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Harrow’s brow arched higher. “You, my brawny friend, are cleverer than I gave you credit for.”
They passed under the columned entrance and into Blood Guard headquarters. When it was still the Royal Library, this building preserved witch propaganda, histories full of lies, and entire floors of spell books. Gideon remembered the marble busts of notable witches that once lined the wings, as well as the gilt-framed paintings depicting the golden age of witches. All of it was gone, destroyed in the early days of the New Republic.
“If she doesn’t have scars, I can’t accuse her.”
“How closely did you look?”
Gideon thought back to the dark, boarded-up shop. To Rune’s nearly naked form, standing in the glow of his lamp.
“The lighting was poor, but trust me, I looked.”
His memory was like a faucet. Once he opened the valve even a little, he couldn’t stop everything from rushing out. Thememory of her soft, white curves. The delicate lace of her bra. The scent of her skin …
Gideon had gotten very close to a nearly naked Rune. And he hadlooked. There was nothing to find.
“She’s flawless.”
“She was completely nude?” asked Harrow.
“What? No. You don’t do measurements in the nude.”
“Well, there’s your problem. The Crimson Moth won’t have casting scars where someone like you could find them. How do you think she’s escaped detection the past two years? You’ll need to get her good and naked.”
The words were a lightning strike. But Harrow was right. Runehadn’tbeen entirely unclothed. And he’d inspected her quickly, in dim lighting.
Gideon ran a hand over his face.
How was he supposed to get Rune Winters naked?
“Maybe I won’t have to.”
Harrow rolled her eyes. “You have some other plan?”
They entered the atrium, which was encircled by a massive staircase spiraling to the top floor. Overhead, the glass-domed ceiling revealed a sky full of clouds. Holding up the dome were statues of the seven Ancients, chiseled out of marble. Liberty, with her gun held high. Mercy, with her arc of doves flying toward the glass. Wisdom, with an owl on her shoulder and an open book in her hands …
“Do you remember it?” asked Harrow, halting halfway to the stairs, standing now in the center of the atrium. Gideon turned to find her staring at a spot in the middle of the floor, where the tiles didn’t match.
“There used to be a tree that grew right here,” she said, going quiet. “It reached all the way to the fourth floor.”
Gideon nodded. Rioters had destroyed it, too, after therevolution. Hacking it apart, uprooting the stump, and burning it all.
“Every spring, it blossomed for a month straight. My mistress, Juniper, loved to come when the blossoms dropped. They would carpet the floor in a sea of white.” Harrow swallowed, lost in the memory. “She said that Amity herself planted it here and centuries later, people built the library around it.”
Gideon had never heard Harrow speak about the witch who’d indentured her.
“Was she purged?” he asked.
This snapped Harrow out of the memory. Her footsteps started again, hastening toward the stairs.
“No.”
When Gideon caught up to her, a heavy silence hung between them. If this Juniper hadn’t been purged, then the witch was still out there, somewhere. He wondered if her memory haunted Harrow the way Cressida’s memory haunted him.
“Is she the one who …?” Gideon pointed to his ear.
Harrow reached to touch the place where her ear used to be, before a witch had cut it off.
“No. But neither did she stop it.”
