With a massive effort, Starflight focused on the details of the room around him. Think about what you see. Don’t think about anything else.
First, there weren’t actually hundreds of dragons staring at him. He did a quick estimate, hiding his other thoughts inside mountains of numbers. Maybe forty. About forty black dragons filled the cave, most of them as large as Morrowseer, which meant they must be quite old. They were all as thin as the dragonets in the dormitory, and many of them had worn patches on their scales, sores on their snouts and wings, and traces of blood around their nostrils. These dragons looked like the tribal opposite of the colorful, healthy, well-fed RainWings.
There was a clear spot on the cave walls right across from him. It looked like a circle had been carved into the rock, as wide across as Starflight’s wingspan, and then jabbed full of small holes, none of them bigger than a dragon’s eye.
The other dragons kept glancing at this circle as if waiting for it to do something.
On a ledge beside the circle perched a dragon with a scar rippling down her chest. Her wings drooped in an odd way, as if they were weighted down with rocks, and she wore a cluster of diamonds around her neck. Another chain of smaller teardrop diamonds was wound around the horns on her head.
But that can’t be the queen, Starflight thought. She didn’t have authority in her bones. She didn’t radiate power all the way through her wingtips, like the other queens he’d met.
It took him only a moment of puzzling this out before he realized that there must be a dragon behind the screen, staring through those holes at him. A chill sliced through his scales. Nobody could see her, but her presence filled the cave like heavy smoke.
The queen of the NightWings.
The scrolls always referred to her as mysterious and unknown, but Starflight hadn’t imagined that she would keep herself hidden even from her own tribe.
Why?
Because it’s extra-terrifying, he answered himself.
“This is him?” barked one of the dragons.
“Yes,” Morrowseer growled. “We snatched him from the rainforest this morning.”
Wings rustled uneasily all around the cave.
“Has he told us anything?” asked another dragon. “What do they know? What are they planning?”
“How soon will they attack?” growled another.
“And how did that RainWing escape?” another one shouted as several dragons began to speak at once. “We’ve heard reports that there was a MudWing with her. A MudWing! How did he get here? Why didn’t we kill them before they got away?”
They’re talking about Glory and Clay, Starflight thought with a shudder.
“That’s the RainWing I warned you about,” Morrowseer snarled. “The one the Talons of Peace got to replace the SkyWing they lost.” He spat into the lava. “This is exactly why I told them to kill her.”
“A RainWing, of all things,” said the dragon with the diamonds. “What an unfortunate mistake.”
“We had her,” said a dragon with twisted horns. “Here. In our talons. And nobody killed her?”
“Who knows what she saw?” cried another dragon. “If she warns the RainWings what we’re planning —”
“She can’t possibly know that,” Morrowseer said.
“She knows about the tunnel between our kingdoms,” challenged a dragon from the far wall. “And that little one escaped with her. She’ll have told her everything she saw in the fortress. What if they figure it out?”
A clamor of voices filled the cave.
Figure what out? Starflight looked down at his talons and wished they weren’t shaking so much. He was half afraid that he’d tremble himself off balance and into the lava, but that wasn’t even in the top twenty things he was worrying about right now. What are they planning?
He glanced up at the screen where the queen was hidden. She hadn’t spoken at all yet. But he could feel her watching; from the way his skin prickled, he thought she hadn’t taken her eyes off him since he’d entered the cave.
All at once, the dragon with the diamonds leaned toward the screen, tilting her head.
A hush fell instantly around the room. Nothing moved except the bloop-bloop of bubbles in the lava. Every NightWing present seemed to be holding his or her breath.
Starflight didn’t hear anything — no queen’s voice issuing regally from her hiding spot — but the diamond dragon nodded and straightened up again.
“Queen Battlewinner says to shut up and ask him.” To his horror, she pointed at Starflight. “That’s why he’s here. Make him tell us what they know and what they’re going to do next.”
The listening dragons all swiveled their heads toward him.
Falling into the lava suddenly sounded like a pretty great option.
“Um,” Starflight stammered several times. “I — I — um —”
“Speak or I kill you right now,” Morrowseer growled behind him.
Starflight pressed his front talons together and took a deep breath. “Her name is Glory,” he blurted.