Queen Coral tried flashing some more questions at Tsunami, but finally she flapped her wings and pointed to the surface. Tsunami pressed the egg to her chest and followed her mother, up and up and up through winding tunnels and cavernous palace rooms, through emerald-studded coral and pearl-laced curtains of golden sea grass. They swam to the top of the palace, where a guard stood watch over a view for miles underwater.

He saluted to the queen, and she swam up past him toward the gray light overhead, where raindrops pelted the surface of the water. Anemone paddled in her wake, glowing like a pale blue pearl in the dark sea.

They emerged into a storm so fierce, it almost felt like they hadn’t left the water at all. Tsunami faltered in the air as wind and rain tried to sweep her back into the ocean. The egg was slippery in her talons. Don’t you dare drop it, she hissed to herself.

“This way,” shouted the queen, banking toward the nearest island. A large cave yawned open onto the beach. Rough, dirty, and muddy, it was still the driest spot they could see. The three of them huddled into its shelter.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the queen demanded as soon as Tsunami’s claws touched the ground.

“Someone has to protect this egg,” Tsunami said. “It’s not safe in the hatchery.”

“It’ll be safe in the hatchery if I put all my guards on it,” Queen Coral fumed.

Tsunami shook her head. “Haven’t you tried that before? Has it ever worked?” She paused and glanced at her sister. “What did you do for Anemone?”

The queen shook out her wings. “I slept by the egg myself, for the entire year,” she said.

“You did?” Anemone said. Rain dripped off her tiny pale wings into puddles around her feet.

“I barely left the hatchery. I let Gill run the war for me, but — that’s how I lost him.” Coral’s voice caught and she frowned. “I can’t ne glect my duties as queen, now that he’s gone.”

“So let me do this,” Tsunami said. “Let me protect this egg.”

“But you have to stay in the hatchery,” the queen insisted. “It must be kept warm, especially right before hatching.”

Tsunami glanced down at the egg. She didn’t trust the hatchery. Anyone could sneak in to attack both Tsunami and the egg, especially if there was a secret entrance. Besides, she couldn’t stay in the Deep Palace; she had to go back and check on her friends. “I have a better idea,” she said. “Trust me. I’ll take it back to the Summer Palace.”

“The Summer Palace!” The queen flared her wings. “No, you don’t want to do that in this weather. It gets terribly flooded there during a storm. Better to wait out the rain here at the Deep Palace, where you’ll hardly notice it’s happening.”

“Flooded?” Tsunami echoed. “Do you mean — the caves? And the beaches? Where my friends are?”

“Oh.” Queen Coral waved her claws dismissively. “I’m sure they’ll be all right. Can’t they swim?”

“Not like we can,” Tsunami said. “I’m going back to check on them.”

“With my egg?” Coral growled.

“You’ve tried trusting everyone else,” Tsunami said, taking a step back toward the pounding rain outside. “Now trust me. I promise this dragonet will hatch safely.”

Her heart beat like the thunder in the clouds. Was this, finally, the right thing to do? Was she doing it for the right reasons? Or was she being impulsive again — trying to prove something instead of thinking it through?

I’m doing this for my father. I’m doing this to make up for all my mistakes.

And I’m doing this to save my little sister. How can that be wrong?

“If anything happens to that egg,” Queen Coral hissed, “I’ll lose two daughters that day.”

So much for being a special princess. “I need a harness for it,” Tsunami said, looking her mother in the eye. See. I’m not afraid of you. Maybe you should think about how your next queen will come to power before you start threatening me.

“The harnesses they were making for the dragonets,” Anemone piped up. “One of those should work.”

“How will you get back to the Summer Palace?” Coral demanded. “You don’t know the way, and my court is staying here with me.”

“I’ll find it,” Tsunami said, but a ner vous shiver went through her wings. She did not want to be wandering the ocean alone during a storm — especially when her friends needed her.

If Riptide is still out there . . . Please let Riptide still be out there.

“Wait,” she said as the queen started for the entrance. “I have a question. Tortoise pointed at Shark while she was dying. Was she saying he attacked the egg?”

Coral flared her wings, looking shocked. “Certainly not!” she said. “My own brother! He wouldn’t dare!”

“She wasn’t saying he killed the egg,” Anemone agreed. “She said he’d given her permission to leave her post. He brought her an octopus to eat.”

“The fool.” Coral gnashed her teeth. “I’ve told Shark a million times that vigilance is the only way to protect the eggs. If that means going days without eating, then that is what my trusted councillor must do. He’s too soft with them.”

Right, Tsunami thought. “Soft” is definitely how I’d describe Shark.

“Well, Tortoise didn’t think anything could happen,” Anemone said. “Not while she was right outside the door and only away from the egg for a few moments.”

“Why didn’t she stay with the egg to eat?” Tsunami asked.

“Nobody eats inside the Royal Hatchery,” Anemone said primly. “It’s a pristine hatching place designed for royal dragonets. And if you get blood in the water, sharks will try to find their way in. Regular sharks who eat dragonets and eggs, that is. Hatcheries other than the Royal Hatchery get attacked by them all the time.”

Tsunami shook her head. She couldn’t help feeling like following all these rules was only helping the assassin. And it was pretty convenient that Shark had set Tortoise up like that — not to mention giving himself a chance to sneak in and kill the dragonet.

She shook out her wings. “Take me to the harness,” she said.

Queen Coral reached toward the egg, then stopped herself. She gave Tsunami another hard look and led the way out into the storm.

This time they swam down through the murky, churning water and around to the back entrance to the palace. The queen burst into a room that seemed to be a workshop where small SeaWings crouched over sea grass weavings and marble carvings. Tsunami paused as her mother thundered to the far end of the room. She lifted one of the weavings in her claws and realized it was made of the same material as the harness — rubbery, stretchy, and waterproof — only these were woven in colors, not clear like the harness.

Queen Coral flared her stripes angrily at a dragon who had frozen over a marble carving. He hurried into a back room and returned with a tiny harness flopping in his talons. Coral pointed at Tsunami, and he took it over to her.

This dragon was old, she noticed, and shaking with fear as he tried to fit straps around Tsunami’s neck and shoulders. They flapped loosely; it was meant for Coral and was too big for her. And of course the smaller harness was supposed to fit a little dragonet with limbs and a tail, not a smooth round egg.

The old dragon gestured helplessly at the harness, and Queen Coral poked it, growling a stream of bubbles. The queen yanked Anemone closer and pointed at the harness, flashing some of the royal stripes in her wings.

Anemone hesitated, then reached out unhappily and touched the harness. To Tsunami’s astonishment, the straps around her shoulders suddenly shrank until they fit perfectly. The other webs snaked and wove closer until the egg was securely bound to her chest.

She grabbed Anemone’s talon. Her sister felt cold and weirdly hard to the touch, and her eyes were out of focus. Tsunami shook her, and Anemone blinked until she was looking at Tsunami.

What? Tsunami flashed the stripes on her snout.

Anemone shook her head and made the circular gesture: Not right now, we’ll finish later.

Tsunami wanted to know more, but the gesture reminded her of Shark and her friends. She had to get back to them. Protecting this egg was important, but watching out for the other four dragonets had been her first duty her whole life.

She bowed politely at the queen and the old harness-maker, then swam out of the palace and back through the gardens she’d seen on their way in. She wasn’t going unnoticed now. Everywhere she passed, SeaWings stopped to stare, then lit up their wings in hurried conversations after she went by. She could sense them pointing at the egg. She wasn’t sure if they knew she was the missing princess, or if they only knew she’d volunteered for the suicide mission of saving the queen’s last female dragonet.

She remembered swimming into the canyon, so she climbed out and swam around the bend in the coral reef. The Deep Palace disappeared behind her, and the wide dark ocean yawned in front of her.

All right, you asked for this.

Now what?