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The dress done up, she starts brushing through my hair. Quietly, she says, “It was in your best interest for the bond to develop. The magic needed to stabilise. And now it has. And you are powerful.”

“So you are loyal to me? You’ve always been loyal to me?”

She shrugs. Brushes some more. “I am loyal to myself.”

I pull away from her and the hairbrush a little. “I don’t think that’s something you should say out loud.”

“Why not?” she asks, quite innocently. Glancing at the air over my head again, she murmurs, “When you are apparently most loyal to yourself, too.” She pauses. “It means we are wise. And you will soon learn, in the Palace, that I am more honest than most, Ara. You’ll need me – you already do. And you know now I have never meant you ill will.”

“What are you saying?”

“That you were right to seek me out yesterday. Let us be honest with each other from now on. And valuable to each other.” She nods at me knowingly. “We do not need to like each other to do that.”

Reluctantly, I nod back at her.

She tilts my head forwards again with her thumbs and goes back to preparing me to look like the queen I will soon be.

Thirty minutes later, Drake and I are watching the descent from The Bridge.

Dezeeves takes over at the control table, bringing up the ship’s various levers while Rike steers the helm and Meg bleeds the osimidite. Some of the other Rhavnans I don’t know help watch the gauges.

The whole ship shakes as we lose more and more height. The whirring amplifies. My ears burst like static and my stomach jolts.

But the view is incredible. At first, there’s open water below us. Then, we see Rhavna. It really is set into the water like a jewel in a crown, just as I’d pictured. I see forests. Open green spaces. The mountains in the distance.

But I also see stretches of barrenness that remind me far too much of Hevalla.

I clasp Drake’s hand when we see it. The dome.

A huge expanse against the barrenness – in fact, the land which is directly around it is the most barren of all.

But the dome itself is beautiful. A perfect bell shape of sparkling blue so pale it’s almost clear, catching the morning sun’s rays and throwing them back.

We hover directly over it.

And then before our eyes, it lifts, as if someone really has opened the cloche. A deity, maybe.

Effortlessly, Dezeeves steers us in.

We land with a jolt in the enormous courtyard. The main building of the Palace is a short way away, opposite, beyond the rose gardens and maze. We are as tall as it. As if we are a palace ourselves, but a different kind. Newer.

And the court are waiting for us. The ship is quickly surrounded by people in their finery.

We follow Dezeeves down to Deck 3. He unlocks the largest door in the row, which leads to an enormous docking pod, and breezes in, us traipsing after him. He yanks the lever to open the external hatch door, and stretches out his palms, as if welcoming into them the light now shining on him from outside. He looks ordained. Just like the travelling holyman I believe he once was.

Glowing, he turns to us, now facing us fully and lifting his palms higher.

“The ground, at last. A new world for us all. Without Provision. Without starvation. A world where we live among magic. And are blessed by the gods.”

Utter glee sprinkles his eyes as he laughs, possibly harder and harsher than ever before.

I look at Drake.

I know exactly what he is about to do. For us.

It comes as no surprise to me at all – and brings me only a thrill, as if I’d willed it myself – when in one swift movement, he lunges, throwing a familiar silver knife over his shoulder, right at Dezeeves.

The knife wedges perfectly into his narrow chest while he’s still laughing.