Hana kept talking. “We gave Mama a proper burial. We cremated her and—”

Sora’s head snapped up. “You buried her? What gives you the right? I should have been the one to lay her to rest.”

“Your Honor,” Papa whispered. “Please listen to your sister. She’s trying to repent.”

“How can you believe that?” Sora asked, horrified. “She let Prince Gin murder Mama.”

Tears ran down Hana’s face. “And I’ll live the rest of my life making up for it.”

“You can’t,” Sora said. “There’s nothing you can do to atone.”

“Spirit.” Empress Aki had slid off Daemon’s back and now stepped forward. She laid her hands on both Sora and Hana. “It’s true that your sister can never bring your mother back. But I’ve watched you, and I know you have faith that there is good in the world. That’s why you keep fighting. And if you believe that, then you also must have faith that people can change. Give your sister a chance. Let her leave Gin and Zomuri behind to step into Sola’s magnanimous light.”

“And what if it’s another lie?” Sora asked.

Hana lowered herself to the ground into something like a bow. “I have no incentive to lie. If I still believed in what Emperor Gin—Prince Gin—wanted to do, I could have alerted the other ryuu to recapture you. But I can’t support him anymore. He damned us all, and I just . . . I’ll do whatever you need.” She glanced up at Papa. “I promised him, and I promise you.”

Papa broke away from Sora and crouched to hug Hana. She threw herself into him as if she was six years old again. “It will be all right, my little one,” he said, stroking her hair. “I have you now. Everything will be all right.”

Seeing them together like that toppled Sora’s defenses. Ever since the Blood Rift Rebellion, all Sora had wished for was to go back in time, to have her sister with her again. That dream had almost seemed possible when Prince Gin returned to Kichona with Hana by his side. Sora had tried to persuade her sister to come back, to rejoin their family, to become a taiga again. Was Sora really going to give up on all those hopes so easily now, out of spite?

She knelt beside Hana and Papa. “We always talked about being a team, fighting side by side. We’d be the best taigas Kichona has ever seen—running faster, hitting harder, casting magic better than anyone in history. I’d still be interested in that, if you are. But you have to prove it’s not a lie.”

Hana let out a messy sob and nodded furiously. She looked up at Sora, and it was the same doe-eyed expression of admiration and love from when she was a tenderfoot watching her big sister’s every move.