My hands slowly drop to my sides as I let the rain soak through my nightgown and drip in my hair. My breathing is still uneven, but the magic in my blood almost feels manageable again.

Lightning flashes bright white across the sky.

I can control this.

Isolde slowly lets go of my wrist, draping her arm over my shoulders. I cringe at the touch. I still don’t know what to say to her. Everything feels different now. “You don’t have to fix everything, Seelie,” she says. Rain sticks her hair to her face and clings to her eyelashes, but she just blinks it away. “We...we’re together now. We’re alive. None of the rest of it matters.”

I let her hold me. Despite everything I feel, my shoulders relax slightly. A roll of thunder follows the lightning, long and low like a breath held too long.

Isolde doesn’t know she’s a changeling, and I don’t know what she’s been through in the time I was gone. So much has changed, and I don’t know if we can ever go back to how it was before.

But what I do know—what she promises wordlessly in the tight grip of her bony arm around me—is that she’s still my sister. My best friend. No matter what happens, what changes, we will always love each other.

And we’ll always come back for each other.

My arms wrap around Isolde, pulling her closer. I know we’re going to fight again, and probably soon. We’re going to disagree on things—lots of things. We’re going to struggle expressing how we feel and make each other furious.

But after it all, no matter what, we’ll still be sisters. Changelings or not. Two halves of a whole.

I squeeze her tight another moment and then pull away, trembling. I’m still delirious and feverish and overrun by faerie magic, but as the storm rages over the city, I can’t feel anything but exhilaration.

We’re going to come up with a way to get out from under Leira’s thumb, but first—the firedrake. It, like the rest of us, is in the hands of the enemy. A Wildline woman who can’t be trusted, under any circumstances. If I can help it and I don’t, how am I any less cruel?

Water droplets puddle in my hands, where magic still sits just below the skin. It feels like power. Like freedom.

“I’ll go,” I say, in a low voice. “Show me the way.”

Isolde pauses, staring at me. Then she nods, letting go and walking back to the door.

Rain streams down my skin, and before I follow her, I step forward. My bare feet splash in the cold puddles, and the wind is like ice on my scarred, soaked arms. I lean over the balcony again, letting the wind wash over me, feeling its magic push gently at my own.

We may be captured, but the dragon is loyal to me. My magic—the same magic that I’ve spent a lifetime trying to escape, that has saved me and my sister and my friends countless times—ties us together.