Somehow, eventually, Sunny slept, which she knew because she woke up to find Flower tugging gently on her tail and Smolder unlocking her chains.

She sat up slowly and stretched her wings, which still ached from all the flying she’d done in the last several days.

“What’s happening?” she asked Smolder.

“Oh, I thought we’d go for a walk,” he said wryly.

Sunny squinted at him. “Are you joking? Or is that just your voice? Can other dragons tell when you’re joking? Because I can’t figure it out.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “I have heard that before,” he admitted. “There was someone who used to tease me about it. She told me she was going to assume that everything I said was a joke, since that would simplify things. You can do that, too, if you like.”

“All right,” Sunny said. Smolder wasn’t exactly the sinister prison guard she would have expected from Burn’s brother. She much preferred this oddness instead, even when it was unsettling.

The last chain clattered to the floor and Smolder held out one talon so Flower could climb up onto his back again.

“Make sure to steer clear of Scarlet,” he reminded Sunny, who didn’t need reminding. “She’s in a foul mood today.”

“I HEARD THAT,” Scarlet roared.

Smolder rolled his eyes at Sunny and dove off the edge. She followed, catching a glimpse of the smoking orange queen as they whisked past. Scarlet sent a blast of flames into the air right behind them; Sunny felt the heat crackle along the scales of her tail and saw Flower press herself closer to Smolder’s back.

Outside, it was early morning — barely sunrise, Sunny realized. Smolder didn’t leave me locked up very long; he didn’t even wait until midday to come get me. Maybe he’s secretly kinder than he wants me to think. The light slanted low across the courtyard and small brown birds hopped along the top of the walls, gossiping cheerily. The air smelled like roasting lizards and the sand was still cool under her claws as she followed Smolder to an archway on the left.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I have been investigating a mystery for the last twenty years or so,” said Smolder. “Occasionally I ask other dragons what they think. Invariably, they disappoint me. But you seem unusual — more unusual than most — so I figured I’d try again. Ever hopeful, that’s me.”

“Twenty years?” Sunny said. “I hope it’s not a very urgent mystery.”

Smolder chuckled, then said, “Well, it rather is. But it’s been resolutely impossible to solve nonetheless.” He led the way through a room of pillars, all of them carved with swirls that looked like dragon tails, and into a long hallway lined with sparkling rust-colored tiles in a spiraling pattern. Sunny brushed one of the tiles with her wing, thinking that it was the first beautiful thing she’d seen in this palace.

The hallway slanted down and down and down until Sunny was sure they were underground, and finally it ended in a room with four locked doors.

Smolder walked to each door and opened them with large brass keys from around his neck, revealing four rooms of roughly equal size, with thick stone walls and plain gray stone floors. All of them were completely empty.

“The rumors about the SandWing treasure were never entirely accurate,” he said as he did this, twisting the keys in his claws. “We were very wealthy, yes, but we weren’t quite stupid enough to keep it all in one place. Almost that stupid, but not quite. We kept only our most prized possessions in our treasure rooms — along with a backup stash of rubies, diamonds, and gold in case we ever needed it. So it wasn’t our entire wealth or a palace full of treasure that went missing. Only the contents of these four rooms … but they contained quite a lot.”

He held up a talon for Flower to climb onto, then set her carefully on the floor in front of the treasure rooms. She looked even smaller next to the massive rooms. Sunny realized that Flower was probably small enough to squeeze under the doors.

The scavenger put her tiny paws on her hips, tossed her head fur back, and looked for all the world like she was bored of this dragon game.

“So here’s what I’d like to know,” Smolder said. “How did three scavengers about this size — two, actually, once they lost this one — manage to carry four rooms’ worth of treasure off into the desert?”

Sunny studied the little scavenger in front of her. It was actually a very good question. Flower was only about as tall as a full-grown dragon’s head. She had no wings and miniature, practically useless paws.

Well, maybe not that useless, she thought, remembering the sketch of her face from the night before.

“Could they have built something to carry it?” she said, crouching to examine Flower’s paws. The scavenger squeaked at her. “I saw the ruins of one of their villages on my way here. Their dens look like real houses, and there was an iron bell in the wreckage, too. So they’re good at making things … maybe they made some kind of wagon to carry it in?”

“A wagon would have left tracks across the sand,” Smolder pointed out. “The only tracks we found were hoofprints — three horses, galloping flat out. You tell me how they could do that with more than two bags of gold on their backs, let alone all of this.”

“Oh, you found prints?” Sunny said, stepping into the first room and peering around. “Didn’t you follow them?” She moved to the second room, which was the same as the first, except perhaps with a little more sand on the floor.

“Follow them!” said Smolder. “If only we’d thought of that.”

“Aha,” Sunny said. “That was definitely sarcasm.”

He gave her a crooked smile. “Well, look. There was a lot of confusion when we first found the queen’s body. We all heard her roaring in the middle of the night — it must have woken every dragon for miles. That’s what brought us outside the palace, thinking something terrible had happened. All we found at first was Mother, lying there, dead. Had one of her daughters killed her? Why not in a proper duel? Who else would dare kill the SandWing queen? Who else could — and why wouldn’t they admit to it? The first clue we found was this little creature, trying to hide by burying herself in a dune. She was injured and, of course, had no treasure on her, apart from a cute little claw-sword thing.”

Smolder reached into the bag around his neck and, somewhat startlingly, produced a banana. He handed it to Flower, who sat down and began peeling it with expert little twitches of her slender paws.

“That’s when we realized scavengers were involved, so we knew they must have come here to steal treasure. Burn was so furious. We finally found the horse tracks,” Smolder went on. “But they had at least two hours’ head start by then. We caught up shortly before they reached their forest home — and then Burn decided we should let them reach their forest home.” His eyes were dark, watching Flower. “Once they led us right to it … we burned it to the ground.”

“Yikes,” Sunny said. That’s a lot of scavengers to wipe out just because three of them did something stupid.

“Burn said we had to stamp out the vermin before they began to think they could do something like that again,” Smolder pointed out, as if he guessed what she was thinking.

“So after you burned the village …”

“We searched for the treasure in the ashes. No sign of it anywhere — not a single jewel or gold nugget. We tried hunting down the few scavengers who’d escaped the fire, but some of them must have slipped through our claws — and one of those must have the treasure, even now, twenty years later.”

Sunny started pacing from room to room. Something wasn’t right about this story. A lot of things weren’t quite right about this story. That much treasure — how could it disappear into thin air? How could scavengers make it disappear into thin air?

She stopped and looked down at Flower again. The brown eyes looked back at her curiously.

“Are you sure the scavengers killed Queen Oasis?” Sunny asked. “It wasn’t maybe just really bad luck that they were there at the same time as some other killer?”

Smolder nodded. “I thought of that. But it was a scavenger-sized spear in Mother’s eye. And — this part is a little weird — they cut off her tail barb and took it with them. We never found that either, but there was a trail of venom drops and dragon blood beside the horse tracks.”

Sunny wrinkled her snout. “Why would they do that?”

“Why do scavengers do any of the inexplicable things they do?” Smolder tossed another banana to Flower. Sunny wondered if the scavenger had any idea they were talking about her.

“Hmm,” she said, studying the rooms. Now that she was here, looking at the space and at a scavenger at the same time, the original story sounded more and more ludicrous. It was crazy enough that scavengers had managed to kill a dragon queen. But then they also stole all her treasure? Without getting caught and eaten?

Her wings twitched with a sudden idea. Maybe the question wasn’t How did they transport all that treasure. Maybe the real question was What else could have happened to it. “Wait,” she said. “When did you check these rooms? When did you see how much was missing?”

“Oh.” Smolder breathed a plume of smoke and squinted at her. “When we returned from burning the den. I remember flying back and thinking that the scavengers couldn’t have gotten much if we couldn’t find any trace of it. And then Burn led the way down here to do an inventory … and we found everything gone. I never figured out how Flower unlocked the doors either.”

Sunny lashed her tail so hard it smacked into one of the doors, sending a shiver of pain through her scales.

“That’s it, then,” she said excitedly. “Someone else took it while you were out hunting the scavengers. Who didn’t go with you to chase the scavengers and burn the den?”

“Lots of dragons,” Smolder said. He frowned thoughtfully at the open doors. “Blister and Blaze both stayed here.”

“Then of course it was one of them!” Sunny said. “The scavengers probably didn’t even get anything before Oasis caught them. They don’t have your treasure. One of your sisters does.”

Smolder was already shaking his head. “No,” he said. “No, that’s not possible. It must be scavengers, or this war would be over already.”

Sunny met Flower’s eyes, then looked back at him. “Over? How do you figure?”

“There’s — I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

“You can’t do that!” Sunny said, flaring her wings. “You can’t tell me half of something and then not tell me the rest!”

He wrinkled his snout, looking faintly amused again. “You are my prisoner, remember?” he said. “It’s a royal SandWing secret, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, aren’t you fancy,” Sunny said. “All right, I’ll figure it out.”

“Don’t do that,” Smolder said with a hint of alarm in his voice.

“A royal secret involving your treasure that would end the war if someone had their claws on it already. Oh!” Sunny said. “I bet it’s something animus-touched. Is that it? That must be it. Oooh, is it some kind of enchanted treasure that’s like, oh, if you’re holding this, you’re the SandWing queen? So a scavenger must have it, because if a dragon had it, she’d be queen and the war would be over. Interesting.”

Smolder stared at her with unfathomable black eyes for a long moment.

“That’s … not it?” Sunny finally asked, nervously.

“That was unsettling,” he said.

“It was just logic,” Sunny said. “My friend Starflight would have figured it out faster.” She stopped and curled her tail around her talons. If only Starflight were here. Or Clay, or any of them.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose you’re likely to be dead by the end of the week anyway. Just remember that if you tell anybody, we’ll have to kill them, too.”

“Aren’t you cheerful,” Sunny said crossly. “What is it anyway? The SandWing scepter?”

He shook his head. “I’m not telling you that.”

“The Lazulite Dragon?” Sunny racked her brain, trying to remember what famous pieces of treasure were mentioned in the scrolls.

“Stop guessing!”

“The Eye of Onyx!” Sunny said, and from his expression she knew that was it. His face wasn’t quite the emotionless mask that Blister’s was.

“Well, that’s why the scavengers must have the treasure,” Smolder said quickly, as if hoping she hadn’t noticed. “If Blister or Blaze had it, one of them would be queen instead of hiding in another kingdom. If any SandWing had it, they’d be ruling the desert already.”

Sunny shrugged. “So the scavengers managed to get something — and happened to get the most important thing. Someone else still took the rest of it. I bet you anything.”

“Hmmm.” Smolder narrowed his eyes. Smoke billowed from his nose, writhing around his horns. “In that case, we’d still have to find the scavengers and what they stole.”

Sunny didn’t have an answer for that. She had a feeling “find the scavengers” meant “burn down more dens,” and it made her feel sorry for the squishy little creatures, especially if they were all as cute and clever as Flower.

“Smolder!” a voice called. “Smolder!”

Talons scrabbled on stone as a snub-nosed SandWing came pelting down the long sloping hall. He started calling out as he ran toward them, his voice traveling across the distance.

“We’re under attack!” he yelled. “Help! General Sandstorm is already dead! No one knows what to do! It’s chaos! We’re all going to die!” He skidded the last several steps toward them and nearly tumbled into one of the treasure rooms. Sunny jumped out of the way of his flailing tail.

“Who’s attacking?” Smolder said sharply, grabbing the messenger and steering him back up the hallway with one brisk motion. “IceWings or SeaWings?”

“I don’t know! It happened so fast! It was like they rose straight out of the sand.”

“Maybe it’s Queen Scarlet’s friends,” Sunny said anxiously, scooping up Flower and hurrying behind them. Smolder gave her a look as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Remember? She said someone was coming to rescue her — what if this is them?”

The messenger let out a horrified squeak. “Then we’re definitely all going to die!”

“Stop that,” Smolder said, giving him a quick shake. “There are enough SandWing soldiers here to fight off any invasion.” He held out his talons and Sunny passed Flower to him. Smolder set his pet gently in a side room with no windows. “Stay,” he said sternly, pointing a claw at the little scavenger.

Flower put her paws on her hips and chattered something indignant at him, but he ignored her and swept on up the corridor.

“I don’t have time to lock you up again right now,” Smolder said to Sunny. “But I’m still watching you. If you try to escape while we’re fighting, you’ll end up back in that tower and you’re never coming out again.”

“I get it! You’re menacing!” Sunny shouted at him. “Now what are you going to do about Queen Scarlet? You should send more guards to watch her right now. She’s the one you should worry about escaping. At least I won’t murder everyone on my way out!”

Smolder’s stern expression wavered for a moment as he looked down at her. “I think I should be offended that you’re obviously more afraid of my prisoner than you are of me,” he said. “But I suppose I’ll worry about that later. You!” he shouted at a pair of guards running by. “Find four more soldiers and take them to guard Burn’s weirdling tower. With your lives, you understand?”

They nodded, about-faced, and took off toward the tower.

“Thank you,” Sunny said, more than a little surprised that he’d actually listened to her.

Now they could hear roars and snarls and the clash of claws outside, along with the sound of shouts and running talons all over the palace.

“Watch her,” Smolder said to the messenger, pointing to Sunny.

An unearthly shriek tore through the morning air and Smolder hurtled into the nearest courtyard, then up into the air. The black diamonds on his wings flared like crows taking flight as he soared higher, then banked sideways and shot toward the outer wall.

Sunny ran into the courtyard behind him and spread her wings.

“Wait,” the messenger protested. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To see what’s happening!” Sunny said. “I want to know who’s winning, don’t you?” Because if it’s Scarlet’s “friends,” then I need to get out of here, no matter what Smolder thinks I’ve promised him.

“Um,” the messenger said, twisting his tail between his talons. “But … I’m not sure….”

“Come on!” Sunny launched herself into the sky and heard the scramble of his claws behind her as he followed.

She aimed for the highest point of the palace that she could see: a spire with an open pavilion platform at the top. The corners of the roof were carved like dragon wings open in flight, and wind chimes on each side glittered and whispered in the faint breeze. In a few moments her claws touched down on white stone and she took a fluttering step for balance. Spread out before her, to the south of the stronghold, was the battle.

Sunny squinted, her eyes adjusting to the light of the rising sun as she searched for distinctive colors — perhaps the blues and greens of SeaWings, or the white and pale blue of IceWings, as Smolder expected — or perhaps the reds and oranges of loyal SkyWings come to rescue their queen.

But there was something strange about this battle. Sunny couldn’t see any unusual colors down there — nothing but the tan, pale yellow, and off-white scales of SandWings.

SandWings fighting SandWings.

Was it Blister’s army attacking? But it didn’t look like a whole invading force. In fact, if Sunny had to guess, she’d say there were only about thirty dragons attacking the stronghold, against about a hundred defenders.

And then she saw a flash of sunlight catch on a gold arm bracelet, and she leaned forward with a gasp.

That’s Thorn.

Now that she’d spotted her, it was unmistakable. The wiry, pale yellow dragon was deep in the thick of the fighting, slashing at SandWing soldiers with her talons and stabbing her tail as she rose into the air, then dropped below two warriors, then hurtled up to smash into another.

Sunny scanned the rest of the attackers and picked out Six-Claws, then Qibli, fighting as close to Thorn as they could.

This wasn’t another army, or one of the SandWing sisters. The stronghold was being attacked by the Outclaws.

My mother came to get me, Sunny thought, her scales humming with joy. Six-Claws must have told her the truth instead of the lie we came up with.

But then she took another look at the battle, and her heart sank.

Five SandWing soldiers lay dead on the sand, but the Outclaws were still outnumbered almost four to one. Smolder was shouting orders as he shoved soldiers into formations, tightening the defenses so a bristling wall of spears was ready to ram the scattered attacking dragons. One wave of SandWings piled into Six-Claws, who staggered back with a roar, losing height so his bloodied tail swept the sand below him. Sunny watched in horror as seven soldiers encircled Thorn, cutting her off from her allies.

The Outclaws came to rescue me — and it’s going to get them all killed.