RUNE
WHEN RUNE WOKE, THE room was rocking. Tipping from side to side. Creaking loudly as it did.
She opened her eyes, but everything was hazy. There was a bed, and sheets tucked around her. The scent of magic hung in the air, stale and faded. Mingling with the smell of the sea.
Somewhere nearby, glass clinked. She heard water being poured.
Turning her face toward it, Rune found a figure silhouetted by the light.
“Where am I?” The croak of her voice surprised her. Rune swallowed to moisten her throat.
“Entering New Republic waters,” said a feminine voice.
Rune frowned. That couldn’t be right. She was supposed to be at Larkmont.
“You’ve been in and out of consciousness for several days. You lost a lot of blood.”
We’re on a ship, Rune realized as her vision cleared and cabin walls solidified around her.
And the witch tending to her was Juniper.
Rune tried to sit up and immediately regretted it: fiery pain blazed up her back. She gritted her teeth and went still.
“Here.” Juniper sat down on a chair beside the bed, holding out a glass of water. “Drink.”
Rune eyed it carefully. But even if she was being drugged, her thirst won out, and she let the girl press it to her lips.
Rune gulped the water down.
“My spells slowed the bleeding and mended the torn muscles and tendons,” said Juniper, rising to replenish the empty glass. “I sped up the healing, but it will hurt for some time.”
Rune remembered the lashes raining down; the whip slicing across her back. She remembered the warm, sticky blood on the floor.
I’m her sister.
The horror of it sank into Rune, chilling her all over. She was a Roseblood. Heir to a cruel witch dynasty. Sister to a terrifying murderer.
That’s why Juniper was here: to keep Rune alive. Cressida had likely ordered the girl—who was known for her knack with healing spells—to stay by Rune’s side.
She needed Rune alive to cast the resurrection spell.
Why didn’t Nan tell me?
Juniper poured more water from the pitcher, then returned to Rune’s side, holding out the glass.
Rune shook her head, refusing the water. “Can you help me up?”
Juniper looked reluctant, but did as Rune asked, carefully taking hold of her arms and pulling her to a seated position.
Rune’s back screamed in protest.
She clenched her teeth, enduring the pain, and sat up. The room spun. Not only had she lost a lot of blood, she hadn’t eaten in days. Her weakness made that clear.
Feeling lightheaded, she pushed herself to the bed’s edge and stood up slowly. With every inch she moved, the pain became more bearable, until finally she was at the porthole, looking out.
A fleet of ships surrounded them, their stacks pumping smoke into the sky. Rune recognized Soren’s insignia emblazoned on their sides.
A familiar island loomed in the distance, silhouetted against the setting sun.
Cascadia.
Was this it, then? Were witches at war with the New Republic?
Rune was about to turn away from the porthole when she caught sight of her reflection in the glass. Her face was sickly pale, and bruise-like shadows hung under her eyes. She looked like a ghost.
If this is what the front of me looks like, how much worse is the back?
Rune glanced at the tarnished mirror hanging on the cabin wall. While Juniper looked on with pity in her eyes, Rune took hold of her shirt’s hem and dragged it up over her head. Scorching pain flared up her back, bringing tears to her eyes. Rune clenched her teeth, determined to see the damage.
Lowering the shirt to her side, she turned, glancing into the mirror. Dozens of thick, red lines stood out against her white skin. Covering her back like a web.
It looked hideous.
Rune shut her eyes against the sight of her ruined body.
The sound of footsteps in the hall made her fumble with her shirt, trying to pull it back over her head without passing out from the pain.
She’d barely gotten it on when the door opened.
“What are you doing?” Seraphine stepped inside, her worried gaze falling on Rune. “You should be resting.”
Promise me you’ll find Seraphine Oakes, my darling. She’ll tell you everything I couldn’t.
It was the last note Nan ever wrote her.
Seraphine had known who Rune was this whole time. And she’d chosen to keep the truth from her.
“Why?” Rune demanded, emotions flickering through her: anger, betrayal, grief.
Seraphine shut the door behind her and came toward the bed, which stood between them.
“How could you keep such a secret from me?”
Rune felt unmoored. Everything that could be taken from her had been. Nan. Wintersea. Alex. Her position in society. And now this: everything she’d believed about her own history.
Rune was the orphaned daughter of two people who’d died in a tragic accident at sea—that’s what she’d been told. But it was a lie. One Nan herself perpetuated.
Why?
“Kestrel and I believed the less people who knew, the safer you were.”
“Yes, but you kept the secret from me! I’m perfectly capable of keeping secrets, and I deserved to know.”
Seraphine glanced at Juniper, who silently excused herself from the room.
“You have every right to be angry,” said Seraphine, sitting down on the bed. Her movements reminded Rune of a dove settling down in its nest: gentle, graceful.
She held out her hand for Rune to take.
Rune ignored it, crossing her arms, wincing as the raw skin of her shoulder pulled. “I have a right to know the truth.”
“Yes. You do.” Seraphine dropped her hand. “You’re the daughter of Queen Winoa and her second consort. On the night you were born, the midwife had difficulty turning you around, so she called for me. I managed to turn you, and less than an hour later, there you were, in my hands. But the moment we touched, something … woke up inside me.” Her gaze dropped to the bed. “I cast an illusion, making the midwives believe you were stillborn. I lied to the queen, saying you were dead. And then I delivered you to Kestrel Winters to raise.”
“What do you mean, something woke up inside you?”
“The Roseblood family was dysfunctional and depraved,” said Seraphine, but she didn’t meet Rune’s eyes as she said it. “I couldn’t let an innocent child grow up in that environment.”
Presumably, Cressida and her sisters had been innocent once, too. So why didn’t Seraphine take them away?
“I don’t believe you,” said Rune.
She wasn’t being told the whole story. She could sense it. And there was still the matter of Seraphine’s age …
“Nan told me the two of you grew up together. She used to wear a locket around her neck, and inside were two images: one of her at eighteen, and one of you, not much older.”
Seraphine nodded. “I remember it.”
“You look the same now as you did in that portrait painted forty years ago. How is that possible, unless you’re under some kind of spell? Are you cursed?”
Seraphine drew in a deep breath. It shook as she let it out.
“It’s like a curse, I suppose. Certainly, it feels like one.” Seraphine stared toward the porthole, which showed a patch of blue sky. “I have a task to complete, and until it’s done, I can’t … move on.”
Rune frowned harder. Move on?
Was she some kind of spirit? Trapped here after her death due to unfinished business?
There were stories of such things, but Rune had never believed them. And the woman on the bed was clearly made of flesh and bone. As solid as Rune herself.
Seraphine patted the mattress beside her, inviting Rune to join her. Reluctantly, she sat.
“It feels like yesterday you were this tiny creature swaddled against my breast as I rode for Wintersea House. And here you are, all grown up.” Seraphine’s expression softened as she studied Rune. “I keep looking for her in you—which is absurd, I know. You share no blood. And yet, I glimpse her sometimes. As if you carry her with you.”
Seraphine touched the bird-shaped scar on her neck.
“The night I brought you to Kestrel, she was so angry with me. She’d never wanted children, and at first refused to take you. She said if I were going to steal a royal baby, the least I could do was raise it myself.
“But I couldn’t keep you in the capital to be raised under Winoa’s nose. It was too dangerous. The queen was already suspicious of me by then. I was the only witch on her council who didn’t hide my disgust for her cruelty. I didn’t loathe her in private and flatter her in public, like the others. She knew exactly what I thought: that she was a plague on Cascadia.
“Three days after I brought you to Wintersea, as if sensing my deception
—Winoa exiled me. She wouldn’t tolerate me undermining her authority anymore. If I didn’t leave, she warned, I’d be dead by morning. I rode straight to Wintersea, where I convinced Kestrel to keep you until it was safe for me to return. I didn’t trust the queen not to send her spies after me.
“Years later, after Winoa’s death, I came back to get you. But by then, Kestrel was in love. You were the best thing to ever happen to her.”
Seraphine smiled, remembering. “She told me if I tried to take you, she’d skewer me with a letter opener.”
Tears clogged Rune’s throat. She swallowed them down. “I miss her,” they whispered in unison.
Seraphine seemed about to say something more, about to reach for Rune, when a sudden BOOM echoed from outside the ship. They looked to the porthole.
Cannon fire?
Seraphine rose to her feet and went to look. Rune moved much more slowly, joining her at the porthole.
The ships outside were firing on the harbor.
Rune pressed her hand to the cabin wall, watching the explosions in the distance. The pine boards were rough beneath her palm.
That was her home they were sieging. “So it begins,” murmured Seraphine.
