For all her faults, Vivna was an excellent liar. She convinced the villagers they’d escaped the Skra. They weren’t witches after all, she said, fat tears rolling down her cheeks, showing them their pale-nailed hands.

The villagers carried them aside. They rubbed warmth into their limbs and fed them hot broth, talking among themselves, eager to save two girls who’d escaped the Skra.

“Send for Hans and his family,” a woman said. “Tell them to hurry.”

When a tall man with broad shoulders and a sunspotted face stepped through the door, frost clinging to his pale beard, Ranka looked at him and understood. Here was the man who had given her such broad shoulders, tireless strength, and towering height. A long-legged, dark-haired woman stepped around him with a dancer’s grace. She was the spitting image of Vivna.

Their parents, after eight long years.

“Solomei’s light,” their father whispered.

They fell to their knees and hugged them and cried. Vivna cried with them, peddling more lies, so many lies, as if she’d spent a lifetime hoarding falsehoods behind her teeth.

Ranka sat dry eyed and tense. The strange restlessness that had been plaguing her for months stirred in her veins.

The cabins creaked under the winter wind. They seemed to moan, You don’t belong here.

Ranka agreed.

Ranka and Vivna were not the only children their parents had. When they brought them home, Ranka found herself staring at two chubby little boys.

Ranka hated that they were sweet, that they accepted her. She kept looking for flaws in their neat little life. Her mother took over braiding Ranka’s hair the way Vivna always had. The small schoolhouse that crouched near a frozen apple orchard made room for both girls. When her teacher learned that Ranka could barely read or write, she spent time after hours trying to teach Ranka her letters.

It could have been perfect. It could have been home.

Except Belren was never a home for witches.

It was like everywhere Ranka looked, an echo that she didn’t belong clung to the shadows. A local man laughing about a burning. The children at school playing a game called “kill the witch.” Even her parents spoke in low tones over the table about the wretched Skra, and why wouldn’t that useless Sunra king send troops and just wipe them all out?

These people loved them. They brought them bowls of stew and warm clothes their children had grown out of. And they would kill them if they found out what they were.

At night Ranka caught her parents whispering.

“There’s something strange about that child,” their mother said. “Something off. The way she stares at the boys terrifies me.”

“She’s had a hard life,” Hans argued, his voice gentle. “She’s probably still in shock. Give her time.”

“I don’t feel safe with her here.”

“She’s our blood. She’s staying.”