GIDEON
RUNE WAS RIGHT ABOUT one thing: she wasn’t just a girl. Not to him.
She was so much more than that.
Rune was a sparring partner. Someone to fight with, and admire.
Someone to match.
Rune was a force. One Gideon could barely keep up with.
He wanted to go after her and tell her as much. The problem was … well. There were a lot of problems.
Gideon lifted his fist, opening it to reveal the ring lying on his palm. His mother’s wedding band.
I would have married you in a heartbeat, had you asked me.
Ancients help him.
He wanted it to be true, but it didn’t make sense. Even if he weren’t a witch hunter, even if they weren’t sworn enemies, Gideon had nothing to offer Rune. He was a soldier; she was an heiress. She was nobility.
And she’s deceived me in the past.
Rune could easily be deceiving him now. The last time he’d believed her, her lies had burned him badly.
And if she isn’t lying?
He ran a hand across his forehead. Did it change anything?
Did it change everything?
In the heat of the boilers, Gideon loosened his collar and rolled back his sleeves, trying to think. Going through all the reasons he had to mistrust her. Hate her, even.
She deceived me by hiding her identity as the Crimson Moth.
But Gideon could hardly fault her for it. He would have done the same, if their positions were reversed.
And Gideon had deceived her right back.
She betrothed herself to Alex.
Because Alex didn’t hate what she was. Because being with Gideon would have been a death sentence. He had made that clear the moment he handed her over to be purged.
She helped Cressida rise.
Except, according to Rune, she hadn’t known her friend Verity was really the witch queen in disguise. Was she lying? Possibly. But Gideon knew Cressida all too well—and she was certainly more than capable of this.
The evidence he’d held against her was toppling like a house of cards. So, what was left?
Even if Rune loathes Cressida, she has reasons for supporting her.
Cressida would restore a world where witches like Rune would no longer be hunted. She had every reason to want a new Reign of Witches. She could be secretly working for Cressida and lying to Gideon through her teeth.
What if Rune and Cress had struck a deal? What if, once Cressida had her throne, her resurrected sisters, and the island under her control, she disposed of Soren, eliminating Rune’s need to marry him? This whole thing might be an elaborate ruse.
I would have married you in a heartbeat, had you asked me. That’s how desperately I wanted to be yours.
He thought of Rune in the steam, eyes bright, face flushed, hair coming undone. He’d wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and kiss her. To tell her with his mouth and hands what he couldn’t say with his words.
Gideon gritted his teeth. Pressed his fists against the wall.
No.
Loving Rune was what had allowed her to dupe him the first time. If he didn’t eradicate this naive desire to believe her—to believe she loved him, to believe he could ever be worthy of her—he would never stop Cressida from bringing evil back to power in the New Republic.
He and Rune were enemies at war. Rune was the key to destroying Cressida, and Cressida had to be destroyed. He needed her as a hostage, to bargain with. He needed to stick to his plan. Nothing more.
He couldn’t let Rune weaken him again. Even if he wanted her to.
 |
ANNOYANCE PRICKLED GIDEON AS he neared the party. The fiddlers’ joyful, driving beat and the rowdy, grinning dancers were at odds with his dark mood. They made his teeth clench. For a second, Gideon contemplated returning to their cabin instead of rejoining the revelry.
But there was still a spy running loose. And he needed to find them before they found him—or, worse, Rune.
So he stepped into the room.
Gideon saw her immediately. Like a compass that would always find north. The moment his eyes landed on Rune, she glanced up from the center of the crowd, where she danced with a young man in suspenders.
In a flash, Gideon remembered her drunk and weeping in the powder room, a hollow look haunting her gray eyes. She was neither drunk nor weeping now, yet the look in her eyes was the same.
Gideon was caught in the snare of her gaze. Rune’s eyes always reminded him of a storm. Like thunder and lightning, mingled together.
Except …
Wait.
A moment ago, her eyes had been blue, her hair the color of wheat.
Now her eyes were gray, and her hair was returning to its natural strawberry blonde.
Her spell was wearing off. And she had no idea.
Gideon recalled the police officers knocking on doors, show- ing every passenger aboard this ship a locket with Rune’s likeness.
Anyone in this room could recognize her.
Gideon surged toward her, cutting through the dancers, getting jostled and bumped and sworn at.
“Excuse me,” he said when he arrived, cutting in. “I need to borrow my girl.”
The young man started to protest, took one look at Gideon, and stepped away with a gesture that said, All yours.
“What are you doing?” said Rune. Gideon ran his fingers through her hair. “Your illusion…”
Rune glanced at his hand, where the rose-gold strands sifted across his palm. Her face paled.
He slid his fingers through her gloved ones. They needed to get her out of here before someone noticed.
Unless someone already has …
Gideon glanced around the room, spotting Ash and William and the rest of Abbie’s friends engrossed in a game around a card table. Abbie wasn’t with them.
Where is she?
He kept scanning, tugging Rune toward the exit. But when his attention fixed on the door, his steps halted.
Rune froze behind him.
The same officers who’d interrogated every passenger on the ship, asking if they recognized Rune’s face, were currently stepping into the room.
Shit.
Gideon turned to Rune, cutting her off from their view.
“I can’t recast it with so many people around.” Rune’s grip tightened on his hand as she pulled him back into the chaos of whirling dancers.
He nodded, his thoughts buzzing, trying to come up with a plan. He scanned the room again, searching for a different exit and finding none.
“They’ve split up,” said Rune, staring over his shoulder.
Not good.
Gideon couldn’t keep himself positioned between them both and Rune. His gaze snagged on a dark corner across the room. If he could get her to it, she could recast the spell there.
The song ended.
Breathless and laughing, the dancers stopped dancing and their swirling skirts came to a standstill. They began to scatter and disperse, leaving Rune and Gideon exposed.
They had seconds before she was seen and recognized by the officers. Once that happened, Gideon would be arrested. The ship would turn around. He’d be delivered straight to a Caelisian prison—or, more likely, to Cressida.
More importantly, Rune would be exposed to the spy sent to kill her. A spy she didn’t even know was hunting her.
Somehow, Gideon needed to make everyone in this room believe they weren’t seeing Rune Winters, the kidnapped witch from Caelis, and her captor—a witch hunter who wanted her dead. He needed to make them see nothing but a couple of newlyweds.
Rune’s head turned, her gaze flickering between the officers. “Gideon…”
Fuck it.
Taking Rune’s face in his hands, drawing her gaze to his, Gideon did what he’d wanted to do for days now. Ever since he found her crying in that powder room.
He slid his hands into her hair and kissed her.
Rune tensed, like a deer in a hunter’s crosshairs.
Don’t fight me, baby.
He ran his thumb along her jaw to soothe her. He needed her to help him make this look real. At least until the next song started and they could escape to the shadows.
Either his stroking worked, or Rune figured it out, because she relaxed.
Then kissed back, her lips parting beneath his.
It was as if the betrayal of the past few months never happened. Gideon suddenly couldn’t understand why they’d stopped doing this.
He missed her hair in his hands. Missed her warm, sweet mouth. Missed the way she melted like butter beneath his touch. His entire being ached for her. Every touch of her lips, every press of her body, sent him closer to a deadly fire. One that had burned him before, and, he suspected, would burn him again.
Hooking her arms around his neck, Rune arched against him. Telling him how very mutual this feeling was. That he wasn’t alone in his wanting.
If this was weakness, he wanted to be weak. If this was sin, let him be damned to hell.
Kissing Rune was like a realignment. There was before, when everything was off its axis. And there was after, when everything was steady and right.
When the next song started, Gideon used the crowd as cover to guide her backward, kissing her as he moved through the dancers, toward that dark corner, and pressing her up against the wall.
She was hidden here, in the darkness. He needed to step away and let her recast the spell.
Instead, he tipped her head back and kissed her harder.
Is this real? his mouth asked. Can I trust you?
But if Rune’s mouth had an answer, he couldn’t decipher it.
Their fervent hands slid over each other, as if they’d both completely lost control. The things that he wanted to do with her …
He wanted to take her back to their cabin. Wanted to lay her down in their bed.
Wanted to …
PAIN exploded inside him. Hot and sharp and excruciating. Starting in his scar, it ricocheted outward like a detonated bomb.
Gideon gasped for air.
I need to ensure you’re mine. Cressida’s voice echoed, like a nightmare shattering a dream. Mine alone.
