Book Review: Rebel Witch

Title: Rebel Witch
Author: Kristen Ciccarelli
Genre: Romance, Fantasy, Fiction, Romantasy

What It’s About:

Gideon has changed into the outfit of a soldier in Umbria, and he watches as Rune flits around Prince Soren, the future King of Umbria. He is here with the sole purpose of assassinating Rune as it has reached the New Republic that she had requested an army for Cressida in exchange for her hand in marriage to Soren, but he cannot help himself from admiring her from afar though he doesn’t think the dress she is wearing suits her. He hears he mention his name, but as the music starts for the opera, Rune turns to leave. Soren holds her back, telling her that this is for them, but Rune tells him that she will not miss all of it; she just needs to go to the powder room. Gideon is about to step in to tell Soren that Rune said no, but stops himself in time to make sure that his ruse is not discovered. As Rune leaves, he follows.

Rune could not join Soren for the song because it was the last song Alex had composed and it brings up a lot of memories for her—how much she misses him. So she runs to the powder room, grabbing a champagne bottle, and then once she is in the powder room, she chugs it while she cries. She hears someone come in and sees Gideon in the mirror. They have a fight, and she throws the champagne bottle at him, shattering it, but while he wonders why Rune is crying so much, he never asks her and though he holds the gun to her head, he never shoots. Cressida shows up in the powder room, and immobilizes Gideon. Though she tells everyone to leave, Rune cannot leave at first while holding the gun pointed at Gideon. She ultimately leaves the gun on the counter, and walks out. Cressida tortures Gideon, pressing her hand to his chest where her brand lives, telling him that she’s going to activate the spell that she left there for him. It causes him to scream, and though Rune hears it from the outside, she realizes that if she goes back in she would betray Cressida. Soren shows up and takes her away to his room, telling her that they’ll take care of the brute and then he’ll let her leave. She asks him to get Cressida to sign the treaty now so that they can be married sooner, and seduces him a little bit, before getting him to leave. It’s the only way she can think of to free Gideon from Cressida.

Gideon is surviving all the pain and the conversation from Cressida, when Soren shows up and demands that Cressida come right now to sign the treaty with him. A few minutes later, Rune shows up, having dropped from the balcony, and Gideon attacks her because he is under the control of another witch, Ava, who had come in with Cressida and was helping her by cleaning him up. Rune is able to get to the gun, as she is shoved against it by Gideon, and then uses it to shoot Ava straight in her head. This frees Gideon from the spell, but before she’s able to do anything about getting Gideon out, footsteps come, so she hides them both in the closet, using her Ghost Walker Spell. Though Gideon is uncomfortable at first, he realizes that her spells are different than Cressida’s—Rune is using it to protect and save, while Cressida had been doing it to harm and control. Cressida comes in and wants to know what happened, though soldiers tell her that they haven’t found the perpetrators. That said, Cressida notices the Crimson Moth signatures in the closet while Gideon and Rune sneak out. Cressida tells Soren that they should go check on Rune, to make sure she is there, so Gideon offers to help Rune up onto the balcony, after which they both agree that the next time they see each other, he will be killing her.

Rune pretends to be asleep when Cressida and Soren arrive, but Cressida comes up to her and tells her in her ear that she knows exactly what Rune has done. Seraphine shows up and tells Cressida off, before kicking everyone out and speaking to Rune. She tells Rune that she will have to run away, and Rune comes up with a plan. Gideon, on the other hand, had made it to the motel where he was staying and receives a telegram from Harrow, who tells him that since he is unable to complete his job of assassinating Rune, she will be sending another assassin—Gideon had fallen out of favor with the New Commander, after letting Rune get away, while Harrow had become the spymaster.

He finds that Rune and Soren had gone to a tailor for Rune to buy a wedding dress, and notices his chance when Soren leaves with one of the two guards. Wearing his father’s suit, he steals a hat, and makes it into the shop, where he tries to get past the owner by saying that his fiancée is trying on a dress. She tells him to leave and then focuses on talking to the new clients that had walked in, so Gideon pretends to leave before turning back around and finding himself in front of Rune, who is holding a gun to his face as he opens the door. She tells him to get in, and offers a truce for the two of them, saying that she wants to get the last remaining Roseblood heir—Cressida had told Gideon that she is going to find her missing sister, who had supposedly been born a stillborn but really wasn’t, and was going to resurrect her two dead sisters. Gideon had shared that with Rune, when they last saw each other. He agrees because he realizes that if she finds the heir, he would be able to kill the Roseblood Heir, making it impossible for Cressida to bring back her sisters, and at the same time capture the Crimson Moth. Soren comes calling, and Rune tells him that she needs to change, but then Gideon grabs her, putting a gun to her head, and forces her out of the back door, while Soren watches, helplessly. The two of them leave by the back door, and Rune grabs two suitcases, which Gideon has to carry for them. They run all the way to the docks, with Rune not being able to shoot—which bothers Gideon as he would never have given her a gun for protection without her knowing how to use it—and get in line for the ship. Rune had told him that she had booked a ticket in his name on Arcadia, leaving at 1pm that day, as it is the only ship that refused to have witch hunters on board. The Ticketmaster thinks that they had just gotten married, and Gideon realizes that with the way they are dressed, it does look like that they had recently gotten married. Rune plays into it, and so Gideon does too. They make their way to the cabin, which is a third class cabin, and only then Rune realizes just how tight it is. They start to change, when police officers are coming knocking on doors, so Rune changes her features to hide what she looks like because they are asking if anyone has seen her. The police officers come to their room and Gideon opens the door, half undressed, trying to hide Rune, who is also undressed. They both tell the men that they have no idea who the girl is and they haven’t seen her, before Gideon tells them off because he wants to spend time with his new wife. Once they change, Gideon goes out of the cabin in search of another room, but he is not able to get a different room, besides the bunks, which would be weird if they are really trying to do the newlywed ruse.

While standing outside on the ship, he notices that the officers who had been asking them about Rune are still on the ship, which is surprising because they have long left the port. He overhears one say that she will be assassinated if she is on the ship, and he remembers Harrow’s message, that she had found someone else to do the job. So he goes in search of Rune. Rune, in the meantime had made her way to the cafeteria, where she finds that she is overdressed. She sits at a table, and a man comes up to her serving her a bottle with wine glasses, offering her to not be lonely. They are interrupted by Gideon, who scares off the man and tells Rune that the man had other intentions to her. They bicker about it for a bit, and Gideon wants to know plans, but Rune doesn’t trust him, so they bicker about it too. At some point, the two officers come by, sitting across from them and watch them closely, which forces Gideon and Rune to act like newlyweds, with both wondering how they would act differently if what they were doing was real, and then changing their actions accordingly. Then the officers disappear and instead, a girl shows up. Gideon recognizes her as Abigail, with whom he had worked, trained and even had sex, for some time. She flirts with him, but he is confused why she is on the ship, since she was last working for the Tribunal. She offers Gideon to join them playing a game, and he was about to decline when Rune, seeing their chatter in front of her, accepts as his wife. Abbie’s face falls, but she doesn’t change her invitation. Once she leaves, Gideon takes Rune to their room, as she is extremely drunk, and as he’s putting her to bed, he realizes what he is doing, so he goes in search of water, and food for her. When he returns, she is asleep.

Rune dreams of her having a steamy moment with Gideon in the steam rooms of the ship, and when she wakes up, Gideon gives her a glass of water, before going back to sleep. Rune is unable to sleep so she goes wandering around the ship, and later is joined by Gideon on deck. When the time comes, they go to meet up with Abbie for the game, and Rune quickly realizes that their game is shooting plates that were broken. Gideon shoots 9 times in a row, while Abbie’s record is 11. Rune tries her hand at it and everyone gives her pointers, but she’s not doing well with it, and at some point Gideon and Abbie head off to the side to talk. William, the man who had brought alcohol to her table the day prior, introduces himself to her and asks Rune if her husband is the type to leave her for other women, while watching Abbie and Gideon. Rune is a bit envious of how good they look together that she accidentally shoots the gun in their direction. This causes Gideon to storm towards her, grab the weapon out of her hands, mutter to her that if he was her husband he would teach her how to use a gun properly, and he actually shows her how to use it, wrapping his arms around her and guiding her. Rune does manage to shoot one of the plates, but then Abbie invites them below deck. Gideon walks with Abbie talking to her, in hopes of figuring out whether or not she is the assassin sent to kill Rune. Rune walks behind him with William talking with him. At some point Abbie and Gideon go off into the rowdy entertainment, while William invites Rune to walk with him around the hold—something that Rune had wanted to do in order to see if she could use Arcadia as a way to smuggle herself, and two other witches—the Roseblood Heir and the sybil that is in the hands of the New Republic. Gideon talks to Abbie, and she mentions that she had seen Harrow a week ago when she docked on the ship, but it all leaves Gideon uneasy that he cannot see Rune, so he goes searching for her. He finds her in the hold with William, who has appeared to making a move on Rune, and he chases him out. Then Gideon and Rune get into an argument, about William, her need to find out information so she can smuggle the witches, and that she’s still hung up on Alex, for she wears his ring. Rune tells him that she chose Alex because Gideon broke her heart and Alex loved her for her regardless of who or what she was, but that if Gideon had asked she would have rather married him. She gives him the ring and walks out of the steam rooms back to the party. Gideon tries to make sense of it all before following her back to the room.He quickly notices that Rune’s magic is slipping and she is looking a lot like herself, when the police officers show up. It’s not a good thing, so to hide her, he starts making out with her. And the kiss is so good for both of them, but suddenly, there is excruciating fire-like pain all over his body, and Gideon remembers what Cressida had said—she had activated a spell in his chest. So he shoves Rune away. As a result, Rune runs away and uses her magic to hide her, going invisible. She later returns to the cabin, and falls to sleep with Gideon next to her.

The next day, Rune wanders around the ship again, going back into the holds—she had found her way to look there, when suddenly she is approached by William. He reveals that he knows that she is Rune Winters, and he is here to kill her. Rune realizes that she has been caught and there is nothing that she can do about it.Gideon in the meantime had been in their cabin, when Abbie had showed up and kissed him. He had let her in order to see if he would also get excruciating pain from Abbie, or if it was Rune only. He realizes that it’s only Rune who causes that pain, but also he feels nothing to Abbie. She had begged him to leave his wife and come with her, but he tells her no, only asking Abbie if she is the spy sent by Harrow. Abbie doesn’t know what he is talking about and tells him that she had left the Tribunal and has been working on the ships since, but when she last saw Harrow, they hadn’t talked about this type of work. Gideon considers it and wonders if he had assumed that it was Rune who had lured William when in reality it was William who had lured Rune to the storage rooms.

Rune watches as Gideon comes out of the shadows with a gun pointed at William, telling him to drop it. Gideon then tells her to grab the gun and leave, which she does, but unbeknownst to Gideon, she hides behind one of the boilers and listens in to Gideon tell William that he was planning on betraying Rune all along—that there is a Roseblood sister still alive that he wants her to find, and to kill her so that Cressida doesn’t raise her sisters, and then he will turn Rune in as the Crimson Moth. He asks William to help them get past the Witch Hunters and the bloodhounds and he agrees to do it.

When they arrive on the third day, Rune pretends to be surprised that Gideon had managed to get rid of the Witch hunters—she had needed his help because she has since received casting scars and that even if the dogs smelled her wrong they would still check her body and find them. Rune wants to head to Wintersea to check out the house, but Gideon tells her that she cannot do that as it belongs to Noah Creed, who is the new Commander. Instead, he takes her to his home, and offers her to go shopping, which he will then cook as he realizes that she hadn’t learnt how to cook. But before he can even take a shower, a pounding starts at his door—New Republic soldiers had come to his house, so he opens up a window, puts Rune out along with her suitcase and tells her to not leave that perch until he comes back. He then opens the door and gets dragged out in handcuffs to the New Commander, while Rune watches—luckily the witch hunters do not find her and so Rune sits out there, where she finds the names of Gideon, Alex and Tessa engraved in the wall.

Gideon is brought before Noah Creed, and Harrow, who is giving Noah an update on information on Cressida’s army. He tells them that he has a plan around Rune, including the fact that Cressida has another sister out there and is attempting to find her to be able to resurrect her two sisters. Gideon argues that them killing Rune would do nothing as Soren would come after them for killing her, but Harrow disregards it as Gideon being in love with Rune. Noah doesn’t believe it either, but has the sybil brought in. At first, Aurelia refuses to help them until she sees her daughter, Meadows. So the girl is brought in, and Aurelia tells them that indeed Cressida does have another sister—one who was born to their mother and Cressida’s step father and was believed to have been stillborn. Aurelia reveals that she is unable to find her because the sister is protected, and at first Noah tries to say that she’s lying, but Gideon confirms that Cressida had said the same thing. Noah agrees to Gideon’s plan, telling him that he can do whatever he wants but that he only has two days to make it happen and bring Rune Winters in to be used as a bargaining chip against Soren, or he will be treated as a witch sympathizer and executed. Gideon walks Aurelia out to try to ask her about where the bodies of the sisters might be located, but she refuses to tell him, until he can get her daughter for her safely and get her out to safety.

Rune had been sitting there a while and is hungry, when Gideon shows up and gives Rune a Blood Guard uniform. He asks her for help in getting a child out to safety, and she agrees to help him after she eats. Gideon takes her to the part of town by the port, where Rune sees Alex’s sailboat, and Gideon tells her that he hadn’t the heart to part with it though he doesn’t know how to use it. She offers to teach him, and together they walk towards the yellow house while eating ice creams and talking about their lives, where Gideon reveals that he grew up without ice cream until his parents became better known and suddenly there was enough funds for frivolities. They come to the yellow house where Gideon had told Rune that Meadow is in, and though they try to make it past the guard, he tells them that he can’t let them in without paper orders from the Commander to pick up the child. Rune makes up a ruse that her ankle had started hurting, so the soldier carries her into the parlor and tells her that he will call for a healer. They use this moment to get out of the parlor and go searching around the house, making it as far as the library before the soldier comes there way. Gideon and Rune get into an argument where she tells him that she knows that he’s finding her repulsive, because he pulled away when he kissed her in the alcove. He tells her that it’s not that, and kisses her again, while putting her hand across his chest by the scar. Rune then realizes that his stiffening is the result of pain, not repulsion and when Gideon tells her the truth of what Cressida had told him and done to him, she vows to find a way to free him from it.

They manage to find the child and Rune has to threaten the nursemaid, who as soon as they’re out the door of the room calls out that there are intruders in the house. Gideon and Rune manage to make it out to the kitchen, where they are surrounded, and Rune hides Meadow in her outfit while Gideon shoots at the soldiers from behind the table. There is a moment where Rune has a vision of an older Gideon with three of his own kids—she can tell they are his because they have his features, but wonders who is Gideon’s wife and the mother of her kids. She tells Gideon that this is how it is—they will always be faced with enemies for being together. And he tells her to get out with Meadow, so Rune uses Ghost Walker to disappear out the window, take Gideon’s horse and ride away, as per his request, though she doesn’t want to and later regrets leaving him behind when he doesn’t come home for a long time.

In the interim, Gideon gives himself up, pretends that he doesn’t know where Rune is or that she stole the child, and is handcuffed before being taken to Laila Creed and Harrow. Laila frees him and Harrow gives him a verbal lashing about falling in love with Rune. He tells them that he had the child stolen because he needs Rune’s trust and needs her to do something to get the Roseblood heir. He asks them to trust him, and they agree with the request that he keep them abreast of his plans. Gideon returns to his apartment with Aurelia in tow, and finds Rune holding a gun at him. Aurelia goes to see her daughter, and when she comes back, she points a gun at both of them, having stolen it off of the table where Rune had left one of the guns. Only when Rune proves it to her that she is the Crimson Moth, who had been helping other witches get out of the country, by showing her signature, Aurelia trusts her enough to help her, but she refuses to help answer any of Gideon’s questions and is about to shoot him, when Rune tells her to leave them and that she will take care of Gideon. She then speaks to him and tells him that she will not have him follow them just so that he can steal the Roseblood heir and have her killed.

The two women and the child evade Gideon and go to the temple of the Ancients, where they create the spell needed to summon the sister, using Cressida’s hair. Unbeknownst to them, Gideon had followed them using a bloodhound that smelled Rune. He sits out watching over them long after the two had gone to sleep, and watches as Rune sleepwalks back into the circle, before laying down and her Crimson Moth disappears showing that the spell has finished. He realizes that Rune is the Roseblood sister, and leaves them to head back to town. Rune wakes up in the circle in the morning and is dejected that the spell didn’t work, though Aurelia points out that the moth is gone, indicating that she might have made a mistake or simply, the spell had run out. The two women head back to the port with the child, and Rune tells her that they will steal the boat that had belonged to Alex, telling Aurelia that it belongs to a friend and that he won’t miss it. Rune goes to check it out, and then when she returns, Aurelia tells her that they need food, for the child, so Rune remembers that Gideon had some food at home and heads to his place. She rummages through his cupboard for the apples and the additional food, when Gideon finds her. He quickly realizes that she had lost the gun, gives her another one, and tells her his goodbyes.

Rune returns to Aurelia, and they almost get caught by the Blood Guards, when someone calls them away telling them that the Captain had asked them to be elsewhere. They get on the ship and head out of harbor, with Rune using her limited knowledge of weather magic to help them maneuver towards Larkmont Palace. Gideon, in the meantime, pulls out a map of the island with the intention of finding the bodies of Cressida’s two sisters, when he is interrupted by Laila and Harrow showing up. Laila yells at him that he deceived her as to Rune’s departure and demands to know where she went, but Gideon chooses Rune’s safety over his own life, so he gets arrested. He later gets beaten up by Noah and told by Noah that he will be executed in public as a way to show the fall of one of the Rebellion’s top brass. Gideon accepts his fate, knowing that Rune is safe.

Rune travels with Aurelia all the way to Larkmont palace, where she jumps out of the ship to tell Aurelia that she just needs to speak with someone. When she turns around, Aurelia had unfurled the sails and tells her that she had found a box while they were at sea that she kept away from Rune because Rune would have turned around to him, but that she has a daughter to think of. She throws the box at Rune, and then leaves, so now Rune has no way to get back to save more witches. She finds a necklace with an old coin from the pre-New Republic times and a note from Gideon in the box, and realizes that she would have definitely gone back to him. She puts the necklace and steals into the palace to Cressida’s room. There, she looks through books for anything weather related that she could use to make the ships go faster to get back to Gideon. Amongst the books though, she finds a Curse on True Love that fits exactly what Gideon described and reads what it requires to break it—her blood in sacrifice. She hears Cressida coming and quickly uses her ghost walker spell to hide herself and then hides inside the curtain. Cressida sees that someone has been there, and before Rune is able to get out of the room through the balcony, Cressida catches her, finding the book she is holding and tells Rune that Gideon is hers. She then starts whipping Rune, while having her magically with held. Rune uses the blood from her back to undo the curse on Gideon, adding two more signs to it before she faints. Seraphine arrives putting herself between Rune and Cressida, just as Rune is about to faint, and reveals that Rune is Cressida’s long lost sister.

When Rune wakes up again, she is inside a ship cabin, where Juniper, the witch that had come into the room at the palace with Cressida, tells her that she had taken care of her wounds but not all of them healed, and she should take care of herself. Seraphine comes and when Rune demands to know why she hadn’t told her the truth, Seraphine tells her that she had been called in to her birth, but snapped because she couldn’t put an innocent babe through the cruelty that was Winona Roseblood, so she wove a spell to make everyone think that Rune had died as a stillborn, but then stashed her with Kestrel Winters, who was mad at her for doing it because she did not want anything to do with raising a child. Seraphine had pleaded with her and Kestrel agreed. Three days later, Seraphine was excommunicated from court, and went into hiding, but when she went back to Kestrel years later to get Rune from her, Kestrel threatened her from taking Rune because she was the best thing that had happened to Kestrel, and so she stayed. Suddenly, there is a loud Boom, and they realize that the war on the Island has started.

Gideon is in the cells when the soldiers come get him for execution, but then there are loud Booms and Laila shows up to tell him that they are under attack. She frees him, and gives him a pistol, and they race to the port where they watch the ships appear—they had been hidden previously under the witches’s spells, but now that the port had been destroyed, they are no longer hidden. Gideon watches as Cressida and her rowboat gets closer to the port, and they decide to retreat.

Once Cressida and her army take over the city, and are back at the castle, she has all of the witches take an oath to her, including Rune, whose hands are in witch handcuffs to stop her from spell casting. Rune is then forced to spend time in a room, not allowed to come out except for dinner, but Cressida has her people finding Blood Guards and doing the same thing as Purges but this time killing any of the Blood Guards or anyone that is not loyal to her. Seraphine comes to visit Rune and tells her that she needs to get out, so they hatch a plan. That evening at Dinner, a woman without an ear is brought in front of Cressida, and Juniper runs out of the room, unable to look at her. Seraphine urges Rune to follow her and check on her, which she does. Juniper reveals that the woman they had brought out was Harrow, and that she has been searching for her for a long time following leads on the Continent because her parents told her they sold her there. She asks Rune to help save her and at first Rune refuses, but Juniper invokes the Crimson Moth, so Rune agrees to assist as long as Juniper tells no one that she has seen her. Rune is walking out of the castle to the prison when she runs into Soren, and ends it with him, but he refuses to do that because he lusts after her, so she grabs his gun and shoots him in the head, before heading to the prison. There, she finds Harrow and gets her out, to which Harrow responds that Rune is not what she expected. They leave the prison and Harrow asks what the commotion is about, to which Rune responds that someone is dead, before getting on a horse and riding away.

Rune rides to Wintersea, where she finds Lady, her grandmother’s show horse, and saddles her up. She then takes Lady out of the stables, leaving behind the stolen horse, puts her in the garden, and then climbs up to her casting room, where she goes through the books trying to figure out which books she should take with her or leave behind. She drops one of the books, and shortly thereafter, someone opens the hidden door into the room, but she had turned the room dark by snuffing out the candle.

Gideon is in Wintersea watching Noah panicking and packing, while being guarded by Felix, one of his former men, who isn’t comfortable with it. He hears a thud, and so does Laila, but no one else notices. Laila walks up to him and offers him to search the house with her, which he does, but she frees him as well. He goes through the rooms, including Rune’s old bedroom but sees nothing, and then remembers there is a hidden wall. So he presses it, and enters the old casting room, where the smell of a candle lingers, and someone hits him over the head.

Rune hits the man and lands on top of him, with her knife against his throat. Then he speaks, and Rune realizes it is Gideon. He’s surprised to see her, having thought that she was on the Continent. She tells him she was but doesn’t elaborate, because they are interrupted by Laila and Noah showing up. Laila takes Rune out to shoot her to the gardens, and Rune thinks that this is a nice way to go—to be surrounded by her grandmother’s plants, where she has fond memories, but Laila doesn’t kill her right away. Noah takes Gideon down and punches him. Gideon goads him that the reason why Noah doesn’t like him is because Rune chose Gideon over Noah, and he had wanted her. He talks about love, and how it means something, which has Felix handing over his keys to Gideon’s manacles when he takes him out of the room to follow Noah down the stairs. Gideon overpowers them, and runs out to Rune and Laila while bullets whizz past him. Laila gives them a 20 second start, so Rune helps Gideon weave through the maze and out into the meadow, but she trips twice, which is when Gideon gets hit with a bullet. They make their way into the woods, at which point Gideon falters and falls down. He tells her to leave him behind and save herself, but she says that she won’t, so she uses magic to stop his bleeding. Luckily, Lady shows up so they both get on and make their way to an off the grid cabin owned by Bart Wentholt’s family.

There, Rune looks for anything that she can use to pull out the bullets from Gideon, but finds nothing. They are startled by Bart’s voice and another male, and Rune realizes that Bart had fooled them all—he did anything he could to get women lose interest in him so that he could be with Antonio, a cook in Bart’s home that also had given himself over to the Temple of Wisdom. He helps Rune pull out the bullets from Gideon and ensure that his wounds are cleaned and stitched up. He tells her that they’ll have to trust each other as they have enough to damn each other with each faction. They stay there for a bit and Gideon heals. He has this idea of making a new world—one in which Cressida is not in charge, and one in which the New republic is not the authoritarian government, but something in the middle. Rune doesn’t agree with him, at all about it, but calls Seraphine to come to her. Seraphine, and Juniper arrive at the house, as does Harrow—all on the same day. Antonio recognizes Seraphine as something other than Seraphine, and she only nods at him, but Harrow points her gun at Juniper telling them that she is not to be trusted because she didn’t do anything when her parents sold Harrow. Rune tells Harrow to shut up and that Harrow would not have been saved by Rune if Juniper hadn’t begged for it. They all sit down to have breakfast, and Rune cannot stand to listen Gideon’s idea about a different world because she doesn’t believe it possible so she heads out to the hot bath that Bart’s servant told her about, and bathes there. Gideon realizes that she’s gone, and asks about it, to which the servant reveals that Rune has scars on her back, and Juniper confirms that it was Cressida that caused them, almost to the bone. Gideon goes after her, and tells her that she’s still beautiful regardless of the scars; that they’re a sign of strength. He understands the cruelty she suffered under Cressida better than most, and when she tells him that she’s a Roseblood, he tells her that he doesn’t care.

Rune leaves for the train, and Gideon doesn’t follow her, until Harrow tells him that there are Cressida’s soldiers everywhere looking for Rune, and shutting down the station. He goes after her, watching her from a distance, as she gets onto the train. But then there is a blood hound that is going after her, so he gets in the way and the dog gets caught up in him, causing a scene between him and the officer. Rune gets on and he knows that she’s safe, but a witch comes up to him and tells him that he needs to move because she has orders to bring him in. She takes him to the side of the track with a gun pointing to his head, and Gideon isn’t sure he has a way out. Rune had made her way to her seat and looked at her reflection in the window where she is shocked to find that she had seen her eyes and her hair very recently, but tries to be stoic and go forward with the plan. Then she sees Gideon on the tracks with the gun to his head, and she demands to be let off. She barely makes it in time to shoot the witch, and then Gideon and Rune are forced to flee. They jump onto another train heading south, and talk, to which Rune tells him that he had asked her once if she wanted kids, and she says that she wants three. He tells her that she should leave and he understands that she wants a family but she tells him that she wants to stay as long as he marries her. He is surprised, but agrees to it. They end up having sex on the sleeper train, and then get off at the next station, where they borrow horses and make their way back to WinterSea.

At Wintersea, Rune and Gideon pack up her books to take them back to the hidden cabin, where they hear a clanging sound. Gideon investigates and finds Laila shackled to the pipes in the boiler room—turns out Noah had her shackled there, knowing exactly what could happen to his sister, for letting Rune and Gideon get away. He’s not able to figure out a way to save her, until Rune shows up and tells them that she has a spell. They leave Wintersea, and run into Felix and some of his men, who tell Gideon that they had been sent by Noah to search for him, but that they’re not doing that—they’re going with him. So the group returns to the cabin, and they start planning and plotting. Juniper and Harrow decide to head to the castle to infiltrate the witches, find out where Cressida is keeping her sister’s bodies, and to speak to any other witches that might be on their side. Gideon gives Laila the positioning of infiltrating the Rookery where Noah is with his men with the help of insiders loyal to him. They have a party that night, and everyone has a good time, including Rune.

A message comes from Harrow a few days later that the sisters are at the Crossing, and that Cressida is going to be on her way there for the new moon, when she needs to strengthen the wards to protect the bodies. They make a plan—Seraphine, Gideon, and Rune will head that way, and Antonio joins them in the last minute. Laila and her group will travel with them until they need to turn off, and Bart was going to stay back at the cabin to wait for Juniper and Harrow. Antonio utters something that sounds like a prophecy, and they make their way. They arrive at the Crossing, and Gideon and Rune find the bodies, but too late they realize it is a trap—Cressida and her witches arrived with Juniper and Harrow in tow as prisoners, and they capture Antonio and Seraphine. Cressida makes her way through the bridge and Rune realizes then that the vision she had of Gideon pointing a gun at her was exactly that—a vision. She knows that the resurrection spell needs her to be alive, so if she had just died it wouldn’t work. She tells Gideon to shoot her, and though he doesn’t want to, he does it, and then holds her while she dies. Unbeknownst to him, she marks him with spells that will protect him even after her death. Cressida is furious, and launches attacks at him both by herself and with the help of the witches she has in her employ, but nothing hurts him—not even bullets. He catches Cressida and pins her down, but by that point all of the witches who had been by her side as well as the soldiers had put down their arms and switched. Seraphine and Antonio rush up to them, with the book that Rune had of the resurrection spell. Seraphine has Rune brought over, and makes markings on Rune’s body, while Cressida points out that Seraphine wouldn’t blacken her soul with an Arcana spell, which is forbidden. Seraphine tells her that this type of magic doesn’t apply to her because she is none other than Wisdom and kills Cressida to resurrect Rune.

Once Rune wakes up, six blazing figures show up, and Seraphine walks towards them turning into one of the blazing figures as well. Antonio had told Rune a story about how Wisdom had answered Athena’s help—the queen who was cousin to Winona—and advised her on how to keep her throne. Athena followed Wisdom’s advice only to end up dead, with Winona Roseblood on the throne, usurping her, and as a result Wisdom had bound herself to the earth until she could make it right. Rune also tells Gideon that Alex had told her to tell him that he loved him when he died and she forgot to tell him. She feels that Alex is nearby them, and Gideon asks her if maybe Alex is around—he had visited Alex’s grave at some point trying to decide what to do about Rune, and that is where Harrow had found him and told him her story with Juniper.

Laila and her men had taken over the Rookery and dragged Noah to the breakfast room. Laila announces then that they are now part of the legion reporting to Gideon Sharpe, and if anyone has an issue with it, they will be joining Noah in the prison. No one has any questions or issues, and Noah is crying, so Laila tells him to shut up.

Three months later, Rune is at Wintersea and is nervous so she tries to leave the room through the window, but Gideon asks her if she can’t leave through the back door. He looks handsome in his uniform, and they had gotten married sometime prior, but instead of wearing wedding rings, Rune had made casting scars in the shape of a ring that they will always be truthful to each other. She worries that people won’t like her, though she had been selected to one of the 13 seats on the Parliament—7 for humans, and 6 for witches. Gideon assures her that she will be loved, and together they head down the stairs to the crowd waiting for them.

My Thoughts:

Holy moly cannoli! I really loved this book and how Gideon and Rune found their way back to each other. It was fast paced and things quickly happened, but I loved that Rune struggled with the fear and Gideon was there for her, but also choosing not to leave with her because he knew that when Rune came around to her senses by looking past the fear, she would not be happy with him running away with her. He believe that the Rune that was the Crimson Moth was still there and that she would come back to him, but he had to make sure that she was safe. And sure enough she did come back to him. I was so sad when he had to kill her to save her from Cressida, but they ended up having a happy ending anyway, which is what I had hoped for the two of them. I think that this is by far one of my favorite series (Duologies?) so far and I’m not sure if there will be anything that beats it because the world building is so unique, and how there is the push and pull between one terrorist and one authoritarian ruler that even people on those sides feel that something is wrong with it and not aligned with their morals but they don’t have a better option. The fact that Gideon believes that there is an option that allows both Witches and Humans to live in harmony and for people to have more freedom to be who they truly are, is astounding, showing that he has come full circle from fearing witches because of what Cressida did to advocating for a life where he can be with the woman he loves.

I would definitely love to read this series again as if I was reading it for the first time because it is truly beautiful. And if you’re interested in reading this series, you can purchase the Rebel Witch here–please note that by using this link, I will earn a small commission at no cost to you that will help keep this blog running.