The weather was perfect: rain poured from a grumbling, fire-breathing sky. The rivers at the bottom of the canyons swelled and roared and ate the walls, sending all the dragons who lived down there scrambling for higher ground. The wind was so fierce that it seemed to have been sent by vengeful IceWings to rip every NightWing out of the sky. It was veering quickly from a storm into a baby hurricane.

Darkstalker had been waiting for a day like this. Surely even Clearsight wouldn’t expect him today.

But as he swooped down to the ledge in front of her house, there she was, sitting out in the rain, waiting for him. He hadn’t quite figured out all her expressions yet, but he thought this one might be her trying-not-to-laugh-at-him face.

“Surprise!” he shouted, thumping down beside her.

“Why are you crazy?” she said, raising her voice over the thunder. “Go home!”

“And be trapped indoors with my squabbling parents all day?” he said. “No thanks! Let’s go to the sea!”

“The sea will eat us alive if we go there today,” she protested.

“I didn’t say in the sea.” He shook his wings, accomplishing nothing because he was still getting drenched. “I said to the sea.”

“I’m not a dragon who goes flying in hurricanes!” she said. “Do you know how unpredictable they are? The smallest wind shift or one piece of debris spinning in the wrong direction, and suddenly you’re in a whole other timeline — or everyone else is, because you’re dead.”

“It is virtually impossible for us to die today,” said Darkstalker. “It would be a waste of lots of very melodramatic prophecies if we did. Why are you even arguing about this? You know that we go and it’s wonderful.”

“On the contrary,” she said. “I see this really awesome future where I go back inside and drink tea by the fire and read a scroll about funny scavenger antics for the rest of the day and also, by the way, stay completely dry. That one is definitely winning right now.” She saw the expression on his face and relented a little. “We could go tomorrow, when the sun will be shining.”

“But then there will be dragons everywhere,” he said. “Today the beach is all ours!”

Clearsight gave a little shiver, and although he was trying not to listen, something fluttered through her mind: a whisper, an echo, his own voice shouting, “It’s all ours! The whole kingdom is ours!”

He rested his wing against hers, dripping scales sliding across one another. “Come back,” he said softly. “Be here now.”

She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes. “I am,” she said. “I’m here. All right, fine, let’s go drown there before we drown here.” She glanced back at the door and he wondered if she was trying to get out of there so he wouldn’t meet her parents. He was occasionally hurt by that idea, but then, he didn’t want her to meet his parents either. He didn’t want his father’s scornful eyes anywhere near this one happy thing in his life.

They dove into the storm, battered by raindrops as big as oranges and wind that howled as though kingdoms were falling under its claws. Clearsight was not the best flier, which perhaps he should have thought about, but she didn’t complain, even in her mind. He let himself sneak into her thoughts a little bit while they flew, since they couldn’t keep up a conversation through the rain anyway.

Tick tick tick tick flip flip flip flip. Her brain never stopped. She was constantly running scenarios, tracing paths forward into different futures. Darkstalker had thought he was pretty good at this himself — he could see not just the most plausible future, but a few alternates where things were different. But she had thousands of strands gathered in her mind, weaving and interweaving and knotting and tangling.

He regretted promising to stay out; it was fascinating in there.

It also meant she could easily skip him onto a timeline he hadn’t seen coming. She changed one small thing, and their entire meeting was different. She twitched the future like a long tail, keeping him off balance. It was fun. Maybe it wouldn’t always be fun, but it was for now.

More than all that: she knew him. She knew he wasn’t just a hybrid mistake with loud, fighting parents and a strange sister. She knew he was hers; she knew he was gifted beyond any other dragon in the world; and she knew he was going to do such amazing things that he changed the face of Pyrrhia forever.

Not that she was impressed by any of that. But he kind of liked that about her, too. He’d have enough worshippers, one day.

They reached the edge of the cliffs and suddenly soared into empty space; the land dropped away sharply below them, veering down to a long rocky beach. Which, at present, was being pounded by waves taller than they were.

“Looks fun down there!” Clearsight shouted to Darkstalker.

“All right, yes,” he shouted back. “This isn’t quite what I was picturing.”

She smiled and flickered away, soaring south along the coastline. He followed her, battling to keep his wings straight as the wind kept trying to knock him into the cliffs on his right.

Just as he was starting to wonder if she was punishing him by keeping them out in this weather, she dipped one of her wings and soared down toward the beach. He realized she was aiming for an enormous cave mouth that faced the ocean. Normally it might have had several feet of beach between the opening and the sea, but today it was flooded up to the front door.

They swooped inside, into a world of emerald green and vaulted ceilings. Phosphorescent moss clung to the rocks and walls and stalactites, giving the cave an eerie glow that was matched by the chandeliers of glowworms up above. Water dripped softly here and there, and a rivulet ran through the cave, connecting some of the tide pools and circumventing others.

The wind shrieked outside, but it could only reach its thin tendrils in to try and grab at them. The farther back they went in the cave, the warmer and quieter it was.

Clearsight landed on a tilted ledge of rock above a tide pool full of elongated starfish and anemones the color of sunrise.

“How did you know about this place?” Darkstalker asked, settling beside her.

She looked at him in confusion, and he saw the shift happening behind her eyes as she overlaid the present and the future and tried to make them fit.

“From the visions,” she said. “We came — come — we will come here a lot. Maybe.” She shook her head. “I thought you brought me here on our first trip to the sea — I mean, today — but if you didn’t know about it, then I can’t explain it. It’s like a loop in the timelines that can’t be pulled free.” She worried at a piece of algae that was coming off the boulder underneath her.

“Hey,” he said, brushing her wing. “It doesn’t matter. We’re here now, and it’s great, that’s all that counts.”

What if I messed something up? she thought. What if I jumped ahead and skipped over something important? What if we’re not supposed to be here yet, and this changes something?

Darkstalker came within a heartbeat of answering her before he remembered he wasn’t supposed to be reading her mind. He snapped his jaw shut, trying to pull back. It was hard not to just leave his mind open, listening to everything both spoken and unspoken. But he’d practiced blocking out his father enough; he should be able to do the same for the dragon he loved. Was going to love, eventually. Was starting to love, he was pretty sure.

“Can I ask you something nosy?” she said after a moment.

“Ominous,” he said with a grin.

“Well, you and Whiteout are the only hybrids I’ve ever met,” she said, “so I have no idea if this is a rude question. Tell me if it is and I’ll shut up, all right?”

“You can ask me anything,” he said.

“It’s just … you don’t seem like a hybrid,” she said. “You look like all the other NightWings. Is any part of you IceWing?”

“Oh,” he said. “That question. My father asks me that every day, but much less politely, don’t worry.” He extended his wings fully and pointed. On the inside, along the edge where his wing membranes met his back, a long row of silver-white scales marked the seam on either side of his body. “Ironically,” he said, “these are a lot easier to hide from other dragons than the identity of my father.”

Clearsight reached out and ran one claw lightly along the ridge of IceWing scales. It tickled, and he bit his tongue trying not to laugh.

“Whoa,” she said. “They even feel cold.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s weird.” He hesitated. “There’s … one other thing I inherited from my father. I’m an animus.”

“Right,” she said. “I know that. Obviously.”

Of course she did. “No one else knows that yet,” he said.

“No one? You haven’t cast any spells?” she said, her eyes wide. “In four years?”

He peeked again and saw a ripple of hope jump across her mind. She was impressed; she trusted him a little more.

“Just one, to make sure I could,” he said. “I suspected I was an animus, from my visions of the future and this sense I had, but I needed to know. The Ice Kingdom has a test for anyone who might have inherited animus powers — I gave myself sort of a modified version.”

“Didn’t your father test you?” Clearsight asked.

“He did, but I deliberately failed it,” Darkstalker explained. “I didn’t want him getting any ideas about controlling me while I was still too young to defend myself. He’s suspicious, though. The incessant drumbeat in my house is all about being careful with animus magic.” Darkstalker hunched his shoulders and folded his wings back in. “Basically from the moment we could hear, my father has lectured my sister and me about what the magic means, what it can do to us, how we have to be SO careful or absolutely TERRIBLE things will happen.” He rolled his eyes.

“But he’s right,” Clearsight said earnestly. “Can’t you —”

“No, no,” Darkstalker snapped. He knew she didn’t like the way he was frowning, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Never, never tell me that my father is right about anything. Not if you care about me.”

“I do,” Clearsight said. “I just … I’ve seen those absolutely terrible things, you know.”

“In my future?” he asked, startled.

“In ours,” she answered. “Haven’t you?”

“I didn’t look carefully much further than meeting you,” he confessed. “I knew that now was when everything would start to get better. That I’d be … well, I’d be happy, finally.” He grinned sheepishly at her.

Clearsight twined her tail with his and leaned into his shoulder. “This version of you is the sweetest,” she said.

“I think it’s worth noting,” he said, “that this is actually the only existing version of me.”

She was quiet, but the tick tick tick of her brain was almost too loud for him to avoid hearing.

“I’m not reading your mind,” he said, “but I can tell that you’re thinking I’ll only stay this way if I don’t use my animus magic.”

“I don’t want to scare you,” she said. “If you haven’t seen those futures — the ones where you use it too much, where you start killing other dragons, where you steal the throne to become king … well, that’s probably better. If you haven’t seen them, then they mustn’t be very likely, right?”

It was his turn to be quiet.

He had maybe, sort of, kind of maybe glimpsed a future where he was king of the NightWings.

But it was an awesome future. He was a great king. He would make the NightWings the most powerful tribe in Pyrrhia, and all his decisions would make them stronger and safer. Even if the path to get there was a little dark … once they were there even Clearsight would have to admit it was totally worth it. Better for everyone. The best possible future.

It wasn’t the most likely future, not yet. But he sometimes thought it should be.

She wouldn’t love hearing that, though. She had to be steered carefully into that timeline, until she could see how perfect it was.

“I’ve had visions here and there of the distant future,” he said with a shrug. “But you of all dragons must know that it’s nearly impossible to predict events that are too far in the future. Little changes now can cause such big changes later that it’s almost not even worth it to look that far ahead, right?”

From the tension in her wings, he guessed this wasn’t the answer she was looking for.

“Hey,” he said, ducking his head to meet her eyes. “Don’t be mad at me for things I might do one day, all right? I’m not evil now. I haven’t done any of that. And I probably won’t. Will you focus on that, please? Stay in the present with me?”

“Yes,” she said, dropping her wings. She stepped away from him and shook them out, as if her visions were clumps of mud stuck between her scales. “I know. I’ll try.” She gave him a wry smile. “Sorry. We’re going to have this argument a lot.”

Well, that sounds fun. If you know that already, he thought, then can’t we not?

“So what was it?” she asked. “The one spell you’ve cast?”

With an effort, he made himself grin at her again. “If I tell you, you’re going to make fun of me.”

“Ooo, even better,” she said, perking up. “Tell me!” She poked his chest with her tail. “Tell me!”

“It was just — this toy of Whiteout’s,” he said. “It’s a little carved scavenger. She loves it in kind of an obsessive way. Once it got lost and she cried for a whole day, until we finally found it again. So after that, I enchanted it to always return to her. No matter where I hide it, or where she loses it, it always turns up on her pillow by that night.” He shrugged. “It’s just a little thing.”

“Awwwwwwwwww,” she said. “You are working the sympathy vote so hard right now.”

“I am what I am,” he said, spreading his wings again. “I can’t help my noble heart and generous nature.”

“We might be able to do something about the size of that head, though,” she said, laughing.

“What, this perfect specimen?” he asked with mock incredulity.

Her ears flicked up suddenly. “Shh,” she whispered. “Did you hear that?”

They both fell silent, and against the backdrop of water dripping and the distant roar of the storm, Darkstalker heard a strange, muffled sound. He swiveled his head around. Toward the back of the cave, toward the long shadows.

Clearsight twined her tail around his again and he felt the tension prickling through both of them.

Is someone in here? Or … something?

The sound came again — a low moan just weak enough to perhaps be the wind, but with something unmistakably dragon about it.

Darkstalker hopped off the ledge and stepped cautiously into the dark. Clearsight was close behind him, which was reassuring, because presumably if they were going to be mauled by something in this cave, she would have seen that coming.

With their night vision, they could see that something large and lumpy was lying in the last tide pool, where the rivulet ended. Darkstalker glanced at Clearsight, then let out a small burst of flame to give them more light.

It was a dragon, but in that moment of brightness they could see it was not a NightWing. Its scales were blue.

The dragon made another mournful noise and slowly, painfully, flopped its head around to look at them.

“NightWings,” it hissed softly.

“Are you hurt?” Clearsight asked. She circled the blue dragon cautiously. “Oh, there’s a gash on this side … but it doesn’t look too awful.”

“It’s something else,” Darkstalker said, scanning the SeaWing’s mind. “He’s exhausted. He’s been swimming for days. I see blood and screaming and — tentacles?”

The SeaWing shuddered and tried to sit up.

“Don’t make it worse,” Clearsight said, nudging him back into the water. “Just rest. Can you tell us what happened?”

“Albatross,” the dragon whispered.

Darkstalker froze. He’d heard that name before. In his father’s mind, in a secret compartment where Arctic sometimes turned over the names of the other known animus dragons in Pyrrhia. Queen Diamond, Arctic’s mother. Jerboa, a SandWing who had vanished from the SandWing court years ago and was now either a fugitive or dead. And Albatross, brother to the queen of the SeaWings.

If there were any others, they were just rumors. Those three were the ones Arctic worried about.

“You were attacked by an albatross?” Clearsight said skeptically. “With … tentacles?”

“Albatross is Queen Lagoon’s brother,” Darkstalker told her.

“Oh,” Clearsight said. Her eyes clouded over, and he saw her knitting together all the things she knew and would know about the SeaWings. “Oh no …”

“He went mad,” the SeaWing whispered hoarsely. “He attacked us. He killed … everyone. My brother, my father. I barely escaped with my life. I swam and kept swimming …”

“Everyone?” Clearsight echoed. Her thoughts were so loud and tangled with grief that Darkstalker couldn’t avoid hearing them (or so he told himself). The whole tribe? Or the whole royal family? What about Fathom? Is he dead, is everything wrong now? She shook her head, brushing away tears. No, I see the timelines still; he can’t be dead. He can’t be.

Darkstalker felt a rush of jealousy. He had seen the SeaWing in their future, too: a timid, jittery green dragon, sad and lonely. A friend one day, perhaps, but certainly no one to be so devastated about if he didn’t make it. A peripheral character in their great love story. So why was Clearsight so upset? Was this someone he had to worry about?

“I don’t know if anyone is left alive.” The SeaWing stared at Clearsight with haunted blue eyes. “Albatross killed the queen. I saw it. He killed two SkyWings and the princess and the king and my —” He choked on the words, letting out a sob. “He was still killing when I fled into the ocean. But I don’t know why. He was our prince. We loved him. He was loyal to the queen. He made such beautiful magic for her. Why would he do this?”

Clearsight lifted her eyes to meet Darkstalker’s.

“He was an animus,” Darkstalker whispered. She nodded, knowing that already.

“I think I know why he did it,” she said softly to the SeaWing. “He did a lot of magic for the queen, didn’t he? He wasn’t careful with his soul at all.”

She shot Darkstalker a “what did I tell you?” look. He didn’t love it.

“Weren’t you listening to me?” Darkstalker said, lashing his tail. “Look at me, Clearsight, the way I am now. I’m not whoever you’re seeing in your visions. I am careful.”

The SeaWing lunged out of the water and seized Clearsight’s talons. “Maybe it was another tribe. Maybe they put a spell on Albatross — that could happen, couldn’t it? The IceWings have magic, too; maybe they were trying to wipe us out. Or maybe the RainWings drugged him. They have all kinds of plants that do weird things in the jungle, that’s what I’ve heard. That makes sense, doesn’t it? It must have been someone else using him. It wasn’t Albatross at all.”

Clearsight guided him back into the pool. “We’re going to get you help,” she said. “Queen Vigilance will want to hear about this. She’ll make sure you’re taken care of in exchange for your story. Just … wait here.”

The SeaWing slumped forward, letting the water cover his snout. He took a deep breath, gills fluttering, and closed his eyes again.

“How are we going to get a message to the queen?” Clearsight whispered to Darkstalker, edging around the tide pool and back toward the cave entrance.

He growled under his breath. “We’ll have to tell my father. He has her ear — he can tell her about this dragon and what’s happened in the Kingdom of the Sea.”

She hesitated in front of a wall of glowing moss, her wings spread so she looked silhouetted. “Is this a good idea?” she said. “Queen Vigilance wouldn’t attack the SeaWings while they’re in trouble, would she?” She wrinkled her forehead, not waiting for his answer; she was already a hundred days away, a thousand, studying all the possible outcomes.

“She’ll start with a messenger or a spy,” Darkstalker said. He could at least pretend that Clearsight really wanted to know what he thought. “To find out for sure what happened. It wouldn’t make sense for her to attack, though. The Kingdom of the Sea isn’t geographically useful for us to invade.”

He couldn’t imagine the trip the surviving SeaWing had made — all the way around the bottom of the continent, past the rainforest? Or through the middle of the continent, along the rivers?

“Besides,” he added, “she’s busy enough with the IceWing war. She’ll know we don’t need another front or another enemy to deal with.”

Clearsight looked at him as if she were slowly returning to earth. “I don’t see any NightWing-SeaWing battles ahead,” she said. “I think it’s safe to tell her.”

“That’s what I said,” he pointed out.

“And we should find out what really happened,” she said. “The more we know about animus magic … the safer we’ll all be, right?”

“I know a lot about it,” he said. “IceWings have had it longer than any other tribe. Trust me, I hear about it every day.”

“So why aren’t you scared?” she asked. “Wasn’t it his animus power that drove Albatross insane? Isn’t that why he killed all those dragons? Aren’t you afraid that — that —”

“That that could be me one day?” he said. “No, Clearsight, I’m not worried that that will happen to me. If there’s any animus you should be worried about, it’s my father.”

Could Arctic lose his mind the way Albatross had? Those rotten patches inside him — those came from using his magic, didn’t they? Darkstalker didn’t know the whole story, but he did know that Arctic had done something with his animus power to escape the Ice Kingdom safely with Foeslayer. How many times had he used it? How big were his spells?

How much of his soul did he have left to lose?

Darkstalker was not the dangerous dragon in this tribe. It was Arctic; he had no doubt.

But how was he going to convince Clearsight? He needed a way to make her believe in him — to stop being so afraid of what he might be one day. He needed her to see that he was different from all the other animus dragons … that he was nothing like his father.

Something chimed in his mind, like the bell that rang quietly to signal the end of library time at school.

He was different. He was smarter. And he could prove it.

He knew what he had to do.