Wings of Fire Book Four: The Dark Secret

  “A fascinating empty room,” she insisted. “It used to be full of treasure, just imagine. I’ve never even seen any treasure before.”

  “Oh, right,” Starflight said. “The Talons of Peace wouldn’t have any, I guess, unless some dragons brought it with them when they left their tribes.”

  “If anyone did, they keep it hidden,” she said. He felt her tail flick against his snout accidentally as they both felt their way along the walls. “You didn’t have treasure in your hiding-under-the-mountain place, did you?”

  “No, but I’ve been to the Sky Kingdom and the Kingdom of the Sea,” Starflight said, “and I saw enough treasure there to know that having lots of treasure doesn’t make you a good queen, or a happy tribe.”

  “I thought Queen Coral was a good queen,” Fatespeaker said, sounding surprised.

  “Well, keep in mind she wrote a lot of the scrolls you’ve probably read about her,” Starflight said. “But she’s not terrible. She’s better than Queen Scarlet, that’s for sure. Or Blister.” He shuddered, remembering the SandWing dragon who had been so disgusted with him.

  “I bet the SandWings would be happier if they could find the treasure that scavenger stole, though,” Fatespeaker said.

  “Maybe,” Starflight said. “There were some really famous pieces of treasure in there, including stuff that was rumored to be animus-touched.”

  “Animus-touched?” Fatespeaker stopped and breathed fire again. They were standing under a tall archway with two black metal doors, one of which was propped open just enough for a dragonet to slip through.

  “Animus-touched means an object that’s been magicked by an animus dragon,” Starflight explained in the helpful-teacher voice he sometimes used with his friends. “So the object is left with some kind of power — like a necklace that can make you invisible, or a stone that can find anyone you’re looking for.” Or a statue that’ll kill any heir to the SeaWing throne it can get its claws on. “It’s sort of an archaic term because supposedly there aren’t any animus dragons anymore, but that’s clearly not true — there’s at least one among the SeaWings, and there must have been one not long ago among the NightWings.”

  “Really?” Fatespeaker pushed lightly on the metal door, and it groaned open another inch.

  He realized he didn’t know how much she knew about the NightWing island. “Yes — there’s a tunnel from here to the rainforest, and one from the rainforest to the Kingdom of Sand, which must have been made by an animus dragon,” he said. “I guess I can’t be sure how long ago it was, but none of the RainWings knew about them. Isn’t that how you got here?”

  She shook her head. “We flew across the ocean. It was so long and so boring. I swear I nearly fell asleep and ended up in the sea a couple of times.”

  He perked up, full of geography questions, but she was already squeezing into the room and making “Oooooh!” noises. He squashed himself through the door behind her and saw, in the plume of fire she sent out, a couple of wooden sticks on the floor. He picked one up and lit it so they could look around more easily.

  But when he lifted it up, the first things they both saw were the shriveled corpses of two dead dragons.

  Starflight clapped his talons over Fatespeaker’s mouth midshriek.

  “You’ll bring the mountain down on top of us,” he whispered, and she snapped her mouth shut. He glanced down at the two midnight-black bodies. “Don’t worry, these two have been dead a long time,” he added. “Probably since the volcano erupted.”

  When he released her, she whispered, “How did they die?”

  Starflight lifted the torch again and peered a little closer, although he really didn’t want to. A spear lay beside one of the NightWings, but it was an ordinary spear, not the creepy hooked-and-pronged kind all the guards carried now. Neither of them wore armor either.

  “Suffocation, I bet,” he answered. “Or starvation. Or heat, although dragons can withstand a fair amount of heat. My guess is they were guarding the treasure when the eruption happened and they were trapped here. Nobody could come find them until the lava cooled enough to make the tunnel we crawled through, and by then it was too late.”

  Fatespeaker shook herself from horns to tail. “How incredibly awful.”

  Starflight turned to look around the room, which, as he’d predicted, was otherwise empty. Bare shelves lined all the walls, reaching up to the ceiling, and large urns stood in the two back corners. He could imagine that they had once been filled to the brim with gold and jewels.

  He caught himself thinking, A giant urn full of gold and jewels would be kind of cool to have. Which was ridiculous — just his dragon instincts talking. What would he do with that much gold? Unless it could get him back to his friends or stop the war, it would be useless to him.

  Something went ping at the back of his mind, but before he could figure it out, Fatespeaker said, “Maybe we should go.”

  “I think so,” Starflight said. “I don’t know how much air is down here, but I don’t want to find out by running out of it.”

  “Yikes,” she said, her eyes widening. “That’s all you had to say!” She turned and scooted out of the room faster than he’d ever seen her move before.

  He took a step to follow her, and the torchlight flashed on something small and bright in one of the corpse’s talons.

  Starflight hesitated.

  A piece of treasure that was left behind? Something they missed, because who would want to search a corpse.…

  Well, not him — not particularly.

  But — he felt as if it was calling to him, as if it had been waiting for him these eleven years, hiding from anyone else who came along until the right dragon arrived.

  Now you sound like Sunny, with her faith in fate and destiny and signs and magic.

  So if taking the lost jewel was what she’d want him to do …

  He braced himself, reached down, and plucked it from the dead guard’s claws. Rough dead scales scraped against his, and he shuddered so badly he nearly dropped the gemstone, but instead he gripped it harder and jumped back, knocking against the shelves behind him. The claws were left clutching the air, as if hanging on to the memory of treasure would have to be enough.

  Now Starflight felt fairly sick, but when he held up the torch and glanced down, he realized he’d done the right thing.

  The blue star-shaped sapphire glinted in his talons with a tiny inner spark of its own light.

  He’d only ever read about these. There were supposedly three of them in the world, all lost — all created hundreds of years ago by a SandWing animus dragon.

  A dream-visitor.

  He closed his claws around it.

  With this, he could see his friends again.

  “Starflight?” Fatespeaker called.

  “Coming,” he said. He couldn’t risk anyone finding the dreamvisitor and taking it from him. Not even Fatespeaker could know about it.

  He put it in his mouth, tucked down between his teeth and his scales, and pressed his tongue over it.

  On the way back to the dormitory, Fatespeaker asked why he was so quiet, but he just shook his head and mumbled that he was tired. She shrugged and headed off to her own bed once they were back inside.

  Starflight pulled out the rough blanket he’d been given and arranged it so he could huddle underneath it. The heavy brown fabric caught on his horns and smelled like smoke, but it would keep him hidden from any eyes that might still be awake. He cupped the dreamvisitor in his talons and stared at it, trying to remember if he’d read anything about how they worked.

  Perhaps I just think of the dragon whose dreams I want to visit?

  Surely Sunny would be asleep right now, in the middle of the night. If he remembered right, he should be able to step into whatever she was already dreaming about — and if she were in the deepest level of dreamsleep, she’d see him and they could talk to each other. But if her sleep was shallow or uneasy, he might be able to see in, but she wouldn’t know he was really the
re. And if she were awake, it wouldn’t work at all, of course.

  He closed his eyes and pictured Sunny — her laugh that made everyone else laugh, too, her flares of temper that vanished as quickly as they came, her small claws and fierce protective face, her scales like rippled sunshine, the way she looked like no other dragon on Pyrrhia. If she were here, she’d know exactly what to say about his father. She’d tell him what to tell the NightWings about Glory, and how to talk them out of hurting RainWings, forever.

  But no matter how hard he concentrated, his mind stayed firmly in the NightWing dormitory instead of finding her dreams.

  Maybe she was awake. Maybe she was in the rainforest somewhere, looking at the moons and wondering if he was looking at them, too.

  He tried Glory next, then Clay, then Tsunami. Nothing happened. He couldn’t reach any of them.

  Starflight squeezed the dreamvisitor between his claws, grinding his teeth. This had to work. Unless it wasn’t really a dreamvisitor, but it certainly looked like one.

  Try a RainWing. They’re always asleep.

  The first RainWing who came to mind was Kinkajou, the little dragonet Glory had rescued from the NightWings. Starflight focused on her enormous dark eyes and quick-changing scales. He pressed the dreamvisitor to his forehead, praying that this would work.

  And suddenly he was perched on a branch in the rainforest.

  Starflight took a deep, relieved breath, but he still inhaled the smoke of the dormitory. He could see the rainforest, but he couldn’t smell it, unfortunately for him.

  Kinkajou was curled on a giant leaf beside him with her eyes closed. There was a bandage of soft leaves and moss wrapped around one of her wings, and piles of red and yellow and purple fruits all around her, like offerings to a statue. Her scales were a strangely pale shade of blue in the moonlight, and she breathed shallowly, as if even in her sleep she knew a deeper breath would make something hurt.

  “What happened to you?” Starflight wondered aloud, but she didn’t wake up.

  He turned to find another dragon staring right through him. For a startled, terrifying moment, Starflight thought the dragon could see him, but then he realized she was just watching Kinkajou. She was old, older than any of the guardians or queens he’d met so far, and she had that royal elegance about her that he’d noticed Greatness lacking.

  Starflight turned back to Kinkajou. How could he get inside her dreams? He looked down at the dreamvisitor and remembered pressing it to his own forehead. Carefully he leaned over and rested the sapphire between Kinkajou’s eyes.

  The first time he tried, he nearly fell right through her; since he wasn’t really there, he couldn’t touch her or anything around her. But when he tried a second time, holding the dreamvisitor where he thought it should go, he felt a thrum of energy radiate from Kinkajou through the jewel to him and back again, and then he saw what she saw.

  In Kinkajou’s dream, she was standing in bright sunlight in a wide green bowl laced with brightly colored flowers, surrounded by thousands of RainWings — more RainWings than there could possibly be on the whole continent — all of them staring at her with expressions of disdain that Starflight had never seen in real life on any RainWing.

  Glory was there, in the center of the bowl, but this Glory was impossibly big and impossibly beautiful, and a crown of orange hibiscus, gold chain, and rubies sparkled atop her head. That’s how Kinkajou sees her, Starflight thought. This Glory smiled more, too, at least at Kinkajou.

  A crown, he thought suddenly. Does that mean Glory won? Is she now queen of the RainWings? Or is this a wishful dream?

  Kinkajou backed away from the stares of the dragons until she reached the far edge of the bowl. Suddenly she turned and leaped off, spreading her wings.

  But instead of soaring away through the trees, she fell, plummeting like a coconut toward the ground below. Her wings flapped helplessly, and when she twisted to look at them, giant holes appeared all over her wings, spreading as though acid was eating them away.

  Kinkajou screamed and clawed at the air.

  Starflight watched helplessly from above as the greenery swallowed her up. It’s just a dream, he told himself, but his racing heart didn’t believe him. Just a dream. Nothing you could do. She didn’t even see you here.

  He wouldn’t be able to reach her in a dream like this, where her emotions were so strong. It was really strange to be in someone else’s nightmare, so different from the ones he had almost every night. His own anxiety dreams usually involved the NightWing queen telling him that dragonets who weren’t telepathic were not welcome in the tribe.

  The dreamscape around him shuddered and then suddenly went dark.

  She’s waking up. Starflight dug his talons into the tree branch below him, even though he couldn’t see it now and he also knew it wasn’t really there — or rather, he wasn’t really there. He wanted to hold on to the rainforest as long as he could. He didn’t want to go back to the gloomy NightWing dormitory.

  Stay asleep, he thought desperately. Please see me. I need to send a message to my friends.

  Now he could see faint outlines of shapes in the darkness, as if it was very early morning and the sun was rising far away. In front of him, Kinkajou was curled on the leaf again, still asleep but twitching restlessly. A silvery shaft of moonlight lit up the expression of pain on her face. She’d snapped out of the nightmare into a shallow sleep with no dreams, where she was half aware of everything around her without being fully awake. He could be here, but she wouldn’t see him, not now.

  “Another nightmare?” said a quiet voice behind him.

  Starflight whirled around, his heart leaping into his throat.

  Sunny.

  The SandWing was just landing on the branch beside the queenly RainWing. Her golden wings folded in and she flipped her tail over her back talons the way she always did. A moment later, a glint of blue scales appeared through the trees behind Sunny: Tsunami, flapping down to land next to her.

  “I think so,” said the older RainWing. “I wasn’t sure whether to wake her. How is the queen?”

  “Mad,” said Sunny. “Super mad. I keep telling her there’s no way Starflight went to the NightWings on his own, but she’s convinced he’s betrayed us.”

  Shock rippled through Starflight’s wings. It hadn’t occurred to him that his friends would think he’d left them on purpose. The queen — does she mean Glory? Glory thinks I betrayed them?

  Then he remembered telling the NightWing council that the RainWings were planning to attack, and his scales felt hot with shame. He may have been abducted, but he hadn’t done anything to help his friends since he got here. He hadn’t tried to escape. He hadn’t even argued with Morrowseer or tried to stop the NightWings.

  Maybe he really didn’t belong in the prophecy. Maybe Fatespeaker was the better dragon to save the world.

  “Starflight,” Tsunami snorted. “Of all dragons, like he’d ever betray us. Can you actually imagine how it could have happened? First, making a decision. Not exactly Starflight’s forte. Then, actually doing something instead of sitting and waiting for it to happen to him. And not just anything: jumping into a dark hole with angry dragons on the other side. Starflight. Are you kidding me? STARFLIGHT.”

  “Oh my gosh, stop it,” Sunny said. “You’ve been arguing with Glory all day. You don’t have to convince me that Starflight wouldn’t do something like this.” She hopped down to Kinkajou’s side, nearly passing right through Starflight. He shivered and leaned toward her. He could almost imagine he felt the warmth of her scales as she went by.

  “You don’t think he chose to go to the Night Kingdom?” asked the dragon Starflight didn’t know.

  Sunny looked up at the two moons that were visible through the canopy, then back down at Kinkajou. “If he went, then I’m sure it was for a good reason. But if he didn’t choose to go — then he needs our help, right, Tsunami? Isn’t that the important thing? Shouldn’t we go get him right now, before something terrible
happens to him?” She bent to examine the bandage on Kinkajou’s wing.

  Yes, Starflight thought frantically. Please. Hurry.

  “If it were up to me, the four of us would be there now, tearing that place apart,” Tsunami growled. “Instead of wasting our time here.”

  “Combat training didn’t go well?” asked the other dragon.

  Tsunami lashed her tail so hard she nearly fell off the branch. “General, may I take a nap? General, I need a papaya! General, my claws are tired! General, look, a butterfly! SOMEBODY IS GETTING STABBED IN THE FACE IF YOU DON’T SHUT UP.”

  Sunny smothered a giggle.

  “When does the queen want to attack?” The older dragon bared her teeth as though she was ready to go right now.

  “Oh, look,” Sunny interrupted, touching her front talons lightly to Kinkajou’s head. “She’s waking up.”

  No. Starflight saw Kinkajou’s eyes flutter. He reached out, holding the dreamvisitor, trying to send her back into dreamsleep, but it was too late.

  With a wrenching sideways jolt, the rainforest — and Kinkajou and Tsunami and Sunny — was ripped away, and Starflight found himself lying on cold stone once again. The thick canvas lay heavy on his horns and the dim red light of the coals pulsed beyond it, making his eyes ache.

  Sunny had been right there, inches from him.

  So close, and yet she might as well have been on one of the moons.

  He stared down at the dreamvisitor that glowed faintly in his talons. Seeing them had somehow been even worse than not seeing them.

  My friends think I betrayed them — or if they don’t, they think it’s because I’m too much of a coward to do something like that.

  He closed his eyes, feeling lonelier than he had ever felt in his life.

  The blanket was ripped off Starflight’s head with such force that he tumbled onto the floor. His head spun for a moment, but his first thought was that he was glad he’d hidden the dreamvisitor well the night before.

  “Up,” Morrowseer snarled. His breath was fiercely awful this morning. At least, Starflight assumed it was morning, although the sky was barely lighter than it had been the night before.