Maiven reached over and took the girl’s hand, smiling warmly. “I understood what you meant. Yes, there will be an official declaration by all of us. And you don’t need to choose me.”

No one could imagine choosing anyone else. Rohan clarified: “So there can be no retaking of the land of the dragons by the two proper ruling bodies unless the dragons and black-eyed families, in their sound minds, have made their choices?”

“That’s correct,” said Maiven. “But there’s one more step. The dragon ruler and the human ruler must approve of each other, too, and pledge to work together.”

The children nodded, glad to finally understand how things worked. “I don’t think the Revinir knows all of that,” said Thisbe. “And nobody had better tell her. It’s a relief that she can’t just take over as the ruling dragon like she seems to be focused on doing.”

“Nobody would vote for her,” said Gorgrun, who had been listening. “Not once they find out what she did to them.”

“Ours is a good system of checks and balances,” said Maiven. “And it can be a wonderful process, finding new leaders from all corners of our land.”

That reminded Thisbe of the other question she had for Maiven about what lay beyond the land of the dragons. But Maiven dabbed the corners of her mouth and stood up. “Back at it,” she said cheerfully, like she enjoyed every moment of the training. “Afterward Thisbe will teach us a few magical spells.”

They continued training until their arms shook and their muscles could take no more. Thisbe tried and failed to put her other fears and worries aside—in fact, the closer they got to Artimé, the more fear she felt in her gut about Fifer. Thisbe had experienced a lot of things going wrong in her life by now, and a certain feeling of dread remained present most of the time. After having a couple of things go right for once in the past few days, Thisbe could only imagine that her luck would soon turn bad again. And the memory of Alex and being at odds with him when he’d died weighed heavily. The thought of losing another sibling in the same manner was becoming all-consuming.

When at last they put their weapons down and settled in to learn about magic, Thisbe shoved her concerns to the back of her mind—she had to focus and get this nonmagical team ready to fight in a magical land. She rummaged around the supplies for a specific box she’d packed, which contained craft-type items from Maiven’s house, like paper and colored pencils and extra dragon scales and feathers and even a few colorful jewels that had been lying about. As she passed the items around, Thisbe instructed the future rulers to create small gifts for each other so they could learn to send seek spells.

Once gifts were constructed and exchanged, Thisbe taught the others how to concentrate on the person who’d given them the gift, and then she demonstrated with Rohan. By evening, all of them had succeeded with Artimé’s simplest spell.