“Will it be enough?” one asked. “The covens will be here in less than a week.”

“If it’s not, we’ll still take out a chunk of them. Something will stick eventually. Even the most careful survivors won’t last long once we begin releasing the sick ones into the Northlands again.”

And horribly, finally, after so many weeks of chasing winalin and staring at the bodies of dead witches and wondering, it all clicked.

The Hands had acquired winalin—but instead of perfecting it to make blood-witches, they were using the fatal strain to kill them on purpose.

It was brilliant, in the most horrifying sense possible. The Hands had masked their hatred in the language of zealotry. Whether all of them believed didn’t matter, not when they all had the same end goal in mind: drive the witches from Isodal—or wipe them out entirely.

That first witch. The one who had staggered so far north with a pin in her hand only to die—she’d been no accident. She’d been a test, to see if the plague she carried would catch. And then had come the leaflets about the prince, about Ranka, the rumors festering in the streets, the speeches and terror. Winalin hadn’t cropped up here by accident. Of course it had to start in Seaswept, where the treaty had been born. What better way to ensure humans turned against witches than set self-destructing monsters loose among the political seat of their nation? What better way to turn them against the Bloodwinn and the treaty itself, to motivate them to take up arms? No witch would be tolerated; even the weakest of them would be a threat to any human who had lost loved ones to plague-ridden monsters.

All along they’d been chasing a cure. They’d feared someone else had sought to create blood-witches, had been comforted, in a twisted way, that someone hadn’t come close. Now, as Ranka stared at the syringes on the table, terror settled in her bones. Because this was more than she, Ongrum, or any of the covens had bargained for. This was more than she could handle.

From the poison, comes the cure.

The Star Isles had sought to turn witches into weapons.

Now the Hands would wipe them out entirely.

37

“ALL RIGHT,” ONE OF THE Hands said. “Bring her forward.”

A witch was dragged into the room. Bruises marred her pale skin, and her dark hair had been shaved away. Kerth beads glinted in her ears.

“Our tests have gone well, but it’s still hitting too fast.” One of the Hands flashed two syringes in the air. “The first strain burned them out in days. We believe the second will last for weeks—long enough for them to do some serious damage.”

The second witch came out fighting.