He glanced at her.
Rune mentally pinched herself. What am I doing? She needed to pretend his verbal jabs went over her head, not jab him with sharper ones. Let him insult you. Remember why you’re here.
Wrestling her pride into a cage, she smiled innocently up at him.
He studied her, a bit warily. Seeming to decide he’d misheard her, he returned his attention to the opera.
This is going to be harder than I thought.
Clearly Gideon considered her not only worthy of insulting, but too stupid to realize she’d even been insulted. Ordinarily, she would use this to her advantage. But as he turned away, crossing his arms and staring hard at the stage, she realized he was closing himself off from her, not opening himself up.
Her presence was vexing him. Like it had the first day they met.
He hates parties, Alex had warned her. But it was the best move in Rune’s playbook. The most effective way to lower a man’s defenses was to ply him with her enchanted wine, get him alone, and flirt until the spell loosened his tongue enough to spill the secrets she needed.
Rune tapped her knee with her fingertips, trying to think.
She’d seen the way Gideon lit up at the sight of his brother. Rune had ceased to exist the moment Alex stepped out of that alcove. The Sharpe brothers might be opposites who disagreed on everything important, but something nameless and deep bound the two boys to each other. It wasn’t the first time Rune had seen it.
“Alex would love it if you came.”
Gideon tensed beside her. “You must not know my brother well if you think my presence in your home would cheer him.”
Rune frowned, trying to untangle the words. What did he mean?
“And as I said, some of us have better things to do with our time.”
Before she could try again from another angle, a shadow fell across them. Gideon looked up and shot to his feet. “Harrow. Finally. I thought I was going to have to watch this damned thing to the end.”
“It might have done you some good,” responded a feminine voice. “Isn’t that the point of art—to tame the monsters in us?”
Rune’s attention snagged on the question. It was a line from one of her favorite operas.
Squinting through the darkness, Rune tried to make out the identity of the speaker, but the ushers had snuffed all the lights on this level. She could see neither this girl’s face nor her clothes. Nothing that might give her away.
“You’ve been reading too many fairy tales,” said Gideon, stepping over Rune with his long legs. “You’ll have to excuse me, Citizen Winters. Have fun at your … party.” There was no mistaking the sneer in his voice.
Rune turned her head, watching the two of them walk out of the box, speaking in low voices. The moment they were gone, she squeezed her hand into a fist.
Failed again.
Leaning her head back against the velvet headrest, she ran both palms down her cheeks. She was losing valuable time. Rune needed to find Seraphine’s location—preferably tonight. And she couldn’t keep stalking Gideon Sharp, or he was bound to get suspicious. Which is the last thing I need. Gideon had gotten to Seraphine first on the night Rune was due to arrive at the home of his prey.
It might be a coincidence. Or it might not.
Gideon had seemed convinced by her performance, though. If someone was spying on Rune, she doubted it was him. But she remembered the suspicion in Laila Creed’s questions earlier and had to consider the possibility that her enemies were closing in on her.
Rune sank further into her seat, trying not to think about the witch hunters currently surrounding her in this opera box.
If they are closing in, how can I throw them off my scent?
Her mind was a murky bog of exhaustion, tugging her thoughts down into the muck. Whenever she felt like this, she found Verity, whose sharp questions always sparked Rune’s imagination, like a poker stoking a dying fire. Verity was the Crimson Moth’s second-in-command. She came up with as many plans as Rune did and helped implement them.
So, when the actress onstage finished her aria, Rune hauled herself to her feet, pushed aside the balcony curtain, and went to find her friend.
SEVEN
GIDEON
RUNE WINTERS.
Every time Gideon looked at the young heiress, she reminded him of the sea: steal-your-breath beautiful on the surface, with the promise of untold depths beneath.
Whenever she opened her mouth, however, and he listened to the ridiculous things pouring out—at dinner tables, in parlor rooms, in the halls of the wealthy and popular—he remembered anew how deceptive looks could be.
There were no hidden depths to Rune Winters. Only surface, surface, and more surface.
Tonight was a reminder of that.
“Hello? Gideon?” Harrow snapped her brown fingers in front of his face. “I said: what do you want to drink? It’s on me.”
The raucous noise of the Crow’s Nest came rushing in. The pine table was sticky beneath his elbows, and the air smelled like sour ale.
Gideon shook his head. “Nothing for me.”
Harrow clucked her disapproval. She turned her head toward the bar, and Gideon tried not to stare at the place where her left ear should have been. She kept the hair on that side cropped almost to the scalp, where it shone like dark fuzz. As if she took pride in the disfigurement and wanted to show it off.
He guessed she was close to him in age, but didn’t know for sure, and he’d never asked how she came by the loss of her ear. A family of witches had indentured Harrow before the revolution. Gideon could piece together the rest.
They’d been lucky to grab this table just as its last occupants left. Harrow refused to order at the bar in case someone snatched her stool while she was gone. So while she shouted her request to the barkeep, Gideon’s mind wandered back to Rune.
He couldn’t make sense of her sudden appearance on the balcony tonight. She’d barely spoken a handful of words to him in five years, and suddenly, she was … inviting him to her house? Why?
He tried to shake off the strangeness of it. But try as he might, he couldn’t banish the memory of her next to him in the opera box. Her strawberry blonde hair was a little wilder than usual, and her stylish gown put her elegant clavicles on display. The rust-colored fabric contrasted with her gray eyes and pale complexion, pulling his gaze toward her more times than he’d like to admit.
She might have been the shallowest girl in the opera house, but he couldn’t deny that she was also the prettiest.
A waste of a pretty face, he told himself.
A better person would feel guilty for insulting her. Gideon didn’t. He hoped he’d made his feelings clear, so she’d avoid him in the future. In fact, he thought he’d made his feelings clear years ago, when they first met.
He’d often observed the way his brother looked at her, noticed how his voice softened on her name, and while he had no idea what Alex saw in Rune, other than the obvious—which wasn’t enough to tempt him—Gideon had no intentions of going anywhere near her. That was as true now as it had been when they were kids.
Back then, Rune Winters was the aristo his little brother wouldn’t stop talking about. Alex found ways of inserting her into every conversation. Rune thinks this. Rune loves that. It would have annoyed Gideon if he hadn’t been so goddamned curious.
But then he saw her. Met her. And he knew at once they’d never be friends.
“Those twin girls who escaped three weeks ago?”
Harrow’s voice dragged him back to the table in time to see her creamy ale slosh over the side of her glass as she set it down. When the foam dribbled over her fingers, she licked it off.
“The Crimson Moth stole the pair the night you were supposed to transfer them to the palace prison. Remember?”