No wonder Verity hated her parents. This was why she wore herself down to keep her scholarship—so she’d never have to go home or be at their mercy.

But …

Ouch.

Rune glanced down to see her friend’s fingernails about to break her skin. “Verity, you’re hurting me.”

For a moment, it seemed like Verity wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. But she shook her head and let go. “S-sorry.”

Rune pulled her hand toward her chest, studying the little half-moon marks in her skin. “It’s all right. You’re upset.”

“My sisters weren’t corrupt,” said Verity, her eyes pleading with Rune to believe her. “They weren’t abominations. Witches have been using each other’s blood to amplify their spells for centuries. There’s nothing wrong with what they did.”

Verity nodded to the book on Rune’s desk, lying open to Earth Sunderer.

“That spell, for example. No witch can cast something this powerful using solely her own blood. She’d seriously hurt herself.”

Your sisters weren’t using each other’s blood against their will, though, Rune wanted to point out. Which was the accusation Gideon had made against the queens.

But Verity was distressed by the memory. And Rune couldn’t blame her. So she let it go.

“Come on,” said Rune, grabbing the blood vial she’d come in here to get, then eyeing the dress hanging over Verity’s arm—one of last season’s fashions. “Let’s find you something better to wear.”

OceanofPDF.com

THIRTY-SIX GIDEON

THE SUN HAD SET by the time Gideon arrived on Freshwater Street. Harrow rode atop a borrowed horse beside him.

After finding the Taskers’ apartment empty, Gideon led them here, to the entertainment district of town, whose establishments the brothers liked to frequent. Gideon intended to ask around in the hopes that someone had seen them.

The entertainment district was the capital’s underbelly, known for its brothels, gambling dens, and drunken brawls. Normally, the atmosphere lit up the street like a carnival, but now the district was eerily quiet. Up ahead, a hushed crowd gathered outside of an alleyway.

Harrow’s gaze cut to Gideon, whose eyes narrowed on the sight.

Their horses fidgeted beneath them as they approached, smelling the stench of death before they did. Swinging down from the saddle, Gideon left his horse several yards away, and dispersed the gawking crowd as he strode through it.

Harrow followed him in.

The alley marked the space between two beer parlors and was lit dimly by only the streetlamps and a lantern on the ground. The latter seemed to belong to the elderly man standing over a blanket concealing two large shapes.

The smell of blood was thick in the air, making Gideon nauseous. Pulling the collar of his shirt over his nose, he approached.

“I was taking out the trash when I found them,” said the man, his shoulders hunched like a crow. “It seemed wrong to let them lie here like this. So I …” He motioned to the blanket.

“Mind if I take a look?”

The man nodded for him to go ahead.

Gideon bent down and peeled back the blanket. Despite seeing dozens of scenes like this one in the past few months, he wasn’t prepared for what lay beneath.

The face of one of his officers stared up at him, but the hollow eyes and bloodless skin were anything but familiar. James Tasker’s mouth twisted in what appeared to be the state he’d died in: one of sheer terror.

Gideon forced himself to pull the blanket down further, his gaze descending to the Blood Guard’s neck, which was hacked open like a second gaping mouth. White bone shone in the mess of torn skin, tendons, and congealed blood. James’s spine appeared to be the only thing keeping his head attached to his body.

Bile rose in the back of Gideon’s throat. He looked away, pulling the blanket back over the soldier’s face.

“The second one is the same,” said the elderly man, standing over Gideon. “Throat slashed open.” He shook his silver head. “Poor souls.”

“Indeed,” said Gideon.

He had no love for the Tasker brothers, whose cruelty he hadn’t been able to keep in check. He’d asked for them to be discharged several times, but he didn’t want them dead.

Sighting Harrow further down the alley, a borrowed lantern in her hand, Gideon stood up.

“Fetch the undertaker,” he told the man, who nodded as Gideon stepped past him.

Gideon walked deeper into the alley, coming to join Harrow, who lifted her lantern into the air and nodded to the brick wall before them.

“Looks like she left you a message, Comrade.”

Gideon glanced up. Blood glistened across the yellow brick. The Taskers’ blood, he assumed. It took a moment before he realized the blood formed words, and those words formed a warning.

You’re next, Gideon.

“What are you going to do?” asked Harrow.

“Report this to the Commander,” he said, trying to ignore the icy dread spreading through his chest.

“And then what?”

“He’ll want to reinstate a curfew. And resume the raids.”

After the New Dawn, Gideon hadn’t thought twice about infringing on the rights and freedoms of the New Republic’s citizens. He did what had to be done to protect them, and if that meant entering and searching their homes without warning, if it meant locking them in their quarters after dark, if it meant hauling them into interrogation rooms if they so much as questioned whether the purgings went too far, so be it.

But that kind of power was easily abused. Gideon had seen soldiers take things way too far, and those kinds of measures now made him uneasy.

“And if the raids and curfews aren’t enough?” asked Harrow.

They might not be. Curfews and raids had weeded out witches and their sympathizers early on, but they hadn’t stopped the Crimson Moth. Gideon was dealing with a witch adept at hiding in plain sight.

“The only way to truly end this is to catch her.”

Gideon thought of their earlier conversation about Rune, and what he had sworn to do. The idea that Rune was the Crimson Moth, a witch playing him like a fiddle—that she was capable of this kind of carnage—turned his stomach.

But he couldn’t turn away simply because it made him uncomfortable. Nor could he let his feelings for Rune weaken his search for the truth. Gideon needed to keep his head about him more than ever.

She had seemed different under the moonlight the other night. Not at all the irritating girl who’d accosted him in the opera box. Gideon had been so enamored by the pensive, sensitive Rune that the discordance hadn’t raised his suspicions.

Who was the real Rune Winters?

Gideon wondered if his initial theory was correct: that she was pretending to be something she wasn’t to hide a darker truth about herself.

If so, he needed to find out what that dark truth was.

OceanofPDF.com

THIRTY-SEVEN RUNE

THE GLIMMER OF A hundred candle flames blurred at the edges of Rune’s vision while she tried to focus on the young woman before her.

“It sounds awful, being raised by a witch.”

“Horrible,” said Rune, whose face hurt from fake-smiling. “The worst.” But if this pain was her penance for the lies that she’d spewed—was still spewing—she’d bear it.

Her speech had been a triumph, judging by the throng of patriots gathered round and waiting to speak with her. Rune had felt sick during all six courses of the meal and barely touched her food. Her stomach grumbled loudly now as admirers swarmed. They were drawn like insects to Rune’s devotion to the New Republic, her embodiment of its virtues, and, of course, her disgust for all witchkind.