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“We witches once lived as you do,” Rune said, motioning to the grand hall they stood in, where chandeliers twinkled and marble columns propped up the painted ceiling. “Our lives were full of music, beauty, art…” Yes, thought Gideon. And your luxuries came at the expense of our misery.
She wasn’t sure what was more upsetting: that Alex had loved her, or that Gideon didn’t.
Instead, he’d found this Rune. His Rune. A total mess. The basest part of him wanted to tilt her head back and kiss her until she told him why she was crying.
“I may not know Rune Winters,” he whispered, his mouth an inch from hers. “But I know the Crimson Moth. And she is no caged thing.”
“Cressida isn’t only plotting a war. She’s plotting to raise her sisters from the dead.”
The only person I’m planning to betray is Rune.
Hope is for fools.
We witches were given a precious gift, and with that gift comes a sacred task. The Ancients bestowed magic on us for one purpose: to use for the good, the true, and the beautiful. My cousin intends to twist this purpose with vicious lies. I feel them spreading through my court like poison, a little more every day, infecting even my closest advisors. I fear I can no longer stop her. The worst is imminent. Tonight, I will go to the stones and ask for Wisdom’s help. —FROM THE DIARY OF QUEEN ALTHEA THE GOOD
You’re hunting us even now. You’re only pretending to help me so you can kill Cressida, her army, and the Roseblood heir.
Isn’t that the point of art—to tame the monsters in us?
“You are far worse than a thorn in my side,” he said, his dark eyes gleaming at her. “You are a knife in my heart.”
“Why would you lie to me?” Gideon remembered Rune’s knife pressed to his throat. Remembered the tears in her eyes as she fled. Because I love her.
“Aren’t you tired of this bitterness?” he asked her. “Aren’t you sick of the hate? Those are easy, Harrow. What’s difficult is refusing to harden your heart despite having every reason to. Despite knowing the odds are against you.”
“Live in the darkness too long, and eventually you won’t recognize the light,” he told her. “You’ll become like the monsters you hate.”
You are a knife in my heart. They sailed on.
TRUE LOVE’S CURSE is an Arcana spell. It prevents a victim from being with his true love by inflicting pain whenever he touches her skin to skin.
“It might look like weakness on the surface. But in truth, it’s tougher than steel. Love can’t be controlled. Love can’t obey unjust laws. Love will always oppose tyrants.”
“Love is the real enemy of the regime, and that’s why you despise it. It’s why Cressida tries to crush it. Because you both know, deep down, it has the power to topple you.”
“Most of us are sick of the options we’ve been handed. We don’t want to go back to being ruled by a corrupt dynasty of witches, but neither are we okay with the Republic’s authoritarian control. Deep down, we’re hungry for something else.” He glanced at Rune. “Those who say they aren’t are too scared to imagine such a world is possible. If they could be convinced, we would stand a chance.”
“Because I was stupid enough to fall in love with a witch hunter. Stupid enough to hope he might love me back. And if he did, I wasn’t going to let anything come between us again.”
Even in death, my love, you are a wonder.
