Heartless Hunter (Crimson Moth, #1)

by Kristen Ciccarelli

RUNE WINTERS. Every time Gideon looked at the young heiress, she reminded him of the sea: steal-your-breath beautiful on the surface, with the promise of untold depths beneath.

Whenever she opened her mouth, however, and he listened to the ridiculous things pouring out—at dinner tables, in parlor rooms, in the halls of the wealthy and popular—he remembered anew how deceptive looks could be.

She might have been the shallowest girl in the opera house, but he couldn’t deny that she was also the prettiest. A waste of a pretty face, he told himself.

He’d spent the last two hours making it for her, feeling slightly ill as he sewed every petal. Roses always brought the painful memories rushing back. But Harrow’s advice—to woo Rune—kept ringing through his head, and his mother could never resist the silk roses his father used to make her after they argued.

“Your laugh is like a fuse,” he said. “It lights you up.” Rune’s heart thudded. No one had ever told her that before.

For Rune, casting spells always felt like swallowing the ocean.

Were you born massive? she wondered, staring up at him. Or were you once as small and fragile as the rest of us?

She was a whole foot shorter than him.

“You are not the things that happened to you, Gideon.”