Galen braced a hand against an alley wall and coughed up more blood. Most mages could summon only for a few minutes. She’d never seen someone conjure so much for so long. As the prince’s wind pushed them through the streets, Ranka understood why the first humans had thought the Skybreakers were gods.

“Come on, Aramis,” Galen said, his voice cracking. “Stay awake. You don’t get to leave me too. You’re not allowed to leave me.”

They turned a corner, and finally, there—two guards in palace uniforms, chatting with a fishmonger, their shoulders relaxed. Beyond them, a woman sat on her porch, smoking languidly as her children played in the dark, relishing a break in the heat. One of them kicked a ball in Ranka’s direction. The child stood up to chase after it—and locked eyes with Ranka.

The little girl screamed.

The guards spun, expecting a fight. One drew his sword, but the second gasped in horror as he recognized the twins. Galen finally dropped to his knees, vomiting blood on the stones. Percy slid from his back. Voices rang through the street as passersby began to notice, crying for help, crying for healers, for anyone. The guards scrambled forward to help Galen, shouting for backup. One reached for Ranka. She forced herself to meet his eyes.

“Poison,” she whispered.

And then she collapsed at his feet.

31

RANKA’S WORLD WAS A HAZE of poison, blood, and pain. Hands washed and bound her wounds, sure fingers purging toxic substance from her veins. Poppy kept her subdued. Every time Ranka slipped back into unconsciousness, her only solace was that in her brief window of lucidity Aramis was still breathing.

Someone settled her in a bed that smelled of sweat and old lavender. A body was laid to her left, a person of snakeskin, and a smaller body to her right, smelling of ink and mint. In the Skra camp it was safer, warmer, to sleep three or four crammed to a bed. Comforting to rest wrapped in the embrace of sisters in combat, if not in blood. Some of Ranka’s earliest memories involved waking up beneath layers of fur with the arms of other witchlings thrown over her, a mass heap of safety, belonging, and love.

Cool fingers brushed her forehead. “Rest, child.”

Heavy, rough-spun wool blankets settled over her. Ranka willed her eyes to open, for her tongue to work, but she was so weak. So tired.

So curled between her enemies, delirious with pain, Ranka slept.

Memories returned in snippets—of palace healers clogging the room, treating them where they lay because they were too fragile to be moved; Percy screaming, his eyes turning gold, scales flickering under his skin as the poison left him; Aramis catapulting from sleep to vomit and writhe in agony. Galen vomiting into a bucket over and over again, puking blood and bile as Lanna stood over him.