“Won’t your Outclaws save us?” Sunny asked, wading through the papers to the desk. She ran her talons all over it, but there were no drawers and no place for a hidden extra key.
“If they’re smart, they’ll fly for the hills the moment they hear that Burn is coming,” said Thorn. “They’ll expect me to run and meet them at the Scorpion Den. Act smart, stay alive, stick together but don’t be an idiot — those are our basic rules.” She picked up a scroll and ripped it furiously down the middle.
“All right, so we do that,” Sunny said. “We figure a way out of here. I know we can.” She twisted to look around the library, searching for anything she could use to pick the lock. Not that she had any idea how to do that, but she’d read about someone doing it in a scroll once.
There were no windows, so no way to call out for help. The light came from a small chandelier of hanging oil lamps high above them. The ceiling was tall but made of solid stone. The door was the only way out.
“What about your SkyWing friend?” Thorn said. “Might she guess what’s happened and come looking for us?”
Sunny shifted her wings and shook her head. “I doubt it. If she hears Burn is coming, I’m sure she’ll free Scarlet and run, too.” She stepped back and stared at the door. The wooden door. “But if she could burn down this door, we should be able to do the same thing, right?”
“Wait!” Thorn cried as Sunny drew in a breath. She spread her claws at the mess around them. “It’s not safe. If you set the door on fire, it could spread to the papers in here. The whole room could be in flames in a heartbeat, and we’d burn to death before we made it out.”
That was a horribly good point. Sunny guessed that that had occurred to Smolder as well. He was more cunning than he looked, perhaps as cunning as Blister. He’d also cleverly found a way to separate them from Peril.
“Well,” Sunny said, “I suspect I’d rather burn to death than end up stuffed in Burn’s collection. But I think I can do it carefully — I’m pretty good at aiming small flames. Let me try, all right?”
Thorn hesitated, then nodded. Sunny was pleased. She was pretty sure her friends wouldn’t have trusted her to do anything this risky.
She swept papers away from the door with her tail until it was surrounded by a half circle of clear stone floor. Then she leaned forward, opened her mouth, and hissed, letting fire build up in the back of her throat. It felt fierce and hot, like she’d swallowed the sun, and she never liked using it for long. Aiming carefully, she breathed a small jet of flame in an arc around the lock.
The thick wood turned black where the fire touched it, and smoke curled from the gash left behind. Nothing burst into flames … not yet anyway.
Sunny did the same thing again, trying to trace the same line, over and over, four more times, until she saw a glimmer of light on the other side. She jammed her claws into the blackened wood and twisted them around, digging and slashing until the whole lock came loose and thumped into her talons.
“I did it!” she whispered to her mother as the door swung a few inches open.
Sunny turned and found her mother holding a folded square of thick papyrus paper, with the word Thorn scrawled across the front in black ink.
“There is a letter for me,” said Thorn curiously. “He wasn’t lying about that part. How odd.” She flipped it over and opened it.
“Mother, we really have to go,” Sunny said, but her voice trailed off as she saw the expression on her mother’s face. “Mother? Thorn?”
“It’s from him,” Thorn said, glancing up at Sunny. “From your father. Listen: ‘Dearest Thorn. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t use my powers for the NightWings any longer, or I’ll lose myself completely. So I’m running away, and I’d like you to come, too. Meet me at Jade Mountain. I’ll wait for you as long as I have to. I love you. Stonemover.’ ” Her voice trailed off.
“Jade Mountain!” Sunny cried. “There’s supposed to be a dragon who lives there — maybe it’s Stonemover! Oh, maybe he’s still waiting for you, after all these years! Isn’t that romantic?”
“That frog-faced blob of camel spit!” Thorn shouted abruptly, making Sunny jump. She crumpled the paper in her front talons, threw it to the ground, and smashed it with one of her feet. “All these years? He’s alive, he’s not a prisoner, and he’s known exactly where I was this whole time, but he never once came to look for me or tried to contact me?”
“Well,” Sunny faltered, “maybe he thought you got his letter but didn’t want to be with him.”
“So send me another letter!” Thorn cried. “Try a little harder! Don’t be a jerboa-head!” She stomped past Sunny and into the hall, checking in both directions. “Come on, let’s run for it. I saw a courtyard this way.”
They bolted down the long stone corridor and swerved to the right at the end. Sunny could see a patch of blue sky up ahead, beyond a wall of dark red columns. She started to unfold her wings as she ran.
“The prisoners!” a voice shouted behind her. “Prisoners escaping!”