“It was no gift, being allowed to live while the one you loved most was dead—because of you.”

A witch hunter and a witch!? What could go wrong?

"It’s not murder if you deserve it.”

Turns out, everything.

The hunted had fallen for the hunter.

This was so good!! I absolutely love witch and witch hunter books so I was immediately drawn into this one. but the characters are what really did it for me.

She was an informer. A witch hater. A darling of the New Republic. Rune was the girl who betrayed her grandmother.

Rune was, on the outside, a shallow socialite who turned her grandmother in to be killed by the hunters. On the inside, she was the Crimson Moth, fighting to free captured witches before they were killed. She went through agony when her grandmother died, the guilt, for obvious reasons, she carries around drives her to never give up. So much so that she turned to the Captain of the Hunters to gain more information.

“You are not the things that happened to you, Gideon.”

I found the author wrote emotion really well, we felt what the characters were feeling, Gideon and Rune, and that always improves any story.

“None of us can escape our pasts.”

Gideon. Killer. Captain. Tailor. A broken man. I won’t say much about his character, I would classify most of his motives and backstory as spoilers, but his strength, his obsession in hunting witches, was justified…in a sense. Justified in killing bad witches, not innocent people. Reading his POV was heartbreaking at times, he was so sad, guilty, and grief-driven. But I love him so much. You’ll just have to trust me on this. lol

“Most of her friends still watched them, some of them smirking, others murmuring behind their hands. Were they laughing at him? Was she laughing at him? He thought again of another girl. Another party. One where he’d been paraded around and humiliated.”

The reveals and the ending!!! My heart was racing for the last like, 35% of the book 

“Cress was like that: pretty from a distance, tempting you closer. Like a fool, you were happy to approach.” He was staring at the space over Rune’s shoulder, his expression haunted. “It was only after she’d reeled you in that she revealed her true nature. But by then, it was too late.”
He met Rune’s gaze.
“She was already eating you alive.” 


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This is normally where I would thank the publisher for the ARC, but SMP needs to get their shit together and stop protecting their trash employees.




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I need the next book 😭
RTC