Monster. Butcher. Bloodwinn.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Ones We Burn, Rebecca Mix’s young adult debut about a witch whose dark powers put her at the center of a brewing war—out from Margaret K. McElderry Books on November 1st.
Ranka is tired of death. All she wants now is to be left alone, living out her days in Witchik’s wild north with the coven that raised her, attempting to forget the horrors of her past. But when she is named Bloodwinn, the next treaty bride to the human kingdom of Isodal, her coven sends her south with a single directive: kill him. Easy enough, for a blood-witch whose magic compels her to kill.
Except the prince is gentle, kind, and terrified of her. He doesn’t want to marry Ranka; he doesn’t want to be king at all. And it’s his sister—the wickedly smart, infuriatingly beautiful Princess Aramis—who seems to be the real threat.
But when witches start turning up dead, murdered by a mysterious, magical plague, Aramis makes Ranka an offer: help her develop a cure, and in return, she’ll help Ranka learn to contain her deadly magic. As the coup draws nearer and the plague spreads, Ranka is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her power, her past, and who she’s meant to fight for. Soon, she will have to decide between the coven that raised her and the princess who sees beyond the monster they shaped her to be.
But as the bodies pile up, a monster may be exactly what they need.
Seaswept fell apart as they walked. The wind carried not just the reek of old blood, but the aftermath of true horror, clinging to the very bones of the city. Galen’s eyes widened as they passed houses missing doors, windows, chunks of their roofs, all of them still clearly lived in. A man sprawled facedown in the street, piss drunk though it was barely noon, a halo of vomit spread around his head. He groaned as they passed. Ranka put a firm hand on Galen’s shoulder and propelled him forward.
They stepped around the carcass of a horse that had to be at least a week old, its body bloated with maggots, bridle gone and eye sockets long picked clean by gulls. In the wealthy districts they’d ridden through, a dead animal would have been moved in hours. But here, where the poor and the sick worked, where the healers always arrived far too late and the guards usually never arrived at all, decay was a permanent fixture.
Galen shrank into himself with every step.
The streets were silent save for the soft crackling of palace announcements that flapped from noticeboards, their ends curled by heat. They were all gibberish to her—but Galen stopped short, reading the same one over and over again, his eyes growing wider with each line. Ranka tried to make sense of the letters, but it was useless. Education had hardly been high on the Skra’s priority list.
Not that she was going to admit that to Aramis. She’d rather the princess think her openly defiant and failing her language lessons on purpose than know of another weakness.
“It’s an order from the Grand Council,” Galen finally said. “I guess they, uh, revoked civil protection of witches indefinitely when you were found.” He pointed, his fingers tracing sloppy handwriting that looped over the original announcement. “But this—this isn’t from the Council.”
Buy the Book
The Ones We Burn
In the center of the poster, a single gold pin gleamed.
“What does it say?”
Galen gave her a long, uneasy look. “I don’t think—”
“Read it.”
Galen licked his lips. “It just says: ‘Now we burn.’”
Ranka turned before he could see the panic on her face. Her arrival had done this. Surely, they won’t actually burn witches, right? Not here, with a Bloodwinn poised to rule. It had to be an empty threat.
Except they already tried to kill Aramis. And they tried to kill you, too.
The princess’s voice floated through her mind.
They are still protectors, in the eyes of many.
The scent of death swirled around her, and Ranka forced herself to zero in on the problem ahead. There was nothing she could do about the Hands, the Council, or the laws Galen clearly let them pass without
knowing what he was signing off on.
But answers lay ahead—and she could find them.
The city held its breath, and they turned the corner.
Double-woven ropes with hastily tied palace flags blocked off the end of the street. An old street sign lay crooked and broken on the ground. Galen picked it up, his brow wrinkling, his voice barely audible
as he read, “Bell’s Corridor.”
Ranka ducked under the ropes and stopped.
Galen came to stand beside her. “Solomei’s light.”
Bell’s Corridor was painted in death.
Corpses lay in the street, their throats ripped open, their panicked stares wide and unseeing. Shattered windows gaped like broken teeth. Doors hung open on their hinges—the occupants had left in a hurry. Fresh blood streaked the fronts of buildings, swept across cobblestones where bodies had been thrown and dragged. Overhead, a lone cloud passed over the sun.
Galen’s eyes had a glassy, unfocused look to them. Gone was the prince, replaced by a child not yet eighteen, seeing the horror of his kingdom for the first time. He braced a hand against one of the buildings and immediately cringed away. Flecks of still-drying blood clung to his fingertips. “What happened here?”
“I don’t know.” Ranka scanned the street. A few of the homes had golden pins pressed into the doors, as if the mark of the Hands was a mark of pride.
Galen worked one free, turning it between his fingers with an uneasy frown. “Foldrey said the head priest was murdered the other day—found dead in an alley, with his throat slit, pins pressed into his eyes.” His next words were weak. “Maybe this is where it happened? And they retaliated?”
Ranka shook her head. The pins on the other doors were covered in a layer of grime—these people had believed in the Hands long before death visited their street. Aramis’s words rippled through her.
They are still protectors in the eyes of many.
So why a massacre? And why now?
A child’s shoe lay in the road, the once-white ribbon laces now stained crimson. Ranka knelt and picked it up, turning it over in her hand. That scent was familiar. It was not the reek of a blood-soaked, still-smoking battlefield, or the festering rot of sick bodies dying in the dank bowels of a prison.
It was the scent of terror—and of blood-magic, newly born, as brilliant and burning as the power now lurking in her veins.
It was the scent of Belren.
Ranka dropped the shoe as though it’d burned her. Belren was gone. Erased. The memory couldn’t touch her. She was safe and she needed to focus. Something about this wasn’t right. Where were the city guards? Why wasn’t Seaswept on lockdown? These bodies were fresh—whoever had killed them was still loose.
So why were they alone?
“Princeling, I think . . . I think there’s something you need to know,” Ranka said slowly. “I was hoping to find answers on my own. But if the sickness is getting worse, then your sister’s plan clearly isn’t—”
“What does Aramis have to do with this?”
She raised her head—and in the window behind him, something moved.
“Ranka?”She put her finger to her lips.
The broken window gazed back, its jagged, blood-flecked glass winking in the afternoon light. From inside, a floorboard creaked.
“Princeling,” Ranka whispered, “get behind me.”
Her blood-magic begged to flood her muscles, her heart, her breath. Ranka heard Aramis’s voice, crystal clear in her mind, a balm to the power desperate to overwhelm her.
Breathe, the princess whispered. And control it.
Ranka inched toward the house. She tried the handle. The door swung open without protest, the lock long broken. A few flies zipped out, carrying the scent of fresh bodies already beginning to turn in the heat. She hesitated and breathed in. There it was—a flicker of life amid the carrion, a panicked heart, beating fast.
“Someone is here,” she whispered.
Galen blanched. “We should wait. I’ll get Foldrey, or—”
Something crashed inside the house.
“Stay outside,” Ranka warned. “And if you see anything—run.”
Ranka stepped across the threshold.
The house was dark. The first floor was a disaster—the kitchen table was cracked in half, chairs lying at awkward angles. A line of blood splashed over the wall, across the floor, and up the stairs. Childish drawings depicting parents and two children had been torn down from the wall and ripped in two. Ranka stepped over them and picked up one of the chair legs, snapping it over her knee to form a jagged edge. What she wouldn’t have given for her axe.
Something trembled behind torn curtains. She pulled them aside. A cat cowered on the floor, its white fur flecked with blood.
“You poor thing.” She poked it with her foot to break it from its shock.
The cat hissed, leapt up, and streaked out the door.
At least someone in this house would make it out all right.
A door slammed overhead.
“Hello?” Ranka called. “Is someone there?”
A sharp intake of breath, followed by a pause—and then a hoarse voice, filtering through the floorboards, weak with fear. “Go away.”
Ranka took the stairs carefully, eyeing the fingernail gouges on the wooden steps where someone had fought with everything in them not to be dragged upstairs. Sunlight filtered through a skylight, casting the house in an ethereal golden glow. The buzzing grew louder.
She stepped onto the second floor.
A long, narrow hallway greeted her. Bed frames, chairs, and bookshelves had been toppled over one another in a kind of barricade. Three bodies were strewn across the floor, eyes open, mouths already covered in flies. Ranka crouched in front of them. She closed their terror-bright eyes and wiped her fingers clean.
None of the furniture was bloody. The witch must have barricaded herself after her blood-magic had risen.
Ranka couldn’t help herself. Excitement mixed with the ache of loneliness. Maybe this witch could be reasoned with. Maybe she could be saved.
Death was all around, but it was concentrated in the room at the end of the hall, and it was there she scented warm blood. She moved forward, shifting broken furniture out of her way, sidestepping broken glass.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Ranka called. “It’s okay. I’m a bloodwitch too. I’m here to help.”
Belren flashed behind her eyes. What she wouldn’t have given for another blood-witch that day. Someone to pluck her out of the snow and explain how to keep living once your humanity had been ripped away. She would have given anything, for anyone at all.
“Please,” the voice begged. “Go away.”
Ranka pushed open the door.
A girl of around fourteen cowered in the corner of her bedroom, a piece of jagged glass held out in front of her. Blood matted her yellow hair. She was scrawny, covered in scratches, and where her left thumb should have been there was only a sad knob of bone. But it was the sores on her pale skin that took Ranka’s breath away. The blisters were tiny, no bigger than nailheads, and instead of black this girl’s fingernails were a dull gray. She had Vivna’s eyes—a soft, washed-out blue.
Disappointment flashed through Ranka. Not a real blood-witch.Another sick one—and recently infected, at that.
The girl cringed backward. “You can’t be here. You can’t. You need to go.”
Down the hall, the floorboards creaked.
Ranka crouched and held out a hand. “I can help you. I’m Ra—I’m the Bloodwinn.” The title still felt wrong, but the flicker of recognition in the girl’s eyes pushed her forward. “Come to the palace with me, and you’ll be under my protection.”
Was that even true? She didn’t know. The humans would probably sneer at her. Who was she to think anyone would listen to her? To think after a lifetime of killing, she could save someone instead?
Ranka kept her voice soft. “What’s your name?”
“Talis.” Tears streamed down the girl’s face.
“Nice to meet you, Talis. I’m Ranka.”
“You need to leave.”
“I won’t hurt you. Making the barricade to keep yourself in was smart, but—”
“I didn’t make it to keep myself in,” the girl sobbed. “I made it to keep her out.”
The girl pointed behind Ranka.
And behind Ranka, something breathed.
Pain exploded across the back of her head. Ranka pitched forward, her jaw hitting the floor with a painful crack. The door slammed on the first floor.
Talis sobbed harder. Ranka lay there, head throbbing, blood dripping from her ear. Her mind spun sluggishly, aching from the blow, struggling to make sense of what had just happened. Her blood-magic yanked at her senses, trying to drag her to her feet.
“What are you doing?” a familiar voice shouted from the street below. “Stay away!”
A guttural scream sounded, followed by howling wind and the stench of rot.
Oh no.
Galen.
***
Ranka pointed at Talis. “Run for the palace. Tell them you’re under my protection. Go!”
She descended the stairs two at a time.
From the street came a cry, a blast of wind, and the thud of flesh slamming into something hard. Ranka tore through the living room, heart pounding, and burst out the door. Afternoon sun slanted into her eyes. She stumbled, shading her brow—and found the street empty. Only the dust swirling in lazy particles was any indication of a struggle at all.
“Galen?” Ranka shouted. “Galen?”
Silence.
Bell’s Corridor looked back at her. Panic bubbled up in her chest. This wasn’t the plan. If she lost him now—if he died on her watch—
Enough.
Ranka forced herself to straighten.
She was not some green witchling. She was Skra. She was the Bloodwinn, and before she’d been named Bloodwinn, she’d been a hunter.
Ranka closed her eyes and inhaled.
She tasted the sea, the carrion of the street, and the horror baked into the very stone of this city. She tasted decades—centuries—of pain. Of not just witches burned alive, witches who’d only wanted a life among the humans they’d been born from, but the pain of humans, too. Humans who woke to find their streets soaked in blood, who starved under careless kings and mourned children sent away to die in a needless border war. All of them trapped in a cycle of pain, and for what? It’d changed nothing. Saved no one. This city was a living graveyard, and its citizens were already ghosts made flesh.
She pushed past it all, seeking something living, seeking something new, tasting rot and ruin and hatred, and there—metal polish, an ocean breeze, and an ever-present blanket anxiety. Galen. He was alive—for now.
Ranka ran.
She sprinted down a side alley, counting ten, fifteen bodies in the street, abandoned to the rats. Galen’s scent grew stronger, and so did that reek of a body turned septic. Beneath it, something familiar squirmed. Something that reminded her of home.
Ranka turned the corner.
Galen slumped against an alley wall. Blood crusted his temple. He looked at her, dazed, blinking sluggishly. “Ranka?”
“Goddess, Galen, you scared me.” She hurried forward to pick him up. “I thought—”
“Ranka,” Galen whimpered. “She’s behind you.”
Excerpted from The Ones We Burn by Rebecca Mix © November 2022 used with permission of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing.
