“He said that all Blood Guard officers of a certain rank—usually the captains or their seconds—carry an access coin, allowing them to bring witches straight through to Fortitude Gate.”
If every Blood Guard captain carried an access coin, Gideon surely had one.
Rune wondered where he kept it.
The cogs of Rune’s mind were turning. If she stole Gideon’s coin, and perhaps a Blood Guard uniform—though how she’d do that, she didn’t yet know—would she be able to walk straight through the last gate?
A sudden commotion interrupted her thoughts.
Rune glanced toward the doors to find someone she recognized entering the courtyard. Someone who’d recently shot her.
Laila Creed.
Dressed in her scarlet Blood Guard uniform, Laila strode through the guests while gripping the arm of a prisoner. A black bag covered the prisoner’s head, and from the iron restraints encasing her hands, Rune knew the prisoner was a witch.
While staff filled cups with hot coffee or chilled wine and handed out plates with sugar-dusted pastries, Laila marched her charge through the courtyard. The lights of a thousand candles flickered down the lengths of tables as guests murmured excitedly, their attention on the stage now assembled in the middle of the space.
No, thought Rune. It’s not a stage.
Thick chains hung from a solid beam erected over the platform. Chains Laila was connecting to the ankles of the witch.
It’s a purging platform.
Rune didn’t think, just started forward.
Verity grabbed her wrist to stop her. “There’s nothing you can do,” she whispered, her face going whiter than snow. “Not here.”
Rune’s hands clenched and unclenched, knowing she was right. “Who—”
Before she could finish the question, Laila tugged the black hood off the witch.
Rune and Verity both sucked in a breath.
The face beneath the hood was shockingly familiar to Rune. She knew it from the gold locket Nan used to wear around her neck. It was a locket her grandmother rarely took off.
As a child, Rune liked to open the locket and peer in at the two young women painted on the two panels. On one side was Kestrel’s face, rendered when she was about nineteen; on the other was Seraphine’s, not much older.
The two women had grown up together, Rune knew. They’d been best friends since childhood.
Which was why the sight before her didn’t make any sense.
The witch on the platform bore the exact same face as the one inside Nan’s locket—sparkling brown eyes, sharp birdlike features, black curls that haloed her head like a cloud. As if Seraphine Oakes hadn’t aged a single day.
Why is she so young?
Nan had been over seventy the day she died, and the woman on the platform—Seraphine—looked no older than twenty-three.
Rune’s mind spun with confusion. As she tried to make sense of it, the Good Commander ascended the steps of the platform, causing a hush to fall over the entire courtyard.
The Blood Guard soldiers retreated. Nicolas Creed stepped toward Seraphine, whose hands were manacled at her sides. The witch restraints clasped her hands entirely in iron, so that her wrists ended in two black metal stubs, preventing use.
“Good evening,” said Nicolas, dressed in his usual black. “We have a surprise in store for you tonight. We’re simply waiting for …” His piercing gaze scanned the room before landing directly on Rune. “Ah. There she is. Citizen Winters, will you join me up here for a moment?”
Is this another trap?
Rune glanced into the sea of faces, but the guests looked as surprised as she was. Verity’s hand tightened on her wrist. But Rune couldn’t refuse the Commander, and Verity knew it.
Reluctantly, she let go.
With no other choice, Rune started toward the platform. Drawing nearer, she could see the split in Seraphine’s lip and the bruise ringing her eye, blackening her brown skin.
“Our guest of honor is a model patriot. Miss Winters’ bravery, loyalty, and refusal to tolerate witchcraft is an example to us all.”
At the name Winters, Seraphine’s head whipped sharply toward Rune, her dark brown eyes narrowing.
With hate, Rune thought.
She swallowed, making her way toward the platform, realizing with increasing horror what was happening.
They were going to kill Seraphine. Right here, in the middle of this courtyard.
This was tonight’s entertainment: a private witch purging for Luminaries guests.
Rune’s pulse thudded loudly in her ears. Everywhere around her, faint whispers buzzed in the air. She glanced around, looking for Gideon. Had he known? Was this another one of his traps?
But Gideon was nowhere to be seen.
As she stepped up beside the Good Commander, who placed a heavy hand on her shoulder, Laila opened a black box and drew out the purging knife. She cradled it, almost lovingly, in a piece of red velvet. Then held it out to Rune.
A smile ghosted across her lips as she said, “Rune Winters, I grant you the privilege of purging Seraphine Oakes tonight.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
RUNE
SILENCE RANG THROUGH THE courtyard as the lethal curve of the purging knife glinted in the space between them. A knife that had stolen not only Nan’s life, but hundreds of others.
Rune expected it to burn her when she took it. But as Laila placed it in her hands, both the hilt and the steel were cold to the touch. Rune hoped her trembling didn’t give her away.
What am I going to do?
If she refused to kill the witch before her, she’d reveal the truth to every single one of her enemies. Rune was surrounded. There weren’t only Laila and the other Blood Guard soldiers to contend with. There was the Good Commander himself, not to mention the hundreds of patriots seated at tables, and the thousands of guards beyond, patrolling the halls of the palace.
Cold panic hummed in Rune’s blood.
She was trapped.
The Commander signaled to the musicians to begin. This was the sickest part of private purgings: the music. As if slitting the throat of a girl and watching her bleed out over the floor weren’t butchery or murder, but refined art.
Rune’s fingers tightened around the knife hilt.
Laila retreated, moving toward the levers. In a moment, she’d pull them, and the chains would snap, yanking Seraphine’s feet out from under her and drawing her toward the sky, to hang upside down. Like a cow to be slaughtered.
Rune and Seraphine were momentarily alone on the platform.
She could cast a spell. But to do that, she’d have to pull the blood vial from her pocket, uncork it, and draw the spellmarks. Someone would realize what she was doing and stop her before she could finish.
I could nick my finger with this knife, she thought. Just the fingertip. And use the blood to draw a spellmark on my palm.
But what spell would be quick enough? What wouldn’t require much blood or draw much attention?
And the silvery scar she’d be left with would damn her.
Maybe that was the price she needed to pay, to save Seraphine. To fulfill her grandmother’s last request.
The music still played as Laila grabbed hold of the levers.
“You disgust me.” Seraphine spat. The spittle hit Rune’s cheek, startling her and drawing her attention back to the witch. “Kestrel would be ashamed of you.”
Beneath the grime of too many nights spent in a disgusting cell, Seraphine was fine-boned and pretty. She reminded Rune of a sparrow.
“You don’t deserve the Winters name.” The witch’s eyes burned like black fire. As if, were their positions reversed, Seraphine would have already cut Rune’s throat.
I went to find you, Rune wanted to say. I’ve been trying to save you.
With so many people listening, she didn’t dare.
“Do you have nothing to say to me?” Seraphine’s voice shook—out of hatred for Rune, or grief over Kestrel, or possibly the knowledge that she was about to die.
What they needed was a distraction. Something to put the room into a panic.
A fire would be good. Rune could cause utter chaos with a fire. But summoning actual fire was a complex spell that required a lot of fresh blood, and not only did Rune not know the marks, she didn’t have the blood.