Gideon’s heart twisted as he watched their eyes meet. Heard the tremble in Rune’s voice as she said, “Please, please walk away.”

“Heed her,” said Gideon.

Alex stared at her. “I’m sorry, Rune, if you think I’m going to stand here quietly and watch you die, you’re an idiot.” Turning his back on both his fiancée and his brother, he addressed the bloodthirsty crowd. “I helped her steal witches from my brother’s prison cells! I helped smuggle criminals off this godforsaken island! I’m guilty!”

His eyes flashed as he turned back to Gideon. “Now arrest me.”

Gideon’s jaw clenched. Alex had declared in no uncertain terms that he was an enemy of the Republic. A witch sympathizer.

He knew what he had to do.

But Alex was his little brother, and it was Gideon’s job to keep him safe at all costs.

“Captain,” Laila said softly. “If you don’t, I will.”

She held out a set of iron shackles, the chains clinking in the wind. Alex held out his fists, waiting. Daring Gideon to do the unthinkable.

But Gideon had a sworn duty: to root out witches and their sympathizers. To prevent them from ever rising again to wreak their tyranny on the innocent. It was his purpose. His calling.

So, with his heart breaking in his chest, Gideon took the cold chains from Laila and locked them around his little brother’s wrists.

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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.