Seventy-Six. Gideon
SEVENTY-SIX
GIDEON
GIDEON THOUGHT HE’D ALREADY seen rock bottom.
How wrong he’d been.
The moment she stopped breathing, he knew it. As her body went limp in his blood-soaked hands, all he could do was stare at her, disbelieving.
She’s gone.
As the sobs crawled up his throat, Gideon dropped his forehead to hers.
Cressida was shrieking somewhere behind him. Cursing his name. Her presence like an imminent hurricane.
He didn’t care. The world beyond him was nothing but a blur.
Let her come.
Gideon was still cradling Rune in his arms when the witch queen’s shadow slid over him.
“You have no idea, the ways I’ll make you suffer for this.”
He tore his gaze from Rune’s face and looked up at her.
Spellmarks were inked in blood down her bare arms and rage contorted her face. Her hair billowed in the wind as if she were a storm incarnate.
Her presence was a deafening thunder.
As she spoke, she smeared more blood onto her arms, forming symbols. The air sparked with magic. Her fingers crackled with lightning.
Cressida flung out her hands, hurling the bolt at Gideon.
The air sizzled and cracked. The immense power should have knocked him flat on his back—instead, it ricocheted off him, as if hitting some unseen armor, and struck Cressida instead.
She landed flat on her back.
What the hell?
Still cradling Rune, Gideon watched Cressida roll over, groaning with pain. She shook her head and pushed herself to standing. Beyond her, the witches who’d crossed the bridge hung back, glancing uneasily from their queen to Gideon.
Spinning to face him, Cressida’s eyes narrowed to slits. Pulling the gun holstered at her hip, she raised it and fired.
The bullet should have been a direct hit; she was only a few strides from him. But again, Gideon felt it rebound, flying straight for Cressida, missing her face by a hair.
He remembered the enchantment Rune had once cast on his jacket.
It’s for repelling harm, she’d told him. Like armor, the spellmarks will deflect a knife aimed at your chest, or make bullets bounce off you.
He glanced down at the girl in his arms, her eyes closed forever.
Had Rune done this? Cast one last spell of protection, somehow?
One thing was clear: Cressida couldn’t harm him.
Setting his beloved down gently, Gideon rose to his feet.
Cressida fired four more rounds. Each one ricocheted off him.
She stumbled back.
Cressida screamed, slicing her arm, making more spellmarks with the blood gushing out. The wind picked up, howling in Gideon’s ears. The whirlpool churned faster, the water rising like a hurricane, swirling around them. Cressida lifted her hand, flinging her arm toward Gideon, hurling the whirlpool at him.
Several tons of water descended on Gideon. He braced himself for the crush, ready to be swept out into a watery vortex and dashed against the rocks.
Only it never hit.
The water crashed, slamming against Rune’s invisible dome-like shield, falling around him and Rune like a waterfall before rushing back toward the whirlpool, nearly sweeping Cressida out with it.
Leaving him completely dry.
When the witch queen regained her footing and saw he was still standing, utterly untouched, her eyes blazed with fury. She drew more spellmarks, readying a new spell.
The casting knives of every witch standing on the shore flew upward, out of their sheaths. Like arrows, they shot in unison toward Gideon, glittering in the vanishing sunlight, their lethal edges aimed at his throat.
But they, too, failed to meet their mark.
One by one, they came up against Rune’s spell, their tips bending, chipping, then clattering to the stones around him.
This time, Cressida’s eyes widened in fear.
“Fire, you imbeciles!” she screamed at the soldiers standing on the bank. “Shoot him!”
Their bullets soared like comets. Coming straight for Gideon.
Every single shot bounced off.
Gideon thought of his Crimson Moth and smiled through his sorrow.
Even in death, my love, you are a wonder.
The gunfire abruptly stopped as soldiers took cover from the rebounding bullets. In the chaos, Gideon saw Juniper knock her captor to the ground and steal her gun. His heart thrilled further as Harrow wrapped her restraints around an enemy soldier’s neck until he passed out beside her. She grabbed his gun and started firing.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The witches who’d crossed the bridge were backing away, returning the way they’d come, trying to escape the line of fire.
Gideon stared down Cressida.
The wind whipped around them. It was only the two of them now.
“My brother showed you mercy once,” Gideon shouted over the whirlpool’s roar. “I won’t make the same mistake.” He closed the gap between them. “On your knees.”
Cressida slashed her casting knife at him. “Never.”
Gideon huffed a laugh. “You can’t hurt me anymore, Cress. You’ll never hurt me again.”
Rune had done that: reduced this powerful queen to a pathetic creature when met by Gideon Sharpe.
He grabbed the wrist of her hand—the one that wielded the knife—as she tried to cut him down. His hand tightened, crushing, until her grip loosened.
It fell to the ground.
Grabbing her throat with both hands, Gideon squeezed, forcing Cressida to her knees and into the dirt. “If there’s a hell, I hope you burn in it.”
“Go on, then.” Her eyes glittered black as she stared up at him. “Send me to hell.”
His hands tightened.
“I’ll never stop haunting you, Gideon. I will always—”
“Wait!”
Seraphine was stepping off the bridge, coming swiftly toward them, with Antonio on her heels. A white spell flame floated over their heads, lighting their way in the twilight. Across the whirlpool, Juniper and Harrow blocked access to the bridge. With them stood a dozen witches, forming a wall of defense.
Seraphine was right, he realized.
More and more were defecting. With no way to resurrect Elowyn and Analise, with Cressida at the utter mercy of Gideon, they had far less to lose and were coming to join the line forming between the witch queen and those trying to aid her.
Seraphine crouched next to Cressida; Antonio joined her a few seconds later. In his arms was Rune, and on his back was her leather satchel. He lay Rune carefully down on the other side of Seraphine, then pulled back the satchel’s flap and withdrew a spell book.
The white flame hovering in the air cast an eerie glow over them all.
“Any moment, witches are going to break through that barricade,” Gideon told Seraphine, his hands tightening around Cressida’s throat, choking off her breath. “I need to put this dog down.”
“Not yet.” Seraphine touched his arm. “Trust me.”
So Gideon loosened his grip on the witch queen’s neck.
Seraphine seized the knife sheathed at Rune’s leg while Antonio opened the spell book to a page marked with a ribbon, holding it up for her to read.
Catching sight of the spell, Cressida laughed.
“An Arcana ? We both know you won’t risk corrupting yourself, Seraphine.”
Gideon saw the movement too late: Cressida snatching her moon-curved casting knife and lunging for the witch beside her.
It was Antonio who grabbed her wrist, holding her back.
“Little queen,” laughed Seraphine, “I am incorruptible.”
Cressida frowned, her gaze flickering over Seraphine’s face.
“My name is Wisdom .” Her voice rang like a drawn blade. “And I’ve waited a long time for this.”
The witch queen’s face paled, and she tried to rise. Gideon slammed her down, pinning her beneath his knees, his hands tightening around her throat.
Seraphine… is Wisdom? The Ancient?
She didn’t look like a being who’d created the world. She looked like a mortal woman, barely older than twenty.
Wisdom’s dark eyes flickered, then glowed bright white as she sliced Cressida’s arm, Antonio holding it steady. The blood gushed, thick and red, and Wisdom dipped her fingers in the stream. She used it to draw seven spellmarks across Rune’s lifeless body: on each of her open palms, at the base of her throat, across her lips and forehead, and then, after instructing Antonio to take off Rune’s boots, she drew two more on the soles of her feet.
When she finished, a coppery smell bled through the air, mingling with something else. Something older than these mountains. Something far more primal than the murderous currents crashing around them.
Magic.
Ancient and powerful.
Wisdom turned to the witch queen trapped beneath Gideon, with no hope of escape. Antonio pinned Cressida’s arms to the ground above her head, allowing Gideon to let go of her throat and lean back, restraining only her lower body. Cressida writhed and squirmed, but they held her fast.
With Rune’s knife in both her hands, the Ancient lifted the blade high in the air.
“The queens and commanders of this world may think they know something of power,” she said. “But true power is divine, and her judgment is final.”
She plunged the knife straight into Cressida’s heart.
The witch queen gasped and the symbols on Rune’s skin glowed moon-white. As if joining in with the breath she took, coming alive as Wisdom’s magic stole Cressida’s life force and poured it into Rune.
Magic flared, disorienting Gideon and making his teeth ache. Building and building until it caused a pressure in his head so painful, it felt like it would explode.
And then: Cressida fell still.
The tension lifted.
Rune inhaled a sharp breath.