Ilsa offered her a smile, and Cassia returned it, though the cracks were showing at the edges. It was plain in her eyes that any hope Cassia felt was fading fast. She had more to say, but she hesitated, her gaze haunted.
“Gedeon would be furious that I almost got you killed today,” she said carefully, and Ilsa wondered what she was trying to keep from her voice. “He’s always been this way, really. It’s why he left. He would always rather do things himself than risk anyone he cares for.”
It might have sounded like a noble thing, but not the way Cassia said it.
“And what’s he doing this time?” asked Ilsa.
Any softness in the girl’s gaze hardened in an instant. “If you really wish to find out where Gedeon is, you should ask Eliot,” she said tightly, then she let herself out, leaving Ilsa alone with her blood-soaked thoughts.
12
Ilsa’s grief kept her from sleeping that night, and the peculiarity with the clocks didn’t help. Around midnight, she gave up trying and slipped from her room, drawn back to the row of portraits in the long gallery where she had first laid eyes on her parents.
On this night, at this hour, the moon was at a different slant, and when Ilsa stood before the very last portrait – the one the shadows had kept from her the first time – she could see the face of the boy looking back at her.
He was a young man, really, at nineteen; captured here less than a year ago, she had been told. He wore a red sash, like the subjects of the many portraits she couldn’t bring herself to look at yet, and his hair was a thick golden-blonde. He was very handsome, with strong cheekbones, lightly tanned skin, and an indefinable decency in his expression. The artist had captured a sharpness and strength of spirit in his hazel eyes.
Ilsa felt an entirely different presence stood in front of this portrait than the one of her parents. She wanted to reach up and brush her fingers over his brow, his hair, and along the edge of his jaw, like she might be able to feel the contours of a real face. Her brother, who thought her dead. She ached with wondering what else he had thought about her while she was busy not daring to imagine him. If she was ever going to know, they needed to find him, and Ilsa was going to be the one to do it.
Cassia had told her to ask Eliot. The only trouble was, this was the only place she knew to look for him. Perhaps he was up and wandering the corridors too, but in a house so big, at an hour so dark, what chance did they have of stumbling across each other?
As the thought crossed her mind, a burst of noise made her jump. Her first thought was that she’d been wrong; Eliot was here after all, about to emerge from the shadows and frighten her like last time. But then she recognised the sound for what it was: a swell of raucous laughter, coming to her from somewhere outside.
Ilsa crept to the window. Despite the hour, a ground-floor window at the corner of the east wing was illuminated, casting a swath of yellow light across the gravel path that ran by the house. As Ilsa watched, a second sliver of light appeared and widened as a door was opened, spilling two men into the garden. Not just men, Ilsa realised as they shifted. Wolves. They split off to their respective watches, melting into the night like shadows, but movement at the window told Ilsa there were more inside, and a sudden curiosity took hold.
It was a pitifully long time before Ilsa located the room; she could barely find her way around the Zoo in daylight. It wasn’t until another burst of laughter echoed through the corridors that she was able to follow the sound down a narrow passage that ran by the kitchen.
She found herself at the door of a guardroom; a plain space with a brick floor and white walls, with a long table and benches in the centre. Three wolves were in the middle of a card game, but they dropped their hands and stood at the same moment that Ilsa entered.
She shot an alarmed glance behind her, expecting to find Hester had followed her down there. But no; it was her the wolves were staring at as they stood to attention.
“What?” said Ilsa warily. They looked at each other as if deciding what to do, and Ilsa was suddenly unsure of herself. “I din’t mean to intrude. I saw the light on is all.”
Two of the wolves relaxed their posture. The third, a stocky young man with a mousy beard, looked Ilsa up and down distrustfully.
“Please, Miss Ravenswood, do come in,” said the nearest. She had a rounded mane of tight black curls, black-brown skin, and she was dressed like a lady in a lemon-yellow gown, her militia sash around one arm. Ilsa had expected the attire of a soldier, but of course, there was no need for a soldier who could shift at will to dress any way at all.
“Yes, do,” said the third, a man with russet-brown hair and freckles. He grinned at the wolf in the yellow dress as they sat back down. “I was about to take all of Georgiana’s money, and I think I’d quite like a witness.”
“You should be so lucky, Rye. Deal the next card. Miss Ravenswood…”
“Ilsa,” she corrected. Miss Ravenswood still sounded like someone else.
“Do you want to play with us, Ilsa?” said Georgiana.
“But we’re mid-game,” blurted the bearded wolf who didn’t appear to possess a smile.
“We can deal her in on the next round,” said Rye.
“S’alright,” said Ilsa before the other man could object again, though she
