Ilsa growled, and the sound reverberated off walls that weren’t there. She pawed in a circle, thrashing her tail, tracing the void with her eyes and finding nothing, but knowing all the same that unimaginable horror lurked there.
Then a light fell on her. Looking up, Ilsa saw a hole. A gap in the void where the sky above London poked through, rafters and broken roof tiles around its edges. She stepped back, a sinking suspicion taking hold. And beneath her paw, where before there had been nothing, the loose floorboard of the attic creaked.
A ribbon of darkness lashed out and struck her in the side. She roared, her legs buckling, pain burning across her ribs. Another hit her in the back, agony racing up and down her spine as her nerves sang from the blow.
Demon, said a voice. Devil’s get. The darkness shivered, and Ilsa knew what lurked there.
She pulled herself into a ball as she took another blow to the head, tail tucked tight to her body, ears flat against her skull. She would never be free. She would never be safe. She screwed her eyes shut, but she could still see it all; the attic, the woman with the switch.
And there, at the corner of her vision, Pyval, flickering like a flame. Was he doing this to her? Or had her own terror taken over?
Another lash. Another sting of pain. But she could make it end. Pyval danced in the void, never in one place, but if she focused her gaze, she could hold him in the corner of her vision. Then, maybe…
She pulled herself onto four legs. She couldn’t see the drawing room, couldn’t even convince herself it was there, but she could picture it. She could imagine this horror wasn’t real. Pyval had been stood beside the couch, opposite the French windows, and if she kept her gaze elsewhere, he always hovered in the same spot in the void. She had nothing else to go on, but she leapt. Pyval raised an arm in defence, but Ilsa was defending herself too. It was instinct, and she struck without a thought.
Someone roared. Miss Mitcham, the pain, the attic all vanished, and the light rushed in. Ilsa was on the floor, her skirts pooled around her, her back to the wall. She felt her ribs, her face. She was uninjured, but the heedless dread wouldn’t vanish.
Pyval hissed. He was clutching his arm, blood seeping through his fingers. Alitz was watching him impassively. Fyfe appeared at the door of the drawing room, eyes wide with horror at the scene within. Ilsa pushed herself up on shaking legs, and Fyfe dashed to help her.
“I din’t mean to bite him,” she murmured, stunned. “I was just trying to make it stop.”
She had only wanted to knock him out of his concentration. She didn’t even remember opening her jaws.
Across the room, the Whisperers were engaged in a fierce, silent exchange. Alitz tore her seething gaze away from her assistant long enough address them. “He needs stitches,” she said, her tone as unreadable as ever. “Would you be so good as to fetch a healer?”
Fyfe hesitated, a supporting hand still on Ilsa’s arm and a distrustful frown aimed at Pyval. But when the Whisperer removed his hand from his injured arm, and blood gushed from the wound onto the floor, Fyfe snapped to his senses.
He dragged Ilsa from the room with him.
“Are you alright?”
Ilsa nodded. “Fine. Go find a healer.” She smiled weakly. “My lessons with Alitz will be really awkward if he bleeds out.”
“I’ll be right back.”
But Ilsa didn’t wait for Fyfe to return. She made for her room – the sounds of servants and wolves responding to the emergency echoing around her – locked the door, and lay down on the bed.
Only then did she let the tears come.
* * *
Ilsa woke gasping for air, fistfuls of bed linen gripped in both hands.
Night had fallen, and she hastened out of bed to turn up the lamps; to reassure herself she wasn’t still dreaming. But though the nightmare faded with the light, the memory of the waking moments she had spent in that void continued to assault her.
The Zoo trusted Alitz, and Alitz trusted Pyval. And whatever it had cost her, she now had a crystal clear idea of the worst things a Whisperer could do to her, and how helpless she was to stop them when she used her own magic.
But did that make terrorising her a kindness? Had Pyval even meant to conjure the worst memories Ilsa had, or had she done that herself? Did she need to stop being a coward and confront her training head-on, or was it right to put her foot down and refuse to be taught by him?
She couldn’t trust her instincts when it came to Pyval; they were muddied by fear.
The lights weren’t dousing her persisting sense of unease, and if Ilsa just sat she would descend into panic, so she decided to take a walk. If no one was in the kitchen, she would make herself some tea.
But she didn’t get as far as the kitchen. At the top of the stairs descending to the entrance hall, a different room – a different idea – ensnared her.
She had not set foot in her brother’s chambers since that first time; the day she’d realised so much of what she’d hoped for was already gone. The same stillness permeated the room; the same uncanny sense that someone had just stepped out and left their life behind only a moment before.
Though it was clear someone still came in here to clean, no one had drawn the curtains, and another clear night filled the rooms with soft moonlight. Ilsa trod lightly through the sitting room and the study, into the bedchamber, her footfalls whispering on the wood floors and
