Jue squeezes my hand and Bri pulls at pieces of my fabric. “This is actual gold, Rue.”

“It is?” I don’t know why I’m surprised. I shouldn’t expect anything less.

“Yeah,” she says, squinting. “And you’re welcome. I’m so glad it worked.”

“I wish we could have seen how it went down,” Jue says.

“Oh, it was ham. For a minute there I thought we were done for. What exactly happened at the grave site?”

“At first nothing,” he says. “We just poured the onyx on top of the dirt and stood there looking like some dummies.”

“But then Julius got down on his hands and knees and pressed the onyx into the dirt. It absorbed it. Like, sucked it right in.”

“The more we pressed into the surface, the warmer the ground grew, until it was so hot, we couldn’t stand on it. Well, I couldn’t, anyway,” Bri says.

“Yeah,” I say. “As the magic started returning, the more freely our magic moved.”

I catch a glimpse of Titube dancing, a crowd clapping around her. Her fingers coil and twist, flowers bloom everyplace she points. Something like fireworks pops in the air, and I hug around myself.

“All of this… it’s just unreal.” Bellied frogs croak and crickets hum in the branches. In one direction the ocean bathes in the moonlight. In the other, an abyss, a black shadow that used to be the Capital.

“What about the people who didn’t stand with the Chancellor?” Julius asks. “Everyone else on the island?”

“They’re still scattered out there somewhere.”

“Not many,” Bri says. “Their numbers are whittled way down. There’s no surviving out there anymore. There’s nothing to survive on. My parents and brothers are out there somewhere.”

“Bri, we have to find them.”

She nods. But she’s right. The Central District is a deserted heap. And it will no longer be the center of the island. It was built on a lie, which means it’s rotted down to the very foundation and must be rebuilt from scratch. The Ghizon I build will sit at the foot of Yiyo, among the jpango trees. The Central District will be ripped up. All of it. Even the concrete. But I’m not naive: With the history of this island, turmoil is inevitable.

“If anyone out there still toting stolen onyx ever gets the stupid idea to rise again, they’d be severely outnumbered,” I say. “But I’m just gonna do me. That’s all I can do.”

I’m going to lead in a way I haven’t seen it done before. Before, I’d felt so intimidated carving a path, being the first, doing something this big, because I hadn’t seen anyone like me do it before. But there’s freedom in that.