Instead, I plunged into the white-blue between place, fire crackling around me, and came face-to-face with myself. Or, at least, she looked like me, down to the shade of her skin and the tilt of her nose and the texture of her hair. No scar, though, and she held herself differently, with a confidence that wasn’t just a layer of her mask.

There were other differences, too. While I wore a tattered hunting dress, smeared with red dirt and damp with my own blood, she wore a billowy gown that might have been sewn from the night sky; it was black and strewn with stars and darkdust and faraway galaxies. And where I was filthy and sweating, my hair all windblown and wild, she looked freshly scrubbed, her black curls tight and gleaming.

We stared at each other, both evaluating, until finally I said, “Are you Darina?” It seemed presumptuous to wonder if the goddess of love might take on my appearance to talk with me, but I’d reached through the ruins to make this appeal; why wouldn’t she appear to me with a face I recognized?

She laughed. “Do you really think you’re worthy to look upon your goddess, in any form?”

Blood flooded up my throat and cheeks, but I didn’t let the insult cow me. “The Fallen Gods gave me this task. The least they could do is have a conversation.”

Her smile showed teeth.

“And you aren’t me.”

Now she laughed. “No. Not at all. But I’ll give you a hint.” Great black wings flickered into view behind her, stretching wide.

“Drakontos celestus,” I whispered. My twin across time.

“You look like me. As a dragon, I mean.” She shrugged, but now that I knew who—what—she was, I could see where her movements weren’t quite human. “I thought it was only fair that I took on your appearance.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “The eclipse has started.”

“Yes. And the Fallen Gods will rise.”

“How can I stop them?” Surely, more than anyone, she could understand the need to keep the gods here. She—her bones—had been away from the Fallen Isles for so long, and now she was back. She had just as much reason to want them to stay.

“Why do you think you’re supposed to stop them?” The first dragon shook her head. “I told you before: the Great Abandonment was set into motion the day I died.”

“I thought—”

“You thought if there was a last dragon—a new me—then the greatest calamity would be averted?” She smiled again, all teeth. “Tell me, when Tirta took on your title, was she a true replacement?”

“No.” The word came out as a growl. “But you can’t compare me to her. The gods chose me.”

“The gods chose you because you were in the best position to do what needed to be done. They chose you because the Luminary Council chose you, and we both know the Luminary Council chose Tirta, as well.”

“That’s not comforting.”