Twenty-Five. Rune

TWENTY-FIVERUNE

THE GROUNDS OF OAKHAVENPark backed onto a forest that spanned hundreds of acres. The home itself was modest compared to Wintersea House and had belonged to Seraphine Oakes before the queen sent her into exile.

Once a close friend to the Rosebloods, Seraphine fell out of favor with the previous queen—the mother of Elowyn, Analise, and Cressida. Nan never spoke of it, because it distressed her, but some believed that Seraphine’s power surpassed the royal family’s. So out of fear, or jealousy, or both, the witch queen banished her.

Oakhaven Park sat empty until the revolution, when the Good Commander gave it to his wife, Octavia Creed, as a spoil of war.

Some couples keep separate bedrooms,Alex joked once, others keep separate estates.

Though the wind had turned her clothes from sopping wet to damp, Rune still shivered as she rode Lady as far as she dared into the woods surrounding the property. Octavia kept a patrol, Rune knew, and she had no desire to run into it. Once she was inside the forest, shrouded by jack pines and balsam firs, her icy, trembling fingers unbuckled the saddlebag concealing her evening outfit.

Rune was happy to strip the damp clothes off her body. Standing naked in the breeze but for the sheathed knife strapped to her thigh, she tightly braided her wind-dried hair into an effortless style she’d watched Nan employ whenever they were running late to some function. It was still a little damp, but not obviously wet.

Next, she inspected the gash from Laila’s shot, which was still bleeding. Rune had been lucky. If Laila’s shot had been an inch closer, she’d have a bullet in her arm that would require digging out.

This was a flesh wound: bloody, but not deep. She withdrew one of the cotton strips she kept in Lady’s saddlebag for emergencies, bound it around the wound, and tucked the ends underneath. Thankful she’d had the foresight to bring gloves, Rune pulled them on, concealing the bandage, and donned her dress and shoes.

Last, she put on her mask for the evening: a white fox face with pointed ears.

Fully dressed, Rune opened one more saddlebag and pulled out four sheets of tracing paper and a fountain pen. After folding the sheets and rolling them tightly around the pen, she tucked them down the front of her bodice.

Taking her whistle out for the third time tonight, she blew two long notes into the thin metal cylinder, telling Lady to go straight home. The moment the horse trotted away, Rune followed the footpath through the trees, allowing the house lights in the distance to guide her.

Normally, it would be exactly Rune’s style to arrive fashionably late, waltzing in through the front doors and announcing herself to everyone. Tonight, though, she didn’t want people to notice her delayed arrival. She wanted people to think she’d been here the whole time.

Drawing nearer to the house, Rune contemplated going in through the kitchens, pretending to have gotten lost, but that would only make the servants talk. As she drew nearer still, she eyed the windows. They were close enough to the ground for her to open and climb through without soiling her dress. She’d decided on going in through the windows when voices nearby caught her attention.

“All that’s left to do is sell Thornwood Hall.”

Alex?Rune was so relieved by the sound of his familiar timbre, she almost missed the words he had spoken.

Sell Thornwood Hall?

She tucked her questions away for later. Adjusting her mask, she donned a more tedious costume, one that was second nature by now: the guise of a superficial girl who cared only for designer dresses, extravagant parties, and juicy gossip. Rune stepped out of the woods, heading toward the ring of young men circling a fire that blazed in an ornate iron fire pit.

Her eyes found Alex in an instant, despite their masked faces. Through his lion mask, he gazed into the fire. As if pondering a problem that was plaguing him and searching for the answer in the flames.

Unlike his brother, who was built like a soldier, Alex had a slender frame. As a devoted musician who spent his days practicing and composing, he often forgot to eat.

At her approach, Alex’s attention snapped toward her.

“Rune?”

Seeing him was like a drowning woman sighting a buoy. She wanted to throw herself in his direction, loop her arms around his neck, and hold on for dear life.

She did none of these things.

“The darkness sure turns you about!” Still shivering, she stepped toward the delicious warmth of the fire. “I came outside for some air, and the next thing I knew, I was lost in that jungle.” She motioned to the woods behind her.

The gentleman wearing a wolf mask said: “I didn’t realize you were here, Rune.” The voice belonged to Noah Creed. “Did you just arrive?”

Before she could spin the story that she’d prepared, Alex unbuttoned his coat and dropped it over her shoulders.

“Your teeth are chattering. Let’s go inside before you freeze.”

The warmth of his body was still in the fabric, and Rune soaked it up. Wanting to thaw herself out further—and give Noah an answer—she put her hands to the fire. “Oh, but—”

“I insist.” Alex pressed his palm to the small of her back, turning her away from the heat.

The tone of his words, which sounded friendly, had a sharpness beneath for Rune alone. She glanced up to find his golden-brown eyes sapped of warmth. From the way his lips thinned, he wasn’t only worried, but angry, too.

Angry at me?

Too tired to resist, she let him lead her toward the house. Glancing over her shoulder, she waved goodbye to Noah and the boy in the frog mask—Bart Wentholt, she guessed, from the red hair.

She’d implemented the first part of her plan: to be seen at this party. All she needed now was Alex and Verity’s cooperation to make it seem like she’d been here the whole time.

In the fire’s absence, she pulled Alex’s wool jacket firmly around herself. He silently led her out of the gardens, past the cherubic statues, and up the stone steps to the house. Servants bustled past them, some carrying empty trays from the ballroom bursting with music and chatter, while others rushed toward it with trays full of drinks and desserts.

Rune had turned to follow them when Alex grabbed her hand. Sliding his fingers through hers, he pulled her in the opposite direction.

“There’s no need to manhandle me,” she said, getting irritable. The less irritable half of her was surprised at the fingers interlaced with hers. They’d never held hands before.

Alex ignored her. “Where have you been?” he said, his jaw clenched as he tugged her down a long, empty corridor. The gold foil of patterned ferns glittered against the dark green wallpaper. “I’ve been thinking the worst.”

“There was no time to tell you.” Rune glanced over her shoulder while keeping her voice down. “And it was too risky to send a telegram. Promise me something? If I start acting strange—scary-strange, like saying or doing mean things for the pleasure of it—you must tell Verity, okay?”

What Verity would do, Rune didn’t know. But once a witch started corrupting herself with bad magic, she began to crave its power like a drug. After that first hit, it was difficult to resist coming back for more.

Rune did not want to go down that path.

“What are you talking about?” said Alex.

She didn’t feel any different. But maybe no one did. Maybe a witch had no idea what was happening to her until it was too late.

Before the hall turned, Alex opened a door, his hand still gripping Rune’s as he pulled her into the room.

It smelled like books and burning wood inside. Bookshelves lined three of the four walls. Letting go of Alex’s hand, Rune trod across the woven carpet, drawn to the light of a crackling fire in the hearth, and passed a massive oak desk.

I’ve been here before.

Her gaze shot to the wall over the fireplace, and there it was: the map of the palace prison.

A map she needed if she had any hope of saving Seraphine.

Alex had remembered and brought her straight to it. The realization warmed her more deeply than the fire. “Alex, you’re—”

“You still haven’t told me where you were tonight.”

Alex stood behind her, the friendliness stripped from his voice, leaving only the sharpness as he removed the coat from her shoulders. Still shivering and not ready to part with its warmth, Rune almost seized it, then realized he was peeling it away to look at her arm.

Her silk glove had blood seeping through it.

Oh no.

Was that the real reason he’d draped the coat over her?

Did Noah and Bart notice?

More gentle than his tone, Alex turned her toward him and started tugging the glove off her fingers, one by one. The thin silver ring on his smallest finger glinted in the firelight. “How did this happen?”

“Laila shot me,” she said, watching the silk slide down her arm to reveal the makeshift bandage, which was good and soiled. “Or shot at me. I was lucky; she mostly missed.”

Alex went quiet. It was so rare for him to get angry. But she could feel the anger in him now, coiled tight like a spring.

“And why was Laila shooting at you?”

“I was at the old Seldom mine, looking for Seraphine. Your brother set me up.”

Alex’s gaze narrowed behind his lion mask. “What do you mean, he set you up?”

Taking the ruined glove, Rune threw it onto the fire, destroying the evidence. She slid off the second one and burned it too. Hopefully Verity had worn gloves tonight that she could borrow. Otherwise, she’d need Alex to escort her home with his coat over her shoulders—and that would certainly make people talk.

Boys who let girls wear their coats home were making their intentions known.

But if they’re busy talking about Alex and me,thought Rune, they won’t be wondering about when I arrived.

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.

Putting the pen down, Rune rolled the pieces tightly around it and slid them all back down her bodice.

“Look at me, Rune.”

He stood behind her now. But instead of turning, she stared down at a dark knot in the desk’s wood.

“I betrayed my grandmother. I led the Blood Guard straight to our house.” She fisted her hands as a wave of self-loathing crashed through her. “The day they killed her, I stood there and watched it happen. I let them all believe I hated her.” She was glad for the mask over the upper part of her face, which would help hide the tears forming in her eyes as she turned around to face him. “Innocent people don’t do things like that.”

She should have stormed that platform and denounced them all. She should have yelled the truth to the sky: that she loved Kestrel Winters, and they were demons for wanting her dead.

“You did what you had to do to survive.” He pushed back his mask. “Kestrel wanted you to live, Rune. Don’t throw away the gift she gave you.”

She glanced sharply away from him. You’re wrong.

It was no gift, being allowed to live while the one you loved most was dead—because of you.

Rune remembered the day they killed her. Kestrel Winters didn’t cower and beg like a criminal. She stood before her killers with the dignity and poise of a queen. When Rune went to the purge, she wanted to go exactly like that. Knowing she’d done everything she could to deliver other witches from Nan’s fate.

“Sometimes it feels like you’re afraid to look at me,” said Alex. Placing his warm hands on her cheeks, below her mask, he tilted her face back to his. “Is it because I don’t want to hurt you? Or hunt you? Or watch you die?”

His grip was firm. Resolved.

“Do you believe you deserve those things, Rune?”

Looking at him was like watching an opera she didn’t like. One of those ridiculous comedies where the character got everything she’d ever dreamed of and lived happily ever after. Those operas were so unrealistic, they always made Rune want to cry. Or stand up and leave.

Sometimes, she got the same feeling looking at Alex.

He gently let go of her face and pushed back her mask. As if he wanted her to look at him.

“Rune …”

A sudden rattling at the door made him step sharply away from her. Alex grabbed his jacket to drop over Rune’s shoulders, to hide her bandaged arm, but it was too late.

Verity burst in.

“Here you are.” Their friend’s brown curls were loose around her shoulders, and the scarlet dress she wore made her white skin paler than usual. “If I have to listen to Bart Wentholt wax poetic about his shoe collection again, I’m going to scream. Does it never occur to him that nobody cares?”

She halted, glancing from Alex to Rune.

“What happened to your arm?”