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Rune nodded.
It smelled like burning flesh and …something else.
Blood and roses,she thought.
Magic.
Rune had smelled this same scent once before, on the night of the Luminaries Dinner. It rolled over her like a wave.
Someone in the crowd screamed.
As more screams joined the first, Seraphine flew to the wooden rail at the edge of the platform, leaning as far as the chains around her ankles would let her. Rune was about to push herself to her feet, when her stomach cramped. Like a warm, achy swell in her lower belly.
That ache. She spent the better part of every month waiting for it.
As something warm and wet pooled between her thighs, a rush of relief came over Rune.
Her monthly cycle had started.
Fresh blood to cast with …
Except she had no way to use it. Her hands were trapped in iron. Wondering why no soldiers were coming to simply kill them and get it over with, Rune pushed to her feet, joining Seraphine at the wooden rail, scanning the platform.
“Merciful Ancients,” murmured Seraphine.
Dozens of figures cloaked in gray were sweeping across the city square, heading for the platform. The scarlet uniforms of the Blood Guard were cutting toward them, while the crowd in between swelled. Chaos erupted. Citizens tried to scatter, screaming and pushing, desperate to get out of the way.
Beneath the dark sky, thunder rumbled dangerously as gunfire rang through the air.
Rune squinted, trying to see the faces beneath the gray hoods. “Who are they?”
“Witches,” said Seraphine.
Rune’s heart skipped at that word. She squinted harder, realizing she recognized some of the girls beneath the hoods. Witches she’d rescued from Gideon’s clutches. Most she didn’t know at all. But leading them was a girl she knew by heart.
Verity de Wilde.
Her spectacles flashed when the lightning flickered, and her brown ringlets were loose around her shoulders. In her hand was a knife Rune had never seen before. One shaped like a crescent.
“Cressida Roseblood is alive …” Seraphine’s eyes narrowed. “… and has somehow gained a witch army.”
“That’s not Cressida.” Rune corrected her. “That’s my friend Verity.”
Rune had met Cressida. Verity and the youngest witch queen looked nothing alike.
“I assure you,” said Seraphine, “that girl is a Roseblood. She’s simply altered her appearance.”
Rune frowned, forced to recall Verity’s missing dorm room. Her endless exhaustion. Her heavily perfumed scent.
Was it all one elaborate illusion?
The magnitude of it—endlessly pretending to be someone else for two years straight—would require a lot of power.
And a lot of fresh blood.
A terrible feeling was taking hold of Rune.
Verity had reacted almost defensively when questioned about the Roseblood sisters using Arcana spells. And Verity had been at the Luminaries Dinner the night Cressida Roseblood was also in attendance. What if Verity was responsible for the spellfire?
