“The twins! Foldrey! Someone. Shouldn’t I be attending meetings?” Her voice faltered. “Or receiving tutors? Or… doing… something?”

The woman paled. “You are doing something, miss. You’re here.”

A different servant brought her food the next day. When Ranka tried to question her, the woman practically ran from the room.

You’ll be a figurehead, Ongrum had warned. No more, no less.

She’d ceased being Ranka. Now she was just a nameless witch, here to keep the treaty alive. If she was breathing, she served her purpose. Nothing mattered beyond that to these people.

So Ranka wandered.

She crossed the grounds at a turtle’s pace, arms swinging, face curated into the picture of boredom as she mapped out the palace. Any time a guard passed her, she yawned. The only entrance she’d found so far was the main gate, a hideous beast of gilded metal, guarded day and night by men with swords and instant-click torches. She left the palace behind, aiming for the fields that sprawled across the back of the property. No one stopped her. No one seemed to care. Only the blur of sandstone walls on the horizon was a reminder of her status as prisoner.

But everywhere she went, she felt their eyes.

A small crop of stables and weather-beaten fences loomed into view. Several overfed horses grazed in the fields, tails lazily flicking away flies biting at their flanks. Ranka’s blood-magic rolled through her veins, flickering her vision to black and white. Her palms ached. Her power demanded death every few weeks to keep it under control; judging by her hunger, she had six, maybe seven, days before she needed to find a way out of the palace to feed her blood-magic.

Ranka hopped the fence and kicked off her strange shoes—sandals, the maid had called them. She wiggled her toes in the grass, relishing its softness, the way it held the sun’s warmth but remained cooler than the air. One of the horses lifted its head, snorted, and went back to grazing. She closed her eyes, drinking in the scent of the sea, the sun radiating down on her skin. The heat was still a weight, but not nearly as bad dressed in the human’s flowing robes.

Laughter rippled nearby.

“Come on. No one is out here. I’ll be fine, and you need the practice.”

Ranka flattened herself against the stable wall. Voices rumbled. There’d been no one here seconds before. She inched backward, concealing herself as Aramis and Galen Sunra stepped out of the stables, the noble boy from dinner trailing at their heels.

“Why couldn’t we stay in the tunnels?” Galen demanded. “I don’t…” He lowered his voice. “I don’t want people to see me.”

“Too dark,” Aramis said. “No good for practice.”

“Also, we don’t want to bash Percy’s head in,” the noble boy, Percy, added.

Aramis shrugged. “That might be an improvement, actually.”