“He’ll know,” said Alex. “He’s well acquainted with magic.”
“Not my magic,” countered Rune. “Every witch’s essence is unique.”
After the trap he’d laid for her—a trap she’d stupidly walked straight into—Rune wanted nothing more than to end things with Gideon. He was altogether too clever. But to cut him loose now, when he suspected her most, would be akin to an admission of guilt.
Rune couldn’t retreat. She needed to go on the offensive. She had to appear smitten. Like she’d never encountered him at that mine tonight.
“As a Blood Guard captain, Gideon has brought witches through those gates hundreds of times. He’ll know where Seraphine is, as well as her purging date.”
“He already suspects you, Rune!”
“He didn’t arrest me tonight,” she pointed out. She’d bought herself more time with that luncheon. How much time, she didn’t know.
This didn’t seem to soothe them. Rune couldn’t exactly blame her friends. She might have outwitted Gideon temporarily, but she hadn’t thrown him off her scent for good.
“All I need is something to enchant. Something he’d wear on his person.”
“And the spellmark?” challenged Verity. “He’ll see it and realize what you are.”
“Then I need to enchant something where I can easily hide a spellmark. I’ll figure it out, okay? The Luminaries Dinner is in four days. I’ll ask him to accompany me. And afterward, I’ll use the spell to get the answers I need from him.”
“Afterward,” said Alex, darkly.
Verity said nothing. She’d gone utterly quiet.
They suddenly both annoyed Rune. Couldn’t they see this was their best option?
“If either of you come up with a better solution, I’ll call the whole thing off. Until then, this is the plan.”
Alex turned sharply to the carriage window, his fingers twisting that silver ring around and around his smallest finger. Verity merely scowled.
* * *
AFTER ALEX DROPPED HER off at Wintersea House with barely a word of goodbye, Rune dictated a telegram for Lizbeth to handle:
GIDEON SHARPE
113 PRUDENCE ST, OLD TOWN
COME WITH ME TO THE LUMINARIES DINNER?
RUNE
Afterward, she promptly fell into bed, trying not to think about Alex’s anger, or his tempting invitation to Caelis, or the tension between them tonight. Fighting with Alex made her feel unbalanced. Like a ship they’d been sailing smoothly on for years had suddenly plunged into stormy waters.
Alex never blurred the line between his loyalty to Rune and his love for Gideon. He liked to keep them separate. In courting Gideon, Rune was shrinking the gap between those parts of his life, and it was making him anxious. That’s all this was. That’s why he was being so protective.
Rune shook her head. She couldn’t afford to be distracted right now. So she put her oldest friend out of her mind and fell asleep.
TWENTY-EIGHT
RUNE
IT WAS A FULL day and a half before she received a response from Gideon. Rune was in her casting room, working on her Luminaries speech, when Lizbeth interrupted.
“A package arrived for you.”
Rune, who was in the middle of spewing extravagant lies onto the page with her pen, asked her to leave it on the desk. Only when she came to the end of the paragraph did she look up.
It was a plain white box tied with pale blue ribbons.
Wintersea blue, she thought.
Eyeing the box, Rune rose to her feet. Stretching the kink in her neck, she shoved aside the speech she was writing and pulled the package closer. Loosening the ribbon, she removed the lid, then pushed back the brown paper. A folded mint-green garment laid inside. Resting on top of it was a note written in black ink.
Are you asking me to be your date?
—Gideon
Rune read and reread those words before flipping the paper over and looking for more. But that was all he’d written.
Is that a yes? she wondered.
Glancing at the pale green fabric, she set the note aside and pulled out the dress. Something flickered inside her as it unraveled. Her pulse sped up as she took in the tapered lace sleeves and the delicately embroidered bodice.
After loosening the laces, Rune stripped out of her clothes and stepped into the elegant dress. The silk was smooth as water against her skin and the lace sleeves fit her arms like gloves. Without someone to do the laces up, she left the back open, stepped into the matching silk shoes the dress had arrived with, and walked into her bedroom to stand before the full-length mirror.