“It all needs an overhaul,” Aramis said softly. “This land, this country, was broken long before even my grandfather took the throne and tried to patch it with the Bloodwinn treaty. So you’re right, Ursay. Ongrum’s methods were wrong, but her reasons for wanting change were not. We cannot continue on as we have.”

“Pretty words,” Ursay said slowly. “But I have been given pretty words by humans—and they meant nothing when it mattered.”

The witches rumbled. The covens had every right to mistrust the humans, but without their backing there would be no pressure on the Council to fold. To accept Aramis as their queen instead of Galen.

Before she knew what she was doing, Ranka stepped forward.

Every eye flew to her.

Her legs turned to jelly. It was funny, truly. She had battled half-dead witches and assassins deep below the earth, but it was public speaking that would be her undoing.

“When I was chosen as the next Bloodwinn, I saw it as a death sentence.” She swallowed. “If the Bloodwinn treaty is to be rewritten, then I ask that the role no longer be forced—the covens will take turns selecting their own, choosing any witch they feel is suited to speak for them. Not just a blood-witch.” She paused. “And that witch will not be required to marry the Sunra heir.”

Ranka took another shaky step forward, and her eyes were solely for Aramis. Only a few feet separated them, yet it felt like an entire ocean.

“When a plague came to our shores that killed witches, it was Aramis—not the Council, not the prince, not the covens—who dove into the mines to stop it. It was Aramis who put her life at risk to make a cure. She saved us when our own betrayed us. When our own saw our bodies as nothing more than experiments.”

Aramis held Ranka’s stare, her lips trembling faintly. The evening sun sank lower in the sky behind them, gilding the gardens in a honey glow, illuminating her from behind. With the threads of warm light weaving through her dark curls and glancing off her skin, Aramis looked ethereal.

She looked like a queen.

“We could have no one better,” Ranka said softly. “She is braver than the lot of us. Smarter, too. I am not sure that we deserve her. But we would be lucky with her at the helm.”

Aramis’s throat bobbed, and though her eyes glistened, she held carefully, regally still.

Before Ranka could think twice—before she could let fear sweep in, that whisper that Aramis would not want her vote of confidence or her apology or whatever else she had left to give—she gathered together the last scraps of her courage and sank to one knee.

The last time she had knelt like this, it had been before Ongrum, swearing her fealty to the Skra.