“It is disturbing,” he admitted, “but tell me anyway, if it’s about Icicle.”
“I can’t sense her anywhere.” Moon shook her head. “I’ve been listening as hard as I can since we got to the rainforest, but there’s no sign of her.”
“Maybe she left already,” Winter said. “Maybe she figured out where Scarlet is and went to confront her.” He checked behind him and saw only Qibli battling the vines and mud. If Kinkajou was there, it was impossible to tell. What he wouldn’t give for camouflage scales. Then he could slip through the trees without Glory or any guards spotting him; he could find Icicle and get her away from here before anything terrible happened.
Anything else terrible, that is.
Are you really wishing you were a RainWing right now? he scolded himself. Wouldn’t Mother and Father love to hear about that.
Now was the time to ditch these dragons. Before his thoughts got any more entangled. He could fall behind Qibli, wait until no one was paying attention, and then take off. Now that he had the skyfire, Moon wouldn’t be able to find him by his thoughts. He’d hunt down Icicle and they’d go get Hailstorm together. Or if he couldn’t find her, he’d go back to the Ice Kingdom on his own, like he’d originally planned.
He paused for half a step, letting Moon slip ahead of him. Another minute, and then …
Moon suddenly froze, digging her talons into the ground. Instinctively Winter and Qibli froze, too.
“Search party coming this way,” she whispered. “We have to hide!” She turned and pushed Winter toward a nearby fallen tree covered with moss and winding yellow flower vines. “Under there — can you fit?”
“I’d rather fight them,” Winter objected.
“They’ll think you’re Icicle and lock you up,” Kinkajou’s voice said from the air.
“Unless they kill you first,” Qibli said. “Which I realize I should be more enthusiastic about, but for some reason I’m not. Come on.” He tugged on one of Winter’s wings, then dove under the tree himself, rolling into a ball in the shadows.
Winter reluctantly followed, crouching until his underbelly was sliding across the wet leaves. Dangling curls of damp moss caught on his horns and something scuttled down his spine as he wedged himself in next to Qibli’s warm scales.
“Oh, why are you so glittery?” Kinkajou fretted from outside the hiding hole. “Nothing natural is that color.”
“It’s all right,” Moon whispered back. “Just try to cover us and stay as still as you can.”
“I’ll have you know I was a hide-and-seek champion,” Kinkajou started. “No one —”
“Shhh,” Moon said, and a moment later, Winter was startled to feel her sliding in beside him. The silver scales by her eyes caught the light for a moment as she turned her head, listening. He could feel the whole length of her body breathing softly, anxiously.
“That’s better,” Kinkajou whispered. “I can’t see him anymore.”
Winter covered the skyfire pouch with one of his talons and tried to breathe. Maybe this was what Moon had meant when she said reading his mind was confusing. He couldn’t even tell what he was feeling. Furious, trapped, frustrated — grateful, safe, alone, protected — on fire — wanting the wrong things, hating himself — confused, confused, confused.
His mind flashed back to the first time he’d done a rankings test out in a storm with Hailstorm and Icicle. They’d lost him as soon as they could, each striking out on their own. It made sense, even to a one-year-old dragonet struggling through a blizzard. Nobody wanted to risk letting someone else drag down their ranking number.
So what were these dragons doing? Why were they risking the wrath of their queens by helping him?
Moon’s scales rippled as she shifted quietly. Was that her heartbeat he could feel, thundering in the places where their wings were pressed together, or was that his own?
He closed his eyes and tried to stop thinking.
A few eternities passed, and then finally Moon whispered, “They’re gone.”
“Then get out of the way and let me out,” Winter said in a strangled voice that came out more harshly than he’d meant it to.
She rolled instantly away, and he wriggled after her until he stood blinking in the green rainforest light again. Qibli emerged, stretching out his wings and shaking his tail.
“Careful with that thing,” Winter snapped, glaring at the poisonous barb as it swung back and forth.
“If you ever get stabbed by my tail, I promise it won’t be by accident,” Qibli said haughtily. “Moon, wait up!” She was already moving away, toward the sound of a waterfall in the distance, and the SandWing hurried after her.
I could leave now, Winter thought, feeling as though his talons were paralyzed with indecision. I should leave now. That would be the smart IceWing thing to do.
“The words you’re looking for are ‘thank you,’ ” Kinkajou said, materializing suddenly beside him. Winter jumped. “Thank you, Moon, for warning me and hiding me and helping me even though I am an enormous super jerk sometimes.” She flounced off into the trees, her orange scales fading back into the green of the leaves.
Winter hesitated … and then followed her.
They’re still useful to me, he thought. I have a better chance of finding Icicle if I stay with them. But just for now.
Soon, he promised himself. I’ll leave soon.
When Winter caught up to the others, they were gathered at the base of a huge tree beside a waterfall, staring up at a hole in the trunk. There was something immediately and indefinably uncomfortable about this place. It was like a spot of thin ice on a frozen lake, where the cool safety of the upper world came too close to the dark depths below.
“That’s the tunnel to the NightWing island,” Kinkajou said softly. Her voice was never that quiet or wobbly. Winter squinted at her. Was she afraid of the place for some reason?
“You can wait here if you want,” Moon said, brushing Kinkajou’s tail with her own. “If it’s too — too anything.”
“I’m all right,” Kinkajou said. She flared the ruff behind her ears and deliberately turned her scales dark blue. “I just haven’t been back since the whole … thing.”
“Whoa,” Qibli said, making the connection before Winter did. “I didn’t realize you were — you’re one of the RainWings they —”
“Imprisoned and experimented on,” Moon finished for him.
“It wasn’t quite as horrible as it sounds,” Kinkajou said. “Only mostly that horrible.”
Winter had to take a deep breath and poke the feeling he was having to be sure he was having it. Respect for Kinkajou? Surprise that a dragon as silly as her could have survived what the NightWings did to the RainWings? He’d heard only rumors, really — stories that had spread after the war ended. Tales of NightWings abducting harmless RainWings, dragging them back to the volcanic island, chaining them up, and forcing them to use their venom so the NightWings could study it.
It sounded unforgivable to him. But Kinkajou did not act like a dragon with a grudge; she didn’t seem to hate the NightWings at all. Even though she clearly should. Yet she treated Moon like a best friend …
Because Moon is different, whispered his treacherous mind. Because she would never do what the other NightWings did.
“But you don’t hate them,” Qibli said, echoing Winter’s thoughts. “That’s fascinating.”
“Well — they’re not my favorite dragons,” Kinkajou admitted, squirming. “Except Moon, of course, and Deathbringer is usually pretty great. But, you know, they’re trying to change. They have to. And with Glory as their queen, they won’t do any more awful things.”
“We’ll see,” Winter muttered.
Moon flew up to the hole and stepped inside, then twisted to look back at them. “Winter, come look at this.”
Just inside the mouth of the tunnel was a squashed wet leaf shaped a bit like a scavenger’s paw. When Winter crouched to sniff it, it felt colder than the tunnel around them.
<
br /> “Did she go this way?” he asked Moon.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I still can’t hear her, but maybe that’s why, if she’s at the volcano.”
Winter started down the tunnel, walking straight into that unsettling wrong-feeling air. He heard the shuffling wings of the others falling in behind him.
Heat crackled along his scales as he glimpsed the end of the tunnel, and he paused. This was worse than the damp rainforest heat — this was the kind of heat where he wouldn’t be able to use his frostbreath. And there was something blurring his sight … bits of ash, maybe, drifting through the air.
He took a deep breath and stepped out into a cave, his talons sinking instantly into a layer of ash that covered the floor. It was dark and nearly impossible to see, but a faint gray light scraped the walls on either side of him. Winter took a step forward as Moon emerged behind him and breathed out a small plume of fire.
Sharp claws seized Winter’s heart. The shape of a huge dragon loomed overhead, its wings outstretched, its talons reaching toward him.
“He’s dead,” Moon said quickly. “Whoever he is. He’s gone — this is just the shape of him left behind.” She edged forward and tapped one of the grasping talons. The dragon didn’t move. “I wonder who it was.”
Winter’s breath slowly returned. He carefully made his way around the petrified dragon, trying not to touch the statue of hardened ash. There was a tunnel he could just squeeze into, although it was clogged with ash and the floor was a field of cooled lava that was still too hot for Winter’s liking. It was a relief when he reached open air and was able to spread his wings and fly.
This, then, at last, was the secret home of the NightWings.
He circled, studying everything below him, and felt his triumph dimming.
The island was smaller than Winter could have imagined. It made him feel instantly claustrophobic, even with (or perhaps because of) the vast ocean lurking in all directions. Dense black ripples of lava flows covered everything he could see, still glowing orange and yellow in places where liquid fire was spilling through the cracks. A mountain cut jaggedly into the sky — the volcano itself — but it looked as if the top had been smashed in, leaving a smoking hole.
Had the air been this impossible to breathe before the volcano erupted? Thick gray clouds, heavy with ash and smoke and sizzling with lightning, stretched across the sky. Everything smelled of sulfur and fire and death.
Winter couldn’t imagine anyone actually living here. What did the NightWings eat, in a place so empty of life? How could they sleep, with the promise of fiery death smoking and muttering over their heads all the time? Who would raise their dragonets in such a hideous place?
It felt like a whale smacking him in the face, how suddenly and completely he understood Moon’s mother and her decision to hide Moon in the rainforest. The stranger question was why other NightWings hadn’t done the same.
Afraid to disobey their queen, probably, he guessed. IceWings followed Queen Glacier’s orders with unquestioning obedience as they were handed down through the levels of the aristocracy. It was like obeying your parents; no one would ever think to do otherwise.
But IceWings had the entire Ice Kingdom, the safest and most purely beautiful place to live in all of Pyrrhia. It was the polar opposite of this nightmare. Queen Glacier took care of them. The NightWing queen could not have cared about her subjects at all, if she kept them rotting in a place like this.
“Oh!” Kinkajou gasped, soaring up beside him with Moon and Qibli. “Look, their fortress — it’s totally destroyed!” She pointed to the smoking volcano.
Winter hadn’t even noticed the outline of walls poking through the lava. But now that he looked, he could see the clear shape of the wrecked structure. One of the towers looked eerily like his own flight training tower in Glacier’s palace.
“I had no idea,” Moon said. “I mean, I’ve seen the island in their heads, but I never felt this — Mother never said — it’s so horrible.”
“Holy smoking vipers,” Qibli said. The SandWing swooped down toward a river of molten lava and then back up to Winter. “If I ever had nightmares, they’d be about this place from now on.”
“I think this might take care of my nightmares,” Kinkajou said. “Imagine having your home devastated like this. Poor NightWings.”
“Poor NightWings!” Winter exploded. He would not — would not — feel sorry for NightWings. “Are you serious? What is wrong with you? Don’t you remember what they were doing to your tribe — to you? How they planned to steal the rainforest and probably kill you all?”
Kinkajou flinched away from him, covering her eyes. “I know,” she said in a small voice, “but isn’t it still sad?”
“They deserve this,” Winter spat. “After everything they’ve done, the NightWings deserve to lose their home like this.”
“How can you say that?” Moon asked. “How could any tribe deserve this?”
“Seriously,” Qibli said. “What did they do to the IceWings to make you hate them so much?”
Winter twisted away from them, flying toward the volcano. His training had never covered this. He’d grown up knowing the old stories about NightWings, and he’d always assumed everybody else did, too. They were a part of his bones and the bones of every IceWing. We hate NightWings. They stole from us. They are all liars and backstabbers and monsters.
Was it a secret, the story of what they’d done to the IceWings so long ago? Or did other tribes not know about it because they didn’t particularly care? Or because the NightWings had covered it up over the years, layering their own lies on top of the truth? That was certainly something they were particularly good at.
A blast of sulfurous smoke came from one of the vents below and he dodged around it, coughing.
He’d always imagined the NightWings lounging around their secret home in perfect security, feasting and laughing and reveling in their superiority. He’d imagined them living among marvels, perhaps deep underground somewhere, smugly enjoying what they’d stolen from the IceWings.
Not this — not anything like this hellscape.
He banked to the left, searching the ground for any sign of Icicle.
“Winter?”
He turned and found Moon following him. “Please tell me,” she said. “I really don’t know what the NightWings did and I think — I think I need to.” She flicked her tail anxiously. “Does it have something to do with Darkstalker?”
“It does,” Winter said, watching Qibli and Kinkajou flying over to join them. Well, if it was a secret, someone should have told him to keep it that way. The truth was, it was better for everyone to know so they’d understand never to trust the NightWings. “But it begins with his thrice-cursed mother, Foeslayer. She approached the IceWings under the guise of peace, to offer us an alliance against the SkyWings, and instead she abducted our prince.”
“What for?” Qibli asked. “You know, all the IceWing princes I’ve met have been kind of grouchy. Why would someone want one around enough to steal him?”
Winter glared at him. “Because Prince Arctic was our last animus.”
They all gazed back blankly, as though they’d completely missed the thunderbolt he’d just thrown at their feet.
“Our last animus,” he growled. “Don’t you know anything? Not every tribe has animus dragons. IceWings haven’t had any in centuries … and you know why? Because the NightWings stole that power from us.”
“That’s crazy,” Qibli protested. “You can’t steal a power like that.”
“You can if it’s genetic,” Winter said. “The NightWings never had an animus dragon until they took Prince Arctic. Now they have them, and we don’t.” He took off, flying in a wide circle around the volcano as he eyed the lava-strewn slopes. He kept hoping to see a flash of white scales, but the only colors on this island were black and red and gold and gray.
“Wait,” Moon said, catching up to him. “What are you saying? That Foeslayer … and Prince Ar
ctic … they had eggs together? A NightWing and an IceWing?”
“Sounds twisted, doesn’t it?” Winter hissed, ignoring the stab of guilt he felt at the thought. “Especially when you realize that Arctic would never have agreed to it — would never have betrayed the royal family that way — unless Foeslayer threatened him with something terrible. But whatever she did, it worked.”
Moon’s wings missed a beat and she nearly fell out of the sky. “Winter,” she cried, “are you saying Darkstalker’s father was an IceWing?”
“Not just any IceWing,” Winter snarled. “Prince Arctic, the very last animus ever hatched in the IceWing tribe. Father of the Darkstalker, the first NightWing animus. They planned it that way.”
“That’s … complicated and devious,” Qibli said.
“Congratulations, you’ve just summed up NightWings,” Winter said to him.
“But couldn’t Arctic go home after that?” Kinkajou asked. “I mean, once they had his eggs, couldn’t the NightWings let him go? Why didn’t he go back to the IceWings and have more eggs there?”
Winter saw Moon falter again and realized that somehow she knew the answer.
“Because Darkstalker killed him,” Winter said. “His own son murdered him to make sure the IceWings never got their stolen power back.”
“That’s not —” Moon cried, and then checked herself. “I mean — that’s not the reason I heard.”
“Well, it’s the truth,” Winter said. The volcano rumbled threateningly and spat a small shower of sparks into the air. They were flying over the far side of the island now, and there was still no sign of Icicle.
“But,” Qibli said cautiously, “is it that big a deal? I mean, I hear animus dragons are more trouble than they’re worth. Don’t they go crazy after a while?”
“That’s true,” Moon said. “I read about a SeaWing animus who murdered almost his entire family.”
“But we knew how to handle them,” Winter scoffed. “We perfected the use of animus power. IceWings were the first tribe to figure out that too much use can damage the dragon’s soul. So we were very careful with our animus dragons. We bred them into the royal line, watched each potential animus from hatching, and trained them carefully so they would understand their limits.