BANG! BANG! BANG!
Someone stood behind him, pointing her gun at the deadwitch. She fired until the chamber clicked, clicked, clicked. Out of bullets.
Her gaze lifted to Gideon.
Rune’s illusion was gone. In the light of the setting sun, the wind whipped her red-gold hair free of its braid, and her eyes were thunderous as she lowered the smoking pistol. Her cheeks were red, her skin shone with sweat, and her chest heaved, as if she’d run hard, all the way here. Desperate to get to him in time.
He’d never seen a more beautiful sight.
Or a more furious one.
“What thehell, Gideon?”
SEVENTYRUNE
IT WAS AS THEtrain was pulling away from the platform that Rune saw him out there in the railyard: Gideon, dressed in a fancy riding suit, the brim of a wool cap shadowing his face…
And a gun pressed between his shoulder blades.
Something ferocious roared to life inside her.
But the train was leaving the station, and with it, her last chance to get out. Rune knew what it would cost her to get off. And suddenly, it didn’t matter.
None of it mattered except this.
She had to shove past the passengers blocking her way down the aisle, and then screamed like a lunatic until the staff opened the door for her.
And then she jumped.
From a moving train.
Onto the platform.
She felt her world collapsing in on itself as the train left the station and she ran across the rail yard, not knowing if she’d get to him in time. She’d run harder than she’d ever run in her life. Ran until her lungs burned and her legs screamed, and then ran even harder.
And now here he was: sprawled across the train tracks, his hands in the dirt, that ridiculous wool cap knocked from his head.
Alive.
It made Rune want to fall to her knees and weep with relief.
If she hadn’t glanced out the train window one more time before the platform disappeared, he’d be dead. And she would be riding away from the station, oblivious.
A fist squeezed her heart.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, gripping the pistol in her hand, anger spiking through her. She’d stolen it off a soldier in the station.
“Me?” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “What areyoudoing here?”
Rune pointed to the dead witch at her feet. “Saving yourlife!”
She glanced at the distant train. The one she was supposed to be on.
“You’ve ruined everything!” She threw down the pistol. With its empty chamber, the gun was useless to her. “That was my last chance to escape!”
His face darkened. “Then you should have taken it!”
“And let her kill you?”
