Smolder shook his head. “Mother was very strict and very careful. She had just the three daughters, so someone could inherit one day, but she didn’t want a lot of challengers. So she had no more eggs, and the rest of us were not allowed to have dragonets either.” He fell silent for a moment. “I was in love once. She was so angry when she found out…. I don’t even know what she did, but I never saw Palm again.”
“You should have better choices,” Sunny said, stamping her foot. “All three of your sisters are terrible.” Blaze let out another yowl of pain as Blister slashed her claws across her nose. Sunny had a feeling this fight could have been over already, but Blister was playing with Blaze, showing off for the audience.
“Why can’t someone else be queen?” Fatespeaker asked. “If Glory can be queen of the NightWings … who says it has to be a member of the royal family?”
“Good question,” said Glory.
“Who else would have the authority?” Starflight asked. “Why would the other SandWings listen to anyone else? If any dragon could take the throne, it’d be anarchy. There’d be challengers trying to grab it every other day.”
“I know,” Sunny said, “but still … if all the royal options are awful … it seems like there should be a way to give the SandWings someone else, a better queen.” Her wings drooped. After everything they’d been through, all the worry about the prophecy and all the danger they’d been in and all the dragons who’d tried to kill them … was this how it ended? They stopped the war, but gave the SandWings an evil queen? Was she supposed to say, “Oh, well, good enough?”
Flower wriggled off Smolder’s back and came over to pat Sunny’s talons in her odd comforting way. The little scavenger looked up at Sunny and squeaked, waving her paws.
“Scavengers are so crazy,” Tsunami said. She ducked her head to sniff at Flower. “Look at her, just standing here in the middle of all these dragons. Where’s her survival instinct? This is the one who stole the treasure, right? Hey, squish-face, this is all your fault, you know.”
Flower wrapped her arms around one of Sunny’s ankles and tugged as if she was trying to drag Sunny somewhere, squeaking loudly.
“What?” Sunny asked. She looked at Smolder. “What’s she trying to say?”
He shrugged. “I never know.”
Flower jumped up and down, flapping her paws. Sunny tilted her head, confused. The scavenger ran over to the pit of sand, flapped again, ran back to Sunny, tugged on her ankle, and ran back to the sand. To Sunny’s astonishment, Flower threw herself down and started to dig with her paws.
“What in the three moons …” Smolder said. “I’ll never understand scavengers.”
“She’s trying to tell us something,” Sunny said. She followed Flower to the sandpit, glancing up at the obelisk. Did Flower know that the dragon she’d killed — or helped to kill — was buried here? “This is a little morbid, Flower.”
Flower whacked Sunny’s front talons, pointed at the sand, shouted something like “YIBBLE FROBBLE!” and went back to digging.
“All right,” Sunny said, and she started to dig, too. What could she be trying to tell us?
“What are you doing?” Glory demanded.
“Digging,” Sunny said. She glanced up at Blaze and Blister. Blaze had three more bleeding wounds, and Blister was pacing smugly around her. Surely the fight couldn’t last much longer.
“Why?” Tsunami asked, coming to stand next to her.
“Because Flower wants me to,” Sunny said. “I don’t know, but it feels like maybe it’s important.”
Tsunami and Glory exchanged glances. Sunny could guess what those looks meant: “Another crazy Sunny idea. Look at her, following a scavenger’s instructions, as if that makes any sense.”
“Scoot over,” Tsunami said. She flexed her claws and drove them into the sand.
“You too,” Glory said to the scavenger, joining them.
Tsunami and Glory began to dig, wing to wing with Sunny. A moment later, she looked up and found Thorn digging busily beside her as well.
She tried to hide her smile, but she couldn’t.
Their talons swept the sand away quickly, and soon Sunny could see the gleam of white bones below them.
That’s Queen Oasis. Why does Flower want us to dig her up?
Before long, they had the front half of the dragon’s body uncovered. She was huge, too, even bigger than Burn. She must have been terrifying when she was alive.
Flower scrambled into the hole they’d dug and carefully climbed around the bones until she was standing beside the dragon’s skull. She tapped on the skull’s jaws and looked up at Sunny.
A sudden shiver went down Sunny’s spine, as if she knew what was about to happen, although she couldn’t have put it into words.
She reached down and pried open the queen’s mouth.
Inside were two sacks, falling apart and full of holes, but otherwise just like the one the scavengers had given her in the forest.
Behind her, she heard Glory gasp. She understood what this meant.