“Reject who?” interrupted a new voice.
Rune’s eyes flew open. She raised herself to her elbows, groaning a little at the fight against gravity, and saw Alex enter the room.
“Your brother.” Verity’s hand was still clenched around the rose’s wire stem. She held it out to him. “Maybe you can talk some sense into Rune.”
Alex took the rose.
Sighing, Verity pushed herself from the bed. “I’ll see you both back at the party.”
If I can make it that far, thought Rune, falling into the covers once more.
Alex stared after Verity. “What’s with her?”
Rune made an inarticulate noise, too tired to explain.
Claiming the spot Verity had vacated, Alex lay down beside her. Even with several inches between them, Rune felt the warmth of his body. Together, they lay on their backs, staring at the stucco ceiling.
“Where’s Gideon?” Alex asked, voice tightening around his brother’s name. He held up the silk flower, contemplating it.
Rune winced, remembering their thinly veiled argument on the stairs earlier.
She and Verity hadn’t told him about the list of suitors, knowing he wouldn’t approve. Better to tell him once it’s over and done, Verity said when she first made the list. Remembering Alex’s interference tonight, Rune found herself inclined to agree.
Alex was fiercely protective of his older brother.
“Gideon went home.” Rune’s eyes closed. The comforting call of sleep lapped against her mind like waves against the shore.
A little voice inside Rune reminded her that her party wasn’t over. That she needed to get up, go downstairs, and resume her role as hostess.
Just a little rest, she told the voice. And then I’ll go down.
Silence filled the space between them as Alex went to that quiet place inside himself where he could collect his thoughts. Considering and arranging each one before showing them to the world.
There was a time when his long stretches of silence had unnerved Rune. She didn’t know what they meant and tried to fill the space with her words. But nearly a decade of friendship had taught her to love his silence, and now it was as comforting as his music.
When he finally spoke, she was closer to asleep than awake.
“Rune?”
“Mmmm.”
“Whatever you’re doing with my brother needs to stop.” The bed moved as he sat up, and Rune felt him reach down for her shoes, sliding one off, then the other. She wanted to tell him to keep them on, because she had to go back downstairs, but he continued before she could. “Hunting witches is Gideon’s obsession. If he discovers what you are, he won’t hesitate to kill you.”
“Why does he hate me so much?” she asked, eyes still closed.
Rune felt him lie back down beside her, then turn his face toward her, his breath feathering her cheek. “My brother saw horrible things when he lived at the palace. Things that damage a person irreparably.”
She thought of Gideon refusing the wine earlier. There was a time when I needed it to survive.
She wanted to know more, but it was wrong to pry one brother’s secrets out of the other.
Alex hadn’t really answered her question, though. Gideon had disapproved of Rune since the day they’d met five years ago, long before this damage Alex spoke of. It seemed there was something unique about Rune that Gideon couldn’t abide.
It bothered her more than she cared to admit.
Alex stretched out his arm toward her. It roused Rune a little, and she lifted her head, letting him tuck his arm under her like a pillow.
“It’s too late for Gideon,” he said, turning her on her side and pulling her back against his chest. “You, on the other hand, can still be saved.”
If her eyes were open, she would have rolled them.
We’ve known each other for seven years, she thought, remembering when she first met Alex. She’d been eleven, and accompanying Nan to the Royal Library, which was a glass building full of every spell book in existence—before the Blood Guard burned them all and converted the building into their headquarters. As she wandered the aisles of books, Rune heard music coming from somewhere in the library. The song brimmed with emotion, and she’d searched every floor until she found the boy playing it.
In all those years, how many times have I needed saving?
She must have asked aloud, because Alex said: “It’s not the times you don’t need saving that I’m worried about. It’s the one time you’ll need it, and there will be no one to do it.”