The vortex of events only speeds up, pulling into its depths everyone Tina is ready to fight to the last for—her brother kidnapped by a black dragon, her father, and the Heter she has to deal with, arrested by the Emperor as a traitor and a betrayer of state interests for trying to reconcile and find a compromise between two warring sides. Carefully planned schemes by the men are accidentally disrupted by Tina herself—unconsciously performing a ritual that, by the will of the gods, makes her the new Empress.