On the morning of Ranka’s ninth birthday, they snuck out of camp and crept across fresh snow, stolen axes in hand, determined to learn the throws the older Skra had mastered. Ranka was tall for her age, and if she pitched her shoulder just right, she could throw the axe hard enough to sink the entire blade into a pine trunk.

It filled her with a thrill like no other to hear the thwump of that blade slamming into wood. To envision what it’d sound like for a blade to hit a body.

What a fool she’d been.

“Let me try,” Tafa begged. “Please.”

“You’re too small.”

Tafa kept missing the tree. The axe skittered across the hard-packed snow until it vanished into the underbrush. Her face grew redder. Her throws grew wilder.

On the tenth throw the axe slipped—but instead of forward, it flew back.

The blade hit Ranka in the middle of her stomach.

The pain startled her. So much blood everywhere—down her legs, across the snow. Tafa kept screaming, and Ranka’s vision swam in and out, her head feeling five pounds too light. She stumbled back to camp, leaving a trail of red behind her.

The blood loss should have killed a witch twice her size. Ranka remembered a burning cold, bone-deep exhaustion, the urge to sink into sleep and never rise. But above all, she remembered voices.

Get up, a voice like Yeva’s whispered.

Fight back, one like Ongrum’s snarled.

And her own, hard and determined, filling her mind, her veins, her world.

I am not done.

29

EVERYTHING HURT.

Waves of pain rolled through Ranka’s stomach and pulsed down her temple where the Murknen had struck her. Her mouth filled with blood—she’d bitten her tongue.

“Please,” Foldrey whispered. The guard was on his knees, his sword gleaming uselessly several feet away. “Please, just let them go. They’re children—”

The Murknen made a low, guttural noise. Her words emerged strangled, as though speaking required a terrible effort. “So were we.”

Ranka’s blood-magic rose—and this time she welcomed it.

Her nails elongated, and power flooded her muscles, her heart, her breath. Ranka heard Aramis’s voice, crystal clear in her mind, a balm to the anger churning through her.

Breathe, the princess whispered. And control it.

Seaswept faded into a world of gray, the monotone broken only by the warm glow of bodies, but her stomach was free of cramps, her mind clear. And for a precious breath, all Ranka felt was pure, unbridled awe as her blood-magic coursed through her and she didn’t hunger for death.

Was this what it would be like, if she learned control?

Could her power be a gift instead of a curse?