Tsunami didn’t know what to do. Should she accuse Blister of lying — of murder — in front of all these dragons? How would Queen Coral react?

Stop yourself, she thought. Think. Don’t lash out immediately, the way you want to. She shot a glance at Starflight. He was smart enough to have noticed Blister’s mistake, and sure enough, there was a puzzled expression on his face.

He met her eyes and shook his head a tiny bit.

Tsunami took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Perhaps he was right. She might put her friends at risk if she picked a fight with Blister right now. Better to wait and watch. And hope that Starflight could use that giant brain to figure out why in the world Blister would have killed Kestrel.

Blister’s dark tongue flickered in and out of her mouth. She leaned toward Coral, smiled at Anemone, and said, “How is our secret weapon coming along?”

Anemone dropped her head and stared unhappily at the table.

“Wonderfully!” Coral said. She patted Anemone’s head, beaming with pride. “Why don’t we show you? Whirlpool, come along.”

Whirlpool puffed out his chest and stood up. Curious, Tsunami got to her feet at the same time, but Queen Coral shook her head, her pearls dancing in the green light. “You can skip this, dear. I’m sure it won’t interest you.”

“I’d like her to come,” Anemone piped up. “Please?”

Coral and Blister exchanged a significant look. They don’t trust me, Tsunami guessed. They don’t want me to know about any “secret weapon” until they’re sure I’m on Blister’s side.

Well, too bad.

“I’m sure it’ll be very interesting,” Tsunami said with earnest enthusiasm. “Everything you do is interesting, Mother.” She blinked her large green eyes at Queen Coral. Across the table, Glory snorted and then tried to hide it with a bout of coughing.

“Please?” Anemone said again.

“All right,” Coral said with a sigh. “But not the others.” Her gaze flicked suspiciously to Clay.

Tsunami followed Coral, Blister, Anemone, and Whirlpool to a high level of the pavilion she hadn’t visited before. It was shaped like a bowl, with low walls and a slight slope down to the center. Weapons were lined up along one side: white twisting horn spears like the one attached to Coral’s tail; battle armor of chain link or scales hammered over more scales; gleaming metal claws like the ones scavengers carried in all the scrolls. None of the weapons looked particularly special or secret.

But — Tsunami looked sharply at the wall of weapons again. That battle armor . . . surely that was what her attacker had been wearing in the tunnel. That was why she hadn’t been able to claw him (or her). She remembered her claws scraping uselessly against metal. And one of the vests definitely had a nick in it. So who had access to this level?

Probably everyone, she thought ruefully.

“May I?” Whirlpool said officiously, gesturing to one of the strands of pearls on Coral’s wings. She dipped her wing so he could remove it. He strutted to the center of the bowl and carefully laid the rope of pearls on the floor in front of him.

“All right,” he said, rubbing his talons together. “See if you can make it crawl over to the wall.”

Tsunami looked around. Who on earth was he talking to? Where was the secret weapon?

Anemone sat down next to Tsunami and sighed. “Do I have to?” she said. “It seems like a waste.” Tsunami stared at her.

“Practicing is never time wasted,” Whirlpool said, wagging a claw in a way that made Tsunami want to snap it off.

“But I don’t want to end up like Albatross,” Anemone said. She flicked her wings and edged a little closer to Tsunami.

“He made an entire pavilion grow from stone before he went mad and tried to kill everyone,” Whirlpool said patronizingly. “You have a way to go before that happens. Now. The necklace, please.”

Anemone sighed again. She held out her front talons and, to Tsunami’s amazement, the necklace began to slowly wind toward the wall, moving in curves like a snake.

“Oh my gosh,” Tsunami blurted. Suddenly every thing made sense — the “magic” in Whirlpool’s title, the self-adjusting harness in the Deep Palace. “Anemone! You’re an animus!”

Anemone dropped her talons, and the necklace stopped moving. “I know,” she said with an expression like she would rather be descended from sea cucumbers.

“We’ve had a few animus dragons in the royal family,” Coral said proudly. “But not in several generations. Anemone was hatched just in time to help us win this war.”

“Careful,” Blister said with a hiss.

“She doesn’t have to know our whole plan to guess that an animus dragon would be very useful in battle,” Coral said. “There are lots of marvelous things we can do with this power.”

“Yes, watch this,” Whirlpool said. He picked up a metal armor breastplate and flung it up in the air, over the edge. “Catch it with a spear!” he called to Anemone.

None of the spears moved. The breastplate plummeted toward the lake.

“Sorry,” Anemone said, not looking very sorry. “You didn’t give me enough warning.”

“Ow!” someone yelled from below.

“Anemone,” Whirlpool said with a sigh. “Battle is all about quick thinking.”

“How would you know that?” she said.

He frowned at her.

“Try it again,” Queen Coral said, clapping her front talons together. “And this time do as you’re told, Anemone.”

Whirlpool flung another flat piece of metal armor into the air. Instantly one of the narwhal spears shot after it and pierced it through.

Blister and Coral applauded, but Tsunami thought it was more interesting that the spear then carefully brought the armor back to rest safely on the floor.

“Impressive,” Blister said. “But not much more impressive than what I saw last time. What about progress? What about bigger objects? How much longer must this training go on?”

“I’m sure she’s nearly ready,” said Queen Coral.

“Years. Lots more years,” Anemone said at the same time.

Blister’s forked black tongue slipped through her teeth, and she narrowed her eyes at Anemone. “Coral,” she said, tilting her head.

“Stay here,” Coral ordered. She slid as far away as the harness would reach and crouched with her wings spread, whispering to Blister.

Whirlpool strutted over to Tsunami and Anemone. Anemone gave him a glare, and suddenly the pearl necklace he’d left on the floor whirled around, whipped under his belly, and soared off the ledge. With a yelp, the green dragon raced after it, diving over the edge.

“This is what you have to save me from,” Anemone whispered quickly.

“Boring lessons with Whirlpool?” Tsunami answered. “Sure, I’ll get right on that.”

“No, not just that,” Anemone said, wrinkling her snout. “Although he is awful. All he ever asks me to do is make things move. I can enchant any inanimate object to do my bidding, and he’s like, ‘Make this spear dance! Now make that chair walk from here to here!’ It’s insulting, really.”

“What else could you do?” Tsunami asked. She glanced at Coral and Blister, but they both had their backs turned and were sharing their own secrets.

“According to Blister, I should be able to enchant the Sky Kingdom’s palace to cave in on all the SkyWings,” Anemone said softly, looking up at Tsunami. “She also wants me to curse a spear so it will search for Burn’s heart and not stop until it kills her.”

Tsunami coiled her tail closer, trying not to look as shaken as she felt. If Anemone could do either of those things, she really was a secret weapon. Power like that could end this war in a week.

“I don’t know for sure if I can do any of that,” Anemone said. “I’m scared to try. I don’t want to try. Every time an animus dragon uses her power, she loses a bit of herself.” Tsunami’s sister held out her talons as if they might not really be hers. “Albatross was a prince and a hero at first, but they didn’t know about the price of animus magic then. Building the pavilion turned him evil.” She slipped one talon into Tsunami’s grasp. It felt colder than ice and hard as stone. “I don’t want that to happen to me.”

How can I possibly save you? Tsunami wondered. Even she was tempted by the kind of power that could bring peace so quickly. But she couldn’t ignore the fear in Anemone’s eyes.

“First I’ll catch the dragon who’s trying to kill us,” she said, curling one wing around Anemone. “Maybe then Mother will let you off the harness and start to trust you more. Maybe she’ll listen when you tell her you don’t want to use your power.”

“Ha,” Anemone muttered.

Tsunami didn’t know what else to say. She had no words of advice ready for dealing with strange magical problems. But she did have a lot of other questions for Anemone, and this might be her only time to ask them.

“Can I ask you a question?” she said. “If none of Coral’s daughters survived, who would be queen after her?”

Anemone flicked her tail around and studied the end of it. “Who knows? I don’t think a queen has ever died and passed on the throne peacefully, at least not in our kingdom. And who else would challenge her? I heard Uncle Shark say once that maybe a son should inherit. But I guess it would probably be our cousin Moray. Except she doesn’t want the job — she wants Coral to be queen forever. At least that’s what she says.”

“You don’t believe her?” Tsunami asked.

“There’s just something weird about her,” Anemone said. “Isn’t there? It’s like she must be faking, because nobody could really act like that all the time and mean it.”

“Maybe,” Tsunami said. “But I think the assassin is Shark. I bet he wants Moray to be queen, and if none of Coral’s daughters survive, it’ll have to be her.”

Anemone snorted. “Moray would rather die than challenge the queen.”

Tsunami saw Queen Coral’s wings flutter closed. “In the meanwhile,” she whispered quickly, “keep acting like you need more training. Make mistakes sometimes if you have to. Make them think you aren’t ready for as long as possible.”

“Mistakes,” Anemone said with a sigh. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Queen Coral slid back to them, twisting her snout from side to side. “Where’s Whirlpool?” she asked.

“I think he lost something,” Anemone said innocently.

“Queen Blister wants you to try —” Coral started, but stopped as the SandWing’s head suddenly went up. Blister stared around the cavern, poised in her eerie stillness, nothing but her eyes moving. Tsunami felt hypnotized by her; Anemone and Coral were equally silent, waiting.

Blister’s gaze slowly lifted to the canopy of leaves and vines overhead.

Then Tsunami heard it, too.

Something was moving around up there.

Something big.