What had Galen thought of his father in those moments? Had he watched his father’s pale hands call down storms and prayed his own would never do the same? Had the late king’s power weighed on him the way it clearly did on Galen, or had he merely accepted it, embraced it as a tool to serve his kingdom, drumming dissidents with hail and suffocating wildfires to save their neighbors in the same breath?

What would it be like to be raised with a legacy of that power? She had never asked for blood-magic, certainly, but it’d been a surprise the day her power erupted in Belren. Galen had known from the time he could walk he might someday command hurricanes with a twist of his hand.

From his first breath, Galen Sunra’s magic had never been anything more than a tool of war. It made him a protector to some—a monster to many more.

They had that in common, at least.

The rot swirled thicker.

Ranka fixed Galen with a square look. “You know I don’t want to marry you, right?”

Relief washed across his face. “I had a feeling.”

“What,” she deadpanned. “You mean you weren’t dying to make me your wife? I’m heartbroken.”

“You’re not exactly my type.”

Ranka recalled the way Percy had been so attentive to the prince’s mood, the closeness with which they’d walked. The softness Percy seemed to reserve for Galen alone.

She wondered if Galen was thinking of him, too.

“What a miserable pair we make,” Galen muttered. “The prince desperate to avoid the throne. The witch desperate to avoid the prince.”

Ahead of them, a guard broke from the crowd and hurried toward Foldrey. He whispered something that made the captain jerk—and then Foldrey waved him away. The guard shook his head and disappeared back into the crowd.

Was it her imagination—or had that been blood speckling the front of his coat?

“So why bother with any of this?” Ranka asked slowly, her eyes now glued to Foldrey, who was walking a little more rigidly than before. “Why not just walk away?”

“And… what? Let the treaty fail? Return to war, soak the earth with blood again? Flee, so some tyrant can fill the vacuum I’d leave behind?” Galen laughed, low and bitter. “There’s no escape. Trust me. I’ve spent a lifetime looking for one.”

An uneasy silence stretched between them, and Galen turned away, retreating back into that quiet, haunted shell of his. The hair on her arms stood on end.

There’s no escape.

He had to be wrong—right? Ongrum had a plan. It wasn’t just the treaty that was going to end the night Galen died, it was the entire Council. The Skra would wipe Isodal clean of its leadership. With the covens united, it’d be decades—centuries—before Isodal dared harm Witchik again.