Not the window then. If she could get to the ground floor, she could slip out and get as far away from the militia as she could before she grew wings. Ilsa unfurled her fingers from the latch and stepped away from the window with a slowness that belied her hammering heart, and as she turned to the door, she shifted. Her limbs pulled in towards her body and her skin prickled sharply as she grew fur. The breath was forced from her lungs as she was pressed down, down into the smallest form she could become: a mouse. It had served her well for sneaking in the past, including slipping under doors when she did not wish to be caught using them.
But Ilsa could not slip under this door. She struggled for a moment, head and shoulders wedged in the gap, paws grappling for purchase against the wood floor, but the space was far too small.
She became human again in a heap on the floor, panic rising with every moment, and looked wistfully at the fireplace. Another Changeling could escape up the chimney; in a space that small, Ilsa was as likely to suffocate from fright as she was to reach the top. Her chest tightened just thinking of it.
It tightened further as she got to her feet and wrapped her hand around the doorknob. She was leaving this room in her human form, or she was not leaving at all. The idea that they might have locked her in when she was capable of escaping in so many other ways had seemed pointless before, but now it was burrowing in Ilsa’s gut like it wanted to tear straight through her. She couldn’t be locked in, she thought as she turned the handle. She couldn’t be trapped in here.
But the latch gave without a whisper and the door opened smoothly. Ilsa could have sunk to her knees with relief but instead she braced herself, waiting, ready to sprout wings should a canine beast barrel through the open door.
But the hallway beyond the chamber was deserted. It was a cavernous space, wider than any room Ilsa had ever lived in, and made bigger still by the darkness lurking where the paltry midnight light didn’t reach, like the corridor might go on or up or outwards forever. Somewhere distant, a clock ticked on, but no floorboard creaked, no lights flickered. The household was sleeping, not guarding her like a prisoner.
Still, Ilsa kept her wits about her as she crept softly down the corridor. She rounded a corner, and the moonlight streamed in through tall windows, and revealed the rest of the house to be just as fine as the chamber she had woken in. It illuminated filigreed consoles, marble busts, and crystal vases of fresh flowers. A row of portraits faced the windows, of a size that made Ilsa wonder how a person could paint when they could only see part of their work at one time. Regal giants looked down at her from the frames, sometimes in twos or threes, faces sober and refined, each draped in a red sash like the tags worn by the wolves. They were all relations; the generations of a family immortalised. As Ilsa went from one painting to the next, each subject wore the ghost of the last in their features.
Every one of them made her uneasy, but it wasn’t until she was very near the end of the gallery, where the last few paintings lingered in shadow, that her sense of the uncanny peaked.
She stopped before a portrait of a man and a woman; a plaque on the frame read Alpha Lyander and Thorne Nyberg and was dated eighteen years previously. The woman had a heart-shaped face and fair complexion. The artist had captured the way the light struck her thick, golden hair, and her hazel eyes had hues of caramel and vivid green. The man – her husband, Ilsa guessed – was also fair-haired, with a neat beard and moustache, and slightly sunken features. Ilsa’s attention was wrested by his eyes; their shape, their pronounced lids, the familiarity of them. His mouth was familiar too. As she studied the painting, Ilsa put her fingers to her own lips to feel their shape.
But then, from the darkness in the corner of the corridor came a rumbling growl.
Ilsa leapt back, pressing herself against the wall as another wolf – no, something feline and blacker than night – separated from the shadows. The muscled contours of a gigantic body unfurled gracefully as it rose. A long tail uncoiled, whispering against the floorboards as it did so, like a cobra readying to strike. Ilsa was frozen like a rabbit, unable to think, the faces in the painting still muddling her mind.
The big cat bared its teeth at her as it stalked out of the dark, another low growl emanating from its throat. But then its human eyes – blue and unforgiving – took her measure in quick movements, and the teeth vanished. A second later, so did the cat, and in its place was the shadowed form of a young man.
“Oh,” said the former panther. “I thought you were a Sorcerer.”
Ilsa’s breath left her in a rush of relief. Before she had a chance to raise her guard again, the boy turned to disappear into the shadows without another word.
“Wait! Where are you going?” she called after him. Ilsa saw him look over his shoulder, but she still couldn’t make him out properly in the gloom.
“I prefer to contemplate the dead in solitude. You’re here now. It ruins the ambience.” His tone was callous and superior.
“I—”
“Apologise? I accept. Goodnight.”
He made to leave a
