The Lost Heir

  “Flooded?” Tsunami echoed. “Do you mean — the caves? And the beaches? Where my friends are?”

  “Oh.” Queen Coral waved her claws dismissively. “I’m sure they’ll be all right. Can’t they swim?”

  “Not like we can,” Tsunami said. “I’m going back to check on them.”

  “With my egg?” Coral growled.

  “You’ve tried trusting everyone else,” Tsunami said, taking a step back toward the pounding rain outside. “Now trust me. I promise this dragonet will hatch safely.”

  Her heart beat like the thunder in the clouds. Was this, finally, the right thing to do? Was she doing it for the right reasons? Or was she being impulsive again — trying to prove something instead of thinking it through?

  I’m doing this for my father. I’m doing this to make up for all my mistakes.

  And I’m doing this to save my little sister. How can that be wrong?

  “If anything happens to that egg,” Queen Coral hissed, “I’ll lose two daughters that day.”

  So much for being a special princess. “I need a harness for it,” Tsunami said, looking her mother in the eye. See. I’m not afraid of you. Maybe you should think about how your next queen will come to power before you start threatening me.

  “The harnesses they were making for the dragonets,” Anemone piped up. “One of those should work.”

  “How will you get back to the Summer Palace?” Coral demanded. “You don’t know the way, and my court is staying here with me.”

  “I’ll find it,” Tsunami said, but a ner vous shiver went through her wings. She did not want to be wandering the ocean alone during a storm — especially when her friends needed her.

  If Riptide is still out there . . . Please let Riptide still be out there.

  “Wait,” she said as the queen started for the entrance. “I have a question. Tortoise pointed at Shark while she was dying. Was she saying he attacked the egg?”

  Coral flared her wings, looking shocked. “Certainly not!” she said. “My own brother! He wouldn’t dare!”

  “She wasn’t saying he killed the egg,” Anemone agreed. “She said he’d given her permission to leave her post. He brought her an octopus to eat.”

  “The fool.” Coral gnashed her teeth. “I’ve told Shark a million times that vigilance is the only way to protect the eggs. If that means going days without eating, then that is what my trusted councillor must do. He’s too soft with them.”

  Right, Tsunami thought. “Soft” is definitely how I’d describe Shark.

  “Well, Tortoise didn’t think anything could happen,” Anemone said. “Not while she was right outside the door and only away from the egg for a few moments.”

  “Why didn’t she stay with the egg to eat?” Tsunami asked.

  “Nobody eats inside the Royal Hatchery,” Anemone said primly. “It’s a pristine hatching place designed for royal dragonets. And if you get blood in the water, sharks will try to find their way in. Regular sharks who eat dragonets and eggs, that is. Hatcheries other than the Royal Hatchery get attacked by them all the time.”

  Tsunami shook her head. She couldn’t help feeling like following all these rules was only helping the assassin. And it was pretty convenient that Shark had set Tortoise up like that — not to mention giving himself a chance to sneak in and kill the dragonet.

  She shook out her wings. “Take me to the harness,” she said.

  Queen Coral reached toward the egg, then stopped herself. She gave Tsunami another hard look and led the way out into the storm.

  This time they swam down through the murky, churning water and around to the back entrance to the palace. The queen burst into a room that seemed to be a workshop where small SeaWings crouched over sea grass weavings and marble carvings. Tsunami paused as her mother thundered to the far end of the room. She lifted one of the weavings in her claws and realized it was made of the same material as the harness — rubbery, stretchy, and waterproof — only these were woven in colors, not clear like the harness.

  Queen Coral flared her stripes angrily at a dragon who had frozen over a marble carving. He hurried into a back room and returned with a tiny harness flopping in his talons. Coral pointed at Tsunami, and he took it over to her.

  This dragon was old, she noticed, and shaking with fear as he tried to fit straps around Tsunami’s neck and shoulders. They flapped loosely; it was meant for Coral and was too big for her. And of course the smaller harness was supposed to fit a little dragonet with limbs and a tail, not a smooth round egg.

  The old dragon gestured helplessly at the harness, and Queen Coral poked it, growling a stream of bubbles. The queen yanked Anemone closer and pointed at the harness, flashing some of the royal stripes in her wings.

  Anemone hesitated, then reached out unhappily and touched the harness. To Tsunami’s astonishment, the straps around her shoulders suddenly shrank until they fit perfectly. The other webs snaked and wove closer until the egg was securely bound to her chest.

  She grabbed Anemone’s talon. Her sister felt cold and weirdly hard to the touch, and her eyes were out of focus. Tsunami shook her, and Anemone blinked until she was looking at Tsunami.

  What? Tsunami flashed the stripes on her snout.

  Anemone shook her head and made the circular gesture: Not right now, we’ll finish later.

  Tsunami wanted to know more, but the gesture reminded her of Shark and her friends. She had to get back to them. Protecting this egg was important, but watching out for the other four dragonets had been her first duty her whole life.

  She bowed politely at the queen and the old harness-maker, then swam out of the palace and back through the gardens she’d seen on their way in. She wasn’t going unnoticed now. Everywhere she passed, SeaWings stopped to stare, then lit up their wings in hurried conversations after she went by. She could sense them pointing at the egg. She wasn’t sure if they knew she was the missing princess, or if they only knew she’d volunteered for the suicide mission of saving the queen’s last female dragonet.

  She remembered swimming into the canyon, so she climbed out and swam around the bend in the coral reef. The Deep Palace disappeared behind her, and the wide dark ocean yawned in front of her.

  All right, you asked for this.

  Now what?

  Tsunami twisted around, hoping to see something familiar.

  To be honest, hoping to see Riptide.

  But the ocean was dark and wild, and it seemed like every thing alive had gone into hiding until the storm passed.

  So I figure it out myself. Tsunami set her jaw. She patted the egg through the harness. Don’t worry. I can do this.

  They’d ridden a current most of the way here. Did she have to fight it all the way back? She swam slowly forward until she felt the water try to shove her away. Maybe she could just keep a wing tip in the current and follow it that way.

  Several wingbeats later, she pulled away from the current to rest, exhausted and confused. Why was this so hard?

  Riptide, where are you?

  Perhaps she could find her way back in the air instead. She just had to look for the island shaped like a dragon skeleton — how hard could that be?

  Tsunami lashed her tail to power to the surface. She burst out into a pounding cacophony of thunder and roaring waves. Rain crashed down on her scales like hailstones. The wind immediately tried to grab her and carry her off.

  She fought to stay balanced and fly straight, but she was already lost. She could see an island to her left, but she didn’t know if that was the one close to the Deep Palace, or if she’d been swept to another, and whether it was on the way back to the Summer Palace or not.

  A dark shape on the surface of the water caught her eye. She rubbed her snout, shaking off the raindrops.

  Riptide?

  She flew lower.

  It wasn’t a dragon. It was some kind of odd vessel, like a large bowl, floating on the water. And huddled inside of it were two scavengers, scrawny and soaking wet.
r />   That doesn’t help me at all, Tsunami thought. I’m not even hungry right now.

  She beat her wings to soar upward again, and one of the scavengers looked up. Its eyes were as green as Glory’s, in a smooth face the same brown color as Clay’s scales. Tangled dark hair snarled around its shoulders.

  Tsunami had seen a few scavengers up close before — one in the mountains and two in the SkyWing arena. It struck her again how dragonlike their eyes were. It was sort of unsettling, really.

  She wondered if they could breathe underwater or swim, because these two were about to get swamped and end up at the bottom of the ocean.

  Unless I help them.

  As if I have time for that!

  She hesitated. Maybe all scavengers looked that way all the time, but if she had to guess, she’d say their expressions were terrified.

  On the other hand, I might as well help somebody. Maybe it’ll give me luck.

  Tsunami swooped down and snatched up the vessel in her talons. It was heavier than it looked, and she immediately dropped it. The two scavengers let out their long, piercing bird shrieks as the vessel smacked back into the water.

  Oh, calm down, Tsunami thought. She flew around in a circle, fighting the gusts of wind, and wrapped a front talon around each scavenger. They both shrieked some more and banged uselessly against her claws.

  How do scavengers accomplish anything? Tsunami wondered, flapping toward the island. They don’t seem to have any useful dragon qualities. And yet they manage to steal trea sure and occasionally kill a queen and start a war.

  That’s right, she remembered, giving the scavengers a little shake. I’m mad at your kind. It’s your fault all of this is happening.

  They screamed in a satisfyingly terrified way.

  On the other hand, it’s pretty unlikely that it was these exact scavengers who killed Queen Oasis and set off the SandWing war of succession.

  So I suppose I’ll let them live.

  She dropped them on the island beach. They staggered to their feet and fled up toward the trees and the caves without a backward glance.

  Pathetic little creatures.

  Tsunami’s wings ached from fighting the storm. She had to try going back underwater.

  She dove in with a splash and spun, searching the dark water again for Riptide. Had he given up on her? Was he hiding from the storm, like a smart dragon would, figuring she’d be safe in the Deep Palace?

  Well, there was one thing that had gotten his attention before. She opened her wings and lit up all her stripes, like she had done in the tunnel. The glow blazed through the water, and then she shut them down again and waited.

  Nothing.

  She tried again. It gave her a bit of a head ache, lighting up all her stripes like that, and left her dazzled blind for a few moments afterward. She’d done it sometimes for the other dragonets when the caves got too depressingly dark or Kestrel tried to punish them by taking away all the torches. Glory hated that the most. She couldn’t stand the dark.

  Tsunami thought about the Summer Palace, where there was no fire allowed except in one cave, and all the light came through the canopy up above. Not much light could be filtering down from the sky in the middle of the storm. Her friends were probably sitting in the dark right now, listening to the water climb up the beach toward them.

  I have to get back to them, Tsunami thought, blazing all her stripes on again.

  Right in front of her, Riptide flung up his wings to shield his eyes.

  Tsunami grabbed his claws and turned down her stripes. She jabbed her talon in the direction she thought the Summer Palace was. Oh, why don’t I know how to say anything useful?

  He rubbed his eyes and squinted at the egg attached to her. His expression said, “Something you forgot to mention?”

  She whacked his tail with hers and pointed again. She remembered the pattern for urgent and lit it up.

  Riptide nodded and began paddling toward the surface.

  We don’t have time to chat, Tsunami thought, frustrated, but she followed him because she had no choice.

  But before he reached the air, Riptide swung around and slid into another current. As far as Tsunami could tell, it went in the direction of the Summer Palace. He beckoned her after him, and Tsunami ducked into the current as well.

  All right. I suppose I could have looked for one of those.

  Maybe traveling the sea wasn’t about being strong and fighting with it all the time. Maybe it was about trusting the currents and knowing where they were. Maybe it would just take time before she figured them out.

  She lashed her tail to keep up with Riptide as they swung around islands and dodged billowing clouds of translucent jellyfish. The current sped them along, but the journey still felt endless, and Tsunami couldn’t stop thinking about her friends.

  She should have fought harder to make her mother accept them. How could anyone not trust Clay? Every thought he had was written all over his big, sweet, goofy face. And Sunny — those two were the most trustworthy of the bunch. Tsunami didn’t think Sunny had ever had a negative thought in her life. She did what she was told, and happily. She believed the best of everyone, even Kestrel and Dune.

  Which didn’t say much for Sunny’s judgment or intelligence, but the point was, the littlest dragonet would never hurt or betray anyone — not even a bunch of SeaWings she barely knew.

  Starflight was the opposite of Sunny: very smart, totally unreliable, terrified of the world. He tried so hard to know every thing, just so he could be useful in some way. He wasn’t brave. He wasn’t a good fighter. He didn’t even have any useful NightWing powers yet. Most of the time, Tsunami felt sorry for him . . . at least, when he wasn’t trying to steal her position as leader of the group.

  But if Queen Coral would give him a chance, she might see that his intelligence could be really useful, especially in fighting the other tribes. He probably knew more about the war and the different tribes than any other dragon in Pyrrhia.

  Glory . . . well, Coral didn’t know it, but Glory was probably the least trustworthy and most dangerous of all of them. Her secret venom proved that. Tsunami curled her talons in. In the SkyWing palace, why had Glory waited so long to save her friends? If she’d used the venom on Queen Scarlet earlier, Tsunami wouldn’t have had to kill her father.

  Plus she always talked like she didn’t care about the prophecy, then got mad when other dragons pointed out that she wasn’t in it. It was hard to figure out what she really wanted.

  And Tsunami could definitely live without her sarcastic comments.

  But Glory had saved them all, in the end, in the Sky Kingdom. She’d killed to protect her friends.

  And I notice nobody seems all mad at her about that, Tsunami thought bitterly. Instead I’m the crazy impulsive one. Like that’s fair.

  Still, if Glory would do that for them, then Queen Coral should learn to trust her, too.

  When Mother gets back to the Summer Palace, Tsunami thought, I’ll talk to her. I’ll make sure she treats them like my friends, not prisoners.

  No matter how mad they made her, Tsunami didn’t want anything bad to happen to any of them. And after two days of SeaWings, she had to admit she kind of missed them . . . even Starflight and Glory.

  The spiral horn rocks loomed out of the dark ahead of her, with the golden sea grass curtain behind them. Riptide paused at the rocks, swimming backward as if he was going to leave her there.

  Tsunami wound her tail around his and faced him. Come, she said, wishing she knew the patterns for “please” and “I might need your help” and “the queen is far away and won’t return until the storm is over.” But all she could say was come.

  Apparently that was all she needed to say. Riptide nodded and gestured to the curtain, letting her lead the way. She unwound her tail and ducked through into the tunnel.

  The current in the tunnel felt faster and heavier than before. She splashed out into the Summer Palace cavern and turned toward the beach.

>   The white pebbles had been swallowed by the rising water, and the cave mouth was already partly underwater. There were no SeaWing guards, and no sign of her friends outside the cave. Tsunami looked up, wondering if they’d been moved to a higher cave. But all she saw was a few curious SeaWing faces peering down.

  Most of the dragons had taken refuge out of the way of the dripping canopy. Being all wet was wonderful, but having your head splatted one annoying drop at a time was not as much fun.

  Tsunami paddled over to the beach and felt the pebbles scrape under her claws as she climbed up to the cave. The water was only up to her underbelly, but she could tell it was rising quickly. It lapped around the egg, chilly and unwelcoming, and Tsunami remembered that she was supposed to keep it warm. Hang in there, little sister, she thought. Not much longer.

  “Hello?” she called into the cave. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she saw one giant lump of shadows piled near the back.

  Her heart lurched.

  No.

  Were those her friends’ bodies?

  Had she come too late?

  A small head lifted up from the top of the lump. “Tsunami?” squeaked Sunny’s voice.

  “Are you all right?” Tsunami blurted. She waded over and realized the bottom of the lump was Clay, stretched out in the water, half-submerged. Lying on top of him was Glory, and on top of her was Starflight, and at the top of the pile sat Sunny, well out of reach of the water.

  “This is a terrible strategy,” Tsunami pointed out as her friends opened their eyes, one by one. She covered her relief that they were alive by scolding them. “Seriously, whose idea was this — Starflight’s? Look, once the cave fills with water, you’ll be stuck in here, and even if it only covers Clay, he can’t hold his breath for the entire storm. Why haven’t you moved to another cave?”

  “Oh,” Glory said icily. “The SeaWing princess has time for us all of a sudden.”

  “It’s only been a day,” Tsunami said uncomfortably. “Mother’s kept me busy.”

  “Well, we feel so blessed that you found time to visit. Please do impart some more incredibly brilliant wisdom on us.” Glory wriggled and twisted her neck to glare up at Starflight. “Get your honking great claws off my wings before I bite you.”