Текст книги "Heartless hunter"

Автор книги: Kristen Ciccarelli

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

TWENTY-NINE GIDEON

GIDEON SLOWED HIS STRIDE to 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?

OceanofPDF.com

THIRTY GIDEON

“THE LAST GIRL I fell in love with was a witch,” he said.

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?”

OceanofPDF.com