Winter took his hand, and they backed away from the pooling water, just a step. They didn’t speak. They waited, in the intense heat.

Soon the cavern was empty of anyone else, except for Josi, the grown dragons and their riders.

Joe pictured Ren stuck underground, the weight of rock and water crushing her. Every moment that passed, the ten­sion tightened in his stomach, till he could barely breathe. The water rose around his ankles. It cooled as it poured from the stream, but it was still hot. He felt like a lobster, waiting to be boiled alive.

‘Look!’ Winter said. ‘Look, it’s not rising any more.’

It was true. Joe fixed his eyes on a spot and watched to see if the water rose higher. Instead, after a long moment, a new stretch of rock was exposed. ‘It’s going down!’ he cried. ‘They’ve done it. They’ve cleared the blockage!’ He let out a long breath of relief. The water stopped splashing from its rocky bed, and instead, it flowed harmlessly through the cave and disappeared again.

‘Where are they then?’ Joe whispered. ‘Come on, Ren, come back to me!’

The next few moments felt like the longest ones of his entire life. Ren might have saved all of them, with Fidell, but how could he bear it if it cost her life?

He tried to stay strong, but he felt his throat tighten, and his eyes grow damp. The only thing that helped was 310Winter’s hand in his, knowing she felt the same, knowing she’d faced this before – faced the very worst – and that she was still standing.

And then it happened: two streaks of bright colour shot towards them, green and purple, iridescent and full of life.

‘There they are!’ Winter gasped.

‘What’s happened?’ Joe could see they’d changed somehow.

The dragons were swimming, more strongly than before, so fast that they broke the surface of the water and shot right out, up into the air. With their wings spread, they flew up, up, up, high above their heads, circling the upper reaches of the cavern.

Joe was laughing. ‘Ren! You did it! Oh, Ren!’

Tears streamed down Winter’s face, but she was laughing too.

Nothing had prepared them for this.

Joe tipped his head, trying to see clearly, but the two dragons darted around like two huge dragonflies, so bright and buzzing with energy, restless and quick.

‘Do you remember?’ Winter was saying. ‘We read about this, in that book.’ And she recited the words again:

‘A broken heart will dare it all,

Take the leap and risk the fall.

From ash and bone, new life will rise,

Shadow dragons roam the skies!’

311‘From ash and bone – maybe that meant the volcano, its lava, all the heat below the island? And now somehow it’s changed them, made them fly – they’ve taken to the skies, or the next best thing, down here …’

‘It’s you, Winter,’ Joe saw it suddenly, and clearly. ‘It means you. You’re the broken heart. After Jin died, you were broken-hearted, weren’t you? But you were so brave and you risked everything to try again with Fidell.’