Her coven or the twins.

“Ranka,” Ongrum murmured. “Come home to me.”

Ongrum or Aramis.

Who was she kidding?

There’d only ever been one choice.

Ranka loosened her grip on the axe. In a wide, great arc, she sent the blade flying into the cabinet, and even Aramis’s scream couldn’t drown out the sound of the vials of the vaccine shattering against salt.

Part Four: Bloodwinn: Coup Successful

PART FOUR BLOODWINN COUP SUCCESSFUL

54

THE PALACE BURNED—AND THE witches drank.

Ranka sat immobile and numb as witches celebrated around her. After she’d destroyed the vaccines, the Skra had made quick work of taking Aramis prisoner. Still, her screams lingered.

The witches had overtaken the Council room. They stumbled between the great, ancient chairs, cracking bottles of imported Star Isles wine open against the arms, laughing as they spilled Shiraz down the marble. A Murknen hurled her empty bottle through a stained-glass window overhead and whooped as the entire panel of glass shattered. A few Hands of Solomei had remained in the palace after the coup, but they’d largely extracted themselves from the celebrations. Ranka watched them with a churning stomach. It was clear the Hands had no love for the Skra—yet they’d allied with them in the end.

But why?

Glass shattered overhead. The witches kept celebrating, paying their silent, solemn Bloodwinn no mind. She’d barely spoken to anyone all night.

What was wrong with her?

She’d won. She’d accomplished her mission. She’d done what generations of witches could only dream of.

Yet she felt nothing but misery.

Outside, the gardens burned. Smoke billowed into the air in great black clouds, and patches of palace-bred lilies sizzled as they were charred down to their roots. There was so much smoke, the koi ponds were now shrouded from view. Once, Aramis had told Ranka of how she’d named every single one of them as a little girl. She’d bawled when the fish inevitably died of sickness or old age. Had blushed, lashes fluttering in that way that made Ranka’s heart quicken, when she admitted that even now, balanced on that precipice between girl and woman, it brought her peace to watch the great, lazy fish float to the surface and beg for scraps.

They’d probably boil alive in the heat if they hadn’t already been killed for sport.

The witches slowed only when Ongrum stepped forward. She moved deliberately, face set as she climbed atop the Council seat that had once been Galen’s. Standing on the marble chair, clothes painted in blood, Ongrum looked every bit the conqueror.

Ranka was going to be ill.

“I want you all to take a moment,” Ongrum said. Her voice was soft, but it carried through the great room as well as any shout. “And witness where we are. Witness what we’ve done. We stand in the heart of power—and now it’s ours.”