“The Principles said no one could use their magic beyond their own quarter. The propagandists said it was your mother’s conspiracy to disarm the citizens of the other factions.
“The Principles said in writing that the faction leaders recognised Camden as the territory of the Changelings. And the propagandists said it was just the beginning; that if we were allowed a place in the city, we would grow our territory and our numbers until every other faction fell to us.”
“That don’t make no sense,” said Ilsa, shaking her head. “Why’d they think it was some conspiracy? You said all the faction leaders agreed to them.”
“Stars, that didn’t matter! It was never about the Principles. When London was settled, we didn’t yet exist. The last magic, they call us. Two thousand years younger than the Wraiths. One hundred thousand younger than the Sorcerers. The legitimate peoples of London could not tolerate each other, let alone us, but we were here anyway, and we were lost. Morgan Ravenswood united the Changelings, and then she won Camden for us with teeth and claws. With blood. Her family have been paid in kind ever since. Your parents were killed for the crimes of your ancestor and the desire to be better than her. They were…” he faltered, shook his head. His gaze found hers, tentatively, then shifted away again, finding a spot in the grass to address instead. “They were run into hiding. But they were found. The way I understand it, they had had a plan to hide you in the Otherworld since they learned you were coming. It was supposed to be temporary. Just until the unrest settled a little; a handful of years at most. You were supposed to be cared for there.”
Cared for. “They din’t leave me in an orphanage?”
“I don’t know the details, of course. Like I said, I’m too young to remember any of this first-hand. But they had a friend in the Otherworld whom they trusted. Another Changeling. Lord Walcott, I believe his name was. He had agreed to make you his ward until it was safe for you to return.”
“A lord?” Ilsa let out a miserable laugh, earning her a wary sideways glance. This life she had somehow lost; it was worse than simply cared for, which would have been enough. It was cared for by some wealthy Changeling lord, who would have fed her well and kept her in clean clothes and a warm bed; who would have told her what a Changeling was, and that she had had a mother and father who wanted her. The laugh that might have been a sob came again. “Where is he, then? This Walcott.”
“Dead.” He delivered the word as gently as he had the truth of her parents. “Smallpox. When you were still an infant. Not long after, Ilsa Ravenswood died of it too.”
“I – beg pardon?”
Ilsa recognised the way he was watching her, like a spectator trying to work out the trick before the final flourish, and she knew before he spoke that he didn’t have the answers. “My words exactly when we learned you were alive. No one had been in close contact with Walcott. I imagine they didn’t want to draw attention to him, and to you. He would signal us that all was well, and then the signals stopped coming. When someone was sent to investigate, they were told you were both dead.”
A noxious fear Ilsa didn’t want to name crept into her belly. “By who?”
“Walcott’s beneficiary. She was his housekeeper, I believe. He left her everything, including guardianship of you.” God granted me this house, child, and He’ll have thanks for His grace, whatever He asks of me. “She said she had nursed the baby herself until the end and was holding her when she died,” he added slowly, purposefully. “I remember that specifically.”
I will cure you of that demon inside you, as He wishes.
“What was her name?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” he said again. But he didn’t need to know, because Ilsa did. She understood what had been done to send her life down the path it had taken.
The boy was watching her expectantly. “Do you know of her?” he prompted when Ilsa didn’t speak. “Do you know why she said that?”
Yes, she wanted to say, but she knew the rest of the words wouldn’t come. She knew she couldn’t think on it right now, not with everything else she had learned. Magic, warfare, her parents’ slaughter. It was too much.
“P’raps Ilsa Ravenswood is dead,” she said instead, testing the way it felt and whether she could believe it. She wrapped her arms around her waist tightly. “P’raps I ain’t her.”
The boy shot her a probing look, black shadow and stark light throwing the crease of his brow into stark relief. “Come with me,” he said. “That is, if you would risk stepping back into the house and being a captive once more.”
Then he was a raven again, climbing high beyond the tops of the oak trees where he circled, waiting for her.
Ilsa looked around her at the silent expanse of Regent’s Park. Where would she go, if not with him? This was where the answers she sought could be found. So she shifted and soared to join the raven; the first Changeling she had ever known, she realised with a pang.
They crept back across the wisteria-blanketed wall and swooped low over the lawn, then slipped in through an open window on the first floor and walked through the cavernous hallways in silence. He still hesitated at every doorway, listened before every turn. Ilsa realised in the dizzying torrent of questions answered, the mystery of this boy she had found lurking in the darkness had fallen to the wayside. She studied the sharp lines of his
