Heartless Hunter (Crimson Moth, #1) (21)

Rune let the subject drop and led him up another grand staircase to the third floor, where two double doors led into the second-largest room of the house.

“This is Alex’s favorite room.”

Gideon followed her into the dark expanse, which carried the faint smell of stale tea and old books. In front of them, windows stretched from the floor to the ceiling three stories above. The panes faced Nan’s gardens and, beyond that, the cliffs leading down to the sea. In the distant water, the moon’s reflection was a white candle flame flickering in and out of the waves.

Rune lit the gaslights, illuminating the room, and watched Gideon walk a slow circle, taking in the walls of shelves lined with books, the balconies on the second and third level, the spiral staircase rising to the top of it all.

“Any spell books in here?” he asked.

Rune’s heart tumbled over itself.

After the New Dawn, the Good Commander declared all objects used for witchcraft to be contraband. Finding a spell book in a citizen’s possession was enough to accuse them of sympathizing with witches.

“Feel free to look,” she said, hiding her panic behind a smile. She’d hidden all of her spell books in the casting room. “I won’t stop you.”

Gideon seemed about to say more when a large silhouette near the window caught his eye.

“Is that …?”

It was a grand piano. Alex had his own piano now, but he still preferred this one. He often spent all day here, practicing on it.

“No wonder Alex spent so much time here.”

Alex had been coming to Wintersea House nearly every day since he was eleven years old to play piano. Rune had hated her lessons, hated practicing, hated even the sight of those black and white keys. But Nan refused to let her quit. Alex was not only desperate to play, he was actually good at it. It was a shame that his family couldn’t afford to give him lessons. So Rune blackmailed her tutor into giving Alex hers, and by the time Nan found out, months had already passed.

Gideon strode over to the instrument, walking around it before coming to stand on the other side of the bench, facing the keys.

“Do you play?” she asked.

“Not at all.” He pressed down on a single ivory key. The E note rang, smooth and clear, through the room. “My brother is the musical one.”

Rune nodded. No one played as beautifully as Alex. Even Nan had come round to him in the end, wooed by his raw talent.

“The day his acceptance letter came from the Royal Conservatory, he hid it from our parents.” Gideon pressed down on another key—A this time—and the note hummed from deep in the piano’s heart.

Rune frowned. Alex had never told her that. “Why?”

“Our family could barely afford rent, never mind that kind of tuition. He didn’t want them to feel ashamed.”

If Alex had come to Rune, she would have convinced Nan to lend him the money—or figured out a way to pay it herself. The Royal Conservatory was a prestigious school on the mainland. Their music program was so competitive, the school accepted only a handful of students each year.

But Alex had studied at the Conservatory. For a few years, anyway. When the revolution struck, he left the program and never went back.

Intrigued, she sat down on the bench next to where Gideon stood behind it. “If your family couldn’t pay the tuition, where did he get the money?”

Gideon pressed down on the next key—the middle C—moving further along the keyboard, closer to Rune. The progression of notes he’d chosen formed a minor triad, resulting in a melancholic sound. It was a sadness Rune felt in her chest.

“We got lucky.” His voice hardened on that word: lucky. “My parents’ fashions began catching the attention of the aristocracy.”

Another key; another sorrowful note. This one was so close to Rune, his sleeve brushed her bare shoulder as he reached to play it.

“The eldest witch queens, Analise and Elowyn, were so taken by my mother’s designs, they wanted them for themselves.”

Gideon stepped directly behind Rune and the shadow of him spread up her back. Startled by the move, she froze, her pulse thrumming. With one hand still on the key to her left, Gideon reached around Rune with his free hand, pressing down on the keys to her right—F, then F-sharp—caging her in.

The hair on her nape rose. There couldn’t be more than an inch of space between them now. Rune’s senses heightened as she wondered if the mimic spider ever underestimated its much larger prey and was sometimes caught in its own web instead.

If she survived this encounter unscathed, she’d ask Verity.

Gideon’s voice was beside her ear. When he spoke, his breath rushed against her cheek. “Analise offered my mother a position as royal seamstress, with my father and me assisting. The yearly stipend was more than enough to send Alex away to school.”

Swallowing, Rune kept her voice light as she said, “That’s when your family went to live at the palace?”

“All of us except Alex, yes.” He fell silent for a long moment. Beneath his breath, he said: “He escaped what the rest of us could not.”

What does that mean?

Alex rarely spoke about his family. What Rune knew, she knew from other people’s gossip: shortly before the revolution, a terrible sickness stole his little sister’s life. Not long after, his parents drowned in an unfortunate swimming accident, orphaning him and Gideon.