Текст книги "Heartless hunter"

Автор книги: Kristen Ciccarelli

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

SIX RUNE

GIDEON IMMEDIATELY WITHDREW HIS arm from the seat back, startled by her presence. As the orchestra’s hum rose to a crescendo, the lights around the horseshoe auditorium dimmed. The second act was about to start.

“Actually, that seat—”

“I’ve never watched an opera from up here before,” she said, cutting him off. The exhilarating rush of danger coursed through her as she peered down to the floor seats, which were packed full, except for a few stragglers climbing over others to get to their spots. “It’s quite the view.”

In the near-dark, she could feel the weight of his inscrutable gaze. “Quite. Is Alex with you?”

“No. He …” Rune glanced up and their eyes locked. An electric hum made the hair on her arms rise. Like being caught in a storm right before lightning strikes.

“Miss Winters? Is everything all right?”

The question grounded her.

You are an actor, she reminded herself. And this is a play.

But which character was she—the heroine, the villain, or the fool?

The fool.

“Everything is wonderful,” she said, rallying. “I just love the opera, don’t you?”

The stage lights flared, illuminating the satin gowns and colorful sequins of the actors positioned onstage. Illuminating Gideon, who watched her in the darkness.

“It’s all so pretty,” she continued, spinning the image of herself that she wanted him to see. “The costumes and the sets and the singing …” She flashed him the brightest smile she could manage. “Though the stories could be shorter. A lot shorter, don’t you agree? I find them a little, well, boring, you know? And so hard to follow! By the time they’re over, I’m always a little confused.”

She laughed to solidify the part she was playing. But deep down, her soul wilted.

Before Nan died, they attended the opera every Saturday. It was Rune’s favorite day of the week. Nan did Rune’s makeup and hair and let her borrow whatever jewelry she liked. Rune loved waltzing up the steps to the foyer in a frothy new skirt, loved being included in the conversations with her grandmother’s sophisticated friends, loved being transported to a different world inside the auditorium. But she loved the afterward best, when, on the way home, she and Nan fell into heated discussions about the stories that had played out across the stage.

That was before the Red Peace outlawed the old operas. The travesties that played here now were all preapproved by the Ministry of Public Safety. They weren’t stories—not good ones, anyway. They were thinly veiled lessons about how to behave under the new regime. Reminders of who the enemy was and why you should despise them. The villains were always witches or witch sympathizers; those who ratted them out or hunted them down were the heroes.

It was all so nauseatingly predictable.

Nan would have hated them.

She stole a glance at Gideon. He probably thinks they’re high art.

“Intermission is my favorite part,” Rune continued. “And the after-parties, of course.” She leaned in toward him, as if to spill a secret, and the smell of gunpowder wafted off his coat. “That’s why I’m here. To invite you to my party.”

Annoyance tugged his stern mouth into a harsh line. “I wish I had the patience for silly gossip and shallow company,” he said. “Alas, I do not.”

At the insult, a bloom of heat rushed up her neck, reminding Rune of the first time they met and the dismissive remarks he’d made. She was suddenly grateful for the darkness. Fisting her hands in the smooth silk of her dress, Rune nodded sympathetically. “I understand completely. Someone like you obviously prefers the company of stupid brutes with terrible style.”

He glanced at her.

Rune mentally pinched herself. What am I doing? She needed to pretend his verbal jabs went over her head, not jab him with sharper ones. Let him insult you. Remember why you’re here.

Wrestling her pride into a cage, she smiled innocently up at him.

He studied her, a bit warily. Seeming to decide he’d misheard her, he returned his attention to the opera.

This is going to be harder than I thought.

Clearly Gideon considered her not only worthy of insulting, but too stupid to realize she’d even been insulted. Ordinarily, she would use this to her advantage. But as he turned away, crossing his arms and staring hard at the stage, she realized he was closing himself off from her, not opening himself up.

Her presence was vexing him. Like it had the first day they met.

He hates parties, Alex had warned her. But it was the best move in Rune’s playbook. The most effective way to lower a man’s defenses was to ply him with her enchanted wine, get him alone, and flirt until the spell loosened his tongue enough to spill the secrets she needed.

Rune tapped her knee with her fingertips, trying to think.

She’d seen the way Gideon lit up at the sight of his brother. Rune had ceased to exist the moment Alex stepped out of that alcove. The Sharpe brothers might be opposites who disagreed on everything important, but something nameless and deep bound the two boys to each other. It wasn’t the first time Rune had seen it.

“Alex would love it if you came.”

Gideon tensed beside her. “You must not know my brother well if you think my presence in your home would cheer him.”

Rune frowned, trying to untangle the words. What did he mean?

“And as I said, some of us have better things to do with our time.”

Before she could try again from another angle, a shadow fell across them. Gideon looked up and shot to his feet. “Harrow. Finally. I thought I was going to have to watch this damned thing to the end.”

“It might have done you some good,” responded a feminine voice. “Isn’t that the point of art—to tame the monsters in us?”

Rune’s attention snagged on the question. It was a line from one of her favorite operas.

Squinting through the darkness, Rune tried to make out the identity of the speaker, but the ushers had snuffed all the lights on this level. She could see neither this girl’s face nor her clothes. Nothing that might give her away.

“You’ve been reading too many fairy tales,” said Gideon, stepping over Rune with his long legs. “You’ll have to excuse me, Citizen Winters. Have fun at your … party.” There was no mistaking the sneer in his voice.

Rune turned her head, watching the two of them walk out of the box, speaking in low voices. The moment they were gone, she squeezed her hand into a fist.

Failed again.

Leaning her head back against the velvet headrest, she ran both palms down her cheeks. She was losing valuable time. Rune needed to find Seraphine’s location—preferably tonight. And she couldn’t keep stalking Gideon Sharp, or he was bound to get suspicious. Which is the last thing I need. Gideon had gotten to Seraphine first on the night Rune was due to arrive at the home of his prey.

It might be a coincidence. Or it might not.

Gideon had seemed convinced by her performance, though. If someone was spying on Rune, she doubted it was him. But she remembered the suspicion in Laila Creed’s questions earlier and had to consider the possibility that her enemies were closing in on her.

Rune sank further into her seat, trying not to think about the witch hunters currently surrounding her in this opera box.

If they are closing in, how can I throw them off my scent?

Her mind was a murky bog of exhaustion, tugging her thoughts down into the muck. Whenever she felt like this, she found Verity, whose sharp questions always sparked Rune’s imagination, like a poker stoking a dying fire. Verity was the Crimson Moth’s second-in-command. She came up with as many plans as Rune did and helped implement them.

So, when the actress onstage finished her aria, Rune hauled herself to her feet, pushed aside the balcony curtain, and went to find her friend.

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SEVEN GIDEON

RUNE WINTERS.

Every time Gideon looked at the young heiress, she reminded him of the sea: steal-your-breath beautiful on the surface, with the promise of untold depths beneath.

Whenever she opened her mouth, however, and he listened to the ridiculous things pouring out—at dinner tables, in parlor rooms, in the halls of the wealthy and popular—he remembered anew how deceptive looks could be.

There were no hidden depths to Rune Winters. Only surface, surface, and more surface.

Tonight was a reminder of that.

“Hello? Gideon?” Harrow snapped her brown fingers in front of his face. “I said: what do you want to drink? It’s on me.”

The raucous noise of the Crow’s Nest came rushing in. The pine table was sticky beneath his elbows, and the air smelled like sour ale.

Gideon shook his head. “Nothing for me.”

Harrow clucked her disapproval. She turned her head toward the bar, and Gideon tried not to stare at the place where her left ear should have been. She kept the hair on that side cropped almost to the scalp, where it shone like dark fuzz. As if she took pride in the disfigurement and wanted to show it off.

He guessed she was close to him in age, but didn’t know for sure, and he’d never asked how she came by the loss of her ear. A family of witches had indentured Harrow before the revolution. Gideon could piece together the rest.

They’d been lucky to grab this table just as its last occupants left. Harrow refused to order at the bar in case someone snatched her stool while she was gone. So while she shouted her request to the barkeep, Gideon’s mind wandered back to Rune.

He couldn’t make sense of her sudden appearance on the balcony tonight. She’d barely spoken a handful of words to him in five years, and suddenly, she was … inviting him to her house? Why?

He tried to shake off the strangeness of it. But try as he might, he couldn’t banish the memory of her next to him in the opera box. Her strawberry blonde hair was a little wilder than usual, and her stylish gown put her elegant clavicles on display. The rust-colored fabric contrasted with her gray eyes and pale complexion, pulling his gaze toward her more times than he’d like to admit.

She might have been the shallowest girl in the opera house, but he couldn’t deny that she was also the prettiest.

A waste of a pretty face, he told himself.

A better person would feel guilty for insulting her. Gideon didn’t. He hoped he’d made his feelings clear, so she’d avoid him in the future. In fact, he thought he’d made his feelings clear years ago, when they first met.

He’d often observed the way his brother looked at her, noticed how his voice softened on her name, and while he had no idea what Alex saw in Rune, other than the obvious—which wasn’t enough to tempt him—Gideon had no intentions of going anywhere near her. That was as true now as it had been when they were kids.

Back then, Rune Winters was the aristo his little brother wouldn’t stop talking about. Alex found ways of inserting her into every conversation. Rune thinks this. Rune loves that. It would have annoyed Gideon if he hadn’t been so goddamned curious.

But then he saw her. Met her. And he knew at once they’d never be friends.

“Those twin girls who escaped three weeks ago?”

Harrow’s voice dragged him back to the table in time to see her creamy ale slosh over the side of her glass as she set it down. When the foam dribbled over her fingers, she licked it off.

“The Crimson Moth stole the pair the night you were supposed to transfer them to the palace prison. Remember?”

How could Gideon forget? They were exactly his sister’s age when she died. Skinny little things. He could picture them huddled behind the bars of the cell he’d locked them in: wide-eyed and trembling as they clung to each other. “I remember.”

He also remembered when they disappeared from that same cell one night later. A casting signature had appeared over the cot where they’d slept. Gideon could recall the mark perfectly in his mind’s eye: a delicate, blood-red moth fluttering in the air. He’d been so angry, he’d wanted to grab the thing and squeeze it. But it was only a signature—the mark left behind after a witch cast a spell, like an artist signing their name to a painting.

The moth faded less than an hour later.

Harrow sipped daintily at her beer. “A dockworker found signatures aboard a cargo ship three days ago, after it docked in Harbor Grace. The two witches must have illusioned themselves to look like cargo.”

And when the illusion faded, the signatures would have remained behind.

Harbor Grace was a busy port on the mainland. Everything this island didn’t make, grow, or mine was shipped over via that port.

Gideon frowned. “Were they recaptured?”

Harrow shook her head. “No. But …” She glanced around and leaned in toward him. He could smell the ale on her breath. “The cargo ship belongs to Rune Winters.”

What?

The alehouse spun around them. Gideon flattened his hands on the beer-sticky table to steady himself.

That can’t be right.

“Are you certain?”

Harrow leaned back, taking another sip. “My contact saw the signatures himself, in her ship’s cargo hold.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s involved,” said Gideon, thinking it through. “Just because Rune owns the ships doesn’t mean she knows everything that goes on with them. It could easily be one of the crew stowing witches away without her knowledge.”

“But it makes her a suspect,” Harrow pointed out. “And the best lead you’ve had in a long time.”

For months now, Gideon had suspected the Crimson Moth was someone who traveled in elite circles. Someone with access to the most exclusive balls and private dinner parties. Someone who regularly rubbed shoulders with the powerful and well connected.

Could that someone be Rune Winters?

Gideon remembered Rune at the opera, her conversation growing more and more irritating the longer she kept talking.

“It’s not possible,” he said. “There’s not an intelligent thought in that girl’s head.”

And the Moth was intelligent. To go toe-to-toe with Gideon, to outwit him, she had to be. And if the mutilated bodies they kept finding across the city were her victims, she was also ruthless. Disturbed.

Evil.

It was difficult to reconcile those things with the ridiculous girl in the opera box.

If he needed more proof of Rune’s innocence, all Gideon had to do was go back two years. He’d been at the Winters’ estate when the Blood Guard arrested Kestrel Winters in her home. His orders? To watch Kestrel’s adopted granddaughter, Rune, while the other soldiers seized the witch from her chambers.

Gideon hadn’t taken his eyes off the girl—not an arduous task, to be sure. Rune was just as beautiful then. Like those marble sculptures adorning the lavish mansions of the aristocracy, existing solely to impress the guests. When a Blood Guard officer smashed his pistol into Kestrel’s face, her granddaughter hadn’t even flinched. Only watched, coldly and calmly, as they stripped the old woman down, found her scars, and dragged her off to be executed.

Rune had shown no hint of remorse.

If Rune had been Kestrel’s blood relative, Gideon might consider her more carefully. But the girl’s birth parents had been nothing more than fancy merchant folk. There were no witches in her bloodline—Gideon had checked—making it impossible that she was a witch.

“Rune sent her grandmother to the purge,” Gideon told Harrow. “She’s no witch sympathizer. Just an empty-headed patriot.”

“Maybe that’s what she wants you to think,” Harrow countered.

Gideon shook his head. It made no sense. “Why would she risk her life to save other witches now when she heartlessly betrayed her grandmother two years ago?”

“It could be a deception.”

Gideon was about to shrug this off, except that kind of deception was exactly what he’d learned to expect from the Crimson Moth.

What if Harrow’s right?

His comrade picked up her glass and slowly swirled the ale inside, watching Gideon chew on his thoughts.

He’d dismissed it, but there had been a moment in the opera box when Rune’s mindless prattling had suddenly turned biting. Someone like you obviously prefers the company of stupid brutes with terrible style.

It didn’t prove anything. Aristocrats like Rune Winters had always looked down on Gideon. The Blood Guard paid well, but good pay didn’t elevate a man’s station. Gideon might not be dirt-poor anymore, but he was far from her equal.

In Rune Winters’ eyes, people like him—soldiers, sons of tailors, members of the working class—would always be less than.

But they’d found signatures on her ship. Gideon couldn’t rule out the possibility that Rune might be the Moth—or at least in league with her.

“I’ll keep my eyes on the docks,” said Harrow.

He glanced up to find a thoughtful expression on her face. “I’ll pay for whatever information you find.”

The light in her golden eyes winked out. She stopped swirling her drink. “No.”

Gideon sighed. Over a year ago, Harrow had approached him, offering her services. The Crimson Moth had stolen yet another witch from him the day before, and Gideon was desperate to outmaneuver her. He accepted Harrow’s offer, expecting her to gouge him with her fees. Instead, she refused payment. When he asked her why, Harrow had simply pointed to her missing ear and walked away.

“Doesn’t your little brother run in Rune’s circles? Get him to spy for you.”

Gideon tensed. This had always been a sore spot between him and Alex. His brother wanted nothing to do with the hunting and purging of witches. He’d made that clear these past two years, and Gideon no longer pressed him on it.

Their shared past haunted them both in different ways. Alex wanted to forget; Gideon couldn’t afford to.

“Alex isn’t interested in spy work.”

“Mmm. I guess you’ll have to do it yourself, then.”

Gideon glanced up. “Do what myself?”

“I can’t walk among them. Me in one of those fancy gowns, jewels dripping from my fingers?” Harrow turned her face to give him a perfect view of the side of her head where an ear should be but wasn’t, making it perfectly obvious why she didn’t belong in marble ballrooms, eating off gold-rimmed plates. “But you can.”

“What are you proposing? That I befriend Rune Winters?”

“More than that, Comrade.” Harrow’s grin widened, and there was mischief in it. “You should woo her.”

He nearly choked. “You’re not serious.”

The idea made him break out in a sweat.

Harrow leaned in. “You don’t make friends, Gideon. Not easily, anyway. Certainly not with people like Rune. You do, however, collect admirers. Whether or not you notice them.”

“She called me a stupid brute.”

Harrow’s mouth snagged in a crooked smile, as if this delighted her. “Sounds like a girl after my own heart.”

“I’m serious. I have nothing to offer her. When girls like Rune pick out their future husbands, people like me don’t make their lists.”

“You might be surprised.”

A cold horror crept over Gideon as he forced himself to consider it.

If Rune was the Crimson Moth, she was a master of disguise, and the only way to catch her was to play the same game she was playing.

There was only one problem.

Alex.

If Gideon did as Harrow suggested, presenting himself as one of Rune’s many suitors, he’d be moving in on his little brother’s crush. That’s how it would look, at least.

All of Gideon’s instincts rebelled against it.

But if Rune was the Moth, not only did he have a duty to take her down, he had a duty to protect his brother from her. If he hurt Alex in this process, so be it. It was a price he’d have to live with.

He hadn’t saved Alex from one witch only to let him fall prey to another.

It was this—his brother, in danger—that forced his hand.

Gideon ran calloused fingers roughly through his hair, thinking back to the opera box, wincing at the cruel way he’d spoken to Rune. “There’s another problem.”

Harrow placed her elbow on the table and settled her cheek on her fist. “Tell me.”

“I insulted her tonight. She invited me to her party, and I snubbed her.”

The corner of Harrow’s mouth twitched, as if she found Gideon squirming like a bug in a sticky web the funniest thing she’d seen all day.

She tapped her fingertips against the fuzzed brown hair of her undercut. “There’s an obvious solution, but you won’t like it.”

Gideon nodded for her to go on.

“You need to get yourself to that party and back into her good graces.”

“I need to grovel, you mean.”

“Yes. But you can’t just walk in there and say you’re sorry. You need to prove that you mean it. If you’re going to be a genuine contender for Rune Winters’ heart, you need to beat out the competition.”

He gritted his teeth at the thought.

Harrow leaned in. Even her eyes were laughing at him.

“The question is, Comrade: how are you going to do that?”

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