“Do you want to stay here?” she asked him quietly. “I’d understand if you do.”
“No!” Starflight said. “I mean, I shouldn’t. I can’t.” He glanced at Sunny, who was sorting piles of sleeping darts into little bags that could go over the RainWings’ necks. She had none of the weapons other dragons had — no venom, no camouflage, no fireproof scales like Clay, not even the poisonous tail barb a SandWing should have. He’d never let her go off to a battle without him. Stay behind while his friends threw themselves into danger? How could she ever love him if he made that choice? “I promise I won’t be scared.”
“It’s normal to be scared,” Glory said. “I’m scared. You’d have to be crazy not to be — well, crazy or Tsunami, which is basically the same thing. You just have to push that aside and do what you have to anyway. But I meant, do you want to stay here because we’re going to fight your tribe? If it’s too much to ask, I understand if you want to sit this one out.”
“They’re not my tribe,” Starflight said. “You are. You and Sunny and Tsunami and Clay.”
“Aw, you big sap,” she said, but her wingtips went all rose-colored, and he knew Glory felt the same way even if she’d never say it out loud. “All right,” she said, punching his shoulder, a rare gesture of physical affection from her. “Let’s go change the world.”
She bounded to the tunnel opening and summoned the first wave of RainWings with a flick of her tail. They huddled, listening to her orders.
Starflight looked around at Sunny again.
I might die today.
What if she never knows?
What if I die without ever telling her how I feel?
He lifted his face toward the setting sun. He’d bluffed the NightWing guards. He’d escaped from the NightWing island. Surely he could say three words to one dragon.
When he looked down again, Sunny was right in front of him. His heart seized as though someone had wrapped fierce talons around it.
“We’re going to be all right,” she told him, shaking out her wings. “Just think of the prophecy. We have to be alive to stop the war, right? So we can’t die today. Isn’t that comforting?”
“I wish I had your optimism,” he said.
“It’s not optimism,” she objected. “It’s faith. There’s a reason we’re here. What we do today is part of it, but there’s more, too, and we have to survive to make it all happen.” Her smile made him feel as if lightning were crackling under his scales.
“Sunny,” he said hesitantly. “There’s something — I mean … something I’ve wanted to tell you. For a long time.”
“I’m listening,” she said, tilting her head.
Across the clearing, Glory was flaring her wings and waiting for silence. It was now or possibly never, depending on what happened today.
“I love you,” he blurted.
Sunny blinked, and then blinked a few more times. “I … I love you, too, Starflight.”
“No,” he said. “I mean — I mean you’re all I think about, and I want to be near you and it hurts when I’m not, and everything I do, I think, what would Sunny want me to do? And I think you’re the only dragon who sees me the whole way I am and likes me anyway.…” He thought, uncomfortably, of Fatespeaker and spotted her at the same time, across the clearing near Glory, watching the RainWing queen with her eyes wide and her head upturned. But his feelings for her and his feelings for Sunny … well, they couldn’t be the same.
“And I had to tell you,” he hurried on, “in case something happens to either one of us today, although if anything happens to you I don’t know how I’d be able to breathe or think or do anything ever again.”
“Oh my gosh, Starflight, stop,” Sunny said in a rush. “This — right now — how can I say anything, let alone the right thing, when we’re — when everything —?” She spread her wings helplessly, indicating the mob of RainWings around them.
“It’s all right,” Starflight said, and realized that he meant it. “Don’t say anything. You don’t have to. I just wanted you to know, just in case.”
She wrinkled her forehead, as if that didn’t seem right to her, but he twined his tail around hers and looked down at their talons sinking into the riverbank.
“Just promise me you’ll be safe,” he said.
“I hardly get to do anything in this battle,” she said fiercely. “You promise me you’ll be safe.”
He opened and closed his mouth, wishing he could promise that and mean it.
“Exactly,” she said. “So stop talking like a scroll and just tell me you’ll see me soon, OK?”
“I’ll see you soon,” he said, and for a moment her certainty made him believe it, too.
“Good luck. Kick a NightWing for me,” she said as Starflight stepped away, and then she pulled him back for a quick hug, and a moment later he found himself walking over to Glory, his mind a daze.
I did it. I told her. And the world didn’t collapse.