“THIS ISN’T THE WAYto my cell,” said Aurelia. They’d taken her child away, and ever since, her eyes had gone dark.
Gideon led her through the palace’s gaslit halls, boots thudding on the marble floors. “I’m not taking you to your cell.”
She glanced up at him. “Then where are you taking me?”
Gideon couldn’t help but compare the feral-looking thing beside him to the aristocratic woman he’d originally brought in. Two months in the palace prison could drastically change a person.
“That depends on your answers to my questions.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Where is Cressida keeping the bodies of Elowyn and Analise?”
Aurelia glanced away, pretending to study the marble walls as if they were made of complicated tapestries rather than blank stone.
He stopped, forcing her to halt. “Tell me where they are, and I’ll get you out of here.”
She cocked her head, studying him carefully. “Why should I trust you?”
Gideon shrugged. “You can’t.” He glanced behind them, then up ahead. The hallway was empty; a corridor of white. “But you can barter with me: the answers I need in exchange for your freedom.”
She sharpened like a freshly honed knife. Her green eyes blazed at him.
“I’m not going anywhere without Meadow. And I’m not telling you anything more until she’s safely in my arms.”
Turning on her heel, she headed toward the palace prison.
“You want answers? Free my daughter first. Then, we’ll talk.”
THIRTY-TWORUNE
RUNE WAITED FOR GIDEONon the crest of his tenement’s roof, perched between two chimney stacks, the sunbaked tiles warming her bare feet as she stared over Old Town. Smoke plumed from the factory district into the blue sky overhead, while the smell of coal mingled with the salt of the nearby sea.
Rune watched the comings and goings of people in the street, some pushing carts, others pulling livestock, others running messages or out on errands.
Before the revolution, Nan forbade Rune from ever visiting this side of town. It was dirty and rough, she said. Not for people likethem.
Rune drew her knees up and rested her chin on her arms, watching the city below. What would it have been like to grow up in a place like this, instead of Wintersea? Would she have become someone different, or would she be the exact same Rune?
And who is that?
Who was she, deep down? Beneath the witch. Beneath the aristocrat. What made herher?
Did a person change depending on their circumstances? Or was there something permanent about everyone? Something steadfast and true,despitetheir circumstances?
Rune didn’t know the answer, and it bothered her.
Her stomach growled, reminding her she’d eaten nothing since yesterday.
There’s a day market a few streets over where you can buy food to cook,Gideon had told her. Rune looked for it from where she sat.
She could learn to cook. How difficult could it be?
Rune reached for her shoes and was about to make her way down to the roof’s edge when she turned to find a Blood Guard soldier climbing up from the window below.
Rune sucked in a breath.
The young man looked up.
