They’re coming to fight, for they know what’s right …
It was the eerie version they’d last heard in the Sky Palace, not the usual rousing bar song that Tsunami used to sing around the cave whenever she wanted to annoy the guardians. Sunny had been trapped in her birdcage, alone, on display above the banquet Scarlet was holding for Burn. But everyone there had heard it — the sound of the prisoners singing, echoing over the cliffs in the night. Sunny could remember the shivery, hopeful feeling it had given her, and she also remembered the expressions on some of the soldiers’ faces. Hope, dread, longing … most of them much more complicated than the pure fury visible on Scarlet and Burn.
She felt it again now, like sand trickling across her scales all the way down her spine. Those dragons singing — those were the dragons who believed in them. They were the reason she and her friends had to do this.
I hope we can do this. I really, really hope we can do this.
She glanced up at Clay, who smiled at her. Just being near him made her feel like anything was possible. Clay was so real and solid and dependable and kind. He would always be there.
Clay had kept all of them from killing each other as they grew up under the mountain, trapped with only one another and their guardians. If he hadn’t been there, would they have been more like the “alternates” — the fake dragonets of destiny — who’d hated one another? Could Tsunami, Glory, and Starflight have turned out that way, hostile and aggressive and angry all the time, if they hadn’t had Clay to keep them together? Would Sunny have ended up like Fatespeaker, clinging to a belief in a friendship and loyalty that didn’t exist?
But that hadn’t happened. They’d had Clay, and he stopped them from fighting too much, and he made jokes when anyone was sad, and he made them care about one another, and he believed in all of them. He’d made them a family, even though they were from different tribes.
He really is our bigwings.
“Let’s get back to the others,” she said, and he nodded, and soon they were winging their way back to the rainforest.
Six more days.
We can do this.
*
“She’s not coming?” Sunny cried. “What do you mean she’s not coming?” A shower of raindrops pattered over her wings, sending pink-and-red hibiscus flowers whirling down past her toward the ground far below.
Jambu shook his head, looking very literally blue from horns to tail. “We tried, but every IceWing we talked to basically laughed at us. They said Blaze never leaves her fortress, and she won’t until Glacier lets her go, which will be when Burn and Blister are dead.”
“They know if she gets near one of her sisters, she’s dead,” Mangrove said. “She doesn’t stand a chance in a challenge duel.”
“Then why do the IceWings support her?” Glory said crossly. “Don’t they want the SandWings to have a strong queen? No, of course they don’t,” she answered herself, figuring it out as she spoke. “The one kingdom they share a border with — wouldn’t it be great if it happened to be ruled by a vain, silly dragon who was totally in debt to them and did everything their queen ordered. Maddening for us, but sensible for them. Queen Glacier knows what she’s doing. Unless she loses — like if Blaze happened to die somehow — in which case she’d have to deal with Burn right on her border, all enraged and looking for vengeance. All right, yes, I can see why she’d keep her safely locked up. Three moons.”
“That was like watching her brain work on the outside of her head,” Fatespeaker said to Starflight.
“Well, we can’t let her stay all locked up,” Sunny said. “It’s not going to work unless all three sisters are there. Right? Don’t you agree?”
“Yes,” Glory said, and Tsunami and Starflight nodded as well. “If what you want is to forge a peace treaty, all the combatants need to be present to agree to it.” Glory scratched her snout, thinking. “Perhaps it would be enough to have Queen Glacier there … but I don’t think so. Glacier would know that it would look like weakness to come in her place and let Blaze stay in hiding. Safer for neither of them to show up.”
“But doesn’t Queen Glacier want to end the war, too?” Sunny said. “I’m sure she does. I’m especially sure she would if she knew what Burn and the MudWings were planning a few days ago, even if they’ve put off their invasion plans for now.”
“Are we sure about that?” Starflight asked. “They’re really not invading?”