Percy looked down the tunnels. “When I realized what Ilia had done with winalin, I panicked. I tried to return to my old mentor, and he cast me out. I lost everything—my family, my true magic, my home. And I deserved it. I came here, expecting nothing, and found… everything.” He laughed, the noise quiet and surprised. “Those twins… this place. Sometimes I wonder if the gods brought all my painful mistakes early in life, so I might spend the rest of my days earning the life that followed. I’d like to think I have earned my second chance. I’d like to think I’m better now.” He looked at her. “I serve the twins. If Aramis wants you gone…”

Ranka nodded. “I understand.”

Still he watched her, as if in Ranka he saw an old memory he couldn’t quite shake. “You are not done with her. Ongrum.”

Ranka began to shake her head, but Percy held up a hand.

“You think you are—but trust me. This is how it works, with people who wield abuse like a knife and convince us they’re cutting us with love. There will come a moment more dire than the one you faced last night. A moment you can’t come back from, and everything in you, everything you’ve been conditioned for, every fear and hurt and hope and dream, will scream for you to choose Ongrum again.”

Ranka’s breath hitched. “I’ll choose Aramis this time.”

“No.” Percy shook his head. “No, that’s not the answer. That’s not how you heal. It’s time for you to be your own person, Ranka. We’re not responsible for the wounds we suffer—but we are responsible for healing them. So when the moment comes, and when that choice is in front of you—I’m begging you to choose yourself. That’s the only way you heal. It’s the only way you can be free.”

“I—” Her voice faltered. All her life she’d looked for someone to follow. Someone to believe in. A person, a mission, a cause. And Percy was telling her that was a bad thing? “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“You have to,” the boy said, his voice soft. “The only way out of this is to choose yourself, again and again, even when it’s hard. Even when it’s terrifying. Even when you feel like the most broken, unworthy, worthless person in the world.”

It was asking too much of her. She had always been a follower, a fighter to be directed toward the next target. And Percy was asking her to choose herself? It was laughable. It was terrifying. And it was impossible. Couldn’t choosing Aramis be enough?

“Okay,” Ranka lied. “I will.”

Percy watched her, a quiet sorrow lining his face—and then he put his lips against the lock and blew.