Текст книги "Heartless hunter"

Автор книги: Kristen Ciccarelli

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

FIFTY-SEVEN RUNE

THE WITCH MANACLES RESTED heavily in Rune’s lap, the cold iron enclosing her hands from wrist to fingertip, ensuring she couldn’t cut herself or draw a spellmark.

Thunder rumbled overhead as she looked out over the crowd. Many of those spitting on her, cursing her, demanding she pay for her crimes with her life, were the same people who’d once sat around her table and danced in her ballroom.

It didn’t surprise Rune.

These people had never been her friends.

In one sense, it was a relief. Rune didn’t have to pretend anymore. They finally knew what she was. She cared about Alex, though, who now faced certain death. Whose own brother would deliver him to it.

Their gazes caught across the heads of the Blood Guard soldiers between them.

“You should have renounced me,” she told him as Laila grabbed her arms and dragged her down from the horse. “You could have saved yourself.”

“You can’t renounce your own heart,” said Alex, stepping toward her, eyes brimming with emotion. He lowered his head, pressing his cheek to her temple.

Before he could do more, Gideon separated them. “Enough.” Rune’s gaze skimmed the front of the Blood Guard captain’s jacket. The scarlet wool was so soaked with rain, it looked almost black.

Gideon seemed made of stone. Cold and immovable as a mountain.

“It’s time,” he said, turning her toward the purging platform.

There were two sets of steps, one on each side. As he steered Rune toward the closest ones, she saw someone being led up the other set. A birdlike woman with a cloud of black curls. Seraphine. The same iron restraints enclosed her hands.

Rune tried to swallow her fear.

This was always where it was going to end. You sent Nan to the purge, and now you’ll follow her.

Thinking she could escape with Alex had been a mistake. Only fools believed in happy endings.

As Gideon guided her to her death, Rune thought of how fitting it was that he should be the one to hand her over. She’d spent two years hating this boy. It seemed appropriate that she should go on hating him until her last drawn breath.

Except even here, at the end, her hate failed her.

Rune knew what witches had done to his family. She knew the horrors he’d suffered at a witch queen’s hands. Rune, like a certain witch before her, had toyed with Gideon. Deceived and betrayed him. He had every reason to believe that all witches were the same: horribly cruel and unspeakably evil.

So how could she hate him?

Especially with his hand pressed to the small of her back. Even in his anger, he was tender with her. Stoic Gideon—so firm in his conviction, so diligent in his duty—was reluctant. Conflicted. She felt it in the gentle press of his palm.

Rune remembered the last words Nan had spoken before the knife slashed her throat. I love you, she’d whispered, while staring at Rune in the crowd below.

Rune swallowed the lump in her throat and glanced up at the boy beside her.

I forgive you, she thought. Perhaps that made her a fool, but what did that matter, if this was the end?

In forgiving him, a strange thing happened: Rune found forgiveness for herself, too. For what she’d done to Nan.

The thing she’d needed all this time was right there inside her.

Gideon didn’t look at her as he handed her to the four Blood Guard soldiers waiting to secure her ankles in chains. Chains that would raise her upside down to be slaughtered. The steady warmth of his palm disappeared from her back as he turned to walk away.

“Gideon.”

He flinched and stopped, but didn’t look back.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry for all of it.”

Finally, he glanced at her, and the wounded look on his face pierced like a knife.

Above the heavy plink of the rain, she heard him say, “So am I.”

He strode off as the cold iron bit her bare ankles, and the locks clicked into place.

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FIFTY-EIGHT RUNE

SERAPHINE AND RUNE STOOD side by side now. The crank tightened their chains, preparing to lift them feet-first toward the sky, baring their throats to the purging knife.

Seraphine’s dark eyes narrowed on Rune. But instead of being surprised that Rune was a witch, she said: “Why did you inform on Kestrel?”

Tears fell as the inevitability of it all sank in. “Someone betrayed us. The Blood Guard would have killed us both: Nan, for being a witch; me, for not handing her in. She told me if I loved her, I had to betray her. So she wouldn’t have to watch me die.”

Seraphine’s forehead creased, almost delicately.

Lightning flashed, and the charge in the air raised the hair on Rune’s skin.

“Nan told me to find you. I came to your house the night they arrested you. I spent two years tracking you down and got there too late.”

What would have happened if she’d arrived an hour earlier?

Would either of them be here, awaiting the knife?

“I failed both of you.”

Seraphine’s gaze sharpened.

“No,” she said, her irises flaring strangely as something in the distance caught her attention. “I don’t think you have.”

Light flickered at the edge of Rune’s vision. When she looked up, four black fiery comets hit the platform like cannonballs, aimed directly at the guards on either side of her and Seraphine. Rune heard the thud of their bodies hitting the wood.

All around them, the platform burned. Despite the rain, heat sizzled in the air. More fireballs hit, striking the wooden beam overhead. Rune covered her head with her manacled hands, but knew it was of little use. She and Seraphine were completely exposed.

Something cracked and Rune looked up to see the beam directly overhead start to split.

Then fall.

As the heavy timber descended on them, Seraphine dived at Rune, knocking her out of the way. The beam crashed through the platform floor right where they’d both been standing.

Seraphine pushed herself up. “Are you all right?”

Rune nodded.

It smelled like burning flesh and … something else.

Blood and roses, she thought.

Magic.

Rune had smelled this same scent once before, on the night of the Luminaries Dinner. It rolled over her like a wave.

Someone in the crowd screamed.

As more screams joined the first, Seraphine flew to the wooden rail at the edge of the platform, leaning as far as the chains around her ankles would let her. Rune was about to push herself to her feet, when her stomach cramped. Like a warm, achy swell in her lower belly.

That ache. She spent the better part of every month waiting for it.

As something warm and wet pooled between her thighs, a rush of relief came over Rune.

Her monthly cycle had started.

Fresh blood to cast with …

Except she had no way to use it. Her hands were trapped in iron. Wondering why no soldiers were coming to simply kill them and get it over with, Rune pushed to her feet, joining Seraphine at the wooden rail, scanning the platform.

“Merciful Ancients,” murmured Seraphine.

Dozens of figures cloaked in gray were sweeping across the city square, heading for the platform. The scarlet uniforms of the Blood Guard were cutting toward them, while the crowd in between swelled. Chaos erupted. Citizens tried to scatter, screaming and pushing, desperate to get out of the way.

Beneath the dark sky, thunder rumbled dangerously as gunfire rang through the air.

Rune squinted, trying to see the faces beneath the gray hoods. “Who are they?”

“Witches,” said Seraphine.

Rune’s heart skipped at that word. She squinted harder, realizing she recognized some of the girls beneath the hoods. Witches she’d rescued from Gideon’s clutches. Most she didn’t know at all. But leading them was a girl she knew by heart.

Verity de Wilde.

Her spectacles flashed when the lightning flickered, and her brown ringlets were loose around her shoulders. In her hand was a knife Rune had never seen before. One shaped like a crescent.

“Cressida Roseblood is alive …” Seraphine’s eyes narrowed. “… and has somehow gained a witch army.”

“That’s not Cressida.” Rune corrected her. “That’s my friend Verity.”

Rune had met Cressida. Verity and the youngest witch queen looked nothing alike.

“I assure you,” said Seraphine, “that girl is a Roseblood. She’s simply altered her appearance.”

Rune frowned, forced to recall Verity’s missing dorm room. Her endless exhaustion. Her heavily perfumed scent.

Was it all one elaborate illusion?

The magnitude of it—endlessly pretending to be someone else for two years straight—would require a lot of power.

And a lot of fresh blood.

A terrible feeling was taking hold of Rune.

Verity had reacted almost defensively when questioned about the Roseblood sisters using Arcana spells. And Verity had been at the Luminaries Dinner the night Cressida Roseblood was also in attendance. What if Verity was responsible for the spellfire?

What if Verity de Wilde was Cressida Roseblood in disguise?

“I’m sorry,” said Seraphine. “But your friend Verity doesn’t exist. Or if she did, she doesn’t anymore.”

“Are you saying Cressida killed Verity and stole her identity?”

“It’s very likely, yes.”

“But that means …”

Cressida Roseblood, not Verity de Wilde, had been Rune’s closest confidant for two years—without her knowing.

This whole time, Rune had trusted and confided in a murderer. In the girl who’d tortured Gideon and killed his little sister.

She rested her restrained hands on the wood railing to steady herself.

It can’t be true.

Verity was her friend.

But Rune had only become friends with Verity in the months after the revolution. By then, Cressida was dethroned and on the run. That left plenty of time to kill the girl and subsume her identity before befriending Rune.

The thought of Verity—the real Verity, a girl Rune was forced to concede she didn’t know at all—being cornered by the witch queen made Rune feel like she was going to throw up.

How could I have missed the signs?

Rune watched the girl she’d formerly known as Verity cut through the crowd, a small army of witches in her wake. Despite Rune’s horror and loathing, that girl was the closest thing she and Seraphine had to an ally right now.

Everyone else in that crowd wanted them dead.

Rune remembered the countless times Verity—no, Cressida—had absently traced the spellmarks on the open pages of her spell books. If she’d been memorizing all of Rune’s spells, then she likely knew the one that would set Rune and Seraphine’s hands free.

Picklock.

Leaning as far as she could over the railing, Rune’s voice battled with the thunder as she shouted: “My Queen!”

The girl who’d stolen Verity’s identity glanced up, her gaze swooping like a hawk to Rune.

As smoke filled the air, Rune raised her ironclad hands.

“A little help?”

The witch queen smiled, and Rune shivered at the sight. Holding out her pale forearm, which was covered in bloody spellmarks, she smudged the symbols with her hand.

The illusion fell away.

She was Verity no longer.

That curly brown hair straightened, lightening to moon-white. Her dark eyes turned crystalline blue. And the curves of her body fell away, flattening and lengthening into the wispy queen Rune remembered.

Snatching a young woman from the crowd, Cressida pulled back the girl’s hair. As her victim screamed and fought, trying to get away, Cressida bared the girl’s pale throat to her knife’s crescent edge, and slit it.

Rune glanced away too late to unsee the red blood, running like rivulets down her neck. The girl dropped to the stones, choking on it. Cressida dipped her fingers in the blood and drew a new symbol.

The spell flared to life. The locks of Rune and Seraphine’s manacles clicked. The heavy iron blocks imprisoning their hands opened, along with the chains around their ankles. Both fell, hitting the burning platform with a clattering thud.

Rune and Seraphine were free.

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FIFTY-NINE GIDEON

THE CROWD ERUPTED AROUND Gideon. Everywhere he looked, people screamed and pushed, trying to get out of the square and away from the witches descending on them. Gideon leaned into the jostle and crush, drawing his pistol.

Witches outnumbered his soldiers. The spellfire had killed the Blood Guard soldiers on the platform, leaving only those on the ground. There were enough left to handle a purging, but not a full-on attack. And the furious sound of gunfire cracking across the square meant the witches were armed.

His soldiers were outnumbered and outgunned.

Gideon had known Cressida was planning something. He should have prepared for this. He should have been ready for anything.

The crowd scattered and thinned, leaving only the witches—dozens of them, cloaked in gray. They advanced, moving like a synchronized unit. Those in front fired and fell back to reload, while those behind stepped forward to cover them.

Crack crack crack!

Bullets whizzed past Gideon. He returned their fire, calling for the Blood Guard to fall back to the purging platform, whose wooden frame—now going up in flames—could be used to take cover.

Gideon kept firing as they followed his commands. All except Laila, who stood shooting alongside him.

“Go,” he told her.

She ignored him, her pistol smoking. “Some of those girls are the witches we captured.”

Gideon nodded. The very ones Rune set free, with the help of his brother.

“And the witch leading them …”

Gideon shuddered. Cressida. The girl from his nightmares was here, in the flesh. He didn’t want to think about what that would mean. If they lost this fight …

Suddenly, the witches halted. Their firing stopped and silence rang out through the square.

“Gideon Sharpe!” Cressida shouted. “Tell your dogs to stand down!”

Her voice sent a lightning-like jolt down Gideon’s legs, unbalancing him.

He and Laila both stopped firing. But they kept their guns raised. When the Blood Guard behind them did the same, Cressida stepped forward, out of the formation, with another witch at her side.

The second witch dragged someone along by the collar. Her captive stumbled. His face was so bloodied and bruised that Gideon didn’t recognize him at first.

“Papa!” Laila cried out.

Gideon looked closer. It was Nicolas Creed. The man who’d picked him up from the alley stones behind the boxing ring; the man who’d taught Gideon how to fight back.

How did she capture him?

The Good Commander was heavily guarded at all times.

But if Cress could disguise herself as Verity, she could disguise herself as anyone. One of Nicolas’s most devoted soldiers, perhaps. His wife, or one of his children. He wouldn’t have stood a chance.

The witch threw the Good Commander to the ground at Cressida’s feet.

Laila lowered her gun and stepped forward. Gideon’s arm shot out to stop her.

“Keep your head,” he said. “It’s the only way to help him now.”

Laila swallowed, nodding, and fell back beside Gideon, her eyes trained on her father.

Cressida sheathed her cutting knife—a crescent-shaped blade Gideon knew too well—and drew out a pistol. Stepping forward, she pressed the barrel to Nicolas’s temple. Bright red blood stained her fingers, and all down one scarred arm were faded spellmarks.

Her sharp gaze focused on Gideon. “Tell your soldiers to disarm themselves and pile their weapons here.” She nodded to a spot several feet in front of her. “Then bring me Rune Winters and Seraphine Oakes. Do it now, or I’ll kill him.”

Nicolas knelt on the ground, his hands bound behind his back. The Commander raised his eyes to them, one of which was swollen shut.

Laila’s grip tightened on her pistol.

Nicolas’s gaze held Gideon’s. “Do not obey her. Do not stand down.”

Cressida pressed the barrel harder into his temple. Her dark eyes flashed. “Bring me the weapons, Gideon.”

“Remember what it was like when we lived at their mercy.”

Cressida looked sharply down, staring at her quarry. “Nicolas,” she crooned softly. Deceptively. Gideon knew that voice. His senses heightened, morphing into fear. “Stop talking.”

“Commander,” he warned. “Respectfully, I think you should do as she says.”

Nicolas glanced from Gideon to Laila and back. They may have beaten his body, but his spirit was fully intact. He looked not resigned, but resolved. “Think of what she will do to the ones you love. Think of what she will do to you. Do you want to live like that again? Or do you—”

A shot rang out.

Gideon flinched.

Laila sucked in a breath.

Silence bled through the square as the Commander’s body tipped slowly forward, collapsing in a heap. His eyes were blank as they stared at Gideon.

A cold numbness spread through Gideon’s chest. He stared at his mentor—a man who’d been like a father to him—now dead on the stones.

“That’s enough of that,” said Cressida.

“Papa …”

Laila moved, forcing Gideon to move, too. Sheathing his pistol, he grabbed her hard around the middle, stopping her from going anywhere near the witch.

“I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you!” Laila bucked against him. “Let me go, Gideon!!”

Gideon wrestled the gun out of her hand and threw it on the ground in front of Cressida. His arms pinned Laila against his chest, immobilizing her.

“Let me go let me go let me go …”

She was weeping now. Begging. Gideon held on tighter. This wasn’t the Laila he knew. Laila was tough. Resilient. Indestructible.

He couldn’t let Cressida break her, too.

“Keep your head,” he said again, fury bunching his chest. He wasn’t sure if he was speaking the words to Laila, or himself. “It’s what your father would want you to do.”

This was why the revolution had needed to happen. It was why Gideon became a witch hunter. To never again be at their mercy. To ensure none of them returned to power.

“Gideon?”

Gideon looked to find Alex standing next to him. His brother’s wrists were free of shackles, and his hands held out the coat of a Blood Guard officer, swooped like a basket. Inside were the guns of Gideon’s soldiers. Alex was collecting them for the witch queen.

Rune and Seraphine stood beside him.

There was an unspoken apology in Alex’s eyes as he held out the coat, waiting for Gideon to add his pistol to the pile. Gideon wanted to spit on his apology. Alex had clearly lied about killing the youngest Roseblood sister on the night of the revolution. It made him wonder how far back his brother’s involvement in this conspiracy went.

Alex was as complicit as Rune.

Gideon released Laila, who fell to her knees weeping, then dropped his gun in with the rest.

“You don’t know what you’ve done.”

Alex said nothing. Only turned to deliver the guns, followed by Rune and Seraphine. Gideon watched his brother lay the weapons at Cressida’s feet. Watched the smile spread across her lips. It was the smile from his nightmares. The smile of someone who knew the power they wielded over you, and wanted you to know it, too.

The smile of a monster back from the dead.

Cressida lifted her pistol, this time pointing it directly at him.

“One more thing,” she said. “You’re coming with us, Gideon.”

He almost laughed. “No, thank you. I’d rather be dead.”

That smile slid away.

“Would you rather her be dead?” She pointed the gun at Laila, who was still on her knees.

Gideon stepped in front of Laila, shielding her from the bullet. “You’ll find there are a lot of us who’d choose death over cowering before you again, Cress.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Fair enough,” she said, aiming her pistol at his chest.

Gideon waited for the bullet. Welcoming it. He hoped death would come swiftly.

Except the bullet never came.

When the gun went off, his brother stepped in front of it.

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SIXTY GIDEON

“NO!”

Alex staggered back at the impact. Gideon heard Rune scream. Alex swayed and turned to look at his brother.

Their eyes met.

The blood was already blooming across his chest.

“No no no …”

The entire square disappeared as Alex came into sharp focus. His chin tipped downward to look at the red stain soaking quickly through his white shirt. He touched it with his fingers, realization dawning.

Gideon started toward his little brother. Needing to catch him before he fell. Before his eyes went as blank as Nicolas’s.

Please, no. You’re all I have left …

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SIXTY-ONE RUNE

A SCREAM TORE OUT of Rune’s throat as she watched Cressida raise the gun and pull the trigger. She’d been so consumed by Gideon in the line of fire that she hadn’t seen Alex step forward until it was too late.

“ALEX!” Gideon bellowed.

Rune felt her heart fall out of her chest.

This was a living nightmare.

Gideon was already moving toward his brother. But Rune was much closer. When Alex’s legs buckled beneath him, it was Rune who was there to catch him.

Her arms clasped around his waist, sinking beneath his weight. His eyes fixed on her face as the blood seeped through his shirt, the stain growing wider by the second.

“Rune,” he whispered as she lowered him to the ground. “Do me a favor? Tell my brother I love him.”

Her eyes burned. She shook her head, cradling him against her. “You can tell him yourself.”

The sudden sound of guns going off, of bullets whizzing overhead, made Rune look up. She heard shouting and boots thudding in unison. Saw a sea of red uniforms flood the square.

The Blood Guard army had arrived. Alongside trained soldiers marched average citizens, advancing toward the witches. There had to be thousands of them. Merchants and dockworkers. Mothers and sons. Patriots who would rather risk their lives than see the Reign of Witches resurrected.

They were swarming the square. Surrounding the witches.

We’re done for.

Rune glanced at Cressida, whose face had gone white, her mouth a grim line.

“What’s happening?” asked Alex.

“This is the end,” said Rune. “It’s all over.”

Alex lifted his hand to her face, bringing her attention back to him.

“I want you to do one last thing for me.”

Rune pulled him tighter, closer. As if her embrace alone could stem Death’s tide. “Hush. Don’t tax yourself.” She would hold on to him until they killed her and pried him out of her cold, lifeless arms.

He lifted his other hand toward her, cradling her face now as warm blood seeped out of his chest wound, soaking Rune’s clothes and pooling onto the stones. “I don’t have long. But you … you have a whole life ahead of you. Rune. I want you to live it.”

She closed her eyes. “It doesn’t matter now.” She lowered her lips to his hair. Even if they could survive this, she’d lost everything. Everyone knew what she was. Gideon wanted her dead. And now Alex …

“I’m begging you, Rune. Save yourself.”

She shook her head. The acrid smell of gunpowder burned in the air once more. Any moment, the Blood Guard would start picking them off one by one. Cressida was powerful, but she couldn’t single-handedly stop an army aided by thousands of determined patriots.

Her eyes were still closed when Alex took her hand in his and pressed her palm to his chest, where the bullet had gone in. His blood was warm and wet beneath her skin.

“I’m giving you permission.”

Her eyes fluttered open. What?

“You’ve only ever cast small spells and illusions because you’ve never had enough fresh blood to do more.”

Her brows knit. “What are you saying?”

“Use my blood. I won’t require it much longer.” He smiled, a little sadly. “Take as much of it as you need.”

“I … I can’t.” But she could, and they both knew it. Magic only corrupted a witch if blood was taken against someone’s will. “Even if I could, what would be the point?”

His eyes dimmed.

“The point is to live,” he said, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “The point is to let me give you this one small thing, because I couldn’t give you the rest.”

Rune touched her forehead to his, her chin quivering.

“Promise me my death isn’t for nothing, Rune. Tell me you’ll use it to save yourself.”

She shook her head no.

“Please.”

Rune squeezed her eyes shut, knowing it was selfish to refuse him. If their positions were reversed, she’d be begging him to do the same.

If she was going to lose him, she could give him this one last thing. Couldn’t she?

“All right.” Her voice shook. Tears dripped. “I promise.”

With his hand in her hair, Alex pulled her mouth down to his, kissing her one last time.

Rune kissed back, that small spark flickering inside her. A spark that would never get the chance to grow into a steady flame.

She kissed him until his chest fell and didn’t rise again beneath her palm. Until his last breath died on her lips.

When she pulled away, his golden eyes were calm as a glassy sea. Reflecting the stormy sky overhead.

Alex was gone.

A sob surged from her depths. She wanted to stay weeping over him. To lie down beside him until death came for her, too.

It was the promise she’d made him that stopped her. She couldn’t break it.

The world spun like she’d stepped into the eye of a hurricane. The air smelled of blood and smoke, magic and gunshots. As Rune recalled the pages of her grandmother’s spell books, the shouting soldiers and cracking pistols seemed to go quiet and still.

She’d skimmed through so many spells over the years, most of which she couldn’t cast because she didn’t have the blood required.

Now she did.

She needed to make the most of it.

Save yourself, Alex’s voice echoed in her mind.

As his body grew cold beneath her hand, Rune let his words guide her. She recalled the last spell book she’d opened, remembering a spell too powerful for a witch like her to cast.

Earth Sunderer.

The seven golden marks flared to life inside her mind.

With Alex still in her arms, she lifted her hand from his blood and started to draw on the stone slabs around them. It shouldn’t have been possible to remember them so clearly, but she did. She traced each mark into the ground, her hand guided by something nameless. Ancient. That familiar roar crashed in her ears. Brine bloomed on her tongue. That powerful wave was swelling, only this time, Rune was swelling with it. Her fingers moved as if possessed, the magic itself guiding her.

The moment she finished one mark, she started on the next.

Is this what being a witch is supposed to feel like?

Good. Easy. Right.

With an immense amount of fresh blood, nothing held her back. That ocean inside Rune wasn’t happening to her; it was her. She and the magic were one.

When she finished the last line of the final mark, encasing both her and Alex in a circle of glowing white symbols, her bloody fingers lifted from the earth. As they did, that thunderous wave crashed, shuddering through her, bursting out of her as the ground shook and an earsplitting roar tore the world in two.

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