Without a thought, I lunged and forced my talons into the thin, sagging skin around her feeble biceps. My other hand sliced through her robe, stuck into her ribs, and drew an ear-piercing shriek from her. Rohana was only bone. With ease, I hoisted her up and slammed her down onto the floor, placing my body between hers and Theodore’s.

My voice ripped from my chest. “You touch him again and I’ll tear your limbs from your fucking body.”

“He must pay.” Her voice had turned weak and begging. “The ritual has already begun, the smoke is already in my chest. I must replace what is taken.”

I was nearly choking on the rotting mist that was filling the hut. And I needed my severing draughts. I needed a prophecy, but my anger was consuming. I dug my talons in deeper.

“Please,” she moaned. “I need flesh.”

Flesh. There was no way I could let her touch him.

Her thin lips pulled back in a snarl. “There is an order, a balance that I keep. Killing me will ruin it. If you will not let him pay, then you must so that I may continue to serve.”

“I’ve grown tired of paying with my body so that monsters may keep living.” My talons scraped against her rib bones as I forced them even deeper. Her scream bounced off the walls.

“Do not be like Eusia and kill your own. What kind of monster would you be if you took me from the people I am here to care for?”

I’d grown into a woman believing I was a monster. Living in shame and fear over what I was. But even with my talons tapping against Rohana’s ancient bones, that feeling had momentarily fled. I was not like her. I would never be.

“What exactly do you require?” I ground out. “How much flesh?”

“Just a piece. With fat still attached,” Rohana answered in a relieved wheeze. “And hair. Pulled out at the root.”

The foul, sweet scent of the smoke sat heavy in my lungs. It smelled like dead things, broken down, nearly gone. My head beat with the pressure of that brew she’d given me, but I managed to pull my talons from her crepey flesh. “Don’t move.” I sounded like I’d downed an entire flagon of wine.

It took all my concentration, but I wrapped a clump of hair at my nape around my fingers and ripped it from my scalp. One of her vines stretched longingly for it.

Rohana’s empty white eyes watched hungrily as I lifted my shirt. I dug a talon tip into the soft band of flesh beneath my navel, pulling out a small round of bloody meat. The vine took both my hair and skin and tucked them inside Rohana’s gaunt cheek.

Her entire body relaxed, instantly satiated.

She was dragged back to the bowl, looking like a pale corpse in the lone orb light. The brown mist crested the lip, and the vines heaved her up, holding her so her face hung above it. A rank sucking sound cut through my ears as she gulped the thick, brown fumes deep.

I could hardly see her now with how thick the mist had become. My sight began to fracture with the more breaths of it I took. I adjusted myself so that Theodore lay protected between my legs just before the orb light went out once more. In the dark, I felt like I was floating.

The voice that came was not that of a maiden. It was the voice of a crone, reed-thin and wobbling.

There is a crown. Ripped, ripped, ripped from the head.

There is a bond. Cut, cut, cut from the blood.

The queen lies drained of her divinity.

The king sits wrecked and ravaged beneath her wing.

Rohana made an awful gasping sound that droned on for what felt like minutes.

What they have made will decimate the order of all things.

I shook my head. My voice was dreamy and slow. “I don’t understand.”

Rohana cackled through the darkness.

What they have made will bring chaos. Will bring ruin. Will bring death.

Feeling disembodied and confused, I had the sensation of resting atop coarse, pleated waves. Rocking, swaying, dipping. I fought through the meaning of her words and a chill fell over me as understanding snapped into place.

I was the queen, drained of her power.

And Theodore… the king.

Wrecked and ravaged because of me.

And together… Panic slipped through my body as my thoughts and fears slowly crystalized.

Together we would bring chaos.

We would bring ruin.

We would bring death.

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Time stuttered. Perhaps it stopped. My vision rippled and went black. When I came to, I lay upon the floor, the gleam of orb light above me. Beside me, Theodore was still unconscious. The tinkling of glass, the hiss of smoke, the sound of all those slithering vines, filled my ears.

Sluggishly, I lifted my arm and pressed my hand to Theodore’s chest. Even, shallow breaths. I rose onto my elbow and watched Rohana working over her bowl, her bald head reflecting the sickly, yellow glow.

“Speak, Imogen,” she said, sounding once more like a young woman. “I know you wish to.”

“I want my severing draughts,” I croaked.

“I am making it.”

“I paid for two.”

“You will get one.”

I rushed to stand but her vines tightened around my calves and wrists, keeping me down. I focused, tried to find Theodore’s power through my smoke-addled haze, but I was too sick, and she was so strong.

“I can sever the bond between you and your king, and that is all.” Her awful, cloudy eyes locked with mine. “And what a shame too. You are so much better together.”

I reeled, head hammering. “What do you mean?” I yelled. “What about my bond with Eusia? The bond that you just told me drains me of my divinity.” I thrashed against the vine’s hold. “You told me that I will ruin Theodore, that we will bring death and chaos. How can we be better together?”

Rohana gave an eerie, skittering laugh and loosened the vines. “How young you are, how new and bright. You see things with clear, crisp eyes. But let your vision blur and break. Let yourself see deeper.”

I pushed myself up with a hiss. “If that’s your way of telling me to look for more meaning in your prophecy, then fuck you.”

She was too still, her little body sagging against the cage of vines that held her up. She set a small glass bottle into the loop of a vine and sent it toward me. “It’s time for you to leave. This will remove the God-king from your blood—”

I nearly screamed. “What of my bond with Eusia?”

“You made that bond with a despicable spell, and it is always the Mage who makes the spell that must break it.”

Hopelessness pummeled me. My voice grew small. “What should I do? How?”

A vine curled around her chin, cocking her head for her. Her unblinking eyes were locked with mine. “Go home.”

My brow creased. “Go home?”

The room erupted with the scraping of moving vines. Like a bed of verdant snakes, they began to creep around Theodore’s supine body and ferried him over the bones and wood, toward the hut’s crooked door.

Go home.

The blood bond pulsed like a racing heart, filling me with worry, and I rushed to his side. I touched him, needy for the assurance of his warmth. Gently, I traced the edge of his cheekbone. I ran a fingertip over the slanting line of his nose, down to the contour of his lips.

Home.

The word was a changeling, twisting its meaning from one breath to the next. My mind was still sluggish from the lingering taint of the ritual smoke, and that word—home—spun it and filled it.

Then I was transported. I stood in my old home. In King Nemea’s icy-white throne room, cold penetrating to my bones. I looked to the wall. To the splayed black wing that hung upon it.

It was just like mine.

The king sits wrecked and ravaged beneath her wing. My heart began to squeeze. What they have made will decimate the order of all things.