Walking with Rune, Gideon admits that the last girl he loved was a witch: Cressida Roseblood. He recounts how his parents’ success as royal dressmakers lifted the family out of poverty and into the palace, and how Cressida demanded Gideon be assigned to her at Thornwood Hall.

Gideon explains that Cressida wanted him for more than tailoring, and that he complied. He then describes how his mother became erratic and paranoid, accusing the family of horrific betrayals while Gideon sensed witchcraft around her. Gideon insists the Sister Queens were torturing his mother, and when Rune protests that the blood-fueled Arcana spells he describes are forbidden, Gideon maintains he witnessed the sisters using blood anyway.

Gideon forces himself to reveal what followed: when he tried to end things with Cressida, she threatened his younger sister Tessa. To punish him, Cressida demanded he sew three dozen silk roses by sunrise, and when he failed, she used a spell to infect Tessa with the sweating sickness and locked her away to die. After Tessa’s death, Gideon says his mother drowned herself, his father hanged himself, and Cressida continued to control Gideon by holding his brother Alex as the next threat.

Gideon admits he began drinking to survive being forced back to Cressida, and remembers being branded with a curse meant to activate if he betrayed her again. Rune connects this to why Alex ultimately killed Cressida, and the two emerge onto a quiet shoreline as Gideon apologizes for darkening the evening.

Rune takes Gideon’s hand and tells him he is not the things that happened to him, but Gideon cannot let go of how the Rosebloods shaped him and his ongoing hatred of witches. Remembering he suspects Rune is a witch and that witches bear telltale casting scars, Gideon abruptly pulls away, unbuttons his shirt, and invites Rune to swim—positioning the moment to test what she is hiding.