NightWings had been the sworn enemies of IceWings for hundreds of years, but there hadn’t been any action between them during Winter’s lifetime. The IceWings had been too busy with the War of SandWing Succession — fighting nearly every other tribe — to worry about the secretive, impossible-to-find NightWings.
But then the news had arrived about the massacre at the SkyWing palace. When the tribe heard that NightWings had descended on Scarlet’s arena and slaughtered all the IceWing prisoners while they were still chained and bound … well, Winter wasn’t the only one who’d sworn vengeance. Finding the secret NightWing home had become the ambition of every young IceWing.
And now here he was, about to walk right into it.
This wasn’t the secret home, of course. This was their new home, the one they’d been driven to after the volcano erupted and wiped out their last home. Everyone knew about this one. Just like everyone knew the NightWings had no more powers, that they were resettling in the rainforest, and that a seven-year-old RainWing was their new queen.
They heard the village before they saw it: wingbeats, branches being ripped off trees, something that sounded like hammering. Winter could also smell meat cooking over a fire, and he wished he could order his stomach not to growl and embarrass him.
Then he saw black scales ahead and felt his talons start tingling. Two dragons were pacing across a path that had been cleared through the trees, evidently guarding it. Obsidian went on ahead to speak to them in low murmurs.
The NightWings glanced over and Winter’s claws curled in. If he had to die fighting NightWings, that would be a fine way to go out. Will they kill me like they killed Hailstorm?
He caught himself. It was instinct to see a NightWing and think of his brother’s death, but according to Queen Scarlet, Hailstorm wasn’t dead.
Twelve other IceWing prisoners definitely were, though. And somewhere in this village were the dragons who killed them.
Obsidian beckoned Winter and the others forward with his tail, and the two guards stepped aside to let them pass, smirking in a horribly superior NightWing sort of way.
“What do you think those smug expressions are for?” Qibli said loudly to Winter. “Doesn’t seem like NightWings have anything left to be smug about, right? I mean, they’ve gone from claiming to be the most powerful tribe in Pyrrhia to homeless and pathetic and bowing to RainWings.”
All three guards bristled, flaring their wings.
“What’s wrong with bowing to a RainWing?” Kinkajou demanded.
“Qibli, quit making things worse,” Moon hissed.
“I was just wondering,” he said calmly, with a wink at Winter.
Winter knew what he was doing, and it had worked. Qibli’s words had riled up the NightWings and made Winter feel better at the same time.
All of his senses were on high alert as they walked into the village and more and more NightWings appeared around them. His eyes darted around, assessing their activity. He expected plotting and scheming and battle training … but most of the NightWings seemed to be busily engaged in very ordinary things.
A group of ten were grappling with vines and bushes and stunted trees, trying to expand the open space. Three more were washing fruit in the river, near a set of cooking fires dug into the ground, where another four NightWings were roasting what looked like small pigs.
Several others were working on shoring up the ramshackle huts that dotted the cleared area. Winter saw a young dragon scramble onto a roof to add more giant palm leaves, only to have the entire structure cave in underneath her. She plummeted to the ground with a yell and a crash, and a few other NightWings began shouting at her.
“There were a few RainWings who might have helped them build all this,” Kinkajou explained suddenly, glancing at Winter and Qibli. “We could have showed them how to set up their village in the treetops, like ours, but the NightWings didn’t want help. Plus they thought it was too sunny up there, like, what does that even mean? How can it ever be too sunny?”
It was cooler down on the rainforest floor, but it was also muddier. Winter wasn’t sure which option he’d prefer — but he was glad he didn’t have to live here at all. He wondered if the NightWings really found it an improvement over their last home.
“Mother!” Moon cried suddenly. Her whole face lit up like the sun sparkling off a glacier. She flew across the clearing and threw her wings around a tall, thin dragon who looked a lot like Moon, without the silver teardrop scales near her eyes.
“Moon!” the NightWing gasped. Her expression went from quietly tired to startled to overjoyed, and she wrapped the dragonet in close to her with fierce affection.
Winter felt a strange twinge, watching them. IceWings don’t hug like that, he reminded himself. At least, royal ones don’t. It would be undignified. He couldn’t imagine his mother or father wrapping their wings around him. Or looking that happy to see him, for that matter.
Was this how all NightWings were with their dragonets? He glanced around the clearing, looking for dragons younger than himself, and realized there were almost none. It took him a while to finally spot one by the river, leaning against his mother’s side and helping to wash fruit. She had one wing tented protectively over him.
And there was another small dragonet over by a fallen tree, practicing her flying. A dragon who might be her father stood beside her, catching her when she fell awkwardly. There was something protective and proud about the way he was standing, too.
Winter pulled his gaze away and noticed odd looks on the other dragonets’ faces. Qibli and Kinkajou — there was something faintly wistful in their expressions as they watched Moon and her mother. He caught himself starting to wonder what their family stories were.
They look like lonely cows, he thought ferociously. I refuse to moon about like that over anything. My parents are perfect the way they are. They made me strong and dangerous — a true dragon. Stronger than anyone else here, that’s for sure.
I may not be as fearsome as Hailstorm — but still, I’m an IceWing! The greatest tribe in Pyrrhia! I must act like one, especially here, with so many NightWing eyes on me. Like Father says: Be strong, be vigilant, strike first. And trust nobody.
“What are you doing here?” Moon’s mother asked, holding Moon by her shoulders.
Moon curled her wings in, her face falling. “I didn’t get thrown out,” she said in a soft voice. “I didn’t do anything wrong, and nobody — that didn’t happen, Mother.”
Winter realized that Moon was responding to something her mother was thinking. He touched his skyfire pouch again and wondered if the little rock could protect him from all the NightWings here … or if there were other secret mind readers invading his thoughts right now.
“Shhh,” said the older dragon, pulling Moon close again. She eyed Winter and Qibli warily.
“But I did make friends,” Moon said. She wriggled out of her mother’s grasp. “You should meet them.” She turned toward the others and her eyes went wide.
“No, stop!” she shouted. “He’s not —”
Suddenly claws encircled Winter’s neck and his body was thrown to the ground with a jarring thud. Someone bigger and heavier leaped on top of him, pinning him down.
“Don’t bother struggling, IceWing,” said an unfamiliar voice. “You’re under arrest.”
Winter roared with fury, struggling to fight back, but his attacker had him expertly immobilized.
“Stop it! Get off him!” Moon yelled. Winter couldn’t see much, with his snout pressed into the ground, but he felt the weight of dragons pushing and grappling on his wings.
“He’s on our side!” Kinkajou cried. “Or he was before you randomly attacked him for no reason. Now he’ll never like us again!”
“I wasn’t going to anyway!” Winter bellowed as best he could, seething with rage and humiliation. “I didn’t like you before either! I don’t like any of you! And I’m going to MURDER this NightWing!”
“I don’t know, he sounds kind of
murder-y, Kinkajou,” said the voice. “And we heard there’s an extra-dangerous IceWing on the loose right now. So I’m going to keep sitting on him until I get further instructions.”
“I’m instructing you!” Kinkajou yelped. “He’s not the dangerous one! That’s his sister!”
“It’s true,” Qibli chimed in. “This one is honorable. He’s no sneak-in-the-night assassin.”
“Hey, ouch,” said the dragon on top of Winter. “Nothing wrong with assassins. Who said there was anything dishonorable about assassins? They’re just not allowed to kill my — my queen. It’s my job to stop them and drop some violence on their heads, but I’m not judging them, sheesh.”
“He’s not here to kill Glory,” Moon said. “If he were, he would tell you, and he’d challenge her in open combat.”
Would I? Winter wondered. True, I wouldn’t hurt a nothing RainWing, but if I’d had a chance to kill the NightWing queen, would I have done it the honorable way, or any way possible?
What would Mother have wanted me to do?
Any way possible, he guessed. That was how Icicle and Hailstorm had been trained.
“DEATHBRINGER!” another new voice thundered, loud enough to rattle the leaves overhead. “What are you doing?”
“Saving you, protecting the forest, defending our new home, sitting on a very cold IceWing,” said the NightWing from his perch on Winter’s back. “You know, the usual.”
A murmur eddied through the village as footsteps approached. Winter tried to wriggle around to see who was coming, but Deathbringer reached out and gently pinned his head to the ground again. A grotesque greenish-brown beetle with about four thousand legs came scuttling up and began creeping curiously onto Winter’s nose.
“Stop arresting my guests,” said the newcomer, pausing beside Winter. “It’s not romantic or heroic, it’s annoying. I’ve told you this before.”
“I know,” Deathbringer said, sounding aggrieved. “But look, it’s an IceWing. Sunny specifically said an IceWing tried to kill all the prophecy dragonets. This is definitely a pinion-before-asking-questions kind of situation.”
“All right, OFF,” Glory said firmly. The weight on top of Winter suddenly lifted as if she’d hauled Deathbringer off with her own talons. “I am going to replace you as my bodyguard if you seriously can’t tell the difference between a male IceWing traveling with my friends Kinkajou and Moonwatcher, and a lone female IceWing out to kill me. Pay a little more attention to detail, Deathbringer. Also, by the way, you’re one to talk about killing prophecy dragonets.”
Winter scrambled upright, flinging the beetle off his nose and baring his teeth as he spun around.
His attacker was a NightWing a few years older than him, wiry and graceful and clearly trained to fight from the way he stood and the way he was assessing Winter.
Winter lunged toward him and found his way blocked by a dark green dragon with flares of orange around her ears and along the underside of her wings. She reached out and took one of Winter’s talons, pressing it between hers and lowering her head in a small bow.
“We are so honored to have Queen Glacier’s nephew in our forest,” she said. “I sincerely apologize for the outrageous behavior of my brain-dead bodyguard. You should have been escorted at once to my royal pavilion, not attacked in such a disrespectful manner.”
She glanced around at the gawking NightWings. “Everyone back to work, right now.”
To Winter’s surprise, they obeyed her, although there were a few muttered grumbles and two or three dragons who moved deliberately slowly.
He hesitated. Every bone in his body wanted to fly into a rage and rip Deathbringer’s wings off. He couldn’t let a NightWing treat him that way, especially in front of all the other NightWings, and get away with it.
But he’d never been greeted as visiting royalty before, and there was something irresistibly compelling about the way Queen Glory beckoned him to walk beside her, as if they were equals.
“Will he be punished?” Winter demanded.
“Oh, yes,” Glory said, frowning at Deathbringer. “Creatively and firmly.”
“Very well,” Winter said. He shook as much dirt off his wings as he could and stepped up regally beside Glory. “I don’t have time to punish him myself anyway. We have urgent matters to discuss.”
“Indeed,” said the queen, turning to lead the way out of the village. Behind him, Winter heard Moon saying good-bye to her mother, and the others hurrying to join him. “Sunny told me some of the details, but I hope you can fill in the rest.”
“I can!” Kinkajou offered, bouncing up on Glory’s other side. “Winter’s sister, Icicle, who is, like, wicked scary, by the way, was secretly conspiring with Queen Scarlet because it turns out Winter’s brother is, like, actually alive, not dead like everyone thought, and Scarlet’s totally got him locked up somewhere, so Icicle was going to kill Starflight to get him back, except then Moon and Qibli and Winter completely heroically stopped her and it was apparently amazing and I missed the whole thing! Can you believe it? And so then Icicle flew off and we figure she’s coming here to kill you, so we’re here to completely heroically stop her again and also find out what she knows so we can rescue Winter’s brother ourselves. Also, hello, school is awesome, how are you?”
“You’re in as much trouble as Deathbringer,” Glory said sternly, looking down at the dragonet. “What were you thinking, leaving school without permission? When everyone was already in such a state? Do you know how worried Sunny and Clay have been?”
Kinkajou stopped in her tracks with an expression of deep dismay and an explosion of dark blue splotches across her scales. “Oh, no!” she cried. “I’m sorry! Didn’t Turtle tell them where we went?”
“Yes, and that certainly helped,” Glory said with a snort. “Good news: Four of your students have gone off to find a dragon who just tried to kill you, in order to find another dragon who has tried to kill you about ninety dozen times. Oh excellent, thanks, Turtle. Now we don’t have to worry at all. I mean, we were hoping somebody would take care of the vengeful and deadly Queen Scarlet for us. Preferably a bunch of five-year-olds. Very reassuring indeed.”
Moon ducked her head. “Sorry, Your Majesty,” she said. “This felt … urgent.”
She glanced sideways at Winter and an odd flicker of something like gratitude went off in his chest — stupid, stupid. As if he cared that she knew how important it was to find his brother.
I didn’t ask for help and I don’t need it.
“It is urgent!” Kinkajou said. “We think Icicle is coming here next! To kill you!”
“That’s what I said,” offered Deathbringer, who was trailing behind them with an expression that looked closer to amused than repentant. “Ahem. AHEM.”
Glory considered Kinkajou thoughtfully. “Do you really think so?”
“Absolutely,” Qibli interjected. “You’re the only target she has left. It’s the smart choice for her. I’d wager a month of lizards on it.”
“That would be irritating,” Glory said. “If Deathbringer turns out to be right, I mean. It makes him really insufferable.”
“I am here to search for my sister,” Winter said to Queen Glory. “I just need your assurance that no one will interfere with me while I do that.” He cast a dark glance over his shoulder at Deathbringer.
“I think we can do better than that,” said the queen. She stopped and tilted her snout at one of the branches overhead. “Banana?”
Winter frowned. “No, thank you.”
But as he spoke, he noticed a shimmering in the air around the branch, and then all at once there was a dragon sitting there in a rather hideous shade of pink that Winter had never seen before.
“Actually, it’s Heliconia, Your Majesty,” said the RainWing. “But good guess.”
Glory flicked her tail. “Heliconia, please tell my scout captains to meet me at the pavilion as soon as possible.”
The pink dragon’s scales started fading into shades of blue. “Bu
t I shouldn’t leave you unguarded, Majesty.”
The RainWing queen waved her talons at the surrounding trees. “I think seven guards are quite sufficient. One might call it overkill, in fact. One might even infer that somebody doesn’t think he can do his job properly on his own. Also that he must think I’m either blind and deaf or recently hit on the head, that I wouldn’t notice the addition of five more dragons following me around.”
“The whole point of a top secret invisible guard,” Deathbringer said severely, “is for them to be invisible and secret. Therefore it is extremely unhelpful for certain queens to go pointing them out and discussing them loudly with the entire rainforest.”
“Go now,” Glory said to Heliconia, ignoring Deathbringer. The RainWing guard bowed immediately and vanished. Winter could barely hear her wingbeats flapping away over the buzzing, dripping sounds of the rainforest.
He curled his talons and stared up at the trees. There were seven other dragons up there, watching them? He couldn’t see any sign of even one.
All right, he admitted to himself, grudgingly. That’s kind of an impressive skill. IceWings were good at hiding in the snow, of course, but here in the rainforest he stuck out like a broken wing. Which means Icicle will, too, at least.
“The pavilion is a short flight this way,” Glory explained to Winter. “I had it built halfway between the NightWings and the RainWings for anything official.” She took to the air, and Winter and the others followed her. He strained his ears to listen for the sound of seven extra pairs of wings flying alongside them, but it was impossible to separate them out from the others.
Queen Glory’s royal pavilion was a vast platform in the air, built on the branches of a circle of tall, overlapping trees. Winter guessed that it was about midway between the ground and the treetops — middle ground for the NightWings and RainWings. It had a roof made of the same translucent leaves he’d seen in the library windows at Jade Mountain, constructed atop twisted wooden columns instead of walls so the pavilion was open to the air but sheltered from the rain. Purple and blue morning glory flowers hung like bells from the vines that wound around each column, and delicate white-orange-pink orchids grew from the mossy crevices of the trees.