I’m sorry, Aramis. It seems I have to break one last promise.

“Foldrey,” Ranka called.

He twisted. His face was awash with blood. All around them the grounds had become a theater of death.

“If it doesn’t work—if I turn…” She swallowed. “End it, while I’m still here.”

He held her gaze and nodded.

Ranka was no fool. He would not mourn her death. Winalin or not, she couldn’t occupy the world he wanted to build. But she trusted his love for the twins. Trusted he would do what they could not.

Ranka sat and closed her eyes. The chaos faded away, even as blood spiked in the air, as the screams of the dying swelled to a fever pitch. Foldrey circled her, leaving his men to die as he protected the Bloodwinn.

She wasn’t ready, would never be ready.

But it was time.

The kernel pulsed.

Yeva. Asyil. So many others.

They had died, burned up by this nightmare of a disease, for her to make it right.

Ranka stretched mental fingers toward that memory, the truth she’d spent half a decade running from.

From the poison, comes the cure.

She took a breath—and slammed the winalin into her thigh.

And there, in the arena, Ranka faced Belren.

72

ALL OF BELREN BURNED.

Smoke writhed in the air. The ground was a churned mess of half-melted snow and blood. The fire spread to the last of the houses, trapping its occupants inside, and Ranka didn’t—couldn’t—care. Nearly everyone had fled by now. Even the farm hounds slunk away into the woods.

The worst part was that it felt good to kill. It made sense. Like it was something she’d been built for. Had it been horrifying—had she not wanted this—maybe she could have turned around. But every time someone died, a jolt of euphoria slid through her veins. Her magic numbed her wounds, whispered for her to ignore the blood she was losing.

A man and a woman lay dead at her feet, their eyes stretched wide, faces frozen in masks of horror. Some part of her knew them.

Belren kept burning. What had been a village echoing with screams only minutes ago was now permeated with eerie silence broken only by the crackling of flames, the popping of burning wood, the groans of houses collapsing in on themselves. All of Belren’s residents had died or fled, and now she was just a witch, standing among the wreckage.

The fires raged. Her blood-magic faltered in its presence, weakening, and for the first time Ranka felt the pain in her hands, her arms, her legs. People were strewn across the snow like broken dolls.

I… did this?

From behind her came a faint keening.

Vivna knelt by their parents.