Winter couldn’t decide which was the worst part: the bugs or the heat. It was painfully, oppressively hot in a sweltering, we’re-being-boiled-alive-in-our-scales kind of way. He thought he’d experienced heat, traveling through the Kingdom of Sand, but this was also damp and sticky and more miserable than anything he’d ever felt before.
Then there were the insects swarming around them, finding every spot between the dragons’ scales to wriggle in and suck their blood. He’d already shaken two green-striped caterpillars, a walking twig thing, and an alarmingly furry spider out of his ears. His wings kept catching on enormous spiderwebs, and creatures with millions of legs had scurried over his talons at least a dozen times. He itched unbearably from his horns to his forlornly muddy tail.
Was Icicle really here? He couldn’t imagine her putting up with any of this. He couldn’t imagine her with even a speck of mud on her; she had always returned from battle as pristine as when she’d left, apart from a few bleeding blue scratches here and there.
Perhaps she’d taken two steps into this rainforest and decided that murdering the RainWing queen wasn’t worth it.
“You must hate this place,” Moon said, appearing beside him. They’d stopped to rest near a river, and Winter was crouched on a large boulder, trying to dip his talons in the water without stepping in the oozing black mud that lined the banks.
He narrowed his eyes at her, reaching unconsciously for the small wolfskin pouch he kept tied to one of his ankles, where he’d hidden the skyfire.
She sighed. “No, I didn’t get that from your head. I just figured an IceWing would probably hate it here. It must be the polar opposite of the Ice Kingdom. The anti–polar opposite,” she added, then scrunched her snout, trying not to laugh at her own joke.
Is this merely idle conversation? What would be the point of that? Or is she trying to trick some information out of me?
“It is,” he said finally. “And I do.”
“This is where I grew up,” she said, wading a few steps into the river. The water eddied around her legs with glints of reflected sunlight. “It’s not so bad, actually.”
“Hrrmph,” Winter snorted.
“Not so bad?!” Kinkajou said indignantly from the other bank. “This is the most beautiful part of Pyrrhia! Other dragons would be lucky to live here!”
The RainWing bounded into the water with a splash that drenched Winter’s nose and tail. A fat orange toad burst out of the river and made a clumsy dash for the reeds, trying to get away from the dragons. Moon tilted her head at it, then flared her wings at Qibli as he sat up from the middle of the river.
“Don’t eat it,” she warned him. “Seriously, one of those gave me hiccups for days. Also some really weird dreams. I thought for a while I was having visions of a possible future where newts and anteaters took over the world.”
Kinkajou giggled.
“Here, try these instead,” Moon offered. She reached into one of the overhanging trees and pulled a few strange fruits from the branches. They were a curious reddish-pink on the outside, with flaps like folded-up flower petals, but as she sliced them open with her claws, Winter saw that on the inside they were white with small black flecks.
She handed one to Qibli, then glanced sideways at Winter.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “Do not get that vile stickiness anywhere near me. Fruit. Yuck.” His stomach growled and he tried to hide it by scraping his claws along the rock.
“You are so, so weird,” Kinkajou said to him. “How can you not love it here? Don’t you come from a place with no colors and no life?”
He thought of the thousand different shimmering shades of blue in the ice palace. He remembered the distant splashes of whales and seals, the way sound carried across the cool, quiet ice. He thought of how he could smell polar bears or arctic foxes from miles away and how all of his senses could detect the smallest changes in the frozen world. Here it was just too much.
“White is a color,” he snapped at the RainWing. “Blue is a color. That is an eyesore.” He pointed to a violently red flower as big as one of his talons.
“We also have these,” Moon said. She lifted a dark green leaf on one of the trees and revealed a spiraling tendril of delicate white-blue flowers, glowing like snowflakes against the brown trunk. “Oh, and look! There’s a sloth!” She pointed to a furry gray shape that was clambering slowly along a branch far overhead.
“Thank the moons,” Winter said, leaping to his feet. “I knew there had to be something worth eating around here.” He shot into the air, his claws reaching for the sloth’s exposed white underbelly.
“Wait!” Moon cried. There was a twin shriek of dismay from Kinkajou.
The sloth peered over its shoulder and blinked enormous, confused eyes at him.
And then WHAM something slammed into Winter’s side and smashed him against a tree. He saw a flash of red scales and sharp teeth and thought, SkyWing! Could it be Queen Scarlet, here? Attacking him?
He whirled and lashed out with his tail but just missed the enemy dragon as it dove under him. Winter spun again and clawed at the air where the dragon should have been, but once again it whisked out of his reach.
The red dragon swooped up to the branch, snatched the sloth in its talons, paused to glare at Winter — and then vanished.
Winter roared with surprise and fury.
“Calm down!” Qibli shouted in his ear. The SandWing ducked as Winter swiped at him. “Winter! Stop!”
“There was a SkyWing!” Winter snarled. “It attacked me and stole my prey and then disapp — oh, SEAL GUTS!”
“Not a SkyWing,” Qibli pointed out, although Winter had obviously figured that out already.
“I know!” Winter roared, beating the air with his wings. “Come out and face me, you cowardly lunch-stealing RainWing!”
The dragon suddenly materialized on the branch again, her scales shifting to a furious red with splatters of black and orange. “Toe-Fur is nobody’s lunch!” she shouted. “Those nasty black dragons have already eaten one of my sloths! I’m not letting it happen again!” She flexed her claws and bared her fangs at him.
“Don’t make her mad,” Qibli said quickly, grabbing Winter’s shoulder. “I mean — don’t make her more mad.” The heat emanating from the SandWing’s yellow scales was uncomfortable and Winter shook him off.
“As if a RainWing would ever dare fight me,” Winter scoffed. “As if I couldn’t claw off her face as easily as breathing.”
“What is with you and faces?” Qibli said. “You should try threatening someone’s elbows or ankles once in a while, just for a change of pace.”
Kinkajou landed on the branch beside the angry RainWing, angling herself between the furious dragon and Winter. “Exquisite, it’s me,” she said. “I’m sorry about this. I promise we were about to stop him.”
“Ha!” Winter barked.
“Winter, do you have a part of your brain that can handle empathy?” Qibli asked. “That sloth is her pet. Just like Bandit was your pet. Can you by any chance remember about a week ago when someone tried to eat your pet?”
Winter hesitated. Of course he remembered that, and he remembered how Moon had saved his scavenger in her quiet but resolute way. Qibli was right. Again. There was nothing MORE INFURIATING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.
“Bandit is much smarter than a flea-ridden sloth,” Winter snapped, landing on one of the fat branches of a nearby tree. He flinched as a centipede as long as his foot immediately scuttled over his claws. “But FINE, I won’t eat any stupid sloths. Is there anything else that’s off-limits that I should know about? Beloved armadillos? Hairy giant spiders that someone is terribly attached to?”
“I think the tamarin monkeys are really cute,” Moon offered, swooping up beside them. “It’d be great if you could not eat those.”
Winter scowled at her. As often happened with Moon, he couldn’t tell if she was joking.
“Would you really eat a hairy spider anyway?” Qibli asked with gen
uine curiosity.
Exquisite clutched her sloth closer, hissed at Kinkajou and Winter, and vanished again. This time Winter could see the ripple of her scales changing and the slight weirdness of the air when she moved. A moment later, the branch shook as she took off, and he saw leaves thrashing about as the camouflaged dragon flapped away.
Moon landed next to Winter and suddenly reached out to brush his wing with hers. Unlike Qibli’s, Moon’s scales were cool and smooth, like the icy walls of his room back in the palace.
How dare she touch me! Winter thought. But then … he found himself keeping as still as he could so their wings would stay connected.
What is wrong with me?
Moon’s eyes were far away, and he wondered if she even knew she was touching him.
“Someone’s coming,” she whispered. “Someone with dark thoughts …”
Did she see darkness in my mind? Winter wondered. How did she feel about the way I hate other dragons?
“What’s a dark thought?” Qibli asked with something odd in his voice. Nervousness? Was he also worried about what Moon had found inside him? What had she seen in his head?
“It’s Obsidian. He’s thinking he hates being on guard duty,” Moon said thoughtfully. “Especially with the RainWing he’s been assigned as a partner. He hates being told what to do by RainWings. He wishes the NightWings could overthrow Queen Glory and rule the rainforest themselves.” She paused. “All right, we’re safe; they’ve gone by.”
She realized her wing was still touching Winter’s and pulled away with an apologetic expression. He tried to pretend he hadn’t even noticed.
“So we’re all on board with avoiding NightWings, then?” Qibli said. “Excellent. Present company excepted, of course.”
“Maybe not all NightWings, but definitely him,” Moon said. She sighed. “I should probably tell the queen what I can do so I can warn her about dragons like this.” Her tail flicked the leaves below them. “But I worry — I mean, should dragons be punished for their thoughts? Even if they never act on them? But what if warning her means they’ll never do whatever terrible thing they’re thinking of? I don’t know. I don’t want anyone to use me as a way to spy on the private thoughts of her subjects.”
“Really?” Qibli said. “But it would be useful to know if a coup or an assassination is coming. If you could prevent that, wouldn’t it be worth spying on a few dragons?”
“No,” Winter snapped. “Nothing justifies invading another dragon’s mind.”
“But that’s how she stopped Icicle from killing Starflight,” Qibli pointed out. “Aren’t you grateful she did that?”
Winter glared down at Kinkajou, who had gone back to splashing in the river below. “I still don’t like it,” he said. “In the wrong talons … I mean, Moon could tell Queen Glory she heard someone planning a murder, and that dragon could be punished, and who could prove her wrong?”
“I wouldn’t lie,” Moon said, looking outraged.
“How do we know that?” Winter asked. “You hid your powers from us. Why should we trust you? And even if you wouldn’t lie, what about other NightWings? They’ve lied before, haven’t they? They lied about having powers for years apparently. The entire tribe is full of liars, going back thousands of years to the Darkstalker and his cursed mother, Foeslayer.”
Moon jumped, overbalanced, and fell off the branch with a lot of wild thrashing. Startled, Winter peered down at her as she climbed back up.
“Three moons, what was that about?” Qibli asked when she was settled again. “Are you all right?” Moon was breathing in a funny, almost panicked way.
“Darkstalker?” she said to Winter. “How do you know about him?”
“Everyone knows about him,” Winter said.
“I don’t,” Qibli offered.
“Everyone,” Winter said pointedly, “who’s anyone.”
“Ah, I see,” Qibli said. “You mean IceWings.”
“And NightWings,” Moon said. “He’s our legend. Nightmare. Ghost monster from the beyond. Whatever.”
“Ours too,” Winter said grimly. “Trust me.”
“Why, what did he ever do to the IceWings?” Moon asked.
“Killed one of our princes,” Winter said. “Stole our royal heritage. Ruined everything forever.”
“Oh, my, forever?” Qibli asked. He gave the sunlit rainforest a mock-serious, nodding inspection. “Well, that explains it. I was wondering why everything was so very ruined all the time. Thank goodness there’s one ancient dead dragon we can blame for it all.”
“You wouldn’t joke if you knew the whole story,” Winter snapped.
Moon closed her eyes, then shook her head with an expression that looked like frustration. “I want to know the whole —” she began, and then her eyes popped open in alarm. “They’re coming back. Obsidian and the RainWing guard. We should —”
“Hello!” Kinkajou called, waving her wings. “Hi! Over here!”
“— not do that,” Qibli finished for Moon as she winced.
It was too late. Winter hissed softly. There was no chance of sneaking through the rainforest now.
The guards were heading straight for them.
A black dragon — the one with “ugly thoughts” — slowly stalked along the banks of the river, staring at Kinkajou. His forked black tongue flicked in and out, and his expression was calculating.
A few steps ahead of him was a RainWing, dappled green like the forest but not completely camouflaged. She splashed into the river and over to Kinkajou, frowning.
“Oh, it’s you,” Kinkajou said. Winter had never heard that tone of gloom from the little RainWing before. “Hi, Bromeliad. I thought you were Orchid.”
“What are you doing back here?” Bromeliad demanded. “You were supposed to stay at that school the queen sent you to! I told her you were a terrible student and would definitely fail or run off, but would she listen? Mysteriously not! And now here you are, so I suppose I was right!”
“I’m doing something important,” Kinkajou snapped. “I’m here to save the queen, if you must know!”
Winter caught the shifty expression that crossed Obsidian’s face. Maybe Moon was right. Maybe this dragon’s thoughts were as dangerous as they sounded.
Then Obsidian looked up and his gaze landed on Winter. His tail began lashing furiously.
“An IceWing,” he hissed. “In our rainforest. Don’t just lurk in the trees, friend. Come down and say hello.”
That sounded like just about the last thing Winter wanted to do, but picking a fight with a NightWing would waste time … time he needed to find his sister. He reluctantly spread his wings.
“Don’t let him bully you,” Moon whispered, catching one of Winter’s talons before he could lift off. “He’s afraid of you. He’s planning how to be as cruel and commanding as possible because he wants to see you squirm.”
“I don’t squirm for anyone,” Winter snarled under his breath.
“I know,” Moon said. “You shouldn’t. You’re a much better dragon than he is. You’re … you’re a much better dragon than most anyone.” She ducked her head to look down at her claws.
Winter blinked at her. Was that really what she thought? Even after looking inside him?
“Not me, though, right?” Qibli said, nudging Moon with a grin. “He’s not better than me. I’m awesome, right? Like, the most awesome?”
The way she smiled back at the SandWing, like she couldn’t help herself, made Winter’s scales feel all crawly and too warm. He spun away from them and leaped down to the ground.
The NightWing guard sat back on his haunches, inspecting the dragons suspiciously as Moon and Qibli landed on the riverbank as well. Having a NightWing’s gaze on him, traveling over him as though he was a half-eaten seal carcass, made Winter want to smash in some faces with his tail. He scraped his serrated claws through the damp layer of leaves on the forest floor.
“You’re the peculiar dragonet,” Obsidian said finally, narrowing his ey
es at Moon. “Failed school already? Did they realize you can’t talk and send you back? What’s with the multicolored escort?” He squinted at the dragons around her. “Exactly who are you?”
“None of your business,” Winter growled.
Obsidian’s brows went up and he eyed Winter even more closely. Winter wondered if it would be a bad start if he slashed that superior expression right off the black dragon’s face.
“We’re here to see Queen Glory,” Qibli said. Winter was interested to hear a note of hostility in Qibli’s voice as well. From what he’d seen so far, the SandWing usually got along with everyone, or tried to, especially right at first. “And trust me, she’ll want to see us, so don’t be a camel-sniffer about it.”
“I have to take you to the Night Village,” Obsidian said haughtily. “That’s the protocol for new dragons in the rainforest. We’ll send her a message, and if she wants to see you, she’ll come find you there.”
“Um, no,” Kinkajou said. “Hello, I am a RainWing, not a ‘new dragon.’ I live here! I’m practically the queen’s best friend! And I’m taking my new friends to see her right now.”
The NightWing shifted his wings slightly and flicked his tongue through his sharp teeth.
“Kinkajou,” Moon said, touching her clawmate’s shoulder. “Actually, if we go to the village, I could see my mother … and we could ask whether anyone’s seen Icicle.”
“Oh — all right,” Kinkajou agreed. “But I’m going because I want to, not because anyone is telling me to.” She flared the ruff behind her ears at Obsidian, turning it orange as she did.
He smiled nastily. “Well, come along, then.”
“I’ll go tell Queen Glory you’re here,” said Bromeliad, lifting off into the trees.
Winter followed Qibli and the others, staying a few steps behind so he could keep an eye on Obsidian.
He had imagined visiting the home of the NightWings many times, but in those fantasies he always arrived at the head of a battalion of IceWings. His visions generally involved swooping down in vengeful glory, blasting frostbreath across the entire city, and wiping out the whole tribe in one icy attack.