“I’m fine.” I wrenched my eyes away from the skull. “I’m ready.”

Alusha cast me another dubious look, but then she gave my name to a young man standing on the inside of the door. He, too, shot me a sidelong glance filled with curiosity before he turned back to the empress’s throne room and lifted his voice. “Mira Minkoba of the Fallen Isles, Your Eminence. The Hopebearer, the Dragonhearted.”

At the far end of the chamber, framed by brilliant light and a great dragon’s skeletal wing, the young woman lifted her hand, and Alusha nudged me into the room.

“Do not embarrass me,” she muttered. “I have to fetch your friends now, but I’ll know how you did. Remember to bow when you reach Her Eminence.”

Somehow, I remained on my feet. I registered her words. I remembered how to be the Hopebearer, in spite of the first dragon staring at me.

I moved forward, my shoulders thrown back and my head high. My shoes sank into the soft rug that ran from the door to the empress. As if the great dragon skeleton at her side were nothing but decoration.

But I knew.

With every step, I could feel the first dragon’s presence thrumming through the floor, pounding into my heart, sending pieces of me into the wide-open sky.

She was ancient.

She was power.

She was everything.

But I couldn’t let myself get lost in her now. I had to focus. Be in this moment.

I pulled myself together, piece by piece—out of the sky, out of her eyes, out of her all-consuming presence—until I was just Mira again. Just a girl who loved dragons. Just a girl who’d come here to help her people.

It took all my effort, but I focused my attention on Empress Apolla to find her studying me: my movements, my manners, my preoccupation with the dragon skeleton.

Aside from twenty or so guards stationed around the room, she and I were alone. No court. No secretaries. No servants. She and I just gazed at each other; I would not be the one to look away first.

She was younger than I’d expected, perhaps only a few years my senior, but her hazel eyes held a weight belonging to someone three times her age. Otherwise, her brown skin was smooth and unblemished, brushed with dark powder around her eyes and in the hollows of her cheekbones. She wore white brocade silk, with gold embellishments emblazoned across every stitch of fabric. A thin circlet rested on her brow, and jeweled bands were clasped around her forearms. Her posture, stiff and straight, did not change as I approached.

Ten steps. Twenty.

I reached the dais and stopped, keeping my expression neutral as I met her eyes. “Your Eminence. I’m glad to meet you.”

Her head tilted slightly. “You will not bow?”

“I offer you my respect,” I said. “And my thanks for your hospitality and consideration. But I cannot bow to you, or to anyone else.”