“I don’t know what happened,” Aramis whispered. “She was still comatose when I left for the party, but when I got here, she was just… gone.”

Everything in Ranka threatened to crumble. The agony lining Aramis’s face was so real, it cut her.

Aramis just stood there, her shoulders heaving as she fought back sobs.

“Aramis,” Ranka said gently. “We’ll figure it out, I promise—but right now I need you to listen to me very carefully.”

Aramis raised her head to look at her, her tear-streaked cheeks glistening in the dim light of the mines, and froze. “Is that… blood?”

“We have to go,” Ranka said. “We have to get you out of here. I—I messed up, okay? The Skra are attacking the palace and—”

“They’re what?”

“I know, I’m sorry, I’ll explain everything later, please, but I need you to trust me. We have to run, Princess, and we have to do it now.”

“All my work,” she whispered. Her eyes swept the room, taking in the leftover journals, the vials, the dishes she and Percy had spent months tweaking, testing, protecting. Her hands began to shake. “It was all for nothing.”

“You can make a new cure. But you need to be alive to do it. Aramis, please. We have to go.”

Aramis exploded into movement.

She scrambled around the room, flinging notebooks into bags, swiping at the chalked walls with the sleeve of her uniform. In seconds the workshop was in shambles. She hesitated, lingering over the Kerth witch, and then took a sample of her blood, gagging as she desecrated her body to give the still living a chance.

Vials of half-developed vaccines glinted on the tables and in a cabinet in the corner. Aramis drifted toward them, agony lining her face. “These ones—these are the most recent. They’re the closest we’ve gotten.” Her mouth trembled. “I can’t carry them all.”

“You don’t need them all. Just a few, right?”

Aramis blinked rapidly and nodded. She pulled a vaccine down from the shelf and tucked it carefully into the bag. “We’ll pack as many as we can, and then we can go—”

“Go?” a new voice said. “Go where, exactly?”

No.

Nadya lounged in the doorframe. Blood splattered her pale cheeks and matted her hair. She and her lover, Sigrid, had always been defiant of Ongrum—and only their seniority protected them. Two other Skra flanked her, features indistinguishable in the gloom.

Ranka’s mind blanked. Her hand was a deadweight on Aramis’s shoulder.

Nadya’s attention skipped over Aramis to the worktable. “So this is it, then. The princess’s magic potion, come to save us from the scary witch plague. It’s so… underwhelming.” She gave Ranka a long, dry smile. “How sweet of you to lead us here.”

Aramis whipped to look at her, betrayal washing across her face as it dawned on her.