Sunny was tired after visiting the queen’s dream, but she made herself step into the dreams of the royal siblings next. Three brothers and one sister, all of them having similar anxiety dreams, most of them about Queen Moorhen dying in some awful way. One of the brothers was having such a terrible nightmare that Sunny wasn’t able to get through to him at all, but the others saw her, and they seemed to listen to what she said. They each answered that it was up to Moorhen to make the decision, but Sunny had a feeling the queen would listen to her siblings more than any other advisors she might have, and if they could persuade her … well, it was worth the chance.
After that, as she and Clay were walking back through the camp, past so many sleeping dragons, she stopped, brushing his wing with hers.
“We can do more,” she said. “Not all of them, but … if even a few dragons talk about having dream messages from us, maybe that’ll make a difference.”
“Aren’t you tired?” Clay asked. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
There had been a lot of exhausting flying lately, more than she was used to, and all she wanted was to curl up under Clay’s wing and sleep for the next month. But that was not an option.
“I can do it,” she assured him.
“Let me do some, too,” he said, holding out his talons. “You can rest while I do that.”
They chose sleeping dragons at random, standing in the shadows nearby and dropping lightly into their dreams. Most of them were nightmares; there were nightmares all through the camp. Sometimes Sunny could break through and show them they were dreaming, and then they would listen. She kept her messages brief: The war is almost over. No more killing. Don’t go to the Ice Kingdom. The war will be over soon. You can help. Stop fighting. Spread the word.
They found Reed and the others again as early morning light was beginning to creep across the camp. Umber, Marsh, and Sora were fast asleep in a pile of tails and wings, but Pheasant and Reed were awake, watching for them with matching anxious expressions.
“We did our best,” Clay whispered, pressing their talons in his. “Hopefully you’ll get new orders soon.”
“But we should go before we’re seen,” Sunny said.
“Do you want to come with us?” Clay asked.
Reed sighed and looked at his sleeping brothers and sister. “No. I mean, I do, but we are loyal to the queen, and we don’t want to be fugitives. I wish I could at least give you Umber or Marsh, but they won’t leave the rest of us. We stick together. That’s our way.”
“I’m sorry,” Clay said reluctantly. “I wish I could stay. If you do have to fight … I wish I could be there with you.”
“Me too,” Reed admitted in a low voice.
Pheasant shook her head but didn’t say anything. She nudged the others awake, and they each hugged Clay good-bye.
“See you soon,” Sunny said, trying to sound more hopeful than she felt.
“Be safe,” Clay said. “I’m glad you have Reed.” He wrapped his wings around his brother again, and then he and Sunny hurried off through the camp, toward the safety of the mountains. They stayed on the ground, afraid that the guards would spot them if they flew this close to the camp.
Most of the campfires were now just dying embers, but a few had been rebuilt and the smell of roasting meat and smoke floated through the pre-dawn air. Birds fluttered and chirped in the trees at halfhearted intervals, as if they weren’t sure they should be awake yet. Sunny’s eyes ached and her wings had never felt heavier.
They had reached the scrub brush on the hills overlooking the camp when Sunny heard a different sound coming from behind them. Not the rustling and stamping of dragons or the clanking of weapons.
She heard singing.
Oh, the dragonets are coming …
“Clay,” she whispered. “Do you hear that? Am I imagining it?”
He stopped and lifted his head to listen.
They’re coming to save the day …
Voices in the camp below — more than one, in different parts of the camp. The MudWings were singing.
They’re coming to fight, for they know what’s right …
It was the eerie version they’d last heard in the Sky Palace, not the usual rousing bar song that Tsunami used to sing around the cave whenever she wanted to annoy the guardians. Sunny had been trapped in her birdcage, alone, on display above the banquet Scarlet was holding for Burn. But everyone there had heard it — the sound of the prisoners singing, echoing over the cliffs in the night. Sunny could remember the shivery, hopeful feeling it had given her, and she also remembered the expressions on some of the soldiers’ faces. Hope, dread, longing … most of them much more complicated than the pure fury visible on Scarlet and Burn.
She felt it again now, like sand trickling across her scales all the way down her spine. Those dragons singing — those were the dragons who believed in them. They were the reason she and her friends had to do this.
I hope we can do this. I really, really hope we can do this.
She glanced up at Clay, who smiled at her. Just being near him made her feel like anything was possible. Clay was so real and solid and dependable and kind. He would always be there.
Clay had kept all of them from killing each other as they grew up under the mountain, trapped with only one another and their guardians. If he hadn’t been there, would they have been more like the “alternates” — the fake dragonets of destiny — who’d hated one another? Could Tsunami, Glory, and Starflight have turned out that way, hostile and aggressive and angry all the time, if they hadn’t had Clay to keep them together? Would Sunny have ended up like Fatespeaker, clinging to a belief in a friendship and loyalty that didn’t exist?
But that hadn’t happened. They’d had Clay, and he stopped them from fighting too much, and he made jokes when anyone was sad, and he made them care about one another, and he believed in all of them. He’d made them a family, even though they were from different tribes.
He really is our bigwings.
“Let’s get back to the others,” she said, and he nodded, and soon they were winging their way back to the rainforest.
Six more days.
We can do this.
* * *
“She’s not coming?” Sunny cried. “What do you mean she’s not coming?” A shower of raindrops pattered over her wings, sending pink-and-red hibiscus flowers whirling down past her toward the ground far below.
Jambu shook his head, looking very literally blue from horns to tail. “We tried, but every IceWing we talked to basically laughed at us. They said Blaze never leaves her fortress, and she won’t until Glacier lets her go, which will be when Burn and Blister are dead.”
“They know if she gets near one of her sisters, she’s dead,” Mangrove said. “She doesn’t stand a chance in a challenge duel.”
“Then why do the IceWings support her?” Glory said crossly. “Don’t they want the SandWings to have a strong queen? No, of course they don’t,” she answered herself, figuring it out as she spoke. “The one kingdom they share a border with — wouldn’t it be great if it happened to be ruled by a vain, silly dragon who was totally in debt to them and did everything their queen ordered. Maddening for us, but sensible for them. Queen Glacier knows what she’s doing. Unless she loses — like if Blaze happened to die somehow — in which case she’d have to deal with Burn right on her border, all enraged and looking for vengeance. All right, yes, I can see why she’d keep her safely locked up. Three moons.”
“That was like watching her brain work on the outside of her head,” Fatespeaker said to Starflight.
“Well, we can’t let her stay all locked up,” Sunny said. “It’s not going to work unless all three sisters are there. Right? Don’t you agree?”
“Yes,” Glory said, and Tsunami and Starflight nodded as well. “If what you want is to forge a peace treaty, all the combatants need to be present to agree to it.” Glory scratched her snout, thinking. “Perhaps it would be enough to have Queen Glacier there … but I don’t think so. Glacier would know that it would look like weakness to come in her place and let Blaze stay in hiding. Safer for neither of them to show up.”
“But doesn’t Queen Glacier want to end the war, too?” Sunny said. “I’m sure she does. I’m especially sure she would if she knew what Burn and the MudWings were planning a few days ago, even if they’ve put off their invasion plans for now.”
“Are we sure about that?” Starflight asked. “They’re really not invading?”
“It doesn’t look like it,” Glory said. On her shoulder, her sloth woke up, chirruped sleepily, and tucked itself closer to her wing before closing its eyes again. “We’ve dreamvisited with Clay’s brother and also sent out scouts to check. It seems like that MudWing camp is in a holding pattern — no one flying off to kill IceWings, at least for now.”
“Queen Moorhen is waiting to see what happens at the stronghold,” Sunny said, shaking loose flowers off her wings. “Which means our plan really has to work, or else the invasion might still happen. Maybe if we could tell Queen Glacier that, she’d let Blaze come.”
“Maybe,” Tsunami said, “but we can’t get to the queen if she’s in her ice palace, not that it would be safe to go talk to her no matter where she is.”
“And none of us have seen her, so we can’t even dreamvisit her,” Clay pointed out.
“But we can dreamvisit Blaze,” Sunny said. “I think that’s what we have to do. Glory, you should do it. You’re really convincing.”
Glory looked down at the sapphire as Sunny passed it to her. She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “No, she won’t listen to me. She kept saying I shouldn’t be part of the prophecy, remember? She wouldn’t take me seriously.”
“And she’s jealous of Glory,” Deathbringer interjected. “Blaze doesn’t like any dragons prettier than she is. Which Glory is. Not that I’ve noticed, myself, personally. It’s just a fact.”
“Enough out of you,” Glory said, folding her wings in, but not before Sunny spotted the hints of pink blooming along the edges. “I’ve already said you can be the NightWing liaison, so flattery won’t get you anything else, Mr. Clever Scales.”
“It’s not flattery to state the obvious,” he said.
“It should be Sunny or Tsunami,” Glory said, ignoring him and passing the sapphire back into Sunny’s talons. “Tsunami actually got wounded trying to help her, so she might be impressed by that. But then, Tsunami is about as diplomatic as a starving rhinoceros, so I’d probably vote for Sunny.”
“I BEG YOUR PARDON,” Tsunami objected. “I can be VERY DIPLOMATIC when I WANT to be.”
“I’m sure,” Glory said. “Any other votes?”
As each of them voted for her, Sunny felt as though her own scales might turn pink.
“You are all — you’re — you’re such a bunch of —” Tsunami sputtered.
“Frog-faced blobs of camel spit?” Sunny suggested.
Tsunami started laughing so hard she nearly fell off the branch. “All right, fine,” she said, recovering at last. “I don’t see how I can compete with that kind of mastery of language.”
“But then you should use the dreamvisitor to talk to your mother,” Sunny said. “Or to someone in your kingdom. Some SeaWings should come to the stronghold, if any of them are willing, to see what happens.”
Tsunami nodded, bumping Sunny’s shoulder affectionately. “I can do that. I’d like to check on Anemone anyway.”
That night, Sunny took the dreamvisitor and flew to the pool by the tunnels. She chose the tunnel that led from the Kingdom of Sand to the rainforest. The one that led to the Night Kingdom smelled of burnt scales and fire, and still radiated heat.
She crouched in the darkest part of the tunnel, where it was pitch-black. There was nothing around her to offer a clue about where she was. Even if the dreamvisitor gave the dreamer a glimpse of her, all she would see was blackness. Hopefully Blaze would think it was a cave in the mountains, if anything.
She closed her eyes and held the blue sapphire to her head again. It hummed in a strange way, like faraway chanting faintly heard through layers of rock.
Blaze. Sunny pictured the beautiful SandWing. They’d only met once, in the Ice Kingdom. Later, she’d overheard Tsunami describing Blaze to Kinkajou: “She’s pretty but silly, one of those overly optimistic dragons. Like Sunny is sometimes, although Blaze is more self-centered.”
This comparison had made Sunny want to shred a tree with her bare claws. She was nothing, nothing like Blaze, and if Tsunami thought so, then she really must think Sunny was an idiot with no brains in her head at all.
Don’t think about that now. Concentrate on getting into Blaze’s dreams, she thought, and then she opened her eyes and realized she was already there. She stood in the desert, claws sinking into warm sand.
Blaze was flying, her polished scales shimmering in the bright hot sunlight. She shone against the clear blue sky, and beautiful jewels sparkled all along her scales. She kept circling in the air and twisting her head to look down, not far from where Sunny was, but she didn’t seem to notice Sunny at first. Sunny lifted herself onto her back talons to look around and spotted a clear pool of water not far away. Blaze was admiring herself in the perfectly still reflection.
“Good grief,” Sunny muttered. She flared her wings and waved at the SandWing in the sky. It took a lot of flapping before Blaze finally gave a little start and veered around to stare at Sunny.
Sunny beckoned, wanting to have this conversation on solid ground.
Blaze landed in front of her, kicking sand up Sunny’s nose without noticing she’d done so. She swished her tail around and sat gracefully.
“Hello. I know you, don’t I?” she asked.
“We’ve met,” Sunny said. “I’m one of the dragonets.” That was all she had to say. “Dragonets of destiny” didn’t sound right to her anymore, not since she’d found out the truth about the prophecy. She wondered briefly what would happen if she just told the SandWing sisters that the prophecy was false.
Then they really wouldn’t listen to us, she thought. We’d have no chance of making this work. We have to let them believe it, at least for now.
“Oh, of course, the weird-looking SandWing,” Blaze said. “Right. Which necklace do you think looks better on me? I’ve always liked rubies, but these emeralds are smashing, too, right?” She held out two gem-studded necklaces, draped sparklingly across her claws.
“Blaze,” Sunny said. “Do you want to go home?”
The SandWing princess looked around, blinking. “Aren’t I home?”
“This is a dream,” Sunny said patiently. “I mean, really home. Home to the stronghold and the desert, to sand and roasted lizards and warm sunshine every day.”
“Oh my,” Blaze said with a wistful sigh. “I remember my rooms in the stronghold. They were so big and pretty, with tall windows on three walls. I really do look my best in full natural sunlight, you know.” She spread her wings and swished them gracefully around, admiring them.
Sunny managed not to roll her eyes. “So come to us. Don’t keep hiding in that cold, dark fortress. If you come to the stronghold, we’ll end this war and you can go home.”
“What?” Blaze said, tilting her head. “Right now?”
“The third midnight from tonight,” Sunny said. “Didn’t anyone give you our message?”
“No one’s said anything about a message,” said Blaze. “From the dragonets of the prophecy! How could they keep something like that from me? Well, I am offended.” She thought for a moment, then brightened. “Oh! So you did pick me!”
“Well, wait,” Sunny said. “We haven’t picked any of you yet. We —”
“Right, of course, you haven’t announced it or anything, but you’re going to pick me. The only way I can go home, after all, is if my sisters are dead. Oh, how lovely! I knew you would choose me; I’m very nice. And doesn’t everyone want a beautiful queen?”
Not at all, Sunny thought. “We’re really looking for a peaceful outcome,” she said. “That’s our goal. And then whoever becomes queen —”
“I’m going to order a new bracelet to celebrate!” Blaze declared, jumping up and nearly dancing around Sunny. “And a crown! Of course I need a crown! Oh, now I really have to decide, rubies or emeralds? I suppose I could have two crowns! Or lots and lots of crowns! I’m so excited!”
“Blaze, stop,” Sunny said desperately. The princess wasn’t listening to her at all, and Sunny didn’t want to lie to her, or make her show up under false pretenses. “The important thing is that you be there at the stronghold. And then we’ll figure out who should be queen. It might not be you. Do you understand?”
“Glacier is going to be pleased, too,” said Blaze, talking right over Sunny. “I’ll have to convince her to let me go, but I can win arguments when I really want to. I’ll tell her there’s a new crown in it for her, too. I think she looks best in sapphires, naturally.”
“So you’ll be there?” Sunny said. “Even knowing you might not be queen when it’s all over?”
Blaze was already swanning back to the still pool. “You can live in my palace if you like!” she called back to Sunny. “I could give you a really important job, ooo, like helping me get dressed in the morning! Sometimes it takes me simply hours to choose the right anklet.”
“Midnight at the stronghold!” Sunny cried after her. “Three midnights from tonight! That means not tonight, not tomorrow night, but the night after that. Will you remember? Will you count right?”
“Queen Blaze!” sang the SandWing princess as she lifted into the air. “Doesn’t that sound pretty?”
Oh, dear, Sunny thought. She stepped out of the dream and stared into the blackness all around her.
Will Queen Glacier listen to her?
Will she be there?
What if all of this falls apart and we fail?
She gripped the dreamvisitor tightly in her claws.
That’s not an option. If Blaze doesn’t show up, I’ll fly to the Ice Kingdom and drag her back myself.
In four days’ time, either the war will be over … or we’ll all be dead.