“We’re building off of my mother’s research,” Aramis said softly, her face distant, as though she recalled the years she’d spent as a little girl, clutching at her mother’s robe while the past Bloodwinn hunted for a cure to the power that had plagued her, too. “We know witches and humans are one and the same; no one had even known my grandmother was a witch until her blood-magic rose. Mother always believed there was something within blood-witches that changed when their power manifested. Some chemical switch, a shift in the body and the hormones already reshaping it during puberty, when all other defenses had failed. If trauma can alter our cells, why not magic, too? No blood-witch lives to see old age. The condition is never steady. It worsens each year, taking more and more, like a parasite blooming in the blood.”

That was how it had always felt to her—like her blood-magic had not been something inherent, but a morphing of the witchery she’d carried. A curse, a sickness in her body, in her blood, born from pain and always demanding more in turn.

“Congrats, Ranka,” Percy said cheerfully. “You’ve got the plague. Or you… are… the plague? That part is still unclear.”

Aramis rolled her eyes and continued.

“We believe winalin is changing their blood,” Aramis said finally. “Different magics have different anchors—wind magic is tied to breath. Infect Galen’s lungs, and his magic would weaken. We know blood-magic resides in your veins—that’s why it moves in waves, why it floods you and spikes with your anger. It’s a biological defense mechanism. Somehow winalin is triggering that in non-blood-witches. But it’s getting it wrong. It’s killing them, because their bodies aren’t designed for it. We’re hoping to inoculate them.” Her cheeks were flushed when she finished, and Aramis looked a touch embarrassed.

Ranka wondered what this all might have been like had the past Bloodwinn still lived. Had she felt her body weaken, like Ranka already did? Had the hunger come sharper, crueler, faster? What horror had caused her witchery to change in those vulnerable years of puberty when a blood-witch could be born—what nightmares from childhood had she, too, run from years after she’d become Queen and had children of her own? She knew little of the Arlani blood-witch, had seen her only once from a distance years ago, black nails flashing on her brown hands as she met with Ongrum to mitigate a border dispute with the Kerth.

She had been beautiful, like Aramis, her words soft like Galen’s but her chin lifted with the confidence of a queen. Ranka had not known her, had never even spoken to her, but as she watched Aramis now, she thought the past Bloodwinn would have been proud of her daughter.

She hoped Aramis thought so, too.