Hristo was amazing. Invaluable. And charming, from all his time on Damina. But if he had a Hartan gift, I didn’t know about it.

“Hristo made all of the gardens in the dishonored camp grow.” Aaru looked at my protector. “When we were running to the tunnels, all the gardens we passed started to grow. I could hear the roots moving.”

No one spoke, and the only sound was water rushing against the metal hull.

“Oh.” Hristo lowered his face, but he couldn’t quite hide the pleased smile. “Well, that’s . . .” He didn’t finish, taking the thought inward instead.

“Have any of you ever seen that before?” I looked around. “People’s god gifts being that strong, even away from their gods?”

Everyone shook their head.

“And not only are you the most powerfully gifted people I’ve ever seen, but there’s a representative here from every island,” I said, but Ilina held up a hand.

“Excuse me, I do not represent Anahera. I was born on Darina, same as you. And I’m charming, not conniving.”

I smiled. “You are charming, wingsister. But you’re cunning as well. Unless you disagree that you come up with excellent plans and know how to make twenty lumes stretch into one hundred?”

Her mouth dropped open. “All right, those things are true. I am exceedingly clever. But it doesn’t change where I was born.”

Hristo looked at her, his expression gentle and deep with understanding. “You can have both, if you want.”

“I don’t want,” she snapped. But then she closed her eyes and softened. A heartbeat passed while she took in Hristo’s meaning. “Sorry. I guess I just never thought of it that way—claiming both. I just listened to everything my parents said about Anahera. I didn’t think that not everyone there was like the high magistrate. I mean, Father came from Anahera and he’s a good person. It stands to reason there would be others. I didn’t think about it, though. Not until we got here.”

Hristo crossed the small space and sat next to her, putting his arm around her shoulders. “You get to choose.”

She leaned her head on him.

“If we represent the islands,” Zara said to me, “then what about you?”

“I’m from Damina,” I said. “Like you.”

“But you’re not charming.”

Aaru frowned. “I think Mira is charming.”

I smiled at him. “I’m not like Mother or Zara, though. And this”—I pulled noorestone fire from the dragons’ basket—“isn’t a Daminan gift. It isn’t a gift from any god.” The white-blue glow flickered around my hands before I released it, letting it flow back into the crystals.

“Maybe it’s not from any one god,” Ilina said. “Maybe it’s from every god.”

Before she had a chance to elaborate, however, Nine came back down the hatch, wearing an annoyed look. “All right. You’ve been invited to the Algotti Empire as a special guest of Her Imperial Majesty Apolla. We leave first thing in the morning.”

THE DRAKONTOS CELESTUS

AN ISLAND TREMBLED WITH ANGER, THREATENING TO rise with every moment that passed. The ground lurched, the waters crashed, and the structures erected by humans a thousand years ago began to crumble under the constant tremors.