ENTR’ACTE
RUNE
RUNE STARED OUT OVER the sparkling sea, watching the broken island in the distance grow smaller and smaller. She felt like a stranger in her own body. Everything that made her Rune Winters was on that island—or had been—and she was sailing away from it.
As the gulls cawed overhead and the sails snapped in the wind, she listed off all the things she’d lost:
Wintersea, her home.
Lady, her loyal horse.
Alex, her beloved friend.
Rune swallowed, remembering him in those last moments. Gazing up at her, full of love and trust.
He would never finish his studies now, nor write another song. His music would no longer fill any halls, luring Rune to him. She would never again step into his arms and know she was safe. Never sit beside him at the opera, or the symphony. Never stroll the streets of Caelis at his side.
He was gone.
Rune felt broken beneath the weight of his absence. Their dreams of a new life were scattered to the corners of the earth, never to be put back together.
A sound from behind made her glance away from the porthole.
Across the cabin of Rune’s cargo ship, Cressida sat at a table with several other witches, planning their next move. Rune watched Cressida stand up and lean over the map spread across the table, pressing her fingertip to some point Rune couldn’t see. As she moved, the botanical scars snaking down her arms shimmered silver in the candlelight.
It was painful to look at her.
For two years, Rune had trusted the girl across the cabin with her life, believing she was Verity de Wilde. It made her dizzy to think that the entire time, her best friend hadn’t been a scholarship student, but a murderess.
What are we to each other now?
And what would Cressida expect from Rune when they landed on the Continent?
This whole time, Rune had been unwittingly saving witches for Cressida’s army. And now that they knew the heir to the Roseblood line was alive, more witches were flocking to her. Rune’s cargo ship was sailing to Caelis, where the witch queen would bolster her army and prepare to take back what was stolen from them all—ushering in a new Reign of Witches.
Rune was no fan of the New Republic, where her life was now forfeit. But neither did she want to return to what had come before the regime. She knew what Cressida was capable of and had no interest in swapping one evil for another.
But she had nowhere else to go. She couldn’t return home, where the Blood Guard waited to kill her. And with Alex gone, there was nothing waiting for her ahead.
Someone cleared their throat beside Rune, yanking her out of her thoughts. She turned away from the porthole and found Seraphine, her thin hands cupped around a mug of steaming tea.
“If you can tear a city in half,” said Seraphine, “she’ll want to know what else you’re capable of. In case you can be of use to her.”
Rune recoiled at the thought. “I have no intention of being useful to her.”
Seraphine shot her a look. “It’s better to be useful than to be dead.”
Rune considered the young woman beside her, sipping her tea. Peeking up from Seraphine’s lace collar was the hint of a silver casting scar carved into her umber skin. But Rune couldn’t make out the pattern. Feathers, maybe.
A bird?
Nan’s voice suddenly appeared in Rune’s mind: Promise me you’ll find Seraphine Oakes, my darling.
Rune had been so busy trying to accomplish the first part of Nan’s request, she’d never given thought to the second.
She’ll tell you everything I couldn’t.
“She wanted you to train me,” said Rune. If she had any hope of surviving what came next, she would need as much help as she could get.
“Who?”
“My grandmother.”
Seraphine’s thin brows shot toward her forehead. “Did she, now?”
“I think it’s why she asked me to find you. I think, somehow, she knew I was a witch.”
Beside her, Seraphine’s chest rose and fell with a sigh as she lowered her mug.
“You have a lot of catching up to do,” she said, looking Rune up and down.
Rune was about to say she wasn’t afraid to work hard, that she was determined to learn as much as she could, when Cressida glanced up, catching her gaze.
A chill dug into the base of her spine.
There was something insatiable in the witch queen’s expression. It was the look of a predator. Someone capable of killing innocent Verity de Wilde and subsuming her identity so perfectly, no one noticed. Someone capable of ensnaring brave Gideon Sharpe, then breaking his spirit into a million fractured pieces.