Blood and roses, she thought.

Magic.

Rune had smelled this same scent once before, on the night of the Luminaries Dinner. It rolled over her like a wave.

Someone in the crowd screamed.

As more screams joined the first, Seraphine flew to the wooden rail at the edge of the platform, leaning as far as the chains around her ankles would let her. Rune was about to push herself to her feet, when her stomach cramped. Like a warm, achy swell in her lower belly.

That ache. She spent the better part of every month waiting for it.

As something warm and wet pooled between her thighs, a rush of relief came over Rune.

Her monthly cycle had started.

Fresh blood to cast with …

Except she had no way to use it. Her hands were trapped in iron. Wondering why no soldiers were coming to simply kill them and get it over with, Rune pushed to her feet, joining Seraphine at the wooden rail, scanning the platform.

“Merciful Ancients,” murmured Seraphine.

Dozens of figures cloaked in gray were sweeping across the city square, heading for the platform. The scarlet uniforms of the Blood Guard were cutting toward them, while the crowd in between swelled. Chaos erupted. Citizens tried to scatter, screaming and pushing, desperate to get out of the way.

Beneath the dark sky, thunder rumbled dangerously as gunfire rang through the air.

Rune squinted, trying to see the faces beneath the gray hoods. “Who are they?”

“Witches,” said Seraphine.

Rune’s heart skipped at that word. She squinted harder, realizing she recognized some of the girls beneath the hoods. Witches she’d rescued from Gideon’s clutches. Most she didn’t know at all. But leading them was a girl she knew by heart.

Verity de Wilde.

Her spectacles flashed when the lightning flickered, and her brown ringlets were loose around her shoulders. In her hand was a knife Rune had never seen before. One shaped like a crescent.

“Cressida Roseblood is alive …” Seraphine’s eyes narrowed. “… and has somehow gained a witch army.”

“That’s not Cressida.” Rune corrected her. “That’s my friend Verity.”

Rune had met Cressida. Verity and the youngest witch queen looked nothing alike.

“I assure you,” said Seraphine, “that girl is a Roseblood. She’s simply altered her appearance.”

Rune frowned, forced to recall Verity’s missing dorm room. Her endless exhaustion. Her heavily perfumed scent.

Was it all one elaborate illusion?

The magnitude of it—endlessly pretending to be someone else for two years straight—would require a lot of power.

And a lot of fresh blood.

A terrible feeling was taking hold of Rune.

Verity had reacted almost defensively when questioned about the Roseblood sisters using Arcana spells. And Verity had been at the Luminaries Dinner the night Cressida Roseblood was also in attendance. What if Verity was responsible for the spellfire?

What if Verity de Wilde was Cressida Roseblood in disguise?

“I’m sorry,” said Seraphine. “But your friend Verity doesn’t exist. Or if she did, she doesn’t anymore.”

“Are you saying Cressida killed Verity and stole her identity?”

“It’s very likely, yes.”

“But that means …”

Cressida Roseblood, not Verity de Wilde, had been Rune’s closest confidant for two years—without her knowing.

This whole time, Rune had trusted and confided in a murderer. In the girl who’d tortured Gideon and killed his little sister.

She rested her restrained hands on the wood railing to steady herself.

It can’t be true.

Verity was her friend.

But Rune had only become friends with Verity in the months after the revolution. By then, Cressida was dethroned and on the run. That left plenty of time to kill the girl and subsume her identity before befriending Rune.

The thought of Verity—the real Verity, a girl Rune was forced to concede she didn’t know at all—being cornered by the witch queen made Rune feel like she was going to throw up.

How could I have missed the signs?

Rune watched the girl she’d formerly known as Verity cut through the crowd, a small army of witches in her wake. Despite Rune’s horror and loathing, that girl was the closest thing she and Seraphine had to an ally right now.

Everyone else in that crowd wanted them dead.

Rune remembered the countless times Verity—no, Cressida—had absently traced the spellmarks on the open pages of her spell books. If she’d been memorizing all of Rune’s spells, then she likely knew the one that would set Rune and Seraphine’s hands free.

Picklock.

Leaning as far as she could over the railing, Rune’s voice battled with the thunder as she shouted: “My Queen!”

The girl who’d stolen Verity’s identity glanced up, her gaze swooping like a hawk to Rune.

As smoke filled the air, Rune raised her ironclad hands.

“A little help?”

The witch queen smiled, and Rune shivered at the sight. Holding out her pale forearm, which was covered in bloody spellmarks, she smudged the symbols with her hand.

The illusion fell away.

She was Verity no longer.

That curly brown hair straightened, lightening to moon-white. Her dark eyes turned crystalline blue. And the curves of her body fell away, flattening and lengthening into the wispy queen Rune remembered.

Snatching a young woman from the crowd, Cressida pulled back the girl’s hair. As her victim screamed and fought, trying to get away, Cressida bared the girl’s pale throat to her knife’s crescent edge, and slit it.

Rune glanced away too late to unsee the red blood, running like rivulets down her neck. The girl dropped to the stones, choking on it. Cressida dipped her fingers in the blood and drew a new symbol.

The spell flared to life. The locks of Rune and Seraphine’s manacles clicked. The heavy iron blocks imprisoning their hands opened, along with the chains around their ankles. Both fell, hitting the burning platform with a clattering thud.

Rune and Seraphine were free.

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FIFTY-NINE GIDEON

THE CROWD ERUPTED AROUND Gideon. Everywhere he looked, people screamed and pushed, trying to get out of the square and away from the witches descending on them. Gideon leaned into the jostle and crush, drawing his pistol.

Witches outnumbered his soldiers. The spellfire had killed the Blood Guard soldiers on the platform, leaving only those on the ground. There were enough left to handle a purging, but not a full-on attack. And the furious sound of gunfire cracking across the square meant the witches were armed.

His soldiers were outnumbered and outgunned.

Gideon had known Cressida was planning something. He should have prepared for this. He should have been ready for anything.

The crowd scattered and thinned, leaving only the witches—dozens of them, cloaked in gray. They advanced, moving like a synchronized unit. Those in front fired and fell back to reload, while those behind stepped forward to cover them.

Crack crack crack!

Bullets whizzed past Gideon. He returned their fire, calling for the Blood Guard to fall back to the purging platform, whose wooden frame—now going up in flames—could be used to take cover.

Gideon kept firing as they followed his commands. All except Laila, who stood shooting alongside him.

“Go,” he told her.

She ignored him, her pistol smoking. “Some of those girls are the witches we captured.”

Gideon nodded. The very ones Rune set free, with the help of his brother.

“And the witch leading them …”

Gideon shuddered. Cressida. The girl from his nightmares was here, in the flesh. He didn’t want to think about what that would mean. If they lost this fight …