Fathom dragged his tail as he made his way through the halls to his sister’s throne room. A summons from the queen: this couldn’t be good.

Over a year had passed since the massacre. A long, lonely year.

He’d kept his promise; he’d stayed away from Indigo, although it made him feel like his wings had been cut off.

It was hard to divide up his grief, when he had so many dragons to mourn — his cousins, his uncle, his queen, his parents most of all, but even his grandfather, or at least the grandfather he thought he knew.

Losing Indigo, though … most days, that was the worst of all.

As the dragon who stopped the massacre, Indigo was the hero of the Kingdom of the Sea. Pearl had kept her word: Indigo had been promoted to the queen’s honor guard immediately and assigned to the squadron that protected the queen herself, night and day. Pearl rarely let Indigo leave her side … which certainly made it easier for Fathom to avoid her.

He hadn’t seen either of them in months, not even from a distance. He spent most of his time studying quietly in a back room of the Deep Palace, alone.

He didn’t know what he was going to do with his life anymore.

The three guards at the throne room door saw him coming and bristled dangerously, their spears at the ready, their teeth bared. That was pretty much the way most SeaWings reacted to him these days. He understood it. He couldn’t exactly produce his soul as evidence that he still had one.

Fathom stopped several steps away from the guards and bowed his head. “Queen Pearl sent a message asking me to attend her in the throne room.”

The guards conferred in suspicious murmurs, and then one of them whisked inside. A few minutes later, she came out again and beckoned to him.

“All right,” she said. “Go on in. But we’re watching you, animus.”

He nodded and slipped past the barricade of sharp points and unfriendly eyes.

Pearl was on her throne, with another row of guards assembled across the room between him and her. Surely she knew that would do no good. If he went evil, he could kill her no matter what the guards did. He wouldn’t even have to be here, standing in front of her.

But it was all part of the performance — reassuring the court that she was strong and safe and invulnerable. A show of force was what they needed to see.

He had promised himself he wouldn’t do this, but his eyes darted around the room against his will, looking for deep purple-blue scales.

And there she was, standing just behind his sister. Staring down at the spear in her talons. Ready to die for her queen.

A tidal wave crashed over him, memories and longing and despair crushing the air out of his chest. He remembered claw painting with Indigo when they were tiny dragonets, dipping their talons in blue and gold paint and stomping on each other’s scrolls until she knocked him over and he ended up rolling gold scale patterns across their paintings, sticky and delighted with himself.

He remembered the hours he’d spent carving that first dolphin for her, trying to get it just right. He remembered swimming and diving with her, filling out their fish journals until they’d seen every variety in the sea. He remembered how she teased him for taking their tutors so seriously.

He remembered adjusting the pearls around her neck, the beat of her heart so close to his. He remembered holding her as he willed life back into her body, his tears falling like rain on her battered scales.

I’d do it again, he thought. Again and again, anything to save her. I’d give up my whole soul, let it crumble into darkness, if that’s what it took.

Pearl was still right about him and Indigo, even after all this time apart.

“Hello, brother,” Queen Pearl said, and he forced his eyes back to her. Her face was knowing, wary, as if putting him in the same room with Indigo was a test, and she was watching him fail it.

“Your Majesty,” he said with a bow.

“Look who’s come home to us,” she said, flicking her tail at a SeaWing coiled a few steps below the throne.

It took Fathom a long moment to recognize him. The last time he’d seen his cousin Current, he’d been laughing and joking with the rest of the family. When he never reappeared after the massacre, everyone assumed he had been wounded and died somewhere out in the ocean.

But here he was, alive — and yet this dragon was not the confident, easy-to-smile cousin Fathom remembered. This dragon was thin and shivered constantly, and he couldn’t look at Fathom without flinching away.

“Current?” Fathom said.

“I d-d-don’t — I don’t —” Current stammered.

“Where have you been?” Fathom asked, worried. He took a step closer. The guards raised their spears and Current flinched so hard he nearly knocked himself over.

“You’ll never guess,” said Pearl, and for a moment he heard his sister under the regal voice, excited to know a secret he didn’t.

“Another kingdom?” he said.

“The Night Kingdom,” she said.

Fathom raised his eyebrows. That was about as far away as anyone could get from the Island Palace without turning into an icicle.

But why had Current been gone for so long? He must have heard the news about the new queen of the SeaWings, even across the continent.

“I d-don’t want to see him,” Current whispered, covering his eyes. “P-please don’t make me.”

Pearl sighed. “All right. Take him away,” she said to one of the guards, and for an awful moment Fathom thought that was it — less than a minute of being in the same room with Indigo, as if to torment him before ripping her away again.

But the guard went to Current instead, taking the SeaWing gently by the wing and steering him out of the throne room.

“Current has been a … guest … of the NightWing queen all this time,” Pearl said, watching him go. “And now she’s finally sent him back with a message, and an offer.”

Uh-oh. His pulse throbbed ominously in his skull. Here it comes. The reason I was summoned.

Pearl picked up a tablet and glanced down at the words as though she found it hard to meet Fathom’s eyes. “Apparently the NightWings suddenly have an animus of their own. Their very first.”

“But —” Fathom started.

“How?” she cut him off. “Remember the rumors about that IceWing prince who ran away with a NightWing? They must have been true. This animus is his son, a dragon named Darkstalker.”

Another animus out there.

Is he going to kill his entire family, too?

“Apparently Current told Queen Vigilance all about Albatross and the massacre,” Pearl said. She frowned slightly. Fathom knew she’d been hoping to keep that a secret from the other tribes for a lot longer. “Queen Vigilance is, naturally, worried about whether her animus might go all homicidally crazy, too. She says he is apparently quite careless with his magic, no matter how often his father, the IceWing, warns him about the effects.”

A twist of guilt and fear stabbed through Fathom’s chest.

“We have to do something,” he cried. “Someone has to stop him!”

“Agreed,” said Pearl, looking slightly taken aback at the urgency in his voice. “Someone is going to stop him. You.”

Fathom glanced around at all the blue and green eyes that pinned him to the floor. “Me?”

“We’re sending you to the Night Kingdom.” Pearl tapped the tablet neatly against the arm of her throne. “Queen Vigilance will shelter you and introduce you to this animus. You will tell him your sad story and teach him the error of his ways.”

But nobody listens to me. Why would anyone listen to me?

“And then the NightWings will be our new allies,” Pearl said, examining her claws. “Everyone wins.”

Beside the queen, Indigo finally looked up and met Fathom’s eyes. “But,” she blurted, and Pearl shot a dangerous look at her.

Indigo plowed on bravely. “But is it safe for — is it safe?” she asked the queen. “What if this is a NightWing trap to steal our animus, the way they stole the IceWing one?”

“That story is nonsense,” Pearl said, already standing to leave the room. She paused to look down at Fathom. “Who would want an animus?”

The cold, hard truth of that sank in for a moment.

“Your Majesty,” Indigo said abruptly. Her claws dug into the wood of her spear. “I ask permission to accompany Prince Fathom to the Night Kingdom. As — as the head of his personal guard.”

Fathom’s heart leaped and then immediately sank. With me? Indigo and me, together? It was what he wanted, desperately, but it was also too dangerous, and Pearl would never allow it.

Pearl narrowed her eyes at Indigo. “Who says I’m sending any guards with him?”

“Very amusing, my queen. I know you are too wise to send a powerful, magic member of the royal family to a faraway kingdom unguarded,” Indigo said. “All kinds of terrible things could happen to him. That other animus could kill him.”

Fathom thought perhaps Pearl wouldn’t mind that at all. This was a convenient way to get rid of a dragon who made everyone uncomfortable … and if he never came back, well, problem solved forever.

“Please, Your Majesty.” Indigo folded her wings and bowed respectfully. “It sounds like the NightWing animus could be a threat. I could assess the situation and report back to you. I am not afraid of his magic.”

“She can save everyone from him!” called one of the queen’s advisors.

“That’s true!” called another. “Send the Animus Slayer!”

“She should be wherever there is danger from an animus dragon! She can stop him before he threatens our kingdom!”

“Yeah! She can kill them both if she has to!”

There was an awkward pause after that last shout. Fathom deliberately did not look around to see who’d said it. He knew enough of them were thinking it.

Is that what Indigo’s thinking? That she might have to protect the world from me?

From the look on Pearl’s face, he guessed the queen highly doubted Indigo would be able to pull that off. But she was also stuck. She couldn’t deny the Hero of the Massacre, the Animus Slayer, the one thing Indigo had ever asked for, not in front of her court.

“I don’t need guards,” he forced himself to say. “I can go by myself.”

Indigo gave him a wounded look and he felt like the lowest sea slug in the ocean.

She drew herself up taller, tearing her eyes away from him. “With respect, Your Majesty,” she said. “Your animus should not be allowed to leave the kingdom unsupervised.”

“Very well,” Pearl said, with an expression as though she’d just swallowed a spoiled oyster. “I will assign you two other guards, and you may accompany my brother to the Night Kingdom.”

She turned with a flourish of her wings and swept out of the throne room, lashing her tail furiously. Perhaps it was a good time to travel halfway around the world from her, after all.

And I’ll be with Indigo, he thought. I know I shouldn’t be happy about that. I should be terrified.

Guards were moving forward to usher him out, but across the room he was able to catch and hold her gaze for a moment.

He couldn’t read her face. Was she angry with him? Was she really going with him because she didn’t trust him?

Or is she worried about this other animus?

He realized with a surge of guilt that he was flying straight toward a new, unknown, potentially enormous danger … and he was dragging Indigo right along with him.