“I’d have been jealous if it had been you.” My voice was hoarse. “I was already plenty jealous that you got to spend so much time with dragons.”

Her shoulders relaxed a little.

“So”—Zara spoke slowly—“does this mean the passage is talking about Mira? Is it saying that Mira has a dragon soul?”

A dragon soul.

Foreboding weighed over the group as we all turned back to the books, but just then, Nine came in, clad in the same type of loose cotton clothes everyone else aboard the skimmer den wore.

“Have you prepared your statement for Empress Apolla?” she asked.

My heart was still pounding from the words I’d just read, but I’d had a lifetime of speaking around my anxiety. I managed to keep my voice level as I said, “Of course. We want safe harbor. We want ships to rescue our people. In exchange, I will help her with the problem of the high magistrate.”

She frowned, like she didn’t really believe that would be enough for her empress. “You want to take over the deal she and he made.”

“Yes.” Because I couldn’t tell her that I wanted to scour the empire for dragon bones.

“All right.” She nodded at the piles of books on our table, all the histories and holy words, and the pages and pages of poetry. “Have you learned anything interesting?”

Only this:

1. I knew how to save the Fallen Isles.
2. Because endings made way for beginnings.
3. And sacrifices enabled that change.

I’d been dreaming of the first dragon, because I was the last. And when I found her bones and took her home, I would entreat the gods on behalf of the humans. I would take her place. My shadow soul—my dragon soul—would reign.

But I’d have to sacrifice something dear. For my dragon self to complete its ascension, I’d have to leave my human self behind.

PART FOUR

LOVE SURVIVES DEATH

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EVERY MORNING FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS, WE returned to the library and searched the books of our gods, as well as the histories of the Algotti Empire, but we discovered nothing new.

At least, they didn’t. The more I read, the more I was convinced that the sacrifice described would save the Fallen Isles, but I didn’t tell them. I couldn’t.

Guilt needled me whenever we came back to those passages, and the truth almost spilled out a few times, but I knew how that conversation would go. Hristo and Ilina would drag me into the ocean and swim me back to the Fallen Isles themselves if it meant they didn’t lose the human part of me. They would prevent me from finding the bones of the first dragon and entreating the gods, because they’d rather have me as me than have the rest of our world.

Ours was a powerful love, built over time and trials, and I had no doubts that they’d try to save me above anything else, because I would do the same for them.