“But their minds, Andi. They won’t be them, even if we could get them out of there!”

“At least they’ll be alive,” she said.

“But is that truly living?”

He swallowed, looking like he, too, was going to cry. Dex did not cry. He shook his head slightly, hair falling into his eyes. “The galaxy’s being threatened, and you’re one of the only people who can help stop it. And I just know there’s a way, Andi—there has to be a way to get around this. To free the girls and save Mirabel, without putting you in unnecessary danger.”

“There’s no time to find that way,” Andi insisted. “You know it’s true. They’re going to die, Dex, just like Lira. She won’t hesitate to kill them to get to me. And it will be my fault.”

Dex shook his head. “How could any of this be your fault?”

“Nor killed her because of me,” Andi sobbed. “I have to go. For Breck and Gilly. I have to, Dex. I can’t lose them all.”

“I know,” he said. “But, Andi, I’m afraid you’re going to die no matter which path you choose. And I’m afraid you’re completely okay with that.”

She didn’t know what to say. So she backed away from him, settling against the cold cavern wall.

As she stared forward, a new silence seemed to fall over the crowd. And the wall of ice, still barely aglow, began to transform.

It was a slight change at first, like the time before the rising of the sun. The blue, once a gentle glow that spanned the entire surface of the wall, took on a deeper hue. As if something was coming closer.

Then a tendril of thick, fiery red light appeared on the other side of the ice, soaring from one side of the wall to the other, then darting away, fading as it went. Andi’s breath caught in her throat as she watched, utterly transfixed by the sight. Another appeared, this time as yellow as the fields on Uulveca, bright as a burning sun.

“They’re not lights,” Dex marveled, pointing at the wall of ice as Andi watched, wide-eyed, the moving display. “They’re massive needlefish. That ice wall is holding back an underground lake that’s been here for centuries.”

The fish danced, appearing like ribbons of light, flashing in colors so brilliant that it reminded Andi of the fish inside the Adhiran mountain of Rhymore, where she’d once fought and trained with her girls. It was in Rhymore where Andi had discovered how great a source of strength the girls were for her. But she was a source of strength for them, too. Each one of them, including her, creating a sort of glue that held everything together.

A family.