“Well,” Snowfall said, looking down her nose at a spot just behind his left ear. “That was unexpected.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
“Congratulations,” Lynx said. “You must have had such an adventure.” She had an unusual pattern of dark blue scales scattered across her white snout and wings. Winter had always found them pretty, but now they just reminded him of Moon’s silver scales. He wished he could tell Moon that he was number one in the rankings … although, of course, that wouldn’t mean anything to her.
“Indeed,” said Snowfall. “I can’t wait to hear all the details.”
On that ominous note, Winter was swept into a whirlwind of congratulations, questions, bowing, and advice. Every adult dragon in the palace had an opinion on how to maintain your spot, and many of them had suggestions for his future if he could keep first place all the way until his seventh hatching day. Behind them, Snowfall’s smirk clearly expressed that she didn’t expect it to last even a week.
One week, Qibli’s voice echoed in Winter’s head.
He still had five days to decide to go back to them. Four, since one would be needed for traveling.
What am I thinking? No one would EVER leave after reaching first place. This is every IceWing dragonet’s dream.
Firmly he focused his mind on the nobles around him.
Was it hours later that the courtyard finally cleared? The last noble gave him a respectful nod and flew away. Only a few dragonets remained, including Snowfall and Hailstorm, who were both staring at the rankings as if they could reshape them with the sheer force of their eyeballs.
Winter’s stomach ached with hunger, but he needed to talk to Hailstorm before going hunting. Maybe they could even go together — one of the things Winter had missed most while Hailstorm was away.
Was the dragonet in first place allowed to hunt with the dragonet in last? Could he lose his new ranking if he associated with someone in the Seventh Circle? There had never been such a gap between family members before, so he wasn’t quite sure what the protocol should be.
But he was going to talk to Hailstorm anyway. The watching dragons could eat the moons if they cared. He needed to reassure his brother that climbing back up the rankings could be done — and remind him that it had to be done fast, in case Hailstorm’s muddled memory couldn’t recall his hatching day.
The snow was packed down by the hundreds of dragon feet that had passed through this morning. Shards of blue sunlight reflected off the tallest towers, illuminating odd splotches of the courtyard.
Snowfall watched the brothers with slitted eyes as Winter slid up to Hailstorm.
“Are you all right?” Winter whispered.
Hailstorm frowned at him. “That’s not a very IceWing question,” he pointed out. He hesitated, and then bowed deeply to Winter.
“Stop it, stand up,” Winter hissed. What a horrible feeling, to have his exceptional older brother bowing to him like that. It made the whole world feel out of order, as if the palace had been flipped upside down. He tried to hide how flustered he was as Hailstorm stood back up. “It seems like a good sign that you remember what is and isn’t an IceWing question,” he pointed out.
“Of course I do,” Hailstorm said in a distant way. “Everything is very clear now that I’m home.”
And yet — the way he glanced at the sky … Winter wondered if he had really shaken off all those SkyWing memories yet. Perhaps he remembered how to be an IceWing, but he hadn’t yet found his way back to being Hailstorm. The brother Winter had missed for so long would have had a laughing comment about Winter’s new rank.
“Hailstorm,” Winter said hesitantly. “What did you tell Mother and Father?” He wished they’d thought to compare stories before coming home. He needed to know what he should say about Pyrite and where Hailstorm had been for the last two years.
“I told them the truth.” Hailstorm drew himself up, looking offended. “What else would I tell them?”
“The truth about … everything?” Winter asked. “About … about my friends, too?”
Hailstorm’s expression now was pure IceWing. “If that’s what you want to call them,” he spat. “Yes, I told them about your little band of misfits. I hoped they would promote you up the rankings — I owed you that much. But I did not expect them to raise you so high, not with the entire truth in front of them.” He fell silent, scowling at the wall again.
“This is ssssssssssssssssssoooooooo interesting, isn’t it?” Snowfall strutted toward them, casting arch looks at the circles. “Three moons, Hailstorm, I bet you feel so peculiar right now.”
“Leave him alone,” Winter growled.
She laughed. “There’s not quite enough distance between our numbers for you to be giving me orders,” she said. Her snout was smiling, but her voice was all murderous stalactites. “Besides,” she added, “I’m sure I won’t be the only dragon who wants to ask Hailstorm about the Diamond Trial. Are you considering it, Hailstorm dear? With only twelve days until you’re seven, I certainly hope so.”
Hailstorm didn’t answer her. Winter wondered if he remembered what the Trial was. It had never been attempted in Winter’s lifetime — he wasn’t even sure it had happened in his father’s lifetime. It was so rare for a dragonet to still be in the Sixth or Seventh Circle when he reached his seventh hatching day … and rarer still for any dragonet that inadequate to risk his life on the mysterious Trial.
But Hailstorm wasn’t inadequate; it was pure bad luck that had him so low right now. Whatever the Trial involved, surely he could conquer it easily.
“I mean, if you succeed, you’ll move up to first place,” Snowfall said archly. “Your life would be right back on track instantaneously.”
“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” Winter asked his brother. He couldn’t understand why Hailstorm was staring fixedly down at his talons.
“Oh, how funny, I wouldn’t have thought you’d want him to,” Snowfall went on, her voice sugary-sweet and mocking. “Have you forgotten that the Diamond Trial must also be undertaken by a defending challenger? That’s whoever is currently in first place, of course. But only one dragon can survive the Trial. Dear me, that means it’ll be brother against brother, won’t it? Tsk, tsk. What a conundrum for poor Hailstorm.”
Winter felt ice grip his heart and spread down to his talons, rooting him to the snow.
He had forgotten about that part of the Trial rules. Or rather, it had never occurred to him that he might be on the other end — the defending first-place dragonet instead of the struggling lower-circle challenger.
But Hailstorm knew exactly how it worked. He knew it would have to be him or Winter; that only one could survive.
And of course, Winter’s parents did, too.
This was their plan — to move a dragon into first place who would be no trouble for Hailstorm to defeat. Snowfall was Glacier’s daughter and formidable in her own way, only a few months from her hatching day. But Winter … Winter was expendable.
Sacrifice one brother to save the other.
They couldn’t give both of us high rankings — someone would have called it unfair. This is more dramatic, more like my parents; a higher risk for much higher gain.
They had to do it. Hailstorm’s future is too valuable to throw away.
He understood his parents’ motivations completely. Whatever happened at the Diamond Trial, they’d end up with a son in first place — and they’d get rid of a disgraceful last-place offender.
But Hailstorm …
His brother finally looked up at him, with those blue eyes sharp and alert once again. This is what you told me to do, his eyes seemed to say. You wanted me to be a true IceWing again. Well, here I am.
And without a word, Hailstorm turned and left the courtyard, leaving Winter behind as a new snow softly began to fall.
The summons arrived later that day.
Hailstorm’s messenger found Winter on one of the tallest spires, gloomily picking apart the seal he’d caught.
He hadn’t been able to find anywhere else to eat in peace; everywhere he went, dragons bowed or hurried over to offer him things or buzzed around with a million questions.
And as the day wore on, he’d heard the whispered phrase more and more.
The Diamond Trial … the Diamond Trial …
Every dragon over the age of three knew what it was, but no one could give him any details. The Trial was shrouded in mystery, and there was no one left in the palace who’d survived it, since it hadn’t been used in so long.
“Prince Winter,” said a clipped voice behind him, shaking Winter out of his thoughts. The messenger handed over a small slab of ice marked with precisely carved letters. She stepped back and bowed deeply. “Good luck, sir.”
According to the brief, impersonal message, the Trial was scheduled for sunset the next day.
What would happen if I did something terrible between now and then? Winter wondered. If I snubbed the wrong dragon, or dripped seal blood in the pristine courtyard, or broke one of the queen’s ice sculptures? Would I drop down the ranks? Would someone else have to face the Trial with Hailstorm?
He had a feeling nothing like that would work. The plan was in motion. And Narwhal wouldn’t put Snowfall into the Trial, no matter what Winter did. Queen Glacier would be too furious if she came back and found her daughter’s life in jeopardy.
And if he fled or tried to refuse the challenge, he’d bring shame upon his whole family, and cost Hailstorm any chance he had at climbing the rankings before his hatching day.
For a moment Winter turned the message slab over in his talons, and then he spread his wings. The only thing he could do was fight. Fight for his new position at the top of the rankings. Fight for his family’s melting honor.
Fight for his own life.
It was what Hailstorm and his parents would want him to do, even if they hoped he would lose in the end. He still had to go down like an IceWing warrior.
He spent the rest of the day in the palace library, looking for the Diamond Caves mentioned in the summons. He’d never heard of them, but there they were on an old map. If the Ice Kingdom’s peninsula was shaped like a dragon’s head, the caves were located where her frostbreath would come out.
Diamond Caves. The most famous Diamond in IceWing history was Queen Diamond, the mother of Prince Arctic, the animus who had been stolen by Foeslayer and the NightWings. As a young dragon, Queen Diamond had given the tribe the gift of healing — five narwhal horns enchanted to cure frostbreath injuries in case any IceWing ever wounded another. But there had been a few other Diamonds over the years as well. He wondered if the caves and the Trial were named after one of the historic Diamonds, and why.
He slept poorly that night, troubled by dreams of Moon and Qibli and Hailstorm all in danger, their scales melting and shifting into other colors as he searched for them in the halls of the ice palace. Every time he woke, he wondered why he hadn’t been visited by Scarlet again. He could only imagine her wrath when she discovered that Pyrite/Hailstorm was gone.
The next morning he found Lynx and asked her to train with him. The familiar fighting patterns came naturally, and focusing on her attacks helped drive out all the other worries in his head. They leaped and wrestled in the snow outside the palace until they were exhausted.
Afterward, as they washed each other’s dark blue blood off their claws and scales, they heard wingbeats and looked up.
Queen Glacier was back. Behind her flew two generals and Icicle.
Winter watched them soar into the palace. He wondered what the queen would think of Narwhal’s scheme. Would she stop it? Would she rearrange the rankings before sunset? Could she do that, even with the summons already issued?
If she could, she didn’t. A few hours later, she was among the twelve dragons assembling in the courtyard to fly to the Diamond Caves.
“Prince Winter,” she said, and he bowed as deeply as he could. The IceWing queen was huge and majestic, far more beautiful and imposing than any other queen in Pyrrhia. He wondered if he was only imagining that he could see sympathy in her eyes.
“You’ve served the tribe well, returning Prince Hailstorm to us,” she said. “I wish you luck in the Trial.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” he said. There was an uncomfortable prickle at the back of his neck that he suspected meant Hailstorm was nearby, staring at him.
“You will fly alongside me on the way to the caves,” she said. “I wish to hear about everything that has happened since you left us for Jade Mountain. I’ve heard your sister’s version of events, but I suspect another perspective would be instructive.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” he said. “May I ask what’s going to happen to Icicle?”
She looked grave. “It’s a good question. Queen Glory is … not like other queens. I thought she would demand Icicle’s execution, but instead she said she would leave Icicle’s punishment entirely to me in exchange for something unusual: a cutting from our moon globe tree.”
“What does that mean?” Winter asked.
“I wasn’t sure either,” said the queen. “Apparently with plants, you can take a piece of it and bury that somewhere else, and then a new plant will grow from that piece. The idea, I think, is that she wants to grow moon globe trees in her rainforest, to bring the gift of light to the RainWings and NightWings.”
“Oh,” Winter said, startled. He didn’t know quite how to wrap his head around this. “Will it work?”
“It might,” said Queen Glacier. “The tree is enchanted to behave like a real tree. And I can see how such a thing would benefit her tribes greatly, although, as I said, it’s an unusual queen who would choose a path toward peace and cooperation over clear and simple vengeance.” She flicked her wings, frowning thoughtfully. “The question is whether her tribes will be satisfied with this solution. I suppose we’ll see. It may partly depend on how I ultimately punish Icicle, but I haven’t decided that yet.”
They lifted off into a cloudy gray sky, flying southwest with Tundra and Narwhal in the lead and Hailstorm trailing at the back, as befitted his last-place ranking. Winter had to struggle to keep up with Queen Glacier’s pace, but she didn’t seem to notice.
And since he had a feeling he was about to die, he told her almost everything — about Icicle trying to kill Starflight and how Winter stopped her; about the rainforest and the volcano; about going in search of Scarlet, meeting Pyrite, and encountering the mysterious NightWing in the valley.
He left out a few things, though. Moon’s powers and her prophecy. The fact that his friends were waiting for him in Possibility at that very moment. The way he felt about them, especially Moon.
The queen only stopped him once during his story. “Who?” she asked.
He paused, startled. “Your Majesty?”
“You said there was an IceWing with the Talons of Peace.” Queen Glacier shot a glance at the hole in the clouds where a piece of sunlight had muscled through. “Who was it?”
“His name was Cirrus,” Winter answered. “I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. He was … confusing.”
“We haven’t had a Cirrus in many years,” the queen mused. “And I don’t recall any IceWings leaving us for the Talons of Peace — unless they were from the lower classes, outside the rankings. Perhaps that’s why I don’t know him. Or perhaps he changed his name.”
“He acted like an aristocrat,” Winter said. It hadn’t even occurred to him that Cirrus might be from the outskirts of the Ice Kingdom. That would explain why he didn’t tell Winter his ranking, though. “He implied that he knew my parents, but in a way that seemed like he was lying.”
“Hmm,” Queen Glacier said. “I’ll look into it. Go on.”
Most of the clouds had cleared and the sky was shading into a brilliant orange-red when they finally dove out of the sky toward a snow-covered evergreen forest clustered at the base of an enormous white cliff.
Pine needles jabbed Winter’s snout as he dropped through the trees to the fore
st floor. The scent of the pines surrounded them and the snow crunched like crushed paper under their talons. He thought of the Pyrite scroll spell, now carefully tucked away in the skyfire pouch around his ankle.
A cave mouth yawned in the side of the cliff, glittering with stalactites as sharp as teeth. Ice covered the walls, floor, and ceiling all the way into the tunnel, as far as Winter could see before darkness took over. He touched the moon globe over his shoulder, making sure it was there and still working.
“Princes Winter and Hailstorm,” the queen said briskly. “Your task is simple. Enter the Diamond Caves and search until you find the frozen dragon by the river chasm. Touch one of these spears to her.” She took two gleaming, diamond-tipped spears from one of her guards and handed them to the brothers, one apiece. “Whoever returns shall take first place in the rankings. The other … we bid farewell.”
Huh. Ominous and unspecific, snarked Qibli’s voice in Winter’s head.
Narwhal stepped forward and tipped his long snout down to study his sons. “Remember, be strong,” he said. “Be vigilant. Strike first.”
“Restore our family’s rank,” added Tundra.
Narwhal’s gaze rested on Winter for a moment. “Farewell,” he said finally. “Whichever of you does not return, I know you will accept defeat with honor.”
Sounds great, Winter thought, feeling light-headed. Always wanted some defeat with a side of honor.
He had a feeling he should say something here, but Hailstorm was already pivoting and marching into the cave. Winter glanced around at the assembled IceWings one more time. Was this the last time he would see his parents? His queen and the sky?
When he’d said good-bye to Moon — had it really been forever?
He found he didn’t have anything to say to his parents after all.
Winter turned in silence and followed Hailstorm into the icy tunnel.
* * *
The Diamond Caves, according to the one map Winter had found, apparently stretched for miles in a kind of underground labyrinth with only one exit. Walls of ice hemmed them in on all sides, glittering blue-white in the light of their moon globes. In places, the ceiling brushed the horns on Winter’s head. In others, they had to creep along narrow ledges over dark crevasses, gripping the ice with their claws, because if they tried to fly into that vast dark space they might not find their way back before tiring and falling to their deaths.