Ranka closed her eyes. She saw Vivna’s dark curls bobbing down the streets of Orvist, the warm blue eyes of the human who had taught her to heal. The blankets she’d sheltered under, woven by southern hands. And she saw the after, when witches learned to take instead of ask, when her wounds from Belren hardened into scars and she learned fear could be a tool as sharp as any knife when wielded right.

“I don’t know,” Ranka said, and it was the truth.

Could the world ever become what the Bloodwinn treaty was meant to create—a haven for both humans and witches, where they learned to at least tolerate one another, if not thrive?

Did she want it to?

She didn’t know that, either.

23

RANKA DREAMED OF YEVA.

In her dreams they were children again, rosy cheeked, tromping their way through thick snows in pursuit of a herd of elk that a scout had spied earlier that morning. Bundled in furs, with hair plaited away from her face, Yeva looked a little like Vivna. Sounded like her too.

But unlike Vivna, she waited for Ranka when she lagged behind.

Ranka’s breath fogged in front of her. They were silent, but it was a warm silence. Vivna always whined, and Ongrum barked orders, but with Yeva the world was quiet, and safe. They turned the bend, blinded by a flash of sun on snow.

On the winter breeze came a familiar scent—sweat and smoke, and veins that bled too easily.

Humans.

Ranka and Yeva were down in the snow in a blink, belly-crawling to a patch of bushes. One of Ranka’s gloves worked itself loose, and her bare hand struck snow. The cold burned. Ranka reached back—and Yeva grabbed her hood, tugging her forward, eyes wild with fear.

Better a glove than a limb. Better a glove than a life.

Only two weeks before, they had stumbled into a copse of trees and found two witchlings hanging from their ankles, both younger than Ranka herself. They had been burned alive.

They came from the west: five men, beards flecked with ice and cheeks pink with winterburn. On sleds they towed carcasses dismembered into hunks of meat, bundles of antlers, and thick, fatty hides.

“Well,” Ranka whispered. “Guess Tafa was right—there were elk out here.”

Before Belren, Ranka and Yeva would have called out and approached the hunters with tentative smiles. Even if their gloves hid their dark nails, any human would have known a child emerging from the northern woods could only be a witch. The humans would have been wary—but polite. They’d have inquired after their coven, maybe offered them meat in hopes the witches would grant them access to their lands.

And they would not have carried so many weapons.

It was funny, how quickly things changed.

Take a girl and hand her a knife. Take a village and make it bleed.