My chest clenched.
“Where is he?” I demanded. “If you claim to have something I want, start there.”
She laughed again, delighted this time, as if I’d told a clever joke.
Chapter Thirty
“Do you even realize,” she said, “what it is Gideontrulywants?”
The hedge around my thoughts bristled.
“I’m not playing guessing games with you,” I said.
Her eyes brightened, a cruel sort of amusement.
“You,” she said.
The word hit me like a slap.
“What?” I said.
“You,Maeve.” She rolled the name around like a taste she was considering. “He wants you. Has wanted you since you first stood in his path and refused to flinch. You’re stubborn. Loyal. Powerful in ways you do not yet appreciate. You fascinate him. And men like Gideon… mistake fascination for devotion very easily.”
Cold prickled along my arms.
“No,” I said, too fast. I shook my head. “He doesn’t know me. Not really. We’ve spent most of our time together on opposite sides of a disaster.”
“Disaster is a very intimate experience,” she said. “You shared a path. A curse. Wolves. Wards. You cut him deeper than any enemy’s knife, simply byexistingin his way. You remind him of what he might have been if I had not molded him.”
Her smile thinned. “He hates you for it. And he loves you for it. He does not know the difference. That is what makes him such a deliciously unstable piece.”
Something in my chest gave an uncomfortable lurch.
I thought of the way Gideon had watched me in the neutral ground. Not soft—never that—but intent. I thought of the way his expression had flickered when he agreed to stand in the circle. Not just calculation. Something else.
“No,” I said again, quieter. “He loves power. He loves control. He loves…winning.That’s what he wants. Not me.”
She shrugged one elegant shoulder. “If you say so. But it does explain his latest… choices.”
My mouth went dry. “Where. Is. He.”
She studied me for a long moment, head tilted slightly, like she was picking the best way to bruise a piece of fruit.
Then she smiled.
“Closer than you think,” she said.
Shadows at the edge of the square stirred. In the corner of my vision, I thought I saw a shape as if something, someone, were pressed just beyond the visible dark. A ripple of magic brushed my mark, not the Luminary’s clean hum or the Wards’ steady thrum, but something ragged and half-familiar.
Gideon, my gut whispered.
The priestess’s eyes glittered.
“He ran,” she said. “Of course he did. That is his default setting. But he cannot outrunme.He never could. He is bound to the path we walked together. Do you think I would let my favorite knife be taken from my kitchen by a few sentimental wolves and an upstart Hedge Witch?”
Rage flared, cutting through the cold.
“He chose to stand in the circle,” I said. “He chose to break your path with us.”
