At dusk she found a rock the size of her palm, rough around the edges, colored like an overcast sky, and tied the bracelet around it. No longer against her skin, it looked like an old, worn-out piece of jewelry. Not a promise from someone she’d failed—just a piece of junk.

Percy’s eyes flashed gold as he gave her the barest of nods.

Ranka looked to the sea.

She saw their faces—Yeva and Vivna, but the others, too, the winalin witches whose names she’d never learned, the lives she’d taken and the souls she’d failed. The ones she’d been too late for, the witches who’d burned because of the fear she’d sown. She carried so much guilt. Many more would die before winalin was cured. Many more would burn before they repaired the festering wound the treaty had only slapped a bandage over—if they could repair it at all.

But to do that—to really give the living a chance—she needed to let the dead go.

I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I hope you’re at peace.

I hope, wherever you are, you can forgive me.

Ranka drew back her arm and threw.

The rock cut a high arc through the sky. The bracelet was barely visible, a band of brown against gray as it twirled and dropped. It hit the waves in a flash of white on blue. Ranka imagined the current snatching it up, carrying it to some foreign stretch of sand that had never known the blood of witches or the storms called by men who summoned them at will. Ranka watched the water for a long time.

Percy put an arm around her shoulders.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We’ve all had enough misery. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

46

PERCY WOULDN’T TELL RANKA WHERE they were going, only that, blessedly, this surprise had nothing to do with death.

The palace slumbered around them in a blur of warm shadow and pale tile refracting moonlight. As they moved into the eastern wing, the plain white tiles shifted to brightly colored mosaics. The steel-eyed portraits of the Sunra royals past glared down at her. Finally they stopped in front of a wide oak door. Percy slid a key from his pocket and twisted to look at her, a funny grin on his face. “Do you really not know what we’re doing?”

He was beginning to irritate her.

“If I did, I wouldn’t have asked you about a hundred times.”

“Interesting. All those muscles really are stealing the blood from your brain.” Percy patted her head as though she were a cat he was particularly fond of, and she slapped his hand away.

With a snort, Percy unlocked the door.

All she saw were wind chimes.