Sweat rolled down her forehead and burned her eyes. The circle of witches who surrounded them pressed closer, watching as mother and daughter danced in circles, drawing blood. Some Skra jeered in encouragement, others winced or cast their gaze away. The Arlani remained silent, their white robes snapping, their faces severe and blank, waiting to see who would rise from the dust and lay claim to a coven that sought to uproot the world.

The Oori were nowhere in sight. Neither were the Hands.

Ongrum stumbled. Ranka’s sword snapped out, snaking in a butterfly cut over the older witch’s thigh. Red sprayed the dust, and Ongrum’s hip sagged as her leg buckled.

“Filthy trick,” Ongrum spat, her nostrils flaring as she breathed through the pain.

“I learned from the best.”

Ongrum grinned—and then the expression vanished as she remembered where they were. What they were doing.

Even now this felt like the dozens of trainings they’d done before—first with sharpened sticks when Ranka was only a witchling, learning to duel in hip-deep snow, practicing until her fingers were too frozen to feel anything at all. And years later as a girl, a teenager, a warrior, the weapons growing sharper and the scars thicker, but her battle partner always the same.

“Make me proud,” Ongrum would say, and some days those words felt less like an order and more like the compelling of a priestess toward her disciples. Ranka had never felt the touch of the Goddess or the spirits. She’d never tasted the divine. She’d never needed to because where faith might have lived—where some deity might have cast their golden shadow—was first a sister with watery eyes and then a witch reforged in fire who’d taken a band of witches and made them conquerors.

For the past thirteen years, Ongrum had been her prayer, her hope, the thing her heart spun around, whom she fought for and what she feared and why she loved.

And now Ranka was supposed to kill her.

Ongrum swung her blade in an arc toward Ranka’s head. Ranka jerked sideways, her shoulder burning, and electric crackles of pain shot down her wrist.

“The worst thing,” Ongrum panted, “is that after all this, you’re still weak. You could have been a legend.”

Belren flashed behind Ranka’s eyes. Blood and fire and bodies in the snow. She already knew what it meant to live a legend. She had no interest in dipping deeper in legacy’s bloody waters. The best gift this world could give her would be to forget her entirely.

Exhaustion thrummed through Ranka’s muscles. Her eyes darted to the sea, hoping for a flash of white sails, but all she saw was endless blue. She needed to trip Ongrum up somehow. Stall her until Foldrey could free his men or Percy appeared with the Oori. If he appeared at all.