Fire flared. The lock glowed and melted away entirely, sliding to the floor. Scales shimmered on Percy’s jaw where the flames touched him and then faded, vanishing as his skin cooled.

The door swung open. Aramis looked so small, unconscious and crumpled into a heap. Ranka lifted her with ease. Her head lolled, lips half-parted. Aramis would not forgive her as quickly as Percy had, if she did at all.

It wouldn’t matter. Their quiet, gentle days were behind them. They were at war now, and Ranka was a soldier fighting for Aramis’s cause. No more, no less.

It was all she should have been from the beginning.

I’ll choose her, she told herself. It will be enough. She’ll be enough, this time.

Percy turned to her. “You sure you can get us out of here?”

Ranka nodded, holding Aramis close to her chest. Of all the things she was uncertain of, this she was confident in, because this had nothing to do with her head, her heart, or the blood-magic dormant in her chest.

This relied only on her status as a witch. And that part of Ranka had never faltered.

Her black nails gleamed in the light.

“Burn the lichen on the walls—the fire will slow them down.”

She didn’t wait to see if Percy listened.

With the princess she’d betrayed wrapped in her arms, Ranka took a breath and stepped into the endless dark.

62

RANKA LED THEM DOWN.

Here, where even the first Sunras had stretched their influence, only the whims of water and time molded the rock, carving through the layers of sediment and salt, leaving natural tunnels that were small, sloping, and uneven. Ranka and Percy were forced to walk with their heads bowed, shoulders scraping the walls.

Down they went, deeper and deeper, until the air ran so cold and dark, Ranka finally relented and let Percy lead the way with flames glowing at his fingertips. Seawater dripped all around them.

They didn’t speak. Didn’t dare, not here, where the smallest sound carried and tunnels yawned on either side of them, containing nothing but endless dark. Every scurry of a roach or hiss from a rat made Ranka jump out of her skin. Every few steps she caught a whiff of old blood and rot. Twice the scent grew so strong that they doubled back.

After three hours Percy began to stumble. He was exhausted and had lost too much blood. Ranka was too tired to speak. She shifted Aramis to her left shoulder and pulled Percy’s arm around her neck to take his weight. He didn’t protest, didn’t even offer a quip—the only indication of what bad shape he must have been in. Ranka’s limbs trembled, and her back ached.