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?”
EIGHT RUNE
MINORA: (n.) a category of small to medium spells.
Minora Spells require a witch’s fresh blood. Old blood will typically not work and may cause painful consequences for the witch. Exceptions can be made when using the blood of another. Examples of Minora Spells include: closing a door from across the room or lighting a candle without a match.
—From Rules of Magic by Queen Callidora the Valiant
HER GRANDMOTHER’S SPELL BOOKS stared down from the musty old shelves of the casting room.
“Your supply is low,” said Verity, running her fingers along the corked glass vials that hung on the opposite wall. Of the six vials, four were empty and two were full; one contained Rune’s blood, the other Verity’s.
“I know,” said Rune from her casting desk, where she was tracing the mark for a spell called Truth Teller onto the bottom of a ceramic cup. Her guests would be here within the hour, and she needed to be ready. “But my cycle doesn’t start for another two weeks.”
Rune had developed her blood storage system shortly after learning she was a witch, using vials Verity stole from chemistry labs at the university. It was how Rune kept her body free of casting scars: by collecting her blood at every monthly cycle, she could usually get enough to see her through the month—if she used it sparingly and mainly cast simple Mirage spells. The more complicated a spell was, the more spellmarks it required, and the more blood needed to keep it alive.
A few months after her grandmother’s purging, Rune bled for the first time. All of her friends had started their monthly cycles years before, around the age of thirteen. But Rune’s first bleeding arrived late, at sixteen, after the revolution. Bringing with it the knowledge that she was, in fact, a witch.
She still remembered the painful cramping in her lower abdomen. She’d been at a party when it started, and had to excuse herself. In the bathroom, she’d found the black stain in her underwear, shining like ink.
Rune had stared at it, disbelieving.
It was the initial sign of a witch: at the onset of your first bleeding, you didn’t bleed red, but black.
Rune had seen Nan cast, and had gleaned some of the fundamentals from her. But everything else she’d learned from Verity, whose two eldest sisters had been witches and had let their younger sister help them with their spells. It was Verity who started collecting her own blood and giving it to Rune in order to help her cast stronger spells.
Like this enchantment. Truth Teller was a Minora spell and therefore more advanced than Rune’s usual Mirages. So she was using Verity’s blood instead of her own.
Verity turned away from the vials, moving toward the center of the room, where Rune sat at the desk. A spell book lay open beside her. On the yellowed pages in red ink was the symbol for the truth-telling spell. It was what Rune was using to enchant the wine cup.
“I’ll worry about my supply later,” said Rune, still drawing the mark in blood. The taste of salt stung her throat, and the roar of magic was loud in her ears. “Tonight, we need to find out where they’re holding Seraphine.”
The moment the spellmark was complete, magic swelled inside Rune like a wave. She swallowed back the briny taste in her mouth and waited for the roar in her ears to recede.
As the blood dried and the spell solidified, Verity pushed her spectacles further up her nose. Rune couldn’t help but notice the shadows under her friend’s eyes. Likely from too many late nights helping the Crimson Moth, then staying up until morning to finish her biology homework.
Verity was a scholarship student at the university in the capital.