”
They ran back to the attic. Cogna lay immobile – dead, perhaps – on the floor among the fragments of Ilsa’s wolf. Oren stood over them, a pendant of ruby and silver clutched in one hand. Miss Mitcham was cowering from the scene and muttering the Lord’s Prayer.
Gedeon knelt beside Cogna and searched for a pulse. “Oren!” he shouted. “What have you done?”
“Forgive me, Gedeon,” Oren said, reaching for the back of his belt, underneath his jacket. “I must.”
Ilsa expected a weapon – Oren was carrying several of them – and gasped when she saw what he had been hiding underneath his jacket.
All the confusion and second-guessing. All the waiting to see whether the rebels would come again. But they had never stolen Fyfe’s pocket forge.
Oren had.
Gedeon must have recognised it, for he left Cogna and launched himself across the attic, toppling a stack of crates. “No, Oren! What are you doing?”
Ilsa blocked his path. His wide, harried gaze swung to her in confusion, and Ilsa shook her head. “It’s what’s right,” she said, hearing the roar of flame as the forge came to life. “That amulet stole his magic and made him a helpless prisoner, Gedeon. It’s bad magic. He’s got to destroy it.”
In a flash, the attic filled with livid red light. Ilsa turned, an arm raised to cover her eyes. The amulet was glowing as Oren held the flame to it, and trembling horribly like a living thing. Even more light burst from the it, blinding Ilsa, and she heard it hit the floor as Oren dropped it. She closed her eyes, but the red light shone right through the lids. A long moment passed before the glow receded, and when Ilsa dared look again, the attic was even darker than before.
“Did it work?” she said. She scrambled forward, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. There on the floor, with the chain still attached to it, was a smouldering pool of silver swirled with ruby. The metal was dull; the ruby clouded. As Ilsa watched, fascinated, it dried to a caked powder.
The seventh Seer’s amulet was gone.
Gedeon let out a growl of rage. “I don’t understand you, Oren! You have never been afraid to do what is necessary.” He gestured at Cogna, lying prone on the floor.
Oren blinked at Gedeon like he hadn’t understood him.
“Shortly after your ancestor, Morgan Ravenswood, led the liberation and claimed Camden for the Changelings, she had a daughter with a man named Carlin. She chose to name her Ravenswood.”
“I know this,” said Gedeon, sounding unfortunately like a petulant child.
“But do you know why? Do you know why your name has endured through fourteen generations? Why your mother also passed on her family name to you and Ilsa? Why she took such drastic steps to ensure someone in her family survived? It is a pledge Morgan made, to devote not only her life to the freedom and safety of her people, but the lives of her entire line, in perpetuity. Your name is important to Camden because it is an emblem of stability and strength. It is a promise to the Changelings that there is someone who will endure so that they may endure. Who will die, if necessary, so they may live.” His voice dropped to a whisper at the end, and he drew a breath. Ilsa did not need to guess what that promise had meant to Oren personally. She understood hope.
