Twenty-Nine. Gideon

TWENTY-NINEGIDEON

GIDEON SLOWED HIS STRIDEto match Rune’s as she led him through the labyrinthine hedges. She carried a lantern in one hand as they walked through her gardens, while her other hand clasped her shawl closed at her throat.

Her hair was loose, and the breeze kept tugging strands across her face, giving him the infuriating urge to drag it back with his fingers.

No paint adorned her lips tonight. No rouge reddened her cheeks. Even her feet were bare. She looked wild and raw and exposed out here. Not the girl he was used to seeing all done up at parties.

It threw him off guard. He’d come here to win back her trust because she was his best lead. But he found himself … faltering. Unsure of himself. The silence between them rose like a crescendo.

He glanced down at the angry gash on her forearm. How did a girl who spent her days planning parties and spreading gossip come by such a deep wound?

“Did you hurt yourself?”

Rune startled. “Oh! Yes, I … took a tumble while riding yesterday. Sliced my arm on a rock. I can be so clumsy.” She smiled up at him, tucking the arm under her shawl and changing the subject. “Have you given more thought to my invitation?”

“To the Luminaries Dinner? I thought my answer was obvious.”

She glanced at him, her lips parting.

Apparently, it was not.

He almost laughed. “Rune. Of course I’ll accompany you. You expected me to turn you down?”

Her eyes held his. “I don’t know what to expect with you.”

The words hung in the air between them.

Was that Rune Winters talking? Or the Crimson Moth?

Gideon had no proof that she and the Moth were the same. Rune had a solid alibi the night before last, and yet she was freshly injured—much like the Moth might be after Laila shot at her. He couldn’t arrest her, but neither was he convinced of her innocence.

It was why he was here. If Rune was the Moth, no way would she trust him after the stunt he’d pulled at the Seldom mine. He needed to patch the hole he’d made, because the only way to unmask her was to get closer to her. And the only way to do that was to convince her to trust him again. If that was even possible.

What would I do if this were a real courtship?

Gideon recoiled at the thought. He didn’t know how to fall for someone as superficial as Rune Winters.

Maybe that was the wrong way to think about it.

How would he fall for a girl pretending to be superficial—in order to outwit him?

That was easier.

Gideon cleared his throat. “Your gardens are beautiful.”

He winced, imagining Harrow rolling her eyes. Is that the best you can do, lover boy?

“Are they?” Rune murmured, taking in her surroundings. “I try to keep them well tended, but I lack my grandmother’s … devotion. She loved these flowers like they were her children.”

At the mention of Kestrel, Rune’s face softened. She continued, unprompted, as her gaze roamed the hedges.

“Sometimes, if I squint, I can almost see her still trimming her roses. Or sipping tea in the greenhouse, with her box of seed packets beside her, planning out next season’s garden …”

She quickly glanced at Gideon, her face blanching. As if she’d said more than she meant to. “I—”

“We never had a garden,” he said, to put her at ease. “But my mother grew herbs in a box on the windowsill.”

He immediately wished he’d thought of something else to say. His family’s lack of land was an obvious reminder of the gap between them: their stations, their upbringings, their lives. It was a gap that had narrowed since the revolution, but it would never close.

Proving him exactly right, she said: “You could have a garden now, if you wanted. You could live somewhere far grander than even Wintersea House, with gardens more well kept, as a reward for everything you did for the Republic. I’m sure the Good Commander would grant it all to you, if you asked.”

“I’m happy in Old Town.”

“Are you?”

Gideon flinched at her question, remembering the day he took her measurements in his parents’ shop. He wondered what she’d been thinking as she walked the sooty streets of his neighborhood. Breathing in the smoggy air. Listening to the rattle and hiss of the factories nearby.

“Old Town didn’t impress you, I take it.”

She stiffened beside him. “I only meant—”

“Was that your first time there?”

She didn’t need to answer; he could easily guess.

In all the years Rune and Alex had been friends, she’d never set foot in their tenement. Alex had always gone to Wintersea House. Either his brother had been too ashamed to invite her into their home, or he’d invited her, and Rune had declined to come.

“When my parents died, the shop and apartment passed to me,” he explained.

“But why choose to live there? Why not sell it and ask the Commander for an estate of your own? Thornwood Hall, for example, could have been yours.”

Thornwood Hall.

Gideon shivered.

A dark shadow hung over that house. He could still feel Cressida there. Still smell the stench of her magic in the air. The few times he’d gone back, he’d been plagued by living nightmares.

“I would rather sleep beneath a bridge than sleep in Thornwood Hall,” he said, more to himself than to her. “If you found Old Town beneath you, I certainly won’t admit to the neighborhood we lived in before that.”

“I never said Old Town was beneath me.”

Her voice came from several paces behind him, making him realize she’d stopped walking. Turning to face her, he found her edges lit up by the red-gold light of the setting sun and her white sundress whipping around her knees in the wind. They were at the edge of the gardens here. The hedges were lower and less manicured. Wild, like her.

“Your neighborhood is … quaint.”

“Quaint is a word polite people use when they don’t want to be insulting.”

Her cheeks reddened and her hair blew across her face. “Are you so determined to misunderstand me?”

Gideon paused, studying her. If he and Rune Winters were truly courting—which would never happen—this is exactly the argument he would have with her.

“Is it quaint that the residents of Old Town scrape their pennies together to keep the lights on? Quaint that parents spend half the year starving, so their children don’t have to? When Penitent children beg in Old Town streets? Or the old and infirm freeze to death in their beds because they can’t afford to heat their apartments?”

These things were regular occurrences in Old Town.

Rune stared in horror at Gideon. Of course she didn’t know about these things. She lived in a different world. One that was only an hour’s ride on horseback but might as well be as far as the moon.

Gideon turned and kept walking, annoyed with himself for bringing it up. Annoyed at her for being … well, her.

“I’m not sure why you’re angry at me,” she said to his back. “If Penitent children are begging in the street, it’s the Republic you should blame. The Good Commander made their families outcasts for aiding witches.”

Gideon stopped.

“Or don’t you remember that the Commander promised us a better world?” she continued before he could respond. “One where no one lives in squalor.”

Despite his anger, she was right. Gideon remembered the rallies. The speeches. The pamphlets hidden in pockets and shoes or between the pages of books passed under the noses of the aristocracy. Nicolas Creed had promised to usher in a better world. But that world had yet to fully arrive.

“If people live in poverty,” she said, “you should direct your anger at him.”

He whirled on her.

“You think we weren’t impoverished before? You have no idea what the real world is like, Rune. You live a pampered, privileged existence and always have. I’m not saying that’s your fault. I’m simply stating facts. If you don’t want to look at ugly things, you don’t have to. You can pretend they don’t exist.”

A bright flush of red swept up her neck.

“People like you and your grandmother flourished under the Reign of Witches, when things were worse than they are now. So don’t pretend you care. You didn’t then, and you don’t now. The Sister Queens or the Good Commander … it’s all the same to you.”

She winced, as if he’d struck her.

Seeing it, the fight went out of him.

Fuck.That was too far.

“Rune …” He ran his hands roughly through his hair. “I’m sorry.”

Did he have to be so brutally honest? She seemed so small, suddenly. He wanted to close the space between them but was afraid she might recoil.

“I agree with you: the revolution was supposed to make things better, for all of us, but there’s a long way to go.”

She stayed silent, watching him as the wind whipped through her hair.

I’ve ruined it,he thought. She’s going to turn around, go back, and never speak to me again.

But instead of trying to salvage this—his last fraying thread to his only lead on the Crimson Moth—he gave her that out. He felt sick with himself for insulting her, and the right thing to do was suggest they return to the house.

Before he could, she stepped toward him, stopping only inches away.

“If I thought you were beneath me …” Her eyes were hard as pewter, searching his. “… why would I be out on a walk with you?”

He searched hers back.

Why indeed?

Lifting his hands, he gathered the wild tangle of hair blowing across her face. It surprised him when she didn’t flinch away, when she let him scrape it back instead. She seemed to soften as he held it, allowing him to see her clearly.

He shouldn’t have liked it so much—the feel of her hair against his palms, the way she relaxed beneath his fingers.

“Beautiful heiresses might court common soldiers,” he said. “But they don’t marry them.”

Her mouth quirked a little. “Did you just call me beautiful, Gideon?”

“I’m stating the obvious. Don’t change the subject.”

She looked away.

“You know it’s true, Rune. People of your station don’t marry down.”

In Gideon’s experience, those born into wealth and privilege wanted more of it, not less. Like the first hit of a drug, the moment people tasted power, they needed more to quench the craving.

“I don’t know how to dance to your songs,” he said. “I don’t have the esteem of your friends. I don’t use seventeen pieces of silverware at dinner.” He let go of her hair, and it billowed out, catching in the wind once more. “I have no means of expanding your inheritance.”

He knew he was walking a fine line, reminding her of the reasons they made no sense. That this charade they were playing was a weak one. But if the goal was to be vulnerable, to entice her to be vulnerable, too, he needed to speak the truth.

“People like you are impossible,” she said. “I don’t care about those things.”

He almost rolled his eyes. “Of course you do.”

“Then why are we here? If I’m so shallow—all trappings and no substance—what are you doing with me? Why would someone like you want someone like me?”

Gideon opened his mouth to respond, only he didn’t know the answer.

He studied her, hair ablaze in the setting sun. Gray eyes like molten steel.

In his silence, Rune came to her own conclusions.

“Maybe you’re right.” She stepped around him, lantern in hand, and unlatched the white gate at the garden’s edge, stepping into the meadow beyond. “One of us thinks ourself too good for the other. But it’s not me.”

The gate swung closed behind her.

Gideon stared after her.

What?

From this side of the gate, he watched her follow the footpath through the tall grass, heading toward the woods in the distance. For some strange reason, his thoughts trickled to Cressida.

He’d learned very quickly not to challenge Cress. Arguments with her came with consequences. When he disagreed or disobeyed, she would punish him—and sometimes others. Until he stopped resisting her altogether.

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?