Too much unsteady power. Too much ill-fitting fire. My grip on it grew soft and insubstantial as my fragile human body gave in to flame, but there was nothing to do with everything I took in. I was filled up, overflowing, bloated with the unwanted energy. Even if I could have steadied myself long enough to go to the dragons, this was not healing fire. This would rip all of us apart.

Desperate, I slammed my palms against the ground. Thunder cracked and the planet shook as I pushed power deep, deep into the earth. Through dust and dirt and thin crust, far into the liquid fire that fueled the world.

Silence touched the edges of my awareness. Over the city, it had reached the first remains of the noorestone, smothering the sharp ringing in my head, shard after angry shard. The violent tide of power eased as fragments went silent.

I pushed noorestone fire into the ground.

Silent.

Chaos in the city spread, but new explosions slowed.

Silent.

Tethers of fire snapped, and that was all. There was nothing left as the silence rolled across the city, allowing the last of the noorestone fragments to fall harmlessly to the blackened pit that marked the place where Suna’s temple once stood.

People still ran, and fires still spread, but emergency teams came in with hoses of water siphoned straight from the river. There were medical stations for some, and black mercy for the rest.

I heaved the last of the noorestone fire from my body. Staggered. And dropped to the ground.

At last, I knew darkness.

PART FIVE

SOMETHING TO BURN

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE FIRST DRAGON PEERED DOWN AT ME, ECLIPSING the whole sky as she nosed my chest and breathed a puff of smoke into my face.

Wake up.

She was huge and black and speckled with stars, with graceful horns that curled at the points. Never had I seen scales like this, bigger than both my hands splayed wide, and light shining from within. When I peered deeper, strands of pink and blue and orange darkdust glimmered in the blackness. An illusion. A trick of the eye.

Wake up.

No, the stars and darkdust and galaxies were real. Each scale showed a different sky, and if I could only step through one, I’d find another world.

Wake up.

The dragon pulled back, and that was when sunlight caught it: a long, puckered scar down the left side of her face.

Not the first dragon.

The last.

THEN HRISTO WAS there, Ilina in the background—hazy, though.

Fractured movement.

Everything hurt. Every breath became a scream. Every scream became thunder.

A stranger leaned over me and drew invisible lines in the air above my face and body. They shimmered, flickering in and out of existence. I tried to grab them, make them stay so I could get a better look, but my arms were too heavy.