Hey, it’s that little skull from the title page! I wonder what that’s all about?

The person they have a portrait of is the last salamandrian admiral of Idenau, who is viewed as a tragic hero by many of his species. He’s also Wings’s great-great-uncle, so there’s that too. It was thought that the split crest (which her great-grandmother, the admiral’s twin, also bore) had disappeared from their lineage, until it showed back up in her.