No one.
“If you tell the truth, they’ll kill you.” Rune reached for his arm, keeping him with her. “You can’t speak a word of this to anyone. Especially not Gideon.”
Gideon would be the first to hand him over.
Alex wouldn’t look at her, ashamed of the lie. Ashamed of himself and the mercy he’d shown.
Rune wanted to stay angry at him, and yet she knew the qualities that made him spare Cressida were the same ones that made him spare her. His gentleness and compassion; his firm refusal to take part in cruelty; his willingness to risk his life in order to do what was right … These things allowed him to see who Rune was, not what she was, and love her despite the danger.
“Sparing the life of someone you hate doesn’t make you weak,” she said, perhaps more to herself than to Alex. “It makes you better than the rest of us.”
It was the lie that was wrong.
She cupped his jaw in her hands and tilted his face to hers, holding his gaze. “If anything happened to you …” She shut her eyes against the thought of it. “Please, Alex. Promise me you won’t tell a soul.”
His breath trembled out of him. Finally, he said: “I promise.”
FORTY-FIVE
GIDEON
GIDEON PRESSED HIS BACK to the wall, breathing in the smell of oiled metal and ink. He drew his pistol and glanced at Laila, who mirrored him on the other side of this door, her scarlet uniform a pop of color in the darkness.
At Gideon’s request, the Ministry of Public Safety had instituted a curfew, decreeing a temporary postponement of citizens’ rights and allowing the Blood Guard to conduct raids wherever a casting signature had been found—or was suspected to be found.
It was Harrow who’d tipped Gideon off to this print shop. Three casting signatures were seen in one of its storerooms last week. The tip had come from one of the shopworkers, and as a result, Harrow had several spies watching the shop. She’d notified him less than an hour ago that seven people had entered after hours, when no one should have been there, and they hadn’t come out yet.
On my count, Laila mouthed, holding up three fingers. A printing press loomed at the bottom of the stairs behind her, where the darkness hid the rest of their raiding squad.
Three.
Two.
One.
They pushed off the wall. While Laila covered for him, Gideon kicked the door with all of his might.
It burst open.
They entered the shop’s uppermost room, their guns held high, while the rest of their raiding squad rushed in behind them. From the center, back-to-back, Gideon and Laila scanned the room, turning in a circle, their pistols pointed at empty space.
“There’s no one here.”
Dozens of freshly lit candles ringed the perimeter. Inside the circle of flames, where Gideon and Laila stood, someone had drawn symbols in blood on the floor.
Gideon looked from the bloody marks to the rafters, which were also empty. The door he’d just kicked in was the only way out. So where were they?
He lowered his pistol, eyeing the shadows cast by the flickering flames. “Where the fuck did they go?”
“Maybe they’re not gone,” said Laila, glancing at him.
Her words cast a chill over the room.
Stepping into the circle of flames, he walked toward the center, where a white casting signature glimmered in the air. Strange, how much could change in so little time. Because as Gideon approached, he was hoping for a different one.
This signature was neither crimson, nor moth shaped. Its thorns and petals made Gideon’s blood run cold.
“Gideon?”
He glanced at the three guards still standing beyond the flames, as if afraid to step inside the circle. Behind them, Laila was staring at something over Gideon’s head.
“I know where they went.”
Turning away from Cressida’s signature, he looked to where Laila’s attention was focused: the long horizontal windows roughly ten feet up the wall. One of them was open.
“You three.” He nodded to the soldiers outside the circle. “Check the alleys.” Moving for the window, he called to Laila: “Give me a leg up?”
She strode over and cupped her hands. As he stepped into them, Laila pushed him upward. Gideon grabbed the frame of the open window and pulled himself into it. Reaching down, he grabbed Laila’s outstretched hand and hauled her up beside him.
Gideon climbed onto the slanted roof first. But the fog was so thick, he could only see a few feet in front of him.
The print shop was part of several blocks of continuous row houses. This, combined with the fog cover, gave Cressida and any witches with her ease of movement tonight. They could be halfway across the city by now.