Intrigued, she sat down on the bench next to where Gideon stood behind it. “If your family couldn’t pay the tuition, where did he get the money?”
Gideon pressed down on the next key—the middle C—moving further along the keyboard, closer to Rune. The progression of notes he’d chosen formed a minor triad, resulting in a melancholic sound. It was a sadness Rune felt in her chest.
“We got lucky.” His voice hardened on that word: lucky. “My parents’ fashions began catching the attention of the aristocracy.”
Another key; another sorrowful note. This one was so close to Rune, his sleeve brushed her bare shoulder as he reached to play it.
“The eldest witch queens, Analise and Elowyn, were so taken by my mother’s designs, they wanted them for themselves.”
Gideon stepped directly behind Rune and the shadow of him spread up her back. Startled by the move, she froze, her pulse thrumming. With one hand still on the key to her left, Gideon reached around Rune with his free hand, pressing down on the keys to her right—F, then F-sharp—caging her in.
The hair on her nape rose. There couldn’t be more than an inch of space between them now. Rune’s senses heightened as she wondered if the mimic spider ever underestimated its much larger prey and was sometimes caught in its own web instead.
If she survived this encounter unscathed, she’d ask Verity.
Gideon’s voice was beside her ear. When he spoke, his breath rushed against her cheek. “Analise offered my mother a position as royal seamstress, with my father and me assisting. The yearly stipend was more than enough to send Alex away to school.”
Swallowing, Rune kept her voice light as she said, “That’s when your family went to live at the palace?”
“All of us except Alex, yes.” He fell silent for a long moment. Beneath his breath, he said: “He escaped what the rest of us could not.”
What does that mean?
Alex rarely spoke about his family. What Rune knew, she knew from other people’s gossip: shortly before the revolution, a terrible sickness stole his little sister’s life. Not long after, his parents drowned in an unfortunate swimming accident, orphaning him and Gideon.
But several pieces of the story were missing. It started when the queens employed the Sharpes. Somewhere in the middle, three members of their family died. And by the end, Gideon and Alex had slain all three queens in their sleep.
What connected these things?
Rune had met the youngest queen, Cressida, only once, at one of her seasonal parties. The witch queen had reminded Rune of an elegant swan, poised and aloof. She had porcelain skin, the bluest eyes, and hair like ivory. She spoke only half a dozen words to Rune before floating off to join her sisters.
Cressida had a reputation for being shy, and she rarely left Thornwood Hall, her summer home. Some people attributed this to pride, saying Cressida thought herself better than everyone else.
She’s a queen, Rune had thought at the time. She is better than us.
One of the more vicious rumors, Rune remembered now, had been about Cressida’s lowborn lover. She never brought him with her to public gatherings or appearances, as if she were ashamed of the dalliance. Rune would hear it whispered about at parties, but few people knew the young man’s name, never mind what he looked like. So it could have easily been a lie intended to undermine the girl.
And now, two years after Cressida and her sisters were slain, along with the witches on their council, the boy who led those revolutionaries into the palace stood directly behind Rune, his breath in her hair, his fingers on the keys of her piano.
Why did you kill them? she wanted to ask. Why do you hate us?
But Rune already knew the answer. Gideon hated witches for the same reason everyone else did. Rune was well versed in her society’s hatred. They made no secret of it.
We are vermin to them, Nan told her right before the revolution, when things were already turning. Even before they murdered the queens, riots spilled through the streets. Witches were dragged from their houses and beaten—or worse. The Roseblood sisters sent their army to put the perpetrators down like dogs, but it only made things worse. They see us as a contamination of what is natural and good. They fear our magic the way they fear disease.
The queens were never given a proper burial, and to this day, no one knew where the bodies lay. People had different theories, of course: they’d been burned in a pit, or dumped in the sea, or chopped into pieces to prevent resurrection.
No one knew for sure.
Since their deaths, and the birth of the New Republic, the Good Commander had been stripping the magic from every captured witch by purging her of its source: stringing them by the ankles like animals, slitting their throats, and leaving them to hang until every drop of blood drained from their bodies.
Rune shuddered.
As if in response, Gideon withdrew his hands from the piano keys and stepped back. The absence of him was like a too-heavy coat slipping from her shoulders, allowing her to breathe. He turned toward the thousands of book spines filling the walls, illuminated by the incandescent lighting.
“Do you mind if I look around?”
Relieved by the distance between them, she waved her hand. “Go ahead.”
If he had lived at the palace, he’d lived among witches, which meant he knew how to spot the signs of her kind. Spell books were an obvious giveaway, but there were none in the library. Casting marks were another tell, but the only spell cast recently enough to leave marks was in Nan’s casting room, where Rune had enchanted the cup she’d given to Lizbeth.
There’s nothing to find, she thought, watching the witch hunter.
Perhaps she should use the cup now. Gideon appeared at ease, and the sooner she learned where the Blood Guard were keeping Seraphine, the sooner she could rescue the woman before they transferred her.
After several moments of watching him browse, she said, “Reading can be so tedious, don’t you think? Sometimes I get exhausted just looking at all these books.”
Gideon, who was currently perusing her collection of operas and plays, either didn’t hear her or was ignoring her. The light illuminated his fingers as he traced the titles on the weathered spines. When he arrived at Rune’s favorite play—about a mysterious hero who risks his own life to rescue aristocrats in danger—Gideon slid the book off the shelf and opened it to the first page.
Rune clenched her jaw, annoyed that he’d chosen it. She didn’t want him holding something she loved in his hands. They were the same hands he used to strip witches out of their clothes. To search them for scars. To give them over to be purged.
“For a girl who hates reading, you own a lot of books.”
“They were my grandmother’s. Nan was obsessed with books.” Rune tapped her fingertips against the piano bench, itching to tell him to put her book back and never touch it again. She counted to ten, lost her patience, and said instead, “Would you like to see a witch’s bedroom, Citizen Sharpe?”
To her great relief, he closed the book and returned it to the shelf. When he turned to face her, his eyes were deep wells.
“I’d like nothing more, Miss Winters.”
Rising from the bench, Rune tugged the bellpull, letting Lizbeth know she was ready to put the last part of her plan into action.
ELEVEN
RUNE
IN HER BEDROOM, THE lamps were already lit. Their flames burned dimly, as if the room had been patiently waiting for its mistress.
Rune turned to Gideon, who looked like a wolf stepping into unfamiliar territory: wary, aloof, ready to bare his teeth at the first sign of danger.
His stony gaze scanned the room, taking in the lavender walls and the loft ceiling made of glass. Other than the four-poster bed, there were only a few furnishings, all of them tasteful and understated. Just the way Rune—the real Rune—liked things.
The sea breeze blowing in through the windows ruffled Gideon’s hair. “This is your bedroom.”
She clasped her hands in front of her. “That’s right.”