Battlewinner nodded, her heavy shoulders sliding up out of the lava and back down again. Her black tongue flicked in and out again, and this time he saw that it also had a layer of thin shimmering frost on it.
“You got blasted by an IceWing,” he said slowly. “You must have been on the continent when you … ran into one, is that it? And you fought, and it hit you, but not on the outside … maybe your mouth was open and it went right in and down your throat to freeze your insides. Which means you should have been dead within a day.”
The queen flicked her wings back, scattering sizzling orange droplets around. “Not so easy,” she growled.
“To kill you,” Starflight finished. “You made it back here. And the lava — the lava stops the effects of the freezing? Is that it?”
“Indeed.” The queen hissed again. “A balance.”
“But how —” Fatespeaker said. “I mean, how did you know the lava wouldn’t just kill you right away?”
Starflight could imagine it clearly — Battlewinner on the continent, perhaps looking for a new home for the NightWings, running into an IceWing and nearly dying in battle. But she staggered back through that long, awful flight to the island, feeling colder and colder and closer to death by the minute. The fire that burned inside fire-breathing dragons like NightWings and SkyWings would have been working against the ice to keep her alive for a while, but it wouldn’t be enough to save her.
By the time she’d made it to the island, she would have been shivering violently and feeling terribly sick as her stomach and intestines began to freeze and fuse together, spreading the icy plague out from her organs toward her scales. At that point, he could imagine she felt so cold that diving into lava sounded better than anything. Even if it killed her — and maybe she expected it to — it couldn’t be worse than what she was already feeling.
And instead it saved her life. Queen Battlewinner was alive now, but the frostbreath was still inside her. She could never leave the lava, or else it would finish its work.
The rest was details, although he was still curious about all of it — like who knew her secret besides Greatness, how this room had been built and the screens put in, how the cauldron had been filled with lava and prepared for her. He wondered if she could still eat, or if she existed in kind of a suspended state, right on the edge of death.
The queen was watching him closely, perhaps reading his mind as he put all the pieces together. He guessed that speaking was painful, scraping and cracking the ice in her throat and mouth, and that was why she did as little of it as she possibly could.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her finally. “It seems like an awful thing, what’s happened to you.”
Battlewinner’s head spikes flattened and her snout lifted. “No pity,” she snarled. “Revenge. Soon.”
That sounded ominous, but worrying about IceWings would have to wait. Starflight reached out and took one of Fatespeaker’s talons in his.
“We wanted to talk to you about the prophecy,” he said hesitantly. “We’re afraid Morrowseer is being too cruel and interfering too much.”
The queen cut him off with a barking laugh and then doubled over in pain, clutching her neck. After a moment, she recovered enough to glare at him.
“Do as he says,” she hissed. “The prophecy is everything.”
“But he sent Squid away to die today,” Fatespeaker pleaded. “And he says he’s going to kill me or Starflight. And the RainWing prisoners are being treated so terribly. Please, it doesn’t have to be like this, does it?”
“Anything to … save the tribe,” said the queen. She began to sink down into the lava. “Leave now.”
“Wait, please,” cried Fatespeaker.
But lava was already closing over the dark dragon’s head.
She was gone. They had failed.
Fatespeaker and Starflight trudged back to the dormitory in weary silence. He hoped against hope that dawn was farther away than Deathbringer had said, but he had a feeling Morrowseer would be breathing angry heat into his face within a horribly short span of time.
“Poor Squid,” Fatespeaker said, pausing outside the dormitory entrance. “I guess now we’ll have to work with your SeaWing instead.” She sighed and headed back to her sleeping spot.
Chills rippled through Starflight’s scales like the clouds billowing outside the skylight. Tsunami. That was who he had to warn. Morrowseer had said, “We have another SeaWing. We just have to retrieve her from the rainforest.” Had they gone after her already? Had they tried? Was she all right?
I can warn her. If it’s not too late …
He hurried to his bed and scrabbled among the rocks until he found the tiny hole where he’d stashed the dreamvisitor. This time he’d find someone in the rainforest who would listen to him. He had to.
He pulled the blanket over himself again and cupped the jewel in his talons, then pressed it to his head. Tsunami. Please be there. Tsunami.