If she disentangled herself from Bart—who was currently using his reflection to adjust his cravat—she could give the ribbon she’d saved to Noah before the next dance began.
It seems I’ve made my choice, she thought, swallowing her disappointment.
Noah was perfectly acceptable. He was the son of the Good Commander—arguably the most powerful man in the Republic. And his sister, Laila, was a witch hunter. So, as the hum of instruments faded into silence, signaling the end of this dance, Rune abandoned Bart to his reflection. It would likely be several minutes before he even realized she’d left his side.
As dancers moved off the floor, she started across the ballroom toward Noah, whose face brightened at her approach.
Untying the ribbon from around her wrist, Rune fastened on a smile. She was preparing to continue her tiresome charade a little longer, when someone stepped into her path, cutting her off from her mark.
“Citizen Winters.”
Rune halted at the voice. Her mind clanged like the bells of a firehouse, raising the alarm.
She knew that voice.
Gideon Sharpe.
What was he doing here in her ballroom?
Her brain was in the middle of shutting down, preparing her body to fight or flee, when she suddenly saw the flower he held out.
“I owe you an apology.”
A what?
His palm cupped the rose, its stem hanging down between a gap in his fingers. If there were a more perfect rose, Rune had never encountered it. Crimson petals spiraled out from the center, bending back in mid-bloom.
“I was unthinking earlier,” said Gideon, holding it out to her. “And unkind.”
Knowing that every set of eyes was on them, Rune reluctantly took the rose. She found the stem not full of thorns, or even living; it was soft and sheer. Looking closer, she discovered jade-green silk wrapped tightly around some kind of wire. The petals, too, were fabric. Someone had delicately stitched the edges of each one.
Rune’s gaze skimmed the front of Gideon’s gray suit. It was rare for her to see a garment and not be able to place the designer. Fashion was her specialty. But this style of suit was wholly unfamiliar to her. Vintage? she wondered, impressed despite herself at how perfectly it fit his frame.
He seemed even bigger and broader out of uniform than in one.
“I was returning from a tiring witch hunt tonight,” he explained. “It’s no excuse, but the fatigue made me short-tempered. I was not myself.”
She lifted her eyes to his face.
As their gazes clashed, the ballroom went quiet. The lights, the voices, and the fashions of her guests faded to nothing as an unexpected thought struck Rune.
Gideon Sharpe is the missing name on my list.
It both terrified and tempted her.
But it was one thing to spend her nights as the Crimson Moth, outwitting the Blood Guard and rescuing witches from execution—that kind of danger was familiar. It was something very different to seduce the deadliest witch hunter of all: a cold, brutal soldier who wanted nothing more than to put the Crimson Moth to death.
I’d have to pretend more than ever.
Continuously pulling the wool over his eyes would be Rune’s biggest challenge yet. She would be in constant danger.
But it would be worth the risk …
Because Gideon Sharpe was by far the most tactical choice. If she and Gideon were courting, Rune would have intimate access to all the information she needed to rescue every witch—now and in the future.
She cleared her throat. “You have impeccable timing.” If he’d been fifteen seconds later, she would already be in Noah’s arms, her decision made. “I’ll gladly accept your apology …” Lifting the ribbon she’d untied from her wrist, Rune held it out to him. “… if you’ll dance with me?”
NINE
GIDEON
NORMALLY, GIDEON WENT OUT of his way to avoid parties like this. So when Rune held her ribbon in the air between them, he didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do with it.
As it hung in the space between them, catching the light, every guest in the room fell quiet, their eyes moving to the bumbling idiot standing awkwardly before their hostess, reminding Gideon that he didn’t belong here. How the revolution had changed so much, and also nothing at all.
He was still the poor son of a tailor. The outdated suit he wore declared that to everyone. Gideon had grown up playing on dirt floors, eating watered-down soup to last the bitter winters, feeling his clothes get tighter and more threadbare because there was no money to replace them. All while the people currently gawking at him ate off gold-rimmed plates, fed their leftovers to their fat hounds, and retired their wardrobes at the end of every season.
While Gideon led a desperate group of men through the rat-infested cellars of the palace to murder tyrants in their beds, the “revolutionaries” around him hadn’t stooped to pick up a gun. Or gotten their hands dirty at all. Instead of losing their loved ones in the fighting on the eve of the New Dawn, many of these aristos had handed those loved ones over to be purged, betraying family and friends to keep their status in the New Republic after paying lip service to the Sister Queens for years. As if politics, for them, was not life or death, but simply a matter of swapping outdated gowns for whatever the newest trend was.
Gideon would rather ride his horse through a foot of mud, uphill, in a bloody hurricane than rub shoulders with the people here tonight.
And Rune Winters was the worst of them.
The brush of warm fingers on his wrist broke the spell in the room. Gideon looked down to find the hostess herself tying a blue dancing ribbon around his wrist.
His skin itched where she touched, and he fought the instinct to excuse himself, walk out the doors, and never look back. Gideon forced himself to hold still, thinking of Harrow’s report. Of the casting mark found on Rune’s cargo ship.
You’re here for the Moth, and the sooner you catch her, the easier it will be to purge the world of every last witch.
Gideon studied the girl before him. Was this her?
It seemed absurd. This darling of the New Republic, picking the locks of his holding cells, making off with his prisoners in the night, slaughtering Blood Guard officers in the street. And yet, it could be the reason he’d failed to catch the Moth these past two years: because she’d hidden herself so skillfully in plain sight.
When Rune finished tying the ribbon, she lifted the silk rose, tucking it into her red-gold hair, which was now braided into a semi-crown at the back of her head.
He’d spent the last two hours making it for her, feeling slightly ill as he sewed every petal. Roses always brought the painful memories rushing back. But Harrow’s advice—to woo Rune—kept ringing through his head, and his mother could never resist the silk roses his father used to make her after they argued.
That, of course, was before the Sister Queens broke his mother’s mind.
“Oh dear. Clumsy me! I’m making a mess of it …”
Gideon looked down to find Rune struggling with the stem of the rose—which was snagged in her hair.
“Here, let me …”
Rune dropped her hands as Gideon worked to separate the strands of gold from the wire stem. They stood so close now that her fragrance filled the air. Gideon braced himself, remembering another girl, another scent. But there was no reek of magic on Rune. All he could smell was the salty sea air blowing in through the open windows.
Which means nothing.
After a long soak in the bath, Cressida hadn’t smelled of magic either.
Cressida.
The name was a growl in his mind. Had Cressida ever dined beneath this roof? For all he knew, Cressida and Rune might have been friends.
He swallowed the sick feeling in his throat, carefully tucking the silk flower into the weave of Rune’s hair until it sat snug and fashionably to one side. The way his mother used to wear the flowers his father made her.
Before he could step back, the music started. Gideon glanced up to find himself surrounded by pairs of dancers on all sides.