“Excuse me,” said Rune to the girls before her. “I’ll be right back.”
Rune cut through the fawning patriots and strode past the staff setting up a stage. As she wove through the maze of long tables set with crisp white tablecloths, the chilly evening air made her shiver.
Traditionally, the Luminaries Dinner occurred in the palace’s grand ballroom. But this year, the organizers had moved it to the courtyard. The spring nights were still cool, though, making Rune wonder about the choice.
The moment she arrived at her friend’s side, Verity linked their arms and led Rune toward an empty corner of the courtyard. When there was enough space between them and the other guests, Verity lowered her voice to a whisper. “Witches are kept in the seventh circle of the prison—past Fortitude Gate.”
Fortitude was the seventh Ancient.
And the furthest gate from the entrance, Rune thought, recalling the prison map.
Keeping her face carefully blank, in case they were being watched, she asked: “How did you learn this?”
Her friend’s mouth quirked to the side. “I used some of your tricks on a prison guard who was getting off his shift.” Verity’s eyes sparkled with mischief, making Rune wonder what tricks she’d used, exactly. “He also said that everyone who works in the prison carries an access coin corresponding to the section they work in. The coins are like keys, getting you where you’re authorized to be, but no further.”
Interesting.
“So in order to rescue Seraphine,” murmured Rune, thinking aloud, “I’ll need to find a guard authorized to go beyond the seventh gate.” And steal his access coin.
“A guard,” said Verity. “Or a witch hunter.”
Rune shot her a curious look. “A witch hunter?”
“He said that all Blood Guard officers of a certain rank—usually the captains or their seconds—carry an access coin, allowing them to bring witches straight through to Fortitude Gate.”
If every Blood Guard captain carried an access coin, Gideon surely had one.
Rune wondered where he kept it.
The cogs of Rune’s mind were turning. If she stole Gideon’s coin, and perhaps a Blood Guard uniform—though how she’d do that, she didn’t yet know—would she be able to walk straight through the last gate?
A sudden commotion interrupted her thoughts.
Rune glanced toward the doors to find someone she recognized entering the courtyard. Someone who’d recently shot her.
Laila Creed.
Dressed in her scarlet Blood Guard uniform, Laila strode through the guests while gripping the arm of a prisoner. A black bag covered the prisoner’s head, and from the iron restraints encasing her hands, Rune knew the prisoner was a witch.
While staff filled cups with hot coffee or chilled wine and handed out plates with sugar-dusted pastries, Laila marched her charge through the courtyard. The lights of a thousand candles flickered down the lengths of tables as guests murmured excitedly, their attention on the stage now assembled in the middle of the space.
No, thought Rune. It’s not a stage.
Thick chains hung from a solid beam erected over the platform. Chains Laila was connecting to the ankles of the witch.
It’s a purging platform.
Rune didn’t think, just started forward.
Verity grabbed her wrist to stop her. “There’s nothing you can do,” she whispered, her face going whiter than snow. “Not here.”
Rune’s hands clenched and unclenched, knowing she was right. “Who—”
Before she could finish the question, Laila tugged the black hood off the witch.
Rune and Verity both sucked in a breath.
The face beneath the hood was shockingly familiar to Rune. She knew it from the gold locket Nan used to wear around her neck. It was a locket her grandmother rarely took off.
As a child, Rune liked to open the locket and peer in at the two young women painted on the two panels. On one side was Kestrel’s face, rendered when she was about nineteen; on the other was Seraphine’s, not much older.
The two women had grown up together, Rune knew. They’d been best friends since childhood.
Which was why the sight before her didn’t make any sense.
The witch on the platform bore the exact same face as the one inside Nan’s locket—sparkling brown eyes, sharp birdlike features, black curls that haloed her head like a cloud. As if Seraphine Oakes hadn’t aged a single day.
Why is she so young?
Nan had been over seventy the day she died, and the woman on the platform—Seraphine—looked no older than twenty-three.