A single window lit the front room. The blinds had been drawn, but Ranka drifted forward, peering through the crack that let in moonlight. A stray dog nosed trash in the gutter outside, flea-bitten ears twitching as drainage pipes dripped onto its back, but the city was deserted. Every home on the street had dark windows.

How many more days could these people hide inside all day? How much more horror could this city sustain?

Voices drifted down the hall, and Ranka inched backward, rolling the weight of her foot from heel to ball to keep the floorboards from creaking. Ranka drew to the door and listened.

“You should have seen her face. When she turned the corner, Aramis—I don’t know. She looked like a scared little kid. And even before that, in the hall, when they’d caught me—I think she knew she’d made a mistake. I think she regretted it right away.”

“That doesn’t make up for what she did.”

“It doesn’t,” Percy agreed. “But I’ve met a lot of villains, Aramis. And I’ve met good people who made bad choices because they didn’t know what else to do. Ranka’s a lot of things—but a master manipulator isn’t one of them.”

“She betrayed us,” Aramis spat. “She’s a monster—”

“As am I,” Percy said quietly. “There are no heroes here, Aramis. No villains. There are only monsters—the ones we need, the ones we spare, and the ones we burn. Which of those do you think Ranka is? Which do you want her to become?”

Another lapse of quiet. Ranka reeled in the dark. Images of witches burned alive flashed behind her eyes, of the humans who burned them but the humans that had healed her too. Of a child’s bloody shoe in the street, a village reduced to ash, a healer’s weary smile, and a mother’s clever, cruel lies.

She saw Yeva, rotted to nothing—and Asyil, dying by Ranka’s hand, because Ranka had been too late to save her, too.

You’ll be the monster, Galen had said. There had been so much faith in her then. Hope that Ranka might be the terrible thing they needed. She had almost let herself believe it—that she could be the monster, the knife in the dark, staining her soul to protect those who deserved it. And she had failed.

Aramis finally spoke, her voice barely audible. “Is it true, then? Her leader is… making them? Was supplying the Hands with witches this whole time? And she didn’t know? You believe her?”

“I do. I’m so sorry, Aramis. I never imagined…”

“You don’t have to—”

“But I do. This is my fault—more than Ranka’s, or Foldrey’s, or anyone’s.”

“You were a child. Are a child.” Aramis laughed bitterly. “We all are.”

“I’ll have you know I am very mature for my age.”