Silence filled the room. They stared at each other—Foldrey exhausted, Aramis furious. They had never looked more like father and daughter. Even now there was love between them, shimmering in Foldrey’s weary resignation, in Aramis’s hurt.

The sunlight outside was beginning to fade. They were edging into evening now and losing time. Ranka ghosted her fingers over her chest. No one in the room looked at her. She was no longer an asset; she was an afterthought. Just another witch, as mortal as the rest of them. It was an odd feeling, to be useless. And strangely welcome.

Ranka found her voice. “Foldrey, how many men do you still have?”

Foldrey lifted a brow. “And who is to say I want to help you, Bloodwinn?”

“If you didn’t want to help us,” Ranka said slowly, “your men would have left us to die in the mines.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. She’d called his bluff perfectly. A part of her ached. Foldrey, more than anyone, understood her—a northerner born to nothing, a warrior self-made. He was the mentor she’d always wanted.

And she had no doubt that as soon as he got the chance, he’d put a knife in her heart.

Aramis looked between them. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Look around, Princess,” Ranka said flatly. “You are alone. You have no allies, no army, no money, and no power. Your brother is imprisoned by a madwoman, and your people are burning in the streets. Beneath your city, monsters roam, picking off innocents at night. You have lost, Aramis.”

Aramis watched her, her very being vibrating with fury. Foldrey held painfully, carefully still.

“We all have a common goal,” Ranka said softly. “Stop Ongrum and save Galen. The rest doesn’t matter if he dies.”

They all stared at her. Aramis looked like she wanted to say something cruel, but she closed her eyes and nodded. Percy was watching Ranka with that knowing, soft-eyed look of his, as if he saw himself in her and he was sorry for her. It had always pissed her off when he looked at her like that, but right now it just made her more tired.

Aramis leaned forward. Her voice was still cold, but a spark had entered her eyes that reminded Ranka of the girl she had fallen in love with in the workshop beneath the mines. “The Bloodwinn is right.”

Ranka flinched. The Bloodwinn. Not Ranka. Not witch girl said with a smirk. It was the biggest distance Aramis could put between them without physically leaving the room.

“Ongrum means to execute Galen on the anniversary of the Bloodwinn treaty,” Ranka supplied quietly.

“Very dramatic,” Percy said. “Maybe next time she’ll consider theater instead of genocide.”

Aramis looked exhausted. “That’s in two days. Foldrey—how many provinces could we call upon in that time?”

“At least half.”

“Would it be enough?”