Rune told him everything that had happened in the mine, leaving out the part beforehand, where she went alone to Gideon’s tenement building, stripped down to her underwear, and let him take her measurements. That was irrelevant information, she decided.
As she filled him in, Alex crouched down and lifted the hem of her dress, reaching for the knife he knew she kept strapped to her thigh. They’d been in this situation so many times, working like cogs in a clock that had run smoothly for years, that Alex knew exactly where the knife was sheathed.
“Gideon intentionally misled me,” she said as Alex drew the knife from under her dress and used its sharp edge to cut a long strip off her cotton shift. “If he didn’t suspect me before, he does now.”
If he noticed blood on the blade, he didn’t remark on it.
When he rose to face her, Alex handed her the makeshift bandage to hold while he untied the bloody one from around her arm.
While he focused on his task, Rune studied him. Alex’s golden mask ended at the tip of his nose, cutting across his cheeks and revealing lips that were pressed tight at the sight of the gash in Rune’s pale skin. The wound wasn’t deep, but it was still bleeding freely.
“I asked you to end this thing with Gideon,” he said, throwing the soiled bandage into the flames, then wrapping the fresh cotton strip around the wound.
“He contacted me,” she said, defensive. “He wanted to meet.”
Alex’s elegant fingers secured the bandage and tucked the ends underneath. “And you had no choice but to obey?”
“He’s my best chance of finding Seraphine.”
Alex breathed in deep. As if Rune were a child testing his patience.
“I need an alibi,” she said, changing the subject. “Can we say I came to this party with you tonight?”
Her wound freshly bandaged, she turned her focus to the map over the mantel. From here, it looked like a series of circles within circles.
Before Alex could answer her, she moved to Octavia Creed’s massive desk in the center of the room, piled high with records. Grabbing the heavy desk chair, Rune dragged it back to the fireplace, climbed onto it, and pulled out the tracing paper and pen from inside her bodice. She set both down on the mantel.
“We could say you came with me tonight,” said Alex, watching her. “If you’ve agreed to my offer.”
Rune, standing on her tiptoes, was about to cover the upper left-hand corner of the map with the first piece of tracing paper.
“What offer?” she said, glancing over her shoulder. Her fox mask obscured her view of him. She would have pushed it back off her face, except both her hands were occupied.
“My offer to help you rescue Seraphine,” he said from where he leaned against the prison warden’s desk, looking at her. “I said I would help, if you agreed to come with me to Caelis for a month.”
Rune bristled, gripping the fountain pen hard in her hand. “Two weeks, we said.”
“It will take us three days to sail there, and three days to sail back. So: no. You’ll have to come for the full month.”
Why is he so adamant about this?
It wasn’t like him.
Rune returned to the map, pressing a little too hard on the tracing paper as she followed the lines showing through from behind. “You know I can’t leave. I have—”
“What happens when you succeed, Rune?”
“What do you mean?” she said, still tracing. There were seven concentric circles, each depicting a section of the prison. She was on the second section.
“What happens after you rescue every last witch from the purge?”
If Rune were honest with herself, deep down, she didn’t believe she could save them all. She hoped to save Seraphine, and more witches after that. But eventually, Rune expected to be caught. She was only one girl. And there were hundreds of witch hunters.
“I can’t rescue them all,” she admitted, staring at the untraced lines showing faintly through the translucent paper.
“For this exercise, let’s say you can. When it’s over, will you still hide yourself in plain sight, pretending to be what you despise? Resenting everyone around you? They will never change their minds about you, Rune. Don’t you want to be free of them? Of all of it?”
Rune lowered her pen. She didn’t want to think about this.
Because Alex was right.
Once, this island had been her home. It had been exactly where she belonged. But unless witches somehow seized power, it would never be that way again. And even if a new Reign of Witches were possible, there was no going back to her old life with Nan. That life ceased to exist the day they dragged her away to be purged.
Rune lifted her pen to the paper and kept tracing. She had three prison sections left to copy.
I’ll never succeed—not completely. Witches would always be in danger in the New Republic. So this little game of What if? was a waste of time.
When her tracing was complete, Rune lowered the last piece of paper. It was then that she remembered what Alex had said around the bonfire outside.
All that’s left to do is sell Thornwood Hall.
“You’re leaving for good,” she realized aloud, turning to face him. “Not for a month, and not just to study. You’re going away forever.”
It felt like someone had pulled the chair out from under her.
She struggled to find words. “Does Gideon know?”
“I haven’t told him.” Alex glanced away. “I doubt he’ll care. In fact, I’m sure he’ll be relieved.”
Rune frowned. That made no sense.
Alex pushed away from the desk, walking toward her. He stopped in front of the chair she stood on, his masked face tilted to hers. “I want you to come with me.”
“For a month, yes. You said that.”
“Not for a month. I want you to leave with me and never come back. I want you to be free of this, Rune. You shouldn’t have to live in constant fear for your life.” He reached for her fingers again, sliding them gently through his. “But I’ll settle for only a month. For now. If I must.”
For now. As if he were being patient with her. As if he’d wait for as long as it took Rune to come to her senses.
“In Caelis, we’ll go to the opera house every day of the week. Where they show real operas, not that propaganda you despise.”
She looked away from him, afraid he’d see how much she wanted that—to watch a real opera again. To talk about the intricacies of the characters and themes on the carriage ride home. It would never be Nan sitting next to her. But that would be okay, if Alex was beside her instead.
“We’ll go to the ballet and the symphony. We’ll spend weekends in the Umbrian mountains.”
His words tempted her. Caelis, where people didn’t care if you were a witch, and certainly didn’t report you to the police. And Alex, the boy she trusted most in the world.
She closed her eyes. This fragile feeling in her chest felt like hope.
No.
She shut the feeling down. She pulled her hand free.
“What you’re describing is a happy ending. A fantasy.” She used his shoulders to steady herself as she hopped down from the chair. “And that’s great—for you. Not everyone gets to have that.”
Countless witches had their happy endings stolen from them. Witches like Nan. And Verity’s sisters. Seraphine’s would be stolen, too, if Rune couldn’t save her in time.
Tucking the tracings under her arm and the fountain pen between her teeth, she dragged the chair back to the desk.
“You’re right. Some people are determined to live out their own personal tragedies.”
She stopped, her hands still gripping the back of the chair. Her whole body prickled with anger. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“How many of the witches you save turn around and try to save you, Rune?”
“I’ve told you before, I don’t need saving.”
“And you’ll be telling me that the day they string you up to die while the city cheers. You’ll be saying it while they cut your throat and bleed you dry.”
Why was he doing this? Alex was the one steady rock in her life. Always there to lean on.
They didn’t fight. Not ever.
“Maybe that’s what I deserve,” she said, setting the small stack of tracing paper on the desk, each piece containing one quarter of the prison’s map.
“What?” The word tore out of Alex like thunder from the sky.