Ilsa toyed absent-mindedly with the worn corner of the cabinet as she worked up to her reason for being there. “Eliot said you might be the one to talk to ’bout what happened with Gedeon just before he disappeared,” she said, and Cassia blanched. “He said something ’bout pillow talk.”
“Oh.” Cassia turned back to her potion.
“I ain’t judging. I’ve known lots of girls what’ve lain with men what ain’t their husbands.”
“It’s not that. The Witherward is different to where you grew up. Our laws are concerned with far graver matters than our flesh. Our deities don’t condemn us for what we do with ours.
Hester and Fyfe’s mother was married to neither of the men who fathered her children, you know, and she was held in the highest esteem by all of Camden.”
Perhaps Ilsa should have suspected something like that when she first learned a woman was in charge in Camden. Things were not as she had known them in the Otherworld.
“It’s just that… Eliot doesn’t approve of me.”
“Why’s that?”
Cassia’s voice quivered as she answered. “My parents and yours were good friends. They wanted to strengthen the Heart’s alliance with Camden, and raising us without the biases of their generation and my grandfather’s was a way of accomplishing that. So they sent me here. I’ve known Gedeon since we were five years old. I lived here in the Zoo with your family. Eliot’s father was a lieutenant to your mother so Eliot grew up here too. We played together. We shared a governess and took lessons together. Camden is my home and it always has been.” Her voice broke. Indignation flared in her lovely, wide eyes. “But I needed a Sorcerer’s education too. I wasn’t entirely unversed in how to use my talents, but they did suffer because of my upbringing, so when I was fifteen, I went home.”
“Was that before you and Gedeon were…?”
A faint, humourless smile appeared on Cassia’s lips, but her eyes became even more desolate. “I always loved him. He has this way. He made all our differences feel like puzzles he wanted to solve. Even as a child, I knew that whatever I told him, he would make me feel clever or interesting or special for saying it. He just has this… curiosity for everything and everyone.” She blinked, suddenly self-conscious. “I knew that he felt for me too, but I was shy. It was the hardest decision I ever made; to leave just as he was coming of age and meeting so many girls. I thought, without a doubt, he would fall in love while I was gone, and if I ever came back, I would be just this girl he knew once, deserving of his kindness and attention the way everyone is, but nothing more. But I wasn’t a Changeling, I was a Sorcerer, and I wanted to be a talented one.” She shrugged, a small smile creeping onto her lips. “And now, I suppose am.”
Ilsa blinked. “But you weren’t going far! You din’t have to be separated.”
“It wasn’t the distance. There were those in the Heart already suspicious of my return. To split myself between the two would have meant belonging neither here nor there. It was hard enough being the only Sorcerer in Camden.” There was an understanding between them then that only experience could bring. Cassia flashed that painful smile again. “I needn’t have worried. The night I came back to the Zoo, everyone was looking for him. He was about to become alpha and he wasn’t ready. Hester and Oren were putting him through hours of instruction every day. They were frantic that he was missing. I was about to join the search, but when I got to my room, I found a note on the bed telling me to meet him in the park. He had stolen away with pockets full of the sweet buns he had known I would miss – like a child. He wanted to know everything. It was as if no time had passed at all.”
Cassia’s eyes met hers with a sudden intensity. “He spoke of you often, Ilsa. They used to tell him as a child that you were out there and he would have his little sister back one day, before that woman told us you were dead. It was an unbearable sorrow to him. He never stopped mourning you.”
As if from a distance, Ilsa marvelled at how she was still capable of feeling such pain. Gedeon had mourned her. He mourned her still. It was too much; she pushed the feeling down and cleared her throat. “And Eliot?”
Cassia sighed. “We were never the closest of friends. We were both quiet and introverted. We were both too serious to relax around one another. I always thought I was difficult to get to know, but Eliot couldn’t make a friend if he were shackled to a willing volunteer. We needed Gedeon to bring us together. But that wasn’t the problem.” Her eyes glazed over and she turned to the window. “In the years I was gone, everything changed for Eliot. His father disappeared. Did you know?” Ilsa shook her head, her mind flashing back to that first night in the park. The torment she’d seen when she asked about Eliot’s father. “Oftentimes, when someone is assassinated by the Order of Shadows, that’s all that happens.”
“Assassinated? You mean for money?”
Cassia nodded. “The Order of Shadows is the Wraith guild of mercenaries that Captain Fowler belongs to. They’re as powerful as any of the factions. They might even be as large. They never act against anyone unless there’s a fee involved but… well, one can’t fault them for playing to their strengths as Wraiths.
“Anyway, assassination was the verdict, but sadly Eliot and his family will never know for sure. And we’ve no clue as to why. I understand
