Bile rose in the back of Gideon’s throat. He looked away, pulling the blanket back over the soldier’s face.
“The second one is the same,” said the elderly man, standing over Gideon. “Throat slashed open.” He shook his silver head. “Poor souls.”
“Indeed,” said Gideon.
He had no love for the Tasker brothers, whose cruelty he hadn’t been able to keep in check. He’d asked for them to be discharged several times, but he didn’t want them dead.
Sighting Harrow further down the alley, a borrowed lantern in her hand, Gideon stood up.
“Fetch the undertaker,” he told the man, who nodded as Gideon stepped past him.
Gideon walked deeper into the alley, coming to join Harrow, who lifted her lantern into the air and nodded to the brick wall before them.
“Looks like she left you a message, Comrade.”
Gideon glanced up. Blood glistened across the yellow brick. The Taskers’ blood, he assumed. It took a moment before he realized the blood formed words, and those words formed a warning.
You’re next, Gideon.
“What are you going to do?” asked Harrow.
“Report this to the Commander,” he said, trying to ignore the icy dread spreading through his chest.
“And then what?”
“He’ll want to reinstate a curfew. And resume the raids.”
After the New Dawn, Gideon hadn’t thought twice about infringing on the rights and freedoms of the New Republic’s citizens. He did what had to be done to protect them, and if that meant entering and searching their homes without warning, if it meant locking them in their quarters after dark, if it meant hauling them into interrogation rooms if they so much as questioned whether the purgings went too far, so be it.
But that kind of power was easily abused. Gideon had seen soldiers take things way too far, and those kinds of measures now made him uneasy.
“And if the raids and curfews aren’t enough?” asked Harrow.
They might not be. Curfews and raids had weeded out witches and their sympathizers early on, but they hadn’t stopped the Crimson Moth. Gideon was dealing with a witch adept at hiding in plain sight.
“The only way to truly end this is to catch her.”
Gideon thought of their earlier conversation about Rune, and what he had sworn to do. The idea that Rune was the Crimson Moth, a witch playing him like a fiddle—that she was capable of this kind of carnage—turned his stomach.
But he couldn’t turn away simply because it made him uncomfortable. Nor could he let his feelings for Rune weaken his search for the truth. Gideon needed to keep his head about him more than ever.
She had seemed different under the moonlight the other night. Not at all the irritating girl who’d accosted him in the opera box. Gideon had been so enamored by the pensive, sensitive Rune that the discordance hadn’t raised his suspicions.
Who was the real Rune Winters?
Gideon wondered if his initial theory was correct: that she was pretending to be something she wasn’t to hide a darker truth about herself.
If so, he needed to find out what that dark truth was.
THIRTY-SEVEN
RUNE
THE GLIMMER OF A hundred candle flames blurred at the edges of Rune’s vision while she tried to focus on the young woman before her.
“It sounds awful, being raised by a witch.”
“Horrible,” said Rune, whose face hurt from fake-smiling. “The worst.” But if this pain was her penance for the lies that she’d spewed—was still spewing—she’d bear it.
Her speech had been a triumph, judging by the throng of patriots gathered round and waiting to speak with her. Rune had felt sick during all six courses of the meal and barely touched her food. Her stomach grumbled loudly now as admirers swarmed. They were drawn like insects to Rune’s devotion to the New Republic, her embodiment of its virtues, and, of course, her disgust for all witchkind.
Rune scanned the sea of faces, searching for Gideon, but didn’t see him.
He’s not coming, she thought, trying to squash the disappointed feeling burning behind her breastbone.
Am I really so forgettable?
With dinner over, all that was left was the music, mingling, and dessert. The staff cleared tables out of the center of the room and were now assembling some kind of stage, getting ready for the evening’s entertainment.
From across the courtyard, Rune caught sight of Verity. Her friend wore a cream, off-the-shoulder gown with gold beading. One of her hands held a matching gold clutch while the other beckoned to Rune, finger crooked. As if she had some secret to relay.