Thirty. Gideon

Rune stiffened beside him.

“I met her the day my parents became royal dressmakers.”

His mother’s designs had been catching the eye of the aristocracy for nearly a year. Several months before, the money from their growing business had allowed them to move out of the Outer Wards—the poorest district in the capital—and into a tenement building in Old Town.

In a day, the queens had elevated them much further, moving their family into the palace. Suddenly, they could afford Alex’s tuition. Suddenly, Gideon no longer needed to skip meals so his little sister, Tessa, could eat her fill.

“My parents could hardly keep up with the queens’ demands, so they brought me in to help. Alex had left to study at the Conservatory, and Tessa was too young to do anything except get in the way. Cressida asked that I be assigned to her exclusively, so I went to live at Thornwood Hall.”

His stomach churned as he tried to decide how much to unearth. He didn’t want Rune to know every sordid detail of his past. But there were some things she deserved to know, before she entangled herself with him further.

“Cress didn’t only want me for her tailor.” He darted a glance at Rune, who walked beside him, staring straight ahead. “And I was happy to fulfill her … other needs.”

“You two were intimate, you mean.”

“Yes.”

He wanted to block out the memories flooding in. Late nights in Cressida’s gardens that somehow always ended in her bed, his fingers tracing the silvery casting scars she proudly displayed on her skin like the most exquisite art.

Each casting scar had been etched by Cressida or her sisters, the collection like a wild garden growing up her body. Scar lines formed roses and lilies, buttercups and irises, all tangled with leaves and thorns and stems. The silver flowers climbed her calves and thighs, covering the left side of her torso and breast, and flowed down her arms.

Gideon’s favorites were the petal-shaped scars scattered across her collarbone.

She’d completely bewitched him.

He spared Rune all of this.

“It didn’t take long before things went wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Rune’s voice pulled him out of the memory. They were in the woods now, and like in the meadow behind them, someone had cleared a path. The leaves glowed gold in the haze of the setting sun.

“My mother became … unwell.” He remembered her bruised and bleeding fingers, her red-rimmed eyes, the way her bones poked out of her skin. “She started seeing things that weren’t there and accused my father and me—even Tessa—of things we hadn’t done. Stealing her notebooks. Ruining her fabrics. Sabotaging her in every way.”

His muscles bunched at the memories. His mother accused them of worse things, too: her husband, of being unfaithful to her; Tessa, of poisoning her; Gideon, of abusing Tessa. Nightmarish things. Things that still kept him awake at night. And always, he could smell it on her: the coppery scent of a witch’s spells.

“The Sister Queens were slowly torturing her.”

“That makes no sense,” said Rune. “If they wanted your mother as their dressmaker, why torment her?”

He threw Rune a look. “You obviously didn’t know the Rosebloods. Witches are cruel by nature, but the Roseblood sisters were evil. They tortured and killed those who crossed them, then used the blood of their victims for their spells.”

Rune shook her head in disbelief. “That’s impossible.”

“I saw it with my own eyes.”

“No, I mean … What you’re describing are Arcana spells, which are forbidden. Queen Raine outlawed them centuries ago.”

He glanced at her, surprised that she knew this. But her grandmother had been a witch. Of course she would know things about witchcraft.

“An Arcana is the highest level of spell a witch can cast,” she explained. “They require blood taken against someone’s will. The magic that results is powerful and deadly, but it corrodes the witches who use it. If the Roseblood sisters were casting Arcanas, they would have knowingly corrupted themselves.”

It reminded Gideon of something Cressida had said, years ago, when he walked in on her and her sisters standing over a body in a pool of blood. The sight of it, combined with the strong stench of magic, had almost made him vomit.

The more power we wield, Gideon, the more they want to see us fall. What are we to do? Let those who hate us plot our demise? To play by the rules when everyone else disregards them—that is foolishness. Once you’ve seized power for yourself and those you love,you must do everything to keep it. Even sacrifice your soul. If you don’t, you’ll watch your loved ones harmed by those wanting what you have.

Rune fell silent beside him. For several minutes, the only sounds in the woods were their footsteps crunching the pine needle path and the wind rustling the forest’s canopy.

This next part would be the hardest to get through. Gideon glanced at Rune, trying to justify skipping it, but if this were a real courtship, he would want her to know.

One of us thinks ourself too good for the other. But it’s not me.

He was about to put her words to the test. If they didn’t hold true, he certainly wouldn’t blame her.

“When I told Cressida we were done, that I wanted nothing more to do with her, she warned that if I refused her advances my little sister would suffer my mother’s fate. I was terrified of her by then, and I desperately wanted to spare Tessa. So I did whatever she asked.” He ran a hand roughly through his hair. “She killed Tessa anyway.”

“I thought your sister died of the sweating sickness,” said Rune.

It’s what Alex must have told her.

“Remember the party where I poured you tea? Cress convinced herself that I was cheating on her with a handmaid and wanted to punish me. When she realized that serving tea wasn’t humiliating for me, she changed tactics, telling me I had to prove my devotion by making her three dozen silk roses by sunrise—the kind my father used to make for my mother—and if I failed, something terrible would happen to my little sister.”

He looked down at Rune, who drew her lips in a tight line. “The silk flower I made you took me two hours to sew.”

Rune’s eyes went dark, doing the math.

By the time the sun rose, Gideon had somehow sewn a dozen roses. To Cress, this was further proof that he wasn’t sorry enough. That same day, she used a spell to strike his little sister with the sweating sickness. Cress locked Tessa in her room and refused to let anyone tend to her.

Gideon threw himself at the door—which Cressida had enchanted to hold against all force—beating it with his fists, while Tessa wept and begged from the other side, delirious with fever, calling for their mother. He screamed at Cressida, who only smirked. So he lunged and pinned her down. He had his hands around her throat, prepared to stop squeezing only when she went limp beneath him, but the guards dragged him off and chained him to the floor of a cell.

By the time they let him out, Tessa was dead.

“My mother drowned herself a day later. My father hung himself a few days after that. And still, she wasn’t satisfied.” His hands fisted. “I knew there was one last person she could hurt, if I didn’t do as she asked.”

“Your brother,” murmured Rune.

Gideon nodded. Alex had been the last unspoken threat hanging between him and the witch queen.

He’d started drinking after that. Every day. Sometimes as soon as waking up. It was the only way he could bear crawling back to her bed every night.

Sometimes, it felt like Cressida preferred Gideon unwilling. Like it brought her more pleasure to force him.

He recalled the night she branded him. She’d pinned him to the wall with a spell so he’d be helpless to stop her from searing his flesh. He remembered his body spasming beneath the glowing iron, every muscle tightening at the lightning-hot pain.

It’s a curse, Gideon,she said, pressing harder as he tried not to scream. One I will activate if you betray me again.

“That’s why Alex killed her,” murmured Rune.

Gideon heard the hush of waves in the distance. The smell of the sea was strong here, and when the trees thinned, he saw the gentle roll of the dunes. As they emerged from the woods, he could see the entire shoreline stretched out before them. There was a causeway to the east, separating this shallow bay from the open sea beyond, where the water shimmered turquoise beneath a pink sky.

“I’ve spoiled a perfect evening,” he said, awed by the view.

He wanted to dive in and let the sea wash over the stain he could never scrub clean. But as he started toward the water, Rune grabbed his hand to stop him.

“You’ve spoiled nothing.”

He looked down to find their fingers entwined. When he glanced back, her eyes held a storm so fierce it took his breath away.

“You are not the things that happened to you, Gideon.”

He wished that were true. “None of us can escape our pasts.”

Gideon’s past had shaped him. Haunted him. Ruined him. Everything he did on the eve of the New Dawn—helping Nicolas Creed and the other rebels take the palace, shooting Analise and Elowyn in their beds, hunting down Cressida only to be stopped by Alex, who had found and dealt with her so Gideon didn’t have to—he did it all because of what the witch queens did to him and his family.

It was why he hunted witches still. Because so many had it as bad or worse than him. Harrow was only one example.

Witches were wicked to the core. If given enough power, they would abuse it. To stop them from rising again, to ensure no one was ever at their mercy, every witch needed to be eradicated.

At that thought, Gideon pulled his hand free of Rune’s, remembering why he was here.

He suspected Rune Winters was a witch hiding in plain sight. To catch her, he needed proof. And there was one telltale sign every witch carried on them.

He remembered tracing Cressida’s silvery scars in the dark while she slept.

Remembered Harrow’s advice from two nights ago.

The sun was slipping below the horizon. Soon it would be gone, and the only light remaining would come from the small lantern in Rune’s hand. Before the darkness descended, Gideon unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt.

Rune’s forehead creased. “What are you doing?”

“Going for a swim.”

“Now?”

“The water’s calm. The night is warm. Perfect conditions for swimming.” When the shirt was loose enough, he tugged it off and dropped it into the sand between them.

Whatever objection Rune was about to make died on her lips. At her startled expression, Gideon nearly laughed.

He cocked a brow at her. “You coming?”