Tentatively, Galen raised his hands.

Wind whipped her skin so harshly, it hurt.

“Come on,” Ranka shouted. “Your parents are gone, you’re being forced into a crown you don’t want, Foldrey is dead and you left him behind—what are you going to do about it?”

A blast of wind hit Ranka full on. It flipped her up, and she landed on her stomach, smacking her face against the hard-packed ground. The sky swelled to a deep, bruised gray. The moisture in the air clung to her skin.

“Say it, princeling,” Ranka goaded. “Say you think this is my fault. Say you blame me for everything that’s gone wrong in your life.”

Blood dripped from Galen’s nose. “That’s not—”

“You hate me.” Ranka picked herself up, blood running down her chin, and shoved him backward. “Say it.”

Skybreakers were the nightmare of every witch, a weapon in their own right for the hurricanes they called. She should have wanted Galen to remain weak, celebrated him remaining afraid. And yet she wanted this… this boy, this soft-eyed, gentle boy, to reach for that power and protect himself, because while the idea of another Skybreaker terrified her in theory, the memory of Galen alone and defenseless in that alley terrified her for real. Her worry for him was a betrayal, her feelings a mockery of everything the Skra stood for. She should have just let him and that infuriating sister of his die—but she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, and she hated herself for it.

Galen backed away from her.

“I am the monster you fear becoming,” Ranka accused, not knowing where her anger with Galen began and her fury at herself for caring about him at all ended. “I am your worst nightmare. I am everything you hate about yourself. You loathe me, and you want me dead, because all of this—every life lost, every witch burned—started when I got here, and it’s my fault. You hate me because you know in another life you’d have turned out just like me. And more than anything, you hate me because you believe, down in your bones, it’s my fault Foldrey is dead. Say it.”

Galen faltered and drew back. “No.”

“Whose fault is it, then?”

“No one’s.”

“Who do you blame, Galen?” Wind lashed at her face, tearing at not-yet-healed wounds. “Percy?”

“No!”

“Aramis?”

“Of course not!”

Thunder clapped. “Then who?”

“I blame myself!” Power arced through him, crackling across his skin, illuminating his earth-colored eyes—and then lightning lit up the world.