Thorn stopped again and stared down at her, worry filling her dark eyes. “I didn’t know that. That’s what was happening to him? I wonder if he knew…. He must have known. Why didn’t he tell me?” She flicked her tail thoughtfully, furrowing her brow.
“So then —” Sunny prompted her.
“So then I was afraid the NightWings would come after your egg if they knew about it. That’s why I buried it in the desert; that’s why I asked Dune to help me look after it. I had no idea he was with the Talons of Peace — and even if I had known, I wouldn’t have guessed that would make him steal my egg. Would you?”
“Here we are,” Smolder called, and they realized he’d stopped in the tunnel ahead, next to a dark wooden door. He selected a delicate gold key and unlocked it, then had to shove hard to get the door open.
Sunny realized why as they squeezed inside behind him. He wasn’t kidding about the mess. Piles of scrolls had toppled over to block the door, and there were papers and glass paperweights and small carved onyx lizards scattered all across the small, square room. If there had ever been any system of organization, there was no way to tell now.
“This is not Burn’s favorite place,” Smolder said, stepping around the piles gingerly and still knocking over several more with his tail. “I can’t guarantee she’s ever been in here, in fact. And our mother wasn’t the most organized dragon in the world either. I tried once to put it all in order. As you can see, I was wildly successful.”
“Hmm,” Sunny and Thorn said, the same noncommittal noise at the same time.
Smolder gave them an amused look. “And while I was organizing, I discovered that we have a system for intercepting messages that go across the Kingdom of Sand. Well, Queen Oasis had a system. Again, I’m not sure Burn knows or cares about it. But we have dragons who pose as messengers and other dragons who are instructed to attack real messengers, and so a fair percentage of the letters sent in our realm come here instead. Presumably so that we can scan them for hints of rebellion or assassination schemes, which, clearly, we are keeping careful track of around here.” He waved his claws at the disaster-strewn library. “I guess that’s how it seemed like my mother always knew everything. I keep it going in case we need it one day, even though no one has time to review all this. In any case, I thought I saw one marked ‘Thorn.’ Which I carefully filed somewhere useful, I’m sure.”
Smolder dug his talons into a pile of scrolls and Sunny realized with a start that there was a desk there, underneath the drifts of paper. “Help me look?” he suggested.
Thorn and Sunny waded in and began peering at scrolls and mini scrolls and thick papyrus notes with scrawls of black ink on them. Sunny’s wings toppled over a stack of thin, scraped stone tablets that turned out to have messages carved on them as well.
“Are you sure about this?” Thorn asked after they’d searched for a few minutes. “Maybe you remembered wrong. Or maybe it wasn’t anything important.”
“Maybe,” Smolder said, lifting a bowl filled with dried leaves and peering at the papers underneath. “I’m pretty sure I remember it looked important, though.”
Sunny wished she had time to read everything in here, or a way to bring it all back to Starflight. So many scrolls. So many scraps of dragons’ lives, moments and messages caught in between sent and never received. I wonder if the world would be different if some of these letters had gotten to where they were supposed to go.
Claws scrabbled on the stone in the hall outside, and Smolder went to the doorway to poke his head out.
“What is it?” he called as two guards rushed by.
“A wing approaching from the northeast,” one of them called back. “Might be Burn.”
Sunny’s head snapped up and she flapped her wings at her mother. We have to get out of here.
“Oh, great moons, at last,” Smolder said. “Sorry about this, you two.”
“Sorry about what?” Sunny asked, turning toward him just as he jumped out of the room and slammed the door on them.
“NO!” Thorn roared.
Sunny leaped over the scrolls and grabbed the door handle, but she could hear the key turning in the lock already. She threw herself against the wood, but it was solid and only bruised her shoulder.
“Smolder, don’t do this!” she shouted through the door. “Don’t give us to Burn! Please!”
“I can’t let you waltz out of here,” he said, his voice faint and muffled. “I saw what Burn did to my brothers. I know how to stay alive. Like I said, I’m sorry.”
Sunny pounded on the door. “At least give us a fair chance to fight her! Smolder!”
But she could hear his tail slithering away into the palace.
He was gone.
Leaving her and her mother locked in, trapped and waiting for Burn.
Thorn picked up an onyx lizard and hurled it across the library. “Blood-red eggs and fireballs!” she shouted. “I’m going to flay that dragon alive!”