Rune, on the other hand, seemed rattled by his insults, but unfazed by his defiance.
It was uncharted territory. And without a map to guide him, Gideon stood motionless, watching her get further away. Not even Harrow’s voice in his head was any help.
If you genuinely liked this girl, he told himself, you would go after her.
Hopping over the gate, Gideon jogged down the path after her, his pulse beating wildly. As a general rule, Gideon avoided situations that rendered him vulnerable. Yet here he was, running straight into one.
“If we’re going to do this,” he said when he caught up with her, “there are some things you need to know.”
She glanced at him.
“So you can decide if this is what you want. If I am what you want.”
The forest ahead obscured their view of the sea, but he could taste the brine on the breeze. They were getting close.
She studied him in the light shining from her lantern. “All right. Tell me.”
This is a game, he reminded himself, his chest tight. It means nothing.
But if that were true, why did he feel like he was walking straight off a cliff, hoping he wouldn’t fall?
THIRTY
GIDEON
“THE LAST GIRL I fell in love with was a witch,” he said.
Rune stiffened beside him.
“I met her the day my parents became royal dressmakers.”
His mother’s designs had been catching the eye of the aristocracy for nearly a year. Several months before, the money from their growing business had allowed them to move out of the Outer Wards—the poorest district in the capital—and into a tenement building in Old Town.
In a day, the queens had elevated them much further, moving their family into the palace. Suddenly, they could afford Alex’s tuition. Suddenly, Gideon no longer needed to skip meals so his little sister, Tessa, could eat her fill.
“My parents could hardly keep up with the queens’ demands, so they brought me in to help. Alex had left to study at the Conservatory, and Tessa was too young to do anything except get in the way. Cressida asked that I be assigned to her exclusively, so I went to live at Thornwood Hall.”
His stomach churned as he tried to decide how much to unearth. He didn’t want Rune to know every sordid detail of his past. But there were some things she deserved to know, before she entangled herself with him further.
“Cress didn’t only want me for her tailor.” He darted a glance at Rune, who walked beside him, staring straight ahead. “And I was happy to fulfill her … other needs.”
“You two were intimate, you mean.”
“Yes.”
He wanted to block out the memories flooding in. Late nights in Cressida’s gardens that somehow always ended in her bed, his fingers tracing the silvery casting scars she proudly displayed on her skin like the most exquisite art.
Each casting scar had been etched by Cressida or her sisters, the collection like a wild garden growing up her body. Scar lines formed roses and lilies, buttercups and irises, all tangled with leaves and thorns and stems. The silver flowers climbed her calves and thighs, covering the left side of her torso and breast, and flowed down her arms.
Gideon’s favorites were the petal-shaped scars scattered across her collarbone.
She’d completely bewitched him.
He spared Rune all of this.
“It didn’t take long before things went wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Rune’s voice pulled him out of the memory. They were in the woods now, and like in the meadow behind them, someone had cleared a path. The leaves glowed gold in the haze of the setting sun.
“My mother became … unwell.” He remembered her bruised and bleeding fingers, her red-rimmed eyes, the way her bones poked out of her skin. “She started seeing things that weren’t there and accused my father and me—even Tessa—of things we hadn’t done. Stealing her notebooks. Ruining her fabrics. Sabotaging her in every way.”
His muscles bunched at the memories. His mother accused them of worse things, too: her husband, of being unfaithful to her; Tessa, of poisoning her; Gideon, of abusing Tessa. Nightmarish things. Things that still kept him awake at night. And always, he could smell it on her: the coppery scent of a witch’s spells.
“The Sister Queens were slowly torturing her.”
“That makes no sense,” said Rune. “If they wanted your mother as their dressmaker, why torment her?”
He threw Rune a look. “You obviously didn’t know the Rosebloods. Witches are cruel by nature, but the Roseblood sisters were evil. They tortured and killed those who crossed them, then used the blood of their victims for their spells.”
Rune shook her head in disbelief. “That’s impossible.”
“I saw it with my own eyes.”
“No, I mean … What you’re describing are Arcana spells, which are forbidden. Queen Raine outlawed them centuries ago.”
He glanced at her, surprised that she knew this. But her grandmother had been a witch. Of course she would know things about witchcraft.
“An Arcana is the highest level of spell a witch can cast,” she explained. “They require blood taken against someone’s will. The magic that results is powerful and deadly, but it corrodes the witches who use it. If the Roseblood sisters were casting Arcanas, they would have knowingly corrupted themselves.”
It reminded Gideon of something Cressida had said, years ago, when he walked in on her and her sisters standing over a body in a pool of blood. The sight of it, combined with the strong stench of magic, had almost made him vomit.
The more power we wield, Gideon, the more they want to see us fall. What are we to do? Let those who hate us plot our demise? To play by the rules when everyone else disregards them—that is foolishness. Once you’ve seized power for yourself and those you love, you must do everything to keep it. Even sacrifice your soul. If you don’t, you’ll watch your loved ones harmed by those wanting what you have.
Rune fell silent beside him. For several minutes, the only sounds in the woods were their footsteps crunching the pine needle path and the wind rustling the forest’s canopy.
This next part would be the hardest to get through. Gideon glanced at Rune, trying to justify skipping it, but if this were a real courtship, he would want her to know.
One of us thinks ourself too good for the other. But it’s not me.
He was about to put her words to the test. If they didn’t hold true, he certainly wouldn’t blame her.
“When I told Cressida we were done, that I wanted nothing more to do with her, she warned that if I refused her advances my little sister would suffer my mother’s fate. I was terrified of her by then, and I desperately wanted to spare Tessa. So I did whatever she asked.” He ran a hand roughly through his hair. “She killed Tessa anyway.”
“I thought your sister died of the sweating sickness,” said Rune.
It’s what Alex must have told her.
“Remember the party where I poured you tea? Cress convinced herself that I was cheating on her with a handmaid and wanted to punish me. When she realized that serving tea wasn’t humiliating for me, she changed tactics, telling me I had to prove my devotion by making her three dozen silk roses by sunrise—the kind my father used to make for my mother—and if I failed, something terrible would happen to my little sister.”
He looked down at Rune, who drew her lips in a tight line. “The silk flower I made you took me two hours to sew.”
Rune’s eyes went dark, doing the math.