But she was as still as death.

With terror filling up my veins, I moved to the rex and urged noorestone fire to flood through this dragon, to pour through her hollow bones, to make her membrane-thin wings glow like she’d flown in front of the sun. A lit-within silhouette.

The Drakontos rex didn’t move. Hardly breathed.

The maximus was next, and there I felt it: the first noorestone went dark.

It was hard to say how long I’d been working, but I’d opened myself to every single one of the noorestones, and over two thousand strings of light arced toward me, power spiraling in soft, bright waves. And now, the first noorestone, the smallest noorestone, was dead without having saved a dragon—without having even stirred one child of the gods from this deathlike sleep.

A sob wrenched out of me as I opened myself wide and pushed the fire into the dragons with renewed desperation.

Please, Darina. Please, Damyan. If you care for your children at all.

But the gods were so far away, in a different part of the ocean. If they could hear me, they weren’t listening.

I was on my own, and the only chance these dragons had of surviving the day. The hour.

Faster, I drew on the noorestones and let the fire flood into the dragons like there was no limit. More crystals winked dark, but no one else would be able to tell—not with the blue-white light stretching from the noorestones to me to the dragons. I pushed the fire of Noore into the titanus, urging him to awaken, to heal, to live.

And then it happened.

Just as the first sheet of rain slammed down on the park—

Just as lightning sliced open the sky—

Just as thunder wrenched the ground underneath us—

In the walls of darkness that surrounded the titanus’s mind, a star flickered to life. Under the force of so much energy, the walls began to strain and crack, and light flooded in.

I sobbed in open relief, and with both hands pressed hard against the dragon’s throat, I could feel his pulse quicken under my fingers. Strength surged in as his heart began to beat a steady rhythm, and warmth glowed across the chipped scales.

The healing fire spread from the titanus into the other dragons, through the connection they shared. The same way they’d fallen ill, they were now coming back to life.

Slowly, they began to take deeper, more even breaths. They shifted their bodies around, off one another, as even the ragged, damaged scales glimmered like starlight as noorestone fire rushed through. Water slid down the groaning dragons, making them soft and sharp at once as they gathered themselves.

A wing fluttered.

Spark glands tingled.

Seven heads untangled from the mound and gazed around the park, their eyes gold and green and noorestone blue. They were confused and lost, but awake for the first time in decans.

Behind me, someone gasped. Another person cried out. A servant, perhaps, or a keeper, because I couldn’t imagine the empress or her guards expressing their emotion so openly.