FOR THREE DAYS RANKA STARED at the slip of parchment she’d found beneath her pillow. For three days she agonized, turning the address between her fingers, memorizing the instructions—small single-story house, two blocks north of Druid’s Mark center, on the corner of Fellhaven and Draine. Day and night she toyed with the thought of freedom, drifting off during her lessons to dream of the Northlands. Of home.

On the third night, Ranka broke.

I’ll just go look.

She was committing to nothing. Perhaps it was a trap and she’d walk into an ambush—or worse, there’d be nothing there at all, and Foldrey was simply offering her false hope to humiliate her.

Just a look.

Ranka slipped from her window and crept across the grounds.

The moon hung low and swollen in Seaswept’s night sky. The grounds were abandoned, and nearly everyone ought to have been asleep. Only two guards manned the eastern gate. In a few minutes the watch would change, leaving a precious gap—one Ranka was counting on.

But Aramis Sunra had already beaten her there.

The princess crouched with her head low, tucked in the shadows stretching beneath the palace’s inner wall, invisible to the guards stationed above. And she was alone.

No Percy?

The two did everything together. Winalin was a burden they shared, and they were inseparable. But here was Aramis entering the city alone and without the knowledge of her guards.

I think, more than anything, you want to go home.

Foldrey clearly wanted her gone. If she didn’t take him up on his offer soon, she had no doubt he’d try to find another way to remove her. She needed to use tonight to explore her options. Come up with a plan, decide if she was staying or fleeing, and prepare accordingly.

The guards posted above the wall descended the stairs. Aramis slipped out the gate with an ease that hinted she’d done this many times before, her steps quick and sure.

Ranka crumpled the address into her palm and followed.

The signs of drought were everywhere. Flowers wilted in their windows, the sprigs of basil that shared their plots shriveled to a fragile crisp. Dockworkers and maids relaxed from a long day of labor against scorched brick walls and fanned themselves half-heartedly, picking at their heat-chapped lips and sunburned skin, calling out to neighbors and passing cheap liquor between porch stoops. Posters snapped overhead, their edges curled with heat, offering charms to stave off thirst or help parched gardens grow.

But worse were the leaflets, scattered across cobblestones with no signature, no namesake. Easy to distribute and impossible to trace.

Ranka’s own face stared out from them, warped by blood-magic. The words swam in front of her eyes.

A MONSTER AMONG US