“I healed them.” The words came out with little puffs of smoke. “Like you asked.”

“I asked you to heal them,” she growled. “I had their chains removed because you told me to. I had your crystals moved from the harbor, let you have whatever you needed, and now you’ve sent them away. My dragons.”

“No.” I climbed to my feet, and mud and rain sluiced down the front of my dress. “I didn’t send the dragons anywhere. They felt a tremor coming in the Fallen Isles.”

Her expression said that was no real answer.

“They always feel it first. Sense it. Even from so far away, the dragons are connected to the Fallen Isles because they were born from that land—from the very bodies of our gods. And now the earthquakes aren’t just—” My voice caught. “They aren’t just earthquakes anymore.”

Empress Apolla just glared at me as her guards and servants and all the keepers came to stand behind her. Some looked at me as a challenge, while others seemed wary. Even those from the Fallen Isles watched me with uncertain gazes, as though I might breathe fire on them here and now. Even Ilina’s father.

“These earthquakes make the dragons act . . .” How? As though their parents were leaving them? As though they were being abandoned, too?

It was true.

And I could try to explain all that to Apolla, but the fury in her eyes was starting to shift to something else—something darker and harder to soothe.

“I gave you the means to heal the dragons,” she hissed over the rush of rain. “I gave you everything I could offer to someone of your station. And this is how you repay me: telling them to go.”

“I didn’t—” I had, though. I had told them to go, but I’d meant to go without me, go blow fire somewhere else—away from the people and city.

Apolla’s gaze was steady and sharp. “You planned this, didn’t you?”

“How would I have planned an earthquake? Why would I plan for one of my gods to abandon my people?”

She just shook her head. “You tricked them somehow. You’ve betrayed me.”

Lightning flared and thunder clapped, the only break in the endless drone of rain. I tried to keep Apolla’s gaze, like a dragon refusing to submit, but the memory of their grief and horror was so strong, and my own knowledge of another god rising—it was too much. It was overwhelming.

“Guards.” Apolla snapped her fingers, and a pair of uniformed men closed in. “Escort Mira and the island keepers to the barge. We’re returning to the palace.” She spun to address one of the servants. “Send a message ahead of us. I want the throne room ready. Summon Mira’s friends. All the other islanders who were taken off the ships. Including”—Apolla glanced at me—“her governments. Bring them to me in the throne room.”

“And the court, Your Eminence?” One of the servants already had the small communication device out.