Now threads of panic seeped through me like a poison. I forced myself to breathe evenly.

“You know we’ve been having your apartments monitored.”

“Of course.” My voice came thin.

“My listeners told me you’d come looking for legends about something called the first dragon, but none of us knew what that meant. But I saw your face as you came into the throne room. I saw the way you looked at the bones—the way your friends looked at them, too.” She smiled and sipped her water. “I’ve seen awe, admiration, fear. Often shock. Those are natural reactions to seeing a huge dragon skeleton. But I’ve never seen love.”

My heart pounded too hard, too fast, and everything seemed to be spinning. She’d known this whole time. Maybe not that I wanted to take the bones back to the Fallen Isles, but that I hadn’t come simply to warn her of Paorah’s attack, and that I hadn’t come simply to take over his agreement with her. She’d known that I had come for something else entirely, and she’d been waiting for me to make some sort of move toward taking what I wanted.

She probably thought this was it.

And now she hated me.

“Tell me,” Apolla said. “What good are my dragon bones to you? And when were you planning to steal them from me?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

APOLLA WAS NOT A PERSON WHO DELIGHTED IN CRUELTY, and for that, I was grateful.

When I held my silence, she didn’t threaten to hurt me, or hurt everyone I loved. She just nibbled on the fruits and cheeses as she flipped through documents, and when we arrived at the palace, she declared that both of us would need to change before we were presentable.

“I won’t have anyone imagining I treat my guests so poorly.” The empress glanced derisively at the mud streaked down my dress. “Clean her up. Put her in something beautiful.”

I didn’t resist as I was taken through the palace. The halls were empty—everyone was already waiting in the throne room—and my apartments were quiet except for the fountain bubbling in the center of the public parlor.

In my suite, the attendants peeled off the filthy dress, and—once I’d been scrubbed clean—they approached with a soft blue gown, embroidered with silver filigree across the bodice.

I waved it away. Though it was stunning, I didn’t want to go wearing an imperial-style gown. I wanted to go as the Hopebearer.

“Get one of my hunting dresses,” I said. “The deep pink with white-gold trim.” That, with black leggings and boots, would be more than sufficient.

The attendant holding the gown shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s not here.”

“What do you mean?” I glanced around the dressing room. Now that she said it, I didn’t see the bag I’d brought from the Fallen Isles. “Where are my things?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know.” Her eyes were round, like she thought I might hurt her. Like she’d already heard what I’d become in the dragon park.