Ilsa balled her hands into fists to stop them from shaking. “And you’ve seen such a thing?”
He smiled. Perhaps it was the moonlight, but that smile was a vicious thing, unguarded and yet deceitful, like a fake smile painted on a wooden puppet. “Twice.”
“And where do they live? The Psi.”
“Let’s just say we’re surrounded by enemies on every side. That is what our soldiers are protecting the Zoo from: this city.” He gestured around them again, somewhat wildly. Ilsa could tell he was reaching the crescendo. “It was founded on discontent and tribalism and it broke along those fault lines as it was always destined to do. Welcome to London, the city that orphaned you.” His breath left him in a rush. He ran a hand through his already bedraggled hair as he added, quieter: “You were better off where you came from.”
In the sudden hush that fell, he wandered away a little, almost as if he’d forgotten she was there. But Ilsa didn’t mind. She too, needed to breathe. Her thoughts were tumbling too quickly over one another, like a barrel bouncing over stones as it rolled down a hill; if it didn’t slow, it would break apart.
“So they really are dead, then?” she said, doing her best to sound collected. “My parents.”
His eyes were black in the moonlight as he turned to her, but they seemed to grow darker still as it dawned on him. “You didn’t know.”
Ilsa opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She thought she had known. She had been an orphan all her life, and though she hadn’t rested without knowing where her magic came from, she had long accepted the truth that it meant being without a family. But the confirmation hollowed her out and whistled through her like an icy draft down empty corridors.
She shook her head. “I don’t know nothing. Not who they were, or ’bout this place. Or magic.”
The boy looked skyward and let out a sound halfway between a sigh and a groan. “Heaven, earth, and all the damned constellations,” he said under his breath. “Well, now you do.”
If that was what passed for sympathy, Ilsa would take it. A kind word or a gentle hand on her arm would bring on hateful tears. Tears of what, she wasn’t sure. Bewilderment, grief, injustice; they all bled together and left her numb.
“You knew them? My—” parents. My mother and father. She couldn’t make the words come a second time; they sounded too foreign. No one had ever been hers, and no one was hers still. Her mother and father were dead.
“Of course I didn’t…” he began snippily, clearly struggling to adjust to Ilsa’s absolute ignorance. His hands found refuge in his pockets once more, defensive. “I was an infant when they passed. My… my father was a lieutenant to the alpha, as I am now. Or was. I’m not sure any more.”
“Your father – he ever talk about them?”
His unforgiving gaze snapped to hers. She had said something wrong. The wrongness of it flashed across the boy’s face, torment so bleak Ilsa wished she could unsee it, and yet so brief she wasn’t sure she had. He stared at her like she were a ghost, mouth open like he might speak, but he didn’t.
“How’d they die, then?” She moved closer. She needed him to understand how important this was. “Tell me that at least.”
“They won’t like that you’re talking to me,” he said, almost to himself.
“Who?”
“The other lieutenants. I shouldn’t be the one to tell you these things.”
“Please.” Ilsa hated to beg, but the word was out before she could stop herself. None of it was as she’d thought. She had imagined all sorts of scenarios leading to her being left at the orphanage, and most had involved her parents’ horror at what they had birthed. Now that she was back in the world she had come from – a world full of magic – she knew this couldn’t have been the case. She thought she would feel relieved, validated, but though her parents were truly dead, she understood less than ever why she’d been orphaned.
“I deserve to know why I was left at an orphanage.”
He straightened, unable to hide his surprise. “You weren’t left at an orphanage.”
“I – I was abandoned,” Ilsa said stubbornly.
The boy was shaking his head slowly. “You were hidden in the Otherworld to protect you. The day you were born was the day your parents were murdered.”
Ilsa drew a sharp breath and wondered how it could hurt so much to hear of something she did not remember happening to people she had not known. “How?”
He ran a hand through his already dishevelled hair and looked about like someone – one of the lieutenants, perhaps – was about to catch them. Ilsa was compelled to look too, but there was nothing around them but an expanse of moonlit park. They were too far from the house to draw attention.
“Your mother thought she could tilt the needle towards peace. Before your birth, she gathered the faction leaders and proposed the Principles. They’re… rules of engagement. Break the Principles against another faction and their leader can retaliate as they see fit. Follow them, and you have the best chance of a peaceful life.”
Rules of engagement. Just like on a battlefield.
“Each faction leader can govern their quarter as they choose, but they agree to enforce the Principles. And they did. The faction leaders signed and it was done.” He laughed pitifully. “Should have been done. But there were dissenters. A small band of propagandists and enough hate-filled citizens to listen to them and be convinced that the Principles curtailed their freedom. The guard points, for example.” He nodded at the pinprick lanterns at the west edge of the park. “The Principles say we must pass from one quarter
