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What if Verity de WildewasCressida Roseblood in disguise?

“I’m sorry,” said Seraphine. “But your friend Verity doesn’t exist. Or if she did, she doesn’t anymore.”

“Are you saying CressidakilledVerity and stole her identity?”

“It’s very likely, yes.”

“But that means …”

Cressida Roseblood, not Verity de Wilde, had been Rune’s closest confidant for two years—without her knowing.

This whole time, Rune had trusted and confided in amurderer. In the girl who’d tortured Gideon and killed his little sister.

She rested her restrained hands on the wood railing to steady herself.

It can’t be true.

Verity was her friend.

But Rune had only become friends with Verity in the monthsafter the revolution. By then, Cressida was dethroned and on the run. That left plenty of time to kill the girl and subsume her identitybeforebefriending Rune.

The thought of Verity—the real Verity, a girl Rune was forced to concede she didn’t know at all—being cornered by the witch queen made Rune feel like she was going to throw up.

How could I have missed the signs?

Rune watched the girl she’d formerly known as Verity cut through the crowd, a small army of witches in her wake. Despite Rune’s horror and loathing, that girl was the closest thing she and Seraphine had to an ally right now.

Everyone else in that crowd wanted them dead.

Rune remembered the countless times Verity—no, Cressida—had absently traced the spellmarks on the open pages of her spell books. If she’d been memorizing all of Rune’s spells, then she likely knew the one that would set Rune and Seraphine’s hands free.

Picklock.

Leaning as far as she could over the railing, Rune’s voice battled with the thunder as she shouted: “My Queen!”

The girl who’d stolen Verity’s identity glanced up, her gaze swooping like a hawk to Rune.

As smoke filled the air, Rune raised her ironclad hands.

“A little help?”

The witch queen smiled, and Rune shivered at the sight. Holding out her pale forearm, which was covered in bloody spellmarks, she smudged the symbols with her hand.

The illusion fell away.

She was Verity no longer.

That curly brown hair straightened, lightening to moon-white. Her dark eyes turned crystalline blue. And the curves ofher body fell away, flattening and lengthening into the wispy queen Rune remembered.

Snatching a young woman from the crowd, Cressida pulled back the girl’s hair. As her victim screamed and fought, trying to get away, Cressida bared the girl’s pale throat to her knife’s crescent edge, and slit it.

Rune glanced away too late to unsee the red blood, running like rivulets down her neck. The girl dropped to the stones, choking on it. Cressida dipped her fingers in the blood and drew a new symbol.

The spell flared to life. The locks of Rune and Seraphine’s manacles clicked. The heavy iron blocks imprisoning their hands opened, along with the chains around their ankles. Both fell, hitting the burning platform with a clattering thud.

Rune and Seraphine were free.

FIFTY-NINEGIDEON