Several NightWings muttered under their breath, but none loud enough to be heard, and even they fell silent as others hissed at them.
Sunny ducked and wriggled through the crowd, but she couldn’t get any farther than the stream. Several RainWings stood by the water, in shades of blue and purple, holding NightWing spears. Most of them were ruining the effect by peering at the spears with mystified expressions, or holding them upside down.
Still, Sunny decided not to try pushing past them. Those spears would hurt just as much if they poked her by accident as on purpose.
What she really wanted to do was crash away into the rainforest and not come back. She wasn’t sure she could face her friends — who acted as if they didn’t care about the prophecy at all — and she couldn’t even look at the NightWings.
Tsunami wants to believe Morrowseer. She’s never wanted to fulfill the prophecy. She doesn’t understand how important it is.
Clay would be just as happy if nobody ever noticed how wonderful he is. Then he could sleep and eat and take care of us instead of fighting.
Starflight would love to stop worrying about the prophecy.
And Glory has enough to do here, now that she’s queen.
None of them will fight for our destiny. They certainly won’t listen to me if I try to explain that Morrowseer must have been lying. They’ll give me that look I always get, the one that says: “Oh, silly little Sunny and her crazy dreams, isn’t she cute and harmless.”
She gazed up at the mass of dark trees overhead, where the moonbeams and raindrops skittered in the wind. Even if she tried to run off, she’d probably get her tail stuck in a tree branch and need to be rescued, and then her friends would get to roll their eyes and pat her on the head again.
It wouldn’t be like this in the desert, she thought. She looked across the stream at the other tunnel, the one that led to the Kingdom of Sand. There I could fly and fly and fly all the way to the horizon without ever stopping to think.
Not thinking sounded pretty appealing right now.
“You’re just as ordinary as any other dragon.”
Morrowseer’s spiteful words kept going around and around in her head. “I made up the whole prophecy…. Now the war will drag on endlessly, and more dragons will die every day, probably for generations. All of them wondering what happened to the amazing dragonets who were supposed to save them, but obviously failed.”
Sunny clenched her talons and crouched low to the ground. He was lying, he was lying, he was lying. She wouldn’t let these NightWings see her cry.
Glory climbed onto a boulder and flapped her wings loudly. Even up there, and even with her queenliest face on, Glory still looked like a dragonet, smaller than almost all the NightWings surrounding her.
If the prophecy is fake, then why was everyone so awful to Glory about not being in it? Sunny thought, feeling another surge of fury at Morrowseer. Why make her feel so useless — if we’re all useless?
Because it is real. It has to be.
But how can I prove it?
“NightWings,” Glory said firmly, speaking up to be heard over the shuffling dragons and the rainstorm. “Your home is gone. Your queen is dead. But this is your chance to start over. If you mess it up, you’ll lose this home, too.” She pointed to the RainWings. “You will treat these dragons with respect, and in return, because that’s the kind of dragons they are, they will be much kinder to you than you deserve.”
The RainWing across the stream from Sunny mustered an expression that looked almost fierce.
Rain splattered across Sunny’s snout and wings. The storm was picking up strength, ripping through the treetops way over their heads.
“Tonight you’ll stay right here,” Glory went on. “I don’t want any NightWings wandering off until we can count you and write you all down. You will each be assigned two RainWings to keep an eye on you. And yes, if you’re feeling like perhaps we don’t trust you very much, it’s because we don’t. None of you are welcome in the RainWing village until you earn that trust. We will find you somewhere else to live.”
“We’ll get wet out here,” one of the burlier NightWings complained.
Glory gave him a steely glare. “Feel free to go back and sleep on your nice dry island instead,” she snapped. “I hear it’s quite warm there.”
Sunny glanced around at the NightWings. Even in the moonlight, she could see that most of them looked badly shaken and subdued. Seeing their home buried by the volcano — even if they knew it would happen eventually, and even though the island had been a terrible place to live — it still must have been an awful shock.
Something like being told your whole life is a lie, I imagine.
A roar suddenly erupted from the crowd behind her. Black dragons surged toward Sunny, flapping their wings in alarm, as two deep-red RainWings dove into their midst and dragged a yowling, petrified NightWing in front of Queen Glory.