She placed her hands on Eliot’s chest and pushed him into the wall.
He stumbled. He was looking at her now. “What the—”
“How do you like being pushed around, Eliot?”
“I—” he cut off, mouth snapping shut, the indignation wiping clean off his face and leaving it blank.
“I begged you not to lock me in there.” Ilsa was trembling, and she prayed that her words wouldn’t do the same, but she could feel the angry tears building behind her eyes. “P’raps I can’t… fight off rebels as well as you or… or make a plan if we get attacked. But that don’t give you the right to lock me up like I’m the fine china you don’t want the rebels to break. So you can hang your orders! You think Hester’s got a bite? Well I can still shift, and I’ll rip your bloody throat out the next time.”
For a long moment the only sound was Ilsa’s breathing as it came in jagged pulls of air. Slowly, Eliot leaned back against the wall and buried his face in his hands.
“Stars help me,” he whispered between his fingers. When he looked up at her, bleak remorse shone in his eyes. “I’ve grown so used to doing as Hester orders,” he said softly, “even when it feels wrong.” He rubbed his eyes and rolled them heavenward. “Though now I think on it, I would have forced her into that room too. I panicked. Ilsa, I’m so very sorry.”
Ilsa nodded tightly, the violence that had been coiling inside her like a snake loosening. Given time, it would melt away.
Eliot straightened his ruined shirt and fixed his hair, all the while watching her guardedly.
“I didn’t realise the hidden room would be such a… an ordeal for you.”
“It weren’t,” said Ilsa automatically, tilting her chin proudly.
“Really.”
They were near a window seat, and Ilsa dragged herself to it and sat down. Only when she tried to fold her hands in her lap did she notice they were still trembling. There was a spattering of the Oracle’s blood near the hem of her robe, but when she closed her eyes, it wasn’t the image of his bloodied, empty eye socket that assaulted her. It was the door to the hidden room sliding closed. Better to open her eyes and look at Eliot. She concentrated on the sharp lines of his jaw and cheekbones, more elegant than she had first thought; on the fathomless intensity in his eyes as they searched hers with something like concern.
“I’m sorry I shut you in a three-foot box. I ought to have listened.” With the tentativeness of a nervous wild animal, he lowered himself onto the seat beside her. “May I ask something?”
The only safe answer to that question was no, but Ilsa saw an opportunity. “I’ll trade you. You answer one first.”
A muscle fluttered in Eliot’s jaw. “Alright.”
“Where’s Gedeon?”
Eliot’s breath left him in a rush. Ilsa thought it might be relief. “I’m still offended by that question.”
“Then why’d he leave?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“But you might. You might have clues at least.” He was shaking his head, but she pressed on. “What was his mood like? What did you talk about? He do anything strange?”
“No,” snapped Eliot, surprising them both, and Ilsa remembered who he was: the boy no one trusted. The boy with secrets.
“I see they din’t teach you manners in the Witherward,” she parroted, holding his cold glare with her own.
“Oh, they tried.” Eliot leaned his forearms on his knees and rubbed his eyes. He groaned and relented. “Between the attack and Gedeon leaving, I barely saw him. And we didn’t speak once.”
“Weren’t that strange itself?” challenged Ilsa.
“Well, yes, but his cousin had nearly been killed, and as alpha, Gedeon felt responsible.” He paused, then added stonily: “As any of us would.”
“What ’bout… meetings and that?”
“There were none.”
This would get her nowhere. “I s’pose he wanted to be with Hester, din’t he?” she said weakly.
At this, Eliot tilted his head. “Well, no. He barely saw her either.”
“What? How’d you know?”
“Because I hardly left her side,” he said, looking at his hands. The right one clenched and fidgeted, toying with a pocket watch he had no doubt left in his room during the commotion. “I heard him talking with Fliss in the lounge once or twice, but he never came to her bedside. Not when I was with her, at least.”
Ilsa grappled to place this in the growing picture. Hadn’t she decided there was bad blood between Eliot and Hester? Had he sat at her sickbed because he cared for her? Ilsa’s boldness nearly got the better of her, but she bit back any more questions. She had the sense she would scare the honesty out of him if she got too close to the truth.
“Look.” He cleared his throat. “Talk to Cassia. If any of us have been privy to some clues they didn’t recognise, as you say, it’ll be her. Perhaps Gedeon let something pertinent slip during their pillow talk.”
“Their – oh.”
Ilsa marvelled at her own obliviousness. The impenetrable sadness behind her eyes; the cracks she couldn’t hide when someone mentioned Gedeon; the brittle shell she had donned to keep herself upright.
Cassia’s heart was broken.
“I din’t realise,” said Ilsa.
“So you got some information from me after all. Now it’s my turn.” He straightened and eyed her curiously. “You fight with your fists. I hear when you woke up in the Zoo you threatened Cassia with a statue.”
“That ain’t a question.”
“You’re a Changeling, Ilsa. A capable one, I hear. But you don’t use your magic on instinct. Why?”
Ilsa pretended to rearrange the folds of her dressing gown. “I use my magic,” she said. “I used it to sneak and
