“Don’t get me wrong,” Percy said quietly, his eyes tracking the smoke billowing overhead. “Sometimes drastic measures are needed. Governments topple. A war is won, a people revolt. But it’s never because of just one person.” Percy licked his lips. “People like Ilia… they’ll call themselves heroes and convince you they’re gods. They’ll make everything look so painfully simple, so black and white. But the gods are dead or ignoring us, and there are no heroes coming to save us. There’s just regular, messy people. A good leader knows that. But people like Ilia? They don’t want anything new at all, just the power they’ll get from pretending they delivered you to it.”

Ranka reeled. There was nothing she could ask him without giving herself away.

But oh, how she ached to—to ask him how it felt to realize the new world had been a lie, that he’d only been a pawn in bringing in a new evil from the same old horrors. She wanted to know if there was a way to gauge whether a leader was one of those messy, imperfect people he spoke of, or a beautiful liar spinning hopes built on falsehoods and smoke. She wanted to ask if it was worth trying anyway, on the off chance that some change was better than what had come before. She wanted to know when he’d realized he was wrong—and how he’d lived with himself after.

She wanted to tell him everything.

There’s never a new world.

But what if there could be?

The question rose to her lips—and a scream shattered the air.

On the wind they smelled it: smoke, blood, and the earthy scent of a girl who had only just come into her witchery.

The scream came again, and then they were running, pounding toward a richer district of the city.

All Ranka could see was the smoke, curling in the air, shifting from the pale clouds of regular bonfire to the black plumes of people burning wet wood and whatever they could get their hands on. The streets teemed with people, jostling at one another to move forward, packing sweaty bodies in the narrow alleys.

Something familiar lingered in the air, something that didn’t belong. Ranka forced her way forward.

In front of her was a pile of kindling. A slip of a girl knelt before it, hands tied behind her back.

And across the crowd, dressed in commoner’s clothes, was Foldrey Wolfe.

24

FOLDREY STOOD IMMOBILE, ONE HAND on the sword he’d concealed beneath his cloak, his face carefully blank as he stared at the girl who was aboout to be burned.

And she was just a girl, maybe a few months shy of fourteen, still narrow hipped and full cheeked with youth. She had Vivna’s eyes—a pale, watery blue. Tear tracks cut through the layers of grime on her cheeks.