It’d been her dream for her and Vivna, once. To disappear into Witchik where no war could touch them. She could see it now—a moss-dusted log cabin nestled into the hills that nearly disappeared in the midwinter snows. There’d be a river nearby that always ran clear, where deer came to drink and wood ducks taught their hatchlings to swim. They’d be easy prey, but Ranka wouldn’t hunt them; for once in her life she’d exist near something delicate and simply let it be. She’d wake with the dawn, grow full on berries, and catch the trout from the river until she was absolutely sick of it. In those dreams, her blood-magic always seemed to fade like color on cloth left out in the sun—growing weaker each day, less hungry, until it was barely a flicker, and then finally nothing at all.

“I’d buy books. Dozens of them. Fat books, little books, books for adults and books for children. I’d teach myself to read and write properly.” Her eyelids fluttered. “And paint. Yeva was good at that—painting. I’d learn slowly, but it wouldn’t matter, because I’d have all the time in the world.”

All she’d wanted was that cabin in the woods. How had she strayed so far?

Aramis yawned. “Once this is all over, I’ll build you the most ridiculous cabin on the continent.”

“The point is that I build it.”

“Gross.” Aramis waved a hand. “Fine, I’ll buy you the books. Mountains of them. And we’ll do nothing but read and paint and sing. We’ll be terrible, and it’ll be wonderful. Galen will have no choice but to banish us.”

“Your brother would never banish you.”

“You haven’t heard me sing.” Aramis didn’t move her head from Ranka’s shins. It couldn’t have possibly been comfortable. “For what it’s worth, you’re strong enough to conquer it. You always have been.”

Ranka said nothing, and Aramis didn’t push further. She fell asleep to the soft whistle of Aramis’s breath. She feared nightmares of Yeva, Vivna, or the winalin witches—but instead she fell into a deep, dark sleep, the first she’d had in ages, and dreamed of nothing at all.

When night faded into the pale blue of early dawn, Ranka woke to find Aramis beside her, curled in a ball on top of the sheets, dark hair fanned across the pillow. Galen dozed on the other cot. Percy sprawled facedown on the floor.

Ranka pulled a blanket over Aramis, tracking the worry lines that etched her face, the frown that creased her brows, the exhaustion curling her shoulders even in sleep.

Ranka pressed a kiss to the top of her head and made a promise in the dark.

“I failed them,” she whispered. “I will not fail you.”

48

THE WITCHES ARRIVED WITH THE dawn.