Ranka knelt in front of her.

“They’re all going to die because of me,” Aramis whispered. “Because I wasn’t smart enough. Again.”

When the king and queen died, Ranka had thought little of it. Plague returned quietly every few decades, like a neighbor coming home. The late Sunras weren’t the first rulers felled by disease, and they wouldn’t be the last. It was a miracle, people said, their children had lived. Several healers who’d worked on the king and queen had gotten sick and died too. It’d never occurred to Ranka their daughter might have tried to cure them.

“Aramis, that’s not fair. You are one person. One mind.”

“Be quiet,” Aramis said, her voice barely audible.

“You were a child. We all are. You can’t blame yourself. Look, I understand how—”

“But you don’t, do you?” Aramis’s head snapped up. “How could you? Your power—your worth, Ranka—is in your blood and your bones. No one can take it from you. You, my brother, Percy, and every creature with magic was born with security. I was raised for a crown, and they took it because I wasn’t a witch—gave it to my brother because of his inherited power. All I have is my mind. All I am is smart. If I can’t do this one thing—if I can’t fix anything—then what am I good for?”

“You tell me,” Ranka said quietly. “Who are you, Princess, when everything else is taken away? What are you, after you fail? You’re still resilient. You’re still the most infuriatingly brilliant person I’ve ever met. And you still have a kind heart, though you pretend you don’t. Or are all of those nothing to you too?”

Aramis stared at her, her chest heaving.

“Guys,” Percy said. “You need to see this.”

The leeches were dying.

Dozens of leeches, freed from the jar Aramis had tipped over in rage, now covered the Kerth. Their bodies were seizing. The first fell off with a soft, sad plop and curled into a ball—and then they dropped like flies, curling in on themselves, quivering as they died, their bodies covered in dozens of tiny blisters. Percy took a few uncertain steps forward and sliced one in half with a scalpel.

Leech blood spilled across the table, threaded with twisting gray and the pale lavender of the vaccine.

“Solomei’s light,” Aramis whispered. “That’s it.” She crawled forward, scooping the unfed leeches from the floor. Her movements were frantic.

Ranka watched her with a mix of pity and confusion. “She’s gone, Princess.”

Aramis ignored her. She set new leeches across the Kerth, cleared the dead ones away.

“That’s what we missed,” Aramis murmured, her eyes intent. “We didn’t account for a living body.”