All witches were stronger than humans, but blood-witches were the rare extreme. Regular witchery could be detected in toddlers, but blood-magic didn’t erupt until puberty. It was always born of bloodshed, demanding more death each year. Once a blood-witch rose, the clock began its countdown. At seventeen, Ranka had ten, maybe fifteen, years before her magic killed her—if her coven didn’t put her out of her misery first.

After her power had surfaced, Ranka had begged to be free of it. Instead, her leader had knelt and taken Ranka’s tearstained face in her hands.

Blood-magic is not a curse—it is a gift. You carry death in your veins, Ranka. You carry the power of a god.

But what good was the power of a god if it made her the very monster humans sought to burn?

The fangwolf panted, jerking Ranka back to reality.

For two weeks she’d patrolled, passing up easy kills, keeping her power starved and primed to hunt, searching for missing witches, for any clue as to who or what had taken them. For two weeks she’d starved.

It’d be a waste, to give up such an easy life.

She’d done her due diligence, hadn’t she? Two weeks in the cold, following the trails of ghosts, her dreams filled with blood and her world drained of color, wandering as far as her coven permitted and farther still. The fangwolf wouldn’t make it regardless; it could either die now, ended mercifully by her hand—or slowly, suffering over the course of days.

That witch probably passed through weeks ago.

The wolf lurched. The warm, coppery tang of blood flooded the air.

The faces of the missing vanished, replaced by the thrum of the wolf’s weakening heartbeat, the scent of infection in its blood. The birds fell silent. The stench of decay thickened, burning the back of Ranka’s throat.

And finally, her blood-magic rose—and took control.

Ranka forgot why she’d come here. She forgot the coven she fought for, the sister she’d lost long ago, the faces of the missing and the ones left behind. She forgot her own name. Somehow her weapon appeared in her hand. Somehow she ended up kneeling over the wolf. It panted, eyes rolling. One of its fangs was cracked down the middle, the hairline fracture stretching to the gums.

Ranka killed it with a single stroke.

Its life flared through her in flashes of blue-edged white, in the taste of the wind and the memory of cubs waiting back in the den, their milky fangs soft and harmless. It swelled, filling her veins, and then disappeared, swallowed by a power that always wanted more.

Ranka gasped and doubled over. Minutes crept by as she crouched on her hands and knees, heart pounding, skin dripping sweat as the itch under her skin vanished and her senses dulled, rendering her more girl than predator once more.