“The sparky thing?”

“Hurricanes and lightning, terrible floods! Like your dad, the feared, uh… cloud… bender.”

“Skybreaker,” Galen snapped. “And I told you before—I can only summon wind. I’m not like him. Which everyone loves to remind me of, at all times.”

“Galen.” Percy’s face grew soft. “Just try. For me?”

Galen looked away and then back at Percy with a frown. His eyes were wide and vulnerable, searching the other boy’s expression, and then he sighed. “Oh, fine. You win. Back up, you absolute nut.”

A massive smile broke across Percy’s face. He skipped a few steps backward, bouncing on his toes, and patted his chest. “Do your worst, princeling.”

“That is not the proper title,” Galen muttered.

Aramis sat upright, watching her brother with interest. Even Ranka couldn’t help herself from perking up.

It was a hot, still day. The sky was cloudless. Any ship that tried to leave the bay would have been dead in the water. Most wind mages would have been hard-pressed to muster little more than a breeze.

Galen merely raised a hand.

Wind leapt forward, howling with the ferocity of a Northlander storm, flattening palm trees with distressing creaks until one snapped clean in half. Dust flew into the air in billows, and with it, Percy. He laughed with mad delight as Galen’s wind carried him ten, twenty, thirty feet into the sky. And despite his protest, Galen laughed too. He held Percy aloft effortlessly, as if hefting a whole person into the air were nothing.

Goddess help her, he was using only one hand.

Ranka stood stock-still, the feeling draining from her limbs.

The wind vanished. Percy landed on his feet with the neatness of a cat and crowed, “Again!” Galen waved him off, staring at the sky. It was an endless, bright blue. Disappointment clouded Galen’s face.

Ranka stayed hidden long after they left, her skin clammy despite the late-summer heat. She’d always relied on being the deadliest one in any room she entered. She was the monster, the blood-witch, the Butcher of Belren.

But as Ranka eyed the sap dripping from the splintered palm tree, recalling the boy who’d laughed as though his gale winds were a party trick, a new truth unfolded before her.

Someday, Galen Sunra would grow up. If he did learn to command entire storms, if he became a Skybreaker like his father, his winds would stop being a toy and become a tool of war.

And when that happened, there wouldn’t be enough blood-magic in the world to stop him.

8

For two more nights and two more days, Ranka was left alone. No summons came from the Sunra twins. No whisper of Yeva emerged. Ongrum had been so certain they’d targeted Yeva because she looked like Ranka, so where was she? Why weren’t there any clues? Why wasn’t there any hint of her at all?