“Are you familiar with the pitcher plants that grow in the island’s bogs?”

Though he’d turned around to face her, there were several paces between them. Rune stood in the lamp’s glow, still in her lace underwear. Gideon was in the shadows outside it, fully clothed. And yet, in this moment, he seemed to be the vulnerable one.

“Those deep purple flowers that trap and eat bugs?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Cress was like that: pretty from a distance, tempting you closer. Like a fool, you were happy to approach.” He was staring at the space over Rune’s shoulder, his expression haunted. “It was only after she’d reeled you in that she revealed her true nature. But by then, it was too late.”

He met Rune’s gaze.

“She was already eating you alive.”

OceanofPDF.com

NINETEEN GIDEON

IN THE BEGINNING, THE attraction had been mutual. The first time he met Cressida Roseblood, he’d traveled to the palace with his mother to deliver a dress. While his mother spoke privately with the two eldest witch queens, Gideon waited in the hall, knowing how much rested on this moment. If the sisters liked his parents’ work, Analise and Elowyn would employ the Sharpe Duet full-time to be their dressmakers.

It would give Sun and Levi an enviable salary.

It would change their family’s fate.

Gideon had been standing against the wall when Cressida walked by with her handmaidens. Not realizing who she was, he’d done a double take, soaking up her ivory hair, bright blue eyes, and slender frame.

She had stopped and turned back. Smiling, she’d slowly approached and asked his name, then stayed to converse with him. He was completely taken in by her beauty, flattered by her flirting, and, most of all, surprised at being treated like her equal.

She only left his side when his mother returned, looking dazed, saying she’d signed the contract.

“I guess we’ll be seeing more of each other.”

Gideon still remembered the way his pulse had stumbled at those words. At the look she had thrown him before disappearing down the hall.

It started out slow. Once his family moved into the palace, Cressida invited him on walks in the gardens, or horseback rides along the shore. He started joining her at breakfast on her terrace in the mornings.

They traded kisses in empty palace rooms, hands wandering over each other.

It seemed like a dream back then. Too good to be true.

And it was.

“Gideon?”

Rune’s voice broke through the memories. For a moment, half-stuck in the past, Gideon saw not Rune Winters standing on the measuring block before him, but Cressida Roseblood. Watching him like a lioness. Contemplating whether to play with her food before she ate it, or go straight for the jugular.

His heart hammered; his palms sweated.

“Is everything all right?”

Rune’s voice pulled him fully into the present. Cressida is dead. This was a different girl standing on his measuring block.

Rune stepped down, padding softly toward him.

On instinct, Gideon stepped back.

She froze, biting her lip, as if sensing his distress but not knowing how to ease it.

Snap out of it, Sharpe.

He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Yes. Everything’s fine. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“I’m the one who brought it up,” she said, her stormy gaze studying him. “If you want to talk about it—”

“I’d rather not.”

What was he thinking? This was the absolute worst person to tell his most shameful secrets to. The queen of gossip herself, who could ruin his reputation with a single whispered word.

Why had he said so much?

“Okay,” said Rune, who hugged herself.

She was shivering, he realized. Of course she was. It was freezing in here and she was standing in her underwear.

You idiot. He retrieved a woolen blanket from a chest against the wall. It was a blanket his mother had used to keep herself warm while working late on cold winter nights. Returning to Rune, he flung it over her shoulders.

“Just one more measurement and I’ll be done.”

She nodded. As he bent down, pressing the end of the tape to the floor next to her heel, his gaze slid over her smooth legs, checking for any silvery marks on the skin, just as he’d done with the rest of her body. But there was nothing. Her legs were so perfect, Gideon had trouble tearing his eyes away from them.

He’d found no hint of any casting scars. Frankly, that she would strip down and stand before him this whole time, for his perusal, seemed proof she had none.

Perhaps he’d been wrong. Maybe Rune Winters wasn’t the Moth.

“Stand on this for a second.”

When she stepped on the tape end, he pulled it straight to the top of her head, holding it taut, and noted her height. She was a whole foot shorter than him.

As he wrote the last measurement down in his notebook, he heard her move toward the shelves.

“Are these …”

He turned to find her cocooned in the woolen blanket, which fell to the top of her thighs. She seemed perfectly unbothered by his attention as she peered at his mother’s old notebooks. As if standing half-naked in the same room as him was the most natural thing in the world.

Gideon swallowed, trying to stop his gaze from raking down her legs.

“My mother’s sketchbooks,” he said, loosening the collar of his shirt. “She kept all of her designs in them.”

“Your mother’s …” Rune jerked her face toward him, wild-eyed. “May I?”

“Go ahead.”

The smile that bloomed across her face did something strange to his insides.

Rune scooped every book from the shelf and carried them to the worktable, where she dropped them in a pile and sat down on a stool.

Awe softened her face as she drank in the images, reverently turning the pages. She looked almost … innocent. Gideon brought the lamp over to the table so she could see better.

He’d been careful not to touch her today, remembering his brother’s words in the boxing ring. Remembering who she was. Who he was.

You are beneath her.

Gideon picked up a stool and set it down on the other side of the table, where he planted himself.

He immediately realized his mistake.

From here, he had a perfect view of the low scoop of her bralette, the delicate lace leaving little to the imagination. He had just measured her bust, so why it suddenly mattered, he wasn’t sure. He kept his gaze on the line of her throat instead.

If they were truly courting, though …

If they were together …

He shot his thoughts dead. Didn’t you learn your lesson from the first witch who drew you in?

He and Rune would never be together. If Rune was the Moth, this courtship—if he could even call it that—ended with Gideon arresting her and Rune going to the purge. And if she wasn’t the Moth, he’d step aside and hope his brother finally worked up the courage to go after what he wanted.

And that was the way it should be.

When she caught him staring, Gideon looked away too late. Their gazes snagged.

Slowly, Rune closed the sketchbook she was hunched over and rose from the stool.

“I guess I should return this.” Walking around the table, she let the blanket fall from her shoulders, holding it out to him. When he took it, she hoisted herself onto the table directly beside him, letting her lovely legs dangle over the edge.

Gideon fought to keep his eyes on her face, when all he wanted to do was let them drop.

Picking up the notebook with her measurements, Rune flipped to the dress he’d designed for her. Her fingers traced the lines of his sketch the same way her eyes had traced his mother’s designs.