“Hmm,” Stonemover said, studying her expression. “You did know. You know it’s fake.”

“Well, I’ve heard that,” Sunny said. The walls felt as if they were tilting in toward her. She curled her claws and twitched her tail, avoiding his eyes. “That’s what Morrowseer said. But why should we trust him?”

Stonemover managed to look faintly amused. “Morrowseer wouldn’t make himself seem any less powerful if he could ever avoid it. He must have been forced to tell you the truth, for some reason.”

“He was manipulating us, like always,” Sunny said. “But just because I don’t like him doesn’t mean the prophecy couldn’t be real.”

“Oh, little dragon,” Stonemover said, and she got the feeling he’d already forgotten her name. “I promise you the prophecy is not real. I was there when they came up with it. I was also there when the NightWing scribes were ordered to write more about our so-called powers, building them up in every scroll, every story. Queen Battlewinner planned that carefully. But no NightWing has had any power to see the future or read minds in over a hundred years, if anyone ever did. That is the truth.”

Sunny wanted to throw things and yell like her mother did when she was angry. “NightWings,” she growled. “You guys make it really, really hard to like you. Why are you telling me this? You obviously haven’t told the Talons, or everyone would know.”

“Because I suspect I am dying,” he said with a dry cough, “and someone should know. If not my own daughter, then who?”

“Well, hooray,” Sunny said. “Lucky me.” She tucked her tail around her talons and hunched her wings up. After a moment, she said, “Really? Are you really dying?”

“I’m always dying,” he answered, which also made Sunny want to poke him in the nose. She honestly had no idea why her mother had ever liked this dragon.

But at least he’s telling me the truth. That’s more than I can say for most of the grown-up dragons I’ve ever known. She tried to push down the bitterness she felt about NightWings and all their lies; she tried to look at just Stonemover, her father, and see him as his own dragon, not one of a tribe.

He’s really sad.

Imagine if I had been born with animus powers into a terrible place like the NightWing island. The queen must have used him from the moment they found out what he could do. He never had a choice about what to do with his life.

Maybe nobody does.

Even though I want to end the war so badly, maybe there’s nothing I can do.

The prophecy was really fake. Her life was really a lie. She was really not special, and she was really not destined to save the world.

She looked at her father, whose eyes had closed. His breathing was starting to slow down, as if he were falling asleep again.

“Can I stay here tonight?” she asked.

“Please do,” he said quietly.

Sunny blew out the torch and curled up in a ball in the warmest corner of the cave, across from Stonemover’s petrified scales. She rested her chin on her front talons, feeling like her own scales were made of stone, too, heavy and exhausting to lug around. She wished she could wake up back in the cave under the mountain two months ago, before any of this had happened, when she still believed in the prophecy, their destiny, a wonderful future, and perfect parents waiting out there for all of them.

Her eyes closed, and her sadness drifted away into sleep.

*  *  *

Sunny was back in the stronghold, wandering through Burn’s weirdling collection, except instead of a tower, it had become an endless maze of increasingly creepy oddities. Every time she turned a corner, a new disturbing thing lurched toward her.

She realized Flower was sitting on her shoulder, holding on to her neck like one of the rainforest sloths and chattering quietly to herself.

This was comforting only for a moment, and then a headless gray dragon suddenly loomed out of a shadowy doorway, tottering at her and splattering blood from its claws.

Sunny leaped aside, pressing her back against the wall. She closed her eyes.

Stop. Stop. Don’t be scared. This is just a dream. You’re safe now, far away from Burn.

She imagined the bright rolling sand of the desert, trying to change her dream surroundings by force of will. After a few moments, she felt the warmth of sunlight on her face, and she opened her eyes.

It had worked. She was standing on the desert sand … and right in front of her was a scavenger.

Sunny started back with a yelp of surprise, and so did the scavenger. But it didn’t turn and run, and it didn’t scream. It just stood there and blinked at her with enormous brown eyes.

She reached up to her shoulder. Flower was still there. This scavenger in front of her was not Flower — Sunny had never seen it before.

Aw, Sunny thought. It’s so cute. She guessed it was female, like Flower, although this one seemed smaller and younger. Seeing Flower … that’s probably why she was dreaming about scavengers, although it was surprising to dream up one she’d never seen before. A long, dark mane flowed from the scavenger’s head down to the middle of her back, and she had the same adorable little nose and monkey features as Smolder’s pet, including the long, thin, clever paws with no claws on the end.

Sunny tilted her head at the scavenger’s paws. Wait. She was holding something — something about the size of an orange, which caught the desert sunlight with a shimmer of blue.

While Starflight had been trapped with the NightWings, he’d found a way to communicate with his friends by dropping into their dreams using an old animus-touched sapphire called a dreamvisitor. Apparently there were three of them out there in the world somewhere, and he had found one on the NightWing island. Glory had explained it to Sunny and Clay and Tsunami, rolling her eyes as if she couldn’t believe they’d forgotten that one sentence in one scroll they’d studied years ago. Sometimes she could be as bad as Starflight, although nobody would ever dare tell her that.

Sunny took a step toward the scavenger, but she didn’t even flinch back. Instead, she took a step toward Sunny, holding out her free paw. She pointed at Flower and chattered something.

Am I not dreaming? Is this real?

Could a scavenger possibly have a dreamvisitor? How would it have gotten a dragon jewel like that?

She inhaled sharply, flaring her wings. The only possible way: by stealing it. From the queen of the SandWings, twenty years ago.

“Where did you get that?” she asked, flicking her tail at the jewel in the scavenger’s paw.

The scavenger looked down at the dreamvisitor. Her eyes widened, and the desert sand behind her suddenly went blurry. Sunny caught a glimpse of black shapes around her, towering against a background of trees in moonlight.

With a muffled yelp, the scavenger gave Sunny a fierce look, clutched the sapphire to her chest, and vanished.

“Wait!” Sunny shouted. “I need that treasure!” She pounced on the spot where the scavenger had been, digging frantically in the sand. But of course it was gone, popping out of her dream as abruptly as it had popped in. And there was no way to get her back — the scavenger was the one who had the dreamvisitor, and therefore controlled where she went and who she saw.

But why would she visit me? And how? I thought you could only visit the dreams of dragons you’ve met before.

Or seen … she must have seen me somewhere, sometime while we were traveling around Pyrrhia. Although I’m sure I didn’t see her.

Sunny sat down, sweeping her claws through the sand.

So if I can figure out where, maybe I can find her — and the stolen SandWing treasure.

She closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to bring back those blurry dark shapes that she’d glimpsed behind the scavenger, just for a moment. They’d looked familiar. And there had been trees, too — so it wasn’t the Kingdom of the Sea, or the Sky Kingdom. Were there scavengers in the rainforest?

The trees didn’t look tall enough.

Sunny’s eyes snapped open. The forest between the mountains and the desert. Where I saw the ruins of the old scavenger den.

The little scavenger was in the ruins.

Which means now I know where to start looking.