Sky pulled her back down and gave her a warning look.

“As you know, the Revinir was on her way here. I scared her away once. But with Fifer and Aaron skulking around, you can bet she’ll return with her fleet of bloodthirsty dragons.” She paused briefly to let the words sink in, then asked, “Do you know what we have to do to make sure that doesn’t happen?” She looked sidelong at a man named Garrit who often accompanied her, as if to give him a cue to speak up.

“Get rid of the Stowes!” cried Garrit, pumping his fist in the air. “Sacrifice them to save our world!”

Frieda’s other crewmembers repeated the cry.

The rest of the people stared at Frieda and her staunchest supporters with drawn faces and open mouths. Some of them nodded fearfully. “We don’t want that Revinir beast to come back,” said someone from the crowd. “Dragons?” said another. “We can’t fight dragons!”

“If the Revinir comes back, why can’t we just throw Fifer and Aaron at her?” asked one of the skeptical ones.

“We don’t want that monster anywhere near our land!” said another. “Do you really trust a dragon-monster to take just those two? What if she’s not satisfied with that? I’m not willing to chance it. Let’s do away with the Stowes now, before it’s too late!”

Fifer sucked in a breath. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. Some of the people calling to do away with her were acquaintances she’d been friendly with all her life—or at least that’s how Fifer had seen their interactions. Maybe they’d always been scared of her magic.

“Fifer and Aaron have too many friends here who will protect them,” Frieda went on. “Which makes them our enemies too, right?”

Garrit frowned and elbowed Frieda, like she wasn’t supposed to go that far, but Frieda ignored him.

Not everybody in the crowd was buying this line of thinking, but an alarming number of people were. Fifer clutched her shirt placket and exchanged another glance with Sky. This was surreal and escalating quickly. Now the people weren’t just mad at the girls and Aaron, but Frieda had just lumped in all of their friends as enemies of Artimé too. It was so backward that Fifer could hardly believe this was happening.

“What can we do?” asked someone whose face was etched with fear. “We have to stop the Revinir and the dragons from killing us all!”

“We have to fight anyone who opposes our plan to remove Aaron, Fifer, and Thisbe,” said another firmly. “This is no joking matter. These are our lives we’re talking about.”

“And if we remove them, their friends will fight us,” said another.

“No doubt,” said Frieda Stubbs, jumping on that theme. “We must fight first if we’re going to save our people.”

“This means war,” said Garrit. The way he said it made chills go down Fifer’s spine. “For the good of Artimé.”

“For the good of Artimé!” echoed several others.