Heartless Hunter (Crimson Moth, #1) (77)

Throwing back the covers, she trod barefoot to the windows and pulled back the curtain. The thunder had only grown louder in the hour since Verity left, and the rain hadn’t stopped. If the roads were muddy before, they were swampy now. It would be foolish to ride home to Wintersea.

But neither was she going to get any sleep in this house.

The chill of the floor crept up her legs as she walked into the darkened hallway. The servants had turned down the lamps and gone to bed, making the house feel abandoned. She counted doors until she came to Alex’s room, then went inside.

When the floorboards creaked beneath her weight, Rune heard him stir in the bed.

“Rune?” Alex sat up. His hair was mussed as he squinted through the dark.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, padding to the bedside. “Do you mind if …?”

Alex shifted, making room for her. Rune crawled into the warm spot where his body had been and burrowed into it. The pillow smelled like him. A warm, masculine smell.

They lay side by side for several moments, silent and still.

“Do you know what happened in this house?” she finally whispered. “To your brother, I mean.”

Alex turned toward her in the darkness.

“He never speaks to me about it, but I have my guesses.”

He stretched, pulling both hands behind his head. “It was after the funerals for Tessa and our parents that I noticed something was wrong. Gideon looked … like someone had turned out the light inside him. At first, I thought it was grief. We’d lost our mother, father, and baby sister in the span of a few days. Of course he wasn’t himself.

“But it wasn’t just grief. When I came home for the funerals, it was like Gideon couldn’t bear to look at me. He threw himself into his tailoring work for Cressida, avoiding me even though I was only home for a short while and didn’t know when I’d see him next.

“When I first moved to the Continent for school, Gideon and I wrote each other every week. After the funerals, when I returned to school, I kept writing him letters, but they now went unanswered. I asked some of our old friends to check on him, but no one had seen or talked to Gideon in months. There was something he wasn’t telling me, and I couldn’t understand why. We’d always told each other everything.

“I didn’t realize what he was doing was saving me. I didn’t know it was him who needed saving.”

Alex swallowed, rubbing a hand over his forehead. Rune kept silent, waiting for him to go on.

“Just before the start of spring term, I received a letter from a friend who’d seen my brother at a boxing match the night before. Stoned out of his mind were the words he’d written. Gonna get himself killed. That didn’t sound like my brother. So the same day, I asked for a leave of absence and boarded a ship home.

“I went to the boxing arena, looking for him. I checked every seat in the building, and when I couldn’t find him, I asked the bartender if he’d seen someone by the name of Gideon Sharpe. The man nodded to the boxing ring. The witch’s whore? He’s right there. It took me a moment to realize what he was saying. That the young man getting beaten in the ring was Gideon. His face was so bruised and bloody, I didn’t recognize him.

“The whore comes here every night, the man told me. After she’s done with him. I could see the disgust in his eyes. In all of their eyes. When Gideon got hit for the last time, when he went down and didn’t get up, I watched them throw his body into the alleyway with the rest of the trash. As if this were routine. Like he came there every night, drunk or high, and let them beat him half to death. Like he thought he deserved it.”

The words pressed down on Rune’s chest, heavy as a boulder. She closed her eyes against them.

Sensing it, Alex reached for her beneath the covers. His fingers found hers, knotting them tightly together.

“I didn’t know what to do. My older brother was a stranger as he lay unconscious in that alley. Nicolas Creed helped me shake him awake, and we managed to carry him to our parents’ old apartment. When Gideon sobered, he was not happy to see me.

“He asked why I wasn’t in school. I told him I wasn’t going back to school until he was better. Well, he didn’t want to hear that. He said I had to go back. That I belonged in Caelis, not here. Not anywhere near him. It might have hurt, if he didn’t look so terrified. I remember thinking, He’s driving me away to protect me from something.”

“From Cressida,” said Rune.

He nodded.

Letting go of her fingers, Alex looped his arm snugly around Rune’s waist. He pulled her against him so that her back was to his chest, hugging her the way a child might hug a blanket for comfort.

“I started going to the boxing ring at night, waiting for Gideon to show up. He ignored me. He hated that I was bearing witness to his misery and self-hatred. But if there was anything left in him to save, I had to try.

“Every night, Nicolas and I picked him up out of the alley and brought him home. When Gideon sobered, he and I would argue, and then he would storm out. Always going back to her. I think he was afraid of what would happen if he didn’t.”

Alex’s arms tightened around Rune.

“One night, Nicolas told me there was only one way to save my brother. He took me to a meeting in his friend’s basement. People packed the room, and as Nicolas got up to speak in front of them, I quickly realized what the meeting was: treason. There had been riots for years, but this was different. These men and women were plotting revolution. A world where no witches ruled. A society without magic. Only then would we have a world where the poorest didn’t have to go without food, or work for little pay in atrocious conditions, or sell themselves into servitude to save their families from starvation—or so they believed. The people there had heartbreaking stories, and reason to be angry. But their hatred, their lust for revenge … it scared me.