“On top of that,” Liga continued, landing on the forest floor, “all of Vespre’s children have powers related to the stars or night sky. Some, like me, can dim light.” He looked up at the sky, and it shifted from bright morning sun to the purpled gray of dusk and back again to daylight. “Others can ride electricity like comets. And you—when you were still a constellation in Celestae—were able to manipulate gravitational pull, as stars and black holes do.”

“I could do what?” Daemon’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“You could play with gravity.”

Daemon’s jaw dropped. “I can’t believe I had all of that once, and I gave it up.”

Liga smiled. “You can still have it. You just have to try. Starting with the basics.”

Just try. Daemon took a deep breath, shook out his limbs, and prepared to shift.

“I am an electric wolf,” he said.

Nope. He was a boy.

“I am an electric wolf.”

Still a boy.

“Say it with more feeling,” Liga said.

“I am an electric wolf!” Daemon shouted.

Nothing, gods dammit!

Fairy wrinkled her nose.

“What?” Daemon said, a little more harshly than he meant to.

“Nothing.”

“Sorry, I’m frustrated.” He took a deep breath. “Do you have a suggestion?” he asked slowly so that he didn’t snarl the question.

“It’s just that . . .” She waved a fern frond in the air as she figured out the best way to say it. “I don’t think yelling equates with believing in yourself. It might actually be the opposite.”

Daemon kicked a tree, and chestnuts rained down on him. “Ugh! I’ll never be able to do this.”

“Do you want to take a break from practicing?” she asked. “We need to go into the Imperial City anyway.”

Before Sora and Broomstick had left, they’d agreed that Daemon and Fairy would return to the Citadel and bloodstone palace every day to keep looking for clues to Empress Aki’s whereabouts and to try to put a wrench into whatever the Dragon Prince’s plans were. Sora had created several dozen dragonflies made from ryuu particles and enchanted them to be able to find her. That way, Daemon and Fairy would be able to send daily messages to her and Broomstick and vice versa, on top of communicating emotions through their gemina bonds.

“I don’t think we should go into the Imperial City until it’s dark,” Daemon said, wiping sweat from his brow.

“That’s probably wise,” Fairy said. “Keep practicing, then.”

Liga had been studying Daemon. He snapped his fingers, and blue sparks appeared, hovering in the air and forming themselves into a three-dimensional wolf made of stardust. “Perhaps if you envisioned the end state,” Liga said.