Beetles clicked from the leaves around them, their hard shells gleaming in the early dawn light. Every step Ranka took felt heavier, as if she were wading through water. Her fingers kept drifting to her cuticles, tearing at the skin until it bled. Fear turned her mouth sour. Even her blood-magic seemed afraid. It skittered and bucked beneath her skin, begging her to flee instead of fight.

Ranka kept walking.

They took a sharp turn into a small garden clearing. Petals of once-fragrant white lilies littered the ground, brown at the edges and spotted with decay. Aramis sat cross-legged in the dirt, her nightclothes rustling around her. Her eyes searched Ranka’s face. “We don’t need a full-fledged blood-witch to protect Galen. We have the defenses; the palace has faced insurrections before, and its walls remain standing yet.”

Ranka swallowed. It was tempting. Even now she longed to flee, to tell Aramis she could survive with a lifetime of being only half in control. They’d made so much progress already. Though her blood-magic still wielded her in the end, hadn’t she learned how to direct it? To stave it off and ride the waves of the power, instead of letting them crash wildly over her every time?

Couldn’t that be enough?

But a coup was coming. Her coven would soon enter Seaswept. An underground coalition of religious zealots sought to upturn the twins she was now desperate to protect. A plague that would be the end of everything would burn this land to the ground.

They were about to face the fight of their lives, and they needed every weapon in their arsenal.

Besides, didn’t she need every bit of evidence she could gather for Ongrum that the twins were on her side? If Ranka conquered her blood-magic, she would prove, once and for all, the Sunra princess was someone Witchik needed alive.

She could buy Aramis’s safety for the rest of their lives.

And that, more than anything, made this worth it.

“I’m ready,” Ranka said. “Lead me through it.”

Aramis’s lips wobbled. “Very well, then. Close your eyes, witch girl—and take my hands.”

Ranka complied. The world became nothing but the hum of beetles around her, the bite of the stones against Ranka’s thighs as she sat cross-legged in the dirt. Aramis’s fingers slid into Ranka’s and squeezed. Her voice wrapped around her, carrying that steady, cool confidence Ranka had hated so fiercely when she’d met Aramis and relied on now.

“You have a wound in you, Ranka, one that’s festered for a long, long time.” Aramis spoke slowly, her voice monotone, as though she were repeating an incantation. “Your unwillingness to face that wound has given your blood-magic free reign, to wield you as it pleases. If you want control, there can be nothing you hide from yourself. If you want freedom, the wound must be allowed to scar, once and for all.”