“A country is not a coven,” Ranka said slowly. “This is not a group of sixty witches in the woods. There are millions of people in Isodal, Ongrum. Entire districts, each led by their own Council member. Covens don’t pass laws. We don’t govern. We don’t even know how to govern.”

“Listen to you,” Ongrum said, her voice rife with disgust. “You’ve always had it so easy—found by the Skra, gifted with blood-magic but too scared to use it. If it had been me, if I had your blood-magic—”

Ranka went cold. “You couldn’t possibly understand.”

“No, you don’t understand! You don’t understand what it means to be weak. The Skra were nothing before me. They were in danger of being wiped out. I fixed that. I saved them.” Ongrum’s nostrils flared. “Everything I have, I built myself. I have spent my entire life fighting for scraps—and now that we sit here, at the heart of a kingdom, you want us to—what? Walk away? Give them back their kingdom? Go home?”

“Yes,” Ranka said softly. They were safe in the north. No one could land on their shores. No human could survive their winters. Their only weakness was the border. Let the next generation of witches suffer to protect what her misery had given them. “If the humans agree not to cross the border—”

“The humans don’t get to decide anything anymore. Not with us at the helm.”

Cold settled in Ranka.

Ongrum’s entire life had been a scramble for power. She’d been born to nothing—no coven, no magic, no training. She’d fought, clawed, and killed her ways toward every scrap of influence she now wielded. In Ongrum’s mind, to turn away a kingdom, to turn away any bit of leverage she might have, was weakness.

Ranka could almost see it in front of her—Ongrum, a witch who had never stepped foot in anything larger than a northern lumber town, finding herself in the largest city in the country. Ongrum, who’d never commanded more than a few dozen witches, suddenly poised over an entire kingdom.

It didn’t matter that she didn’t understand it. It didn’t matter that she didn’t have a plan.

Ongrum was dying of thirst and had stumbled across a spring, and she would drink until her stomach burst. She had spent her entire life prepared to die for power. Now that she had it, she would cling to it no matter the consequence, even if it ate her alive.

“Please,” Ranka whispered. “Take us home. You won’t survive this country. None of us will.”

Doubt flashed in Ongrum’s eyes, but only briefly.

“You still think us weak. Outnumbered. But let me show you why we get to rewrite history.” She jerked her chin toward the infirmary door. “Let me show you our future.”