“Go to sleep, cousin dearest,” she heard Hester say. “The world will still be as it is in the morning.”
42
Ilsa wanted to approach Gedeon, but instead she caught herself spying on him from the library. Spying was familiar. Reunions with long-lost siblings were uncharted territory.
Gedeon was in the garden, and Cassia was with him. He had caught up with her there twenty minutes ago, and now he sat on a bench pouring his heart out while the Sorcerer stood rigidly before him. Her arms were wrapped around her like a shield.
It was not going well. Cassia had not thawed one iota since the start of the conversation. And while Ilsa couldn’t blame her, she was quietly cheering for her brother, hoping he could transform the doll into the sharp and soft, determined and gentle, dangerous Cassia she liked more.
But it wasn’t to be. After nearly an hour – and Ilsa kneeling on the window seat with her nose to the glass the whole time – Cassia turned and stalked back to the house, leaving Gedeon on the bench with his head in his hands.
Ilsa summoned her courage as she scrambled from the seat, straightened her skirt and her hair, and went outside to join him.
He didn’t notice her approach, what with his wallowing. It would have been easier if he’d looked up, said hello, started the conversation maybe.
Instead, Ilsa was lumped with breaking the ice.
“What’d she say?”
Gedeon’s head shot up. Several emotions – surprise, pleasure, bashfulness – crossed his features before his melancholy frown returned.
“Nothing that should be repeated in polite company,” he said.
“Din’t no one tell you? I’m as common as they come.”
“I’m getting that.” A smirk touched his lips. “It’s rather charming.”
There was a weighty silence. Ilsa wanted to tell him Cassia would come around, but she wasn’t sure it was true. She also wanted to ask how stupid he had to be to risk losing her this way. From what she knew of Cassia, pretty stupid, and from what she knew of her brother, it was highly possible.
Gedeon got to his feet and beckoned for her to follow him through the garden. “They tell me you grew up in that place.”
“That’s right,” said Ilsa. She decided to spare him the details for now.
Gedeon stopped suddenly. He took hold of her shoulders, turned her to face him and pressed a tentative kiss to her forehead. Ilsa smelled apples and cut grass.
“I’m so sorry, Ilsa,” he said into her hair. Ilsa jolted to hear Gedeon speak her name. She had spent so long imagining this that it all felt a little like she still was. “That I did not find you. That I accepted that you were dead. I should have tried harder. You deserved better than that life.”
Swiftly, and very briefly, she wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to his chest. She didn’t know him; she knew that. She just wanted to know how it felt to be held by her brother. When she pulled away, Gedeon’s cheeks had turned pink.
“All them kids deserve better than that,” Ilsa said. “It’s the way the dice fell. If I start thinking how unfair it all is, I’ll go mad.”
Gedeon studied her admiringly and nodded.
“’Sides,” she went on, “turns out I din’t need you to find me. I found you first.”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder and Gedeon grinned.
“Before I forget,” he said, the smile sliding off his face, “there’s a furious missive on my desk from the Underground.”
“Ah.”
“They’re claiming you broke nearly every tenet of the Principles.”
“That’s an exaggeration!”
“But not a lie?” Ilsa chewed the inside of her cheek. “Ilsa, do you know that they can respond however they choose and the Principles won’t protect you? They seem interested in Fyfe’s dampener technology so I think I can negotiate, but you could have started a war.”
“You’re one to talk,” Ilsa muttered under her breath.
Gedeon laughed wryly and shook his head. “Please don’t take after me. We’ll be in so much trouble, you and I.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ilsa. “I mean it. I ain’t had to live by the rules for a long time. I din’t take it seriously.”
“And now?”
Now? Ilsa had people who would pay for her mistakes. She couldn’t pretend the rules weren’t hers to follow, however unjust they seemed. “Now I’m gonna. Cross my heart, it ain’t gonna happen again.”
“I appreciate it,” said Gedeon solemnly, and Ilsa saw the leader in him; a man who made her want to make him proud, and not just because he was her brother.
They wandered in silence through the garden until they were among the roses. By the conservatory, Fyfe was explaining something about biology and soil to Cogna. Aelius sat watching. He had healed enough to shift back into his younger body. No one would ever have known.
“Speaking of unfair.” She nodded towards the Oracle. “I know they’re as good as doomed back in the Docklands, but you need to take Cogna back.”
Gedeon scowled. “But I like Cogna.”
Ilsa could tell him Cogna had lied to him, but it would raise questions she didn’t want to answer. “Enough to have Oracles coming at us ’til we’re extinct?” she said instead.
Gedeon slumped onto a bench with a dramatic sigh. “The Docklands do not care about Cogna,” he said. “They fear Cogna. As long as the child’s not working against them, they’ll tire eventually.”
“But if Cogna stays here, how d’you s’pect to convince the Oracles—”
“There are some complicated spells involved in glamouring a corpse,” said Gedeon abruptly,
