How could Gideon forget? They were exactly his sister’s age when she died. Skinny little things. He could picture them huddled behind the bars of the cell he’d locked them in: wide-eyed and trembling as they clung to each other. “I remember.”
He also remembered when they disappeared from that same cell one night later. A casting signature had appeared over the cot where they’d slept. Gideon could recall the mark perfectly in his mind’s eye: a delicate, blood-red moth fluttering in the air. He’d been so angry, he’d wanted to grab the thing and squeeze it. But it was only a signature—the mark left behind after a witch cast a spell, like an artist signing their name to a painting.
The moth faded less than an hour later.
Harrow sipped daintily at her beer. “A dockworker found signatures aboard a cargo ship three days ago, after it docked in Harbor Grace. The two witches must have illusioned themselves to look like cargo.”
And when the illusion faded, the signatures would have remained behind.
Harbor Grace was a busy port on the mainland. Everything this island didn’t make, grow, or mine was shipped over via that port.
Gideon frowned. “Were they recaptured?”
Harrow shook her head. “No. But …” She glanced around and leaned in toward him. He could smell the ale on her breath. “The cargo ship belongs to Rune Winters.”
What?
The alehouse spun around them. Gideon flattened his hands on the beer-sticky table to steady himself.
That can’t be right.
“Are you certain?”
Harrow leaned back, taking another sip. “My contact saw the signatures himself, in her ship’s cargo hold.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s involved,” said Gideon, thinking it through. “Just because Rune owns the ships doesn’t mean she knows everything that goes on with them. It could easily be one of the crew stowing witches away without her knowledge.”
“But it makes her a suspect,” Harrow pointed out. “And the best lead you’ve had in a long time.”
For months now, Gideon had suspected the Crimson Moth was someone who traveled in elite circles. Someone with access to the most exclusive balls and private dinner parties. Someone who regularly rubbed shoulders with the powerful and well connected.
Could that someone be Rune Winters?
Gideon remembered Rune at the opera, her conversation growing more and more irritating the longer she kept talking.
“It’s not possible,” he said. “There’s not an intelligent thought in that girl’s head.”
And the Moth was intelligent. To go toe-to-toe with Gideon, to outwit him, she had to be. And if the mutilated bodies they kept finding across the city were her victims, she was also ruthless. Disturbed.
Evil.
It was difficult to reconcile those things with the ridiculous girl in the opera box.
If he needed more proof of Rune’s innocence, all Gideon had to do was go back two years. He’d been at the Winters’ estate when the Blood Guard arrested Kestrel Winters in her home. His orders? To watch Kestrel’s adopted granddaughter, Rune, while the other soldiers seized the witch from her chambers.
Gideon hadn’t taken his eyes off the girl—not an arduous task, to be sure. Rune was just as beautiful then. Like those marble sculptures adorning the lavish mansions of the aristocracy, existing solely to impress the guests. When a Blood Guard officer smashed his pistol into Kestrel’s face, her granddaughter hadn’t even flinched. Only watched, coldly and calmly, as they stripped the old woman down, found her scars, and dragged her off to be executed.
Rune had shown no hint of remorse.
If Rune had been Kestrel’s blood relative, Gideon might consider her more carefully. But the girl’s birth parents had been nothing more than fancy merchant folk. There were no witches in her bloodline—Gideon had checked—making it impossible that she was a witch.
“Rune sent her grandmother to the purge,” Gideon told Harrow. “She’s no witch sympathizer. Just an empty-headed patriot.”
“Maybe that’s what she wants you to think,” Harrow countered.
Gideon shook his head. It made no sense. “Why would she risk her life to save other witches now when she heartlessly betrayed her grandmother two years ago?”
“It could be a deception.”
Gideon was about to shrug this off, except that kind of deception was exactly what he’d learned to expect from the Crimson Moth.
What if Harrow’s right?
His comrade picked up her glass and slowly swirled the ale inside, watching Gideon chew on his thoughts.
He’d dismissed it, but there had been a moment in the opera box when Rune’s mindless prattling had suddenly turned biting. Someone like you obviously prefers the company of stupid brutes with terrible style.
It didn’t prove anything. Aristocrats like Rune Winters had always looked down on Gideon. The Blood Guard paid well, but good pay didn’t elevate a man’s station. Gideon might not be dirt-poor anymore, but he was far from her equal.
In Rune Winters’ eyes, people like him—soldiers, sons of tailors, members of the working class—would always be less than.
But they’d found signatures on her ship. Gideon couldn’t rule out the possibility that Rune might be the Moth—or at least in league with her.
“I’ll keep my eyes on the docks,” said Harrow.
He glanced up to find a thoughtful expression on her face. “I’ll pay for whatever information you find.”
The light in her golden eyes winked out. She stopped swirling her drink. “No.”
Gideon sighed. Over a year ago, Harrow had approached him, offering her services. The Crimson Moth had stolen yet another witch from him the day before, and Gideon was desperate to outmaneuver her. He accepted Harrow’s offer, expecting her to gouge him with her fees. Instead, she refused payment. When he asked her why, Harrow had simply pointed to her missing ear and walked away.
“Doesn’t your little brother run in Rune’s circles? Get him to spy for you.”
Gideon tensed. This had always been a sore spot between him and Alex. His brother wanted nothing to do with the hunting and purging of witches. He’d made that clear these past two years, and Gideon no longer pressed him on it.
Their shared past haunted them both in different ways. Alex wanted to forget; Gideon couldn’t afford to.
“Alex isn’t interested in spy work.”
“Mmm. I guess you’ll have to do it yourself, then.”
Gideon glanced up. “Do what myself?”
“I can’t walk among them. Me in one of those fancy gowns, jewels dripping from my fingers?” Harrow turned her face to give him a perfect view of the side of her head where an ear should be but wasn’t, making it perfectly obvious why she didn’t belong in marble ballrooms, eating off gold-rimmed plates. “But you can.”
“What are you proposing? That I befriend Rune Winters?”
“More than that, Comrade.” Harrow’s grin widened, and there was mischief in it. “You should woo her.”
He nearly choked. “You’re not serious.”
The idea made him break out in a sweat.
Harrow leaned in. “You don’t make friends, Gideon. Not easily, anyway. Certainly not with people like Rune. You do, however, collect admirers. Whether or not you notice them.”
“She called me a stupid brute.”
Harrow’s mouth snagged in a crooked smile, as if this delighted her. “Sounds like a girl after my own heart.”
“I’m serious. I have nothing to offer her. When girls like Rune pick out their future husbands, people like me don’t make their lists.”
“You might be surprised.”
A cold horror crept over Gideon as he forced himself to consider it.
If Rune was the Crimson Moth, she was a master of disguise, and the only way to catch her was to play the same game she was playing.
There was only one problem.
Alex.
If Gideon did as Harrow suggested, presenting himself as one of Rune’s many suitors, he’d be moving in on his little brother’s crush. That’s how it would look, at least.
All of Gideon’s instincts rebelled against it.
But if Rune was the Moth, not only did he have a duty to take her down, he had a duty to protect his brother from her. If he hurt Alex in this process, so be it. It was a price he’d have to live with.
He hadn’t saved Alex from one witch only to let him fall prey to another.