Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli

Author:Kristen Ciccarelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

THIRTY

GIDEON

“THE LAST GIRL I fell in love with was a witch,” he said.

Rune stiffened beside him.

“I met her the day my parents became royal dressmakers.”

His mother’s designs had been catching the eye of the aristocracy for nearly a year. Several months before, the money from their growing business had allowed them to move out of the Outer Wards—the poorest district in the capital—and into a tenement building in Old Town.

In a day, the queens had elevated them much further, moving their family into the palace. Suddenly, they could afford Alex’s tuition. Suddenly, Gideon no longer needed to skip meals so his little sister, Tessa, could eat her fill.

“My parents could hardly keep up with the queens’ demands, so they brought me in to help. Alex had left to study at the Conservatory, and Tessa was too young to do anything except get in the way. Cressida asked that I be assigned to her exclusively, so I went to live at Thornwood Hall.”

His stomach churned as he tried to decide how much to unearth. He didn’t want Rune to know every sordid detail of his past. But there were some things she deserved to know, before she entangled herself with him further.

“Cress didn’t only want me for her tailor.” He darted a glance at Rune, who walked beside him, staring straight ahead. “And I was happy to fulfill her … other needs.”

“You two were intimate, you mean.”

“Yes.”

He wanted to block out the memories flooding in. Late nights in Cressida’s gardens that somehow always ended in her bed, his fingers tracing the silvery casting scars she proudly displayed on her skin like the most exquisite art.

Each casting scar had been etched by Cressida or her sisters, the collection like a wild garden growing up her body. Scar lines formed roses and lilies, buttercups and irises, all tangled with leaves and thorns and stems. The silver flowers climbed her calves and thighs, covering the left side of her torso and breast, and flowed down her arms.

Gideon’s favorites were the petal-shaped scars scattered across her collarbone.

She’d completely bewitched him.

He spared Rune all of this.

“It didn’t take long before things went wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Rune’s voice pulled him out of the memory. They were in the woods now, and like in the meadow behind them, someone had cleared a path. The leaves glowed gold in the haze of the setting sun.

“My mother became … unwell.” He remembered her bruised and bleeding fingers, her red-rimmed eyes, the way her bones poked out of her skin. “She started seeing things that weren’t there and accused my father and me—even Tessa—of things we hadn’t done. Stealing her notebooks. Ruining her fabrics. Sabotaging her in every way.”

His muscles bunched at the memories. His mother accused them of worse things, too: her husband, of being unfaithful to her; Tessa, of poisoning her; Gideon, of abusing Tessa. Nightmarish things. Things that still kept him awake at night. And always, he could smell it on her: the coppery scent of a witch’s spells.

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