Lost.
She had let her desperation sweep her up and carry her to a whole other world, with nothing but a fool’s hope that things would be better after. But ‘better’ was an easy target to a girl who had just seen her dearest friend murdered. No one could mistake Ilsa’s decisions in the hours since for well-thought-out ones. What if nothing was better here? What if the rebels attacked the Zoo again tonight and she was killed? What if they never found her brother and Camden crumbled without him? What if they did, and he was cruel and dangerous; a tyrant?
She gripped the dress tighter in her fists. She was trapped between two lives, and neither was right; neither was safe. Here, she had security in all the ways she’d wanted, and none of the ways that mattered. What she had carved out in the Otherworld was familiar, and hard-earned. It had a different kind of value. But would these people even let her have it back? If she put her old dress back on, and walked out the door and all the way back through Westminster Abbey, would they come after her? They said she wasn’t a prisoner – that the wolves weren’t there to keep her in – but not being a prisoner didn’t make her free. Only choices made a person free.
Ilsa had to find out if she had any.
So the following morning, she dressed, did her hair, and matched a sensible black hat with a sensible black bag she found among the things Cassia had bought her. She had lost her own somewhere between the theatre and the portal. Then she put on a dark red winter coat and matching stole she had to dig from the back of the wardrobe, where they still resided in the box they were delivered in. It was early February after all, and no one had expected she would need them for months.
But where Ilsa was headed, they would be essential.
She found most of the lieutenants in the breakfast room. Cassia stood by the window, a cup and saucer in her hands and a contemplative look on her face. Aelius was entirely hidden behind a broadsheet, one leg crossed over the other, foot dangling in an immaculate shoe that looked like it had never touched earth. He was whistling a low tune off-key, and Ilsa wondered how no one told him to stop. Beside him, Oren was making careful markings in his notebook. His glasses were perched daintily on his nose, and his empty breakfast plate sat to one side, the knife and fork resting perfectly level with one another at a right angle to the edge of the table.
Eliot was, of course, on the other side of the room, as far as he could be from anyone. His eyes were closed, his elbow rested on the arm of his chair, and he had a teacup cradled in his fist. It was pressed to his temple like he could absorb its contents straight into his brain. The sun shone directly onto his face, highlighting the dark circles under his eyes, but when Ilsa stepped into the room, he blinked awake, like he had been waiting for her. He rubbed a hand over his face, a wry smile forming on one corner of his mouth.
“What an eye you have for colour, Cassia,” he said.
Cassia was jolted from her thoughts. “What? Oh,” she said when she saw Ilsa dressed in the coat she had bought, but then realisation dawned in her eyes. “Oh.”
Oren glanced up distractedly. “If you mean to leave the house, I must insist you disguise yourself and one of the wolves accompany you,” he said. “And it’s important you don’t leave Camden.”
Aelius chuckled. “I think she means to go much further than the boundaries of the Changeling quarter, Oren my lad,” he said, turning the page of his paper.
Ilsa took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and reminded herself she was not asking for permission; she was issuing a threat. They would let her go, proving she was safe and among friends, or Ilsa was leaving anyway, whatever it took, and she wasn’t coming back.
She would not be a prisoner.
“I’m expected at the theatre.”
Oren blinked rapidly. “You still wish to go back to the Otherworld and place yourself at the mercy of the Seer’s acolytes?”
“Wishing’s got nothing to do with it. Girls what grow up in orphanages are lucky if they ain’t in the workhouse. You learn to meet your obligations pretty quick with that hanging over you, and I got somewhere to be. So I’m gonna do the show ’til Mr Blume finds a replacement, ’cause it’s what’s professional. And” – Ilsa swallowed. She was about to push her luck – “and I’d be much obliged if you’d settle his debts for him. Seems you can afford it. And you are costing him a good assistant.”
If pressed on the risk of her magician accruing new debts with old habits, Ilsa had a speech prepared for that too. She did not intend to abandon Blume with a little money and cross her fingers that he would finally get his feet under him. She wasn’t leaving the Isolde until she had made him understand that this was a new start for both of them; a chance he couldn’t squander.
Aelius waved a dismissive hand. “You can consider his debts handled, my darling, but” – his humour had vanished – “we’re talking of Oracles. Don’t you understand? Heavens, if I were an acolyte, I would already be at the theatre.”
“No, it’s you what don’t understand! I messed up our finale. We got one more chance to stay on the billing or else Mr Blume’s fired, and it’ll be the last time. No one’ll hire him no more and it’ll be because of me. I ain’t the only one with everything to lose.” Even as she said it, she shivered to think
