Peril didn’t quite realize that she was still in pain from the thorn balls until she was up in the air again, flying with muscles that protested with tiny sparks of agony. She gritted her teeth, determined to ignore it until it went away.

She spent the rest of the morning flying out into the desert, chasing down a desert fox (who escaped into a hole and was kind of too cute to eat anyway), and then catching a large white bird in midair and eating that instead. She also set fire to a tall cactus because it was giving her a superior look and she felt like it. One advantage of a desert: she didn’t have to worry about forest fires or accidentally scorching a field of SkyWing crops or whatever other reasons the queen had always had for keeping her in the palace.

THE queen. I do still think of her that way. Qibli’s words kept going around in her head, which was VERY annoying and made the next cactus over look like tempting kindling as well.

“Isn’t Ruby your queen now?” Well … yes, technically, but how could you swear loyalty to a queen who didn’t even want you in her kingdom?

How could anyone feel loyal to a queen who clearly just wanted you dead?

Peril swerved to fly back toward Possibility and saw a huddle of camels a short ways off, to the south. Maybe a camel would make her feel better.

But as she came closer, she saw that the camels were tied to a palm tree and surrounded by bustling scavengers — at least ten of them, setting up tents and scooping water from a small oasis pond.

They all went gratifyingly still when she shot overhead. She studied their upturned faces, which looked like they were mostly eyes. Terrified eyes. She’d never seen such dopey prey; what were they doing out in the open desert, where it would be so easy to catch and eat them?

She’d never eaten a scavenger before. Queen Scarlet always saved them either to fight in the arena or be served at special banquets, which Peril was never invited to, because blah blah setting the guests on fire would be unhospitable blah blah.

She circled around again, trying to decide how hungry she was. As she did, she spotted one scavenger sitting apart from the others, a little ways up the nearest dune. This one wasn’t looking up at Peril. Its shoulders were slumped and its head was buried in its little brown arms, so all Peril could see was a thicket of dark fur on top of its head, a sand-colored cloth wrapped around it, and two little brown feet sticking out.

It looked … sad.

That’s hilarious, Peril thought. Do camels get sad? Do mountain goats mope? Does a hawk ever have a day where it feels like none of the other hawks want to be friends with it?

Maybe I should burn up the other scavengers and see if that makes this one feel better.

She thought about it for a moment, but there was something about the curve of the scavenger’s back that was almost too achingly familiar, and in the end Peril turned around and flew away, leaving the scavengers and camels to deal with their own problems.

The sandstone arch was easy to find, high on a butte to the west of Possibility, looping out of the ground and back into it in a shape like a RainWing tail. Peril flew through the hole of the archway, feeling her wing tips brush the stone on either side, and then spiraled around to land on top of it.

The desert spread out before her, vast and endless in the hot afternoon sun. When she turned around she could see the whole town of Possibility — the taller structures clustered around the river delta and the trail of smaller ones leading away along the river. From here, the dragons winding through the streets looked no bigger than scavengers, and sometimes it was even hard to tell what color their scales were.

Beyond Possibility, across the eastern horizon, cut the jagged tooth shapes of the Claws of the Clouds Mountains. Scarlet was in there somewhere, Peril was sure of it. The queen wasn’t the kind of dragon to let herself be uncomfortable somewhere weird like the rainforest or the mud swamps. She knew the Sky Kingdom perhaps better than anyone, and she must have found somewhere she didn’t mind hiding.

A flicker of movement caught Peril’s eye, and she swiveled her head to see a dragon winging his way toward her from the edge of Possibility. He was a big golden-orange SkyWing — not anyone she recognized, although it did seem as though he was flying directly toward her.

Maybe he recognized me from all the way down there. Maybe he’s coming to yell at me about how I should leave his precious flammable town alone. Is he the one with the basket of snails from last time? Or perhaps I flambéed one of his relatives and he’s still grumpy about it.

She flexed her talons. Well, if he’d like a fight, I’m certainly in the mood for it.

Clay flashed into her head, wearing his disappointed face. Which was frustrating, because it both made her miss him and also made her want to yell at him that she hadn’t killed anybody yet, and couldn’t he appreciate that instead of anticipating her next bad thing?

And then she felt silly, because she was busy getting mad at him for an imaginary conversation, when really she just wished he was there to nudge her wings and tell her what to do next.

The SkyWing was definitely aiming for the arch and looking at her, but when he was only a few wingbeats away he suddenly jerked back with an expression Peril had seen many times before — that wonderful fear/hatred combination that just the sight of her face seemed to magically induce.

Except this time it wasn’t for her. He wasn’t looking at her anymore; he was looking beyond her. And whatever he saw made him wheel around abruptly and hightail it back to Possibility as fast as he could fly.

Peril turned and scanned the desert sky.

Two more dragons were flying her way. This time it was an IceWing and a big NightWing, coming from the northwest.

Another NightWing, out here?

Could it be one of the ones who escaped from Thorn’s prison?

Or Scarlet’s ally?

The sunlight sparked and danced across the IceWing’s silver scales like a hundred little moons on fire. Peril curled her tail around her talons and watched him with narrow eyes.

She vaguely remembered the IceWings who’d yelled at her in the big entrance hall at Jade Academy, but she doubted she’d be able to pick Winter or his sister out from a crowd of white dragons. Keeping faces in her head wasn’t a particular skill of hers. She always forgot to concentrate on storing their features, usually because she was sizing them up as a potential combatant instead.

Mostly she’d never had to remember the dragons she met anyway, since she’d killed almost all the ones who got close enough to be faces in the first place.

She definitely saw the moment when the ice dragon recognized her, though. He immediately altered his flight path to hurtle in her direction. And his face wasn’t exactly throwing her an enthusiastic full-moon festival.

“What are you doing here?” he yelled down at Peril, circling over her head. The NightWing stayed back, beating her wings to hover in place.

“What do you care?” Peril shouted. It made her instantly grumpy to see how he stayed up in the air, forcing her to look up at him as he flew around and around. That was basic dragon etiquette that even Peril knew: if you want to talk to someone on the ground, you land and look them in the eye.

“Did Scarlet send you?” he called.

“Did she send you?” she snapped back. “Last I heard, it was your sister who was working for her, not me.”

That went in, sharp as a SandWing barb. Winter flinched and frowned even harder. “I’m not going to let you hurt my friends, if that’s what you’re here for.”

“That’s funny,” Peril said. “I mean, the part where you think you could stop me.”

Even as she said it, she knew Clay would think it was exactly the wrong thing to say. She knew she was provoking the IceWing on purpose, because she was already having a bad day and he was making it worse, and she knew she should stop and explain everything and tell him where his friends were, but by all the moons, if he couldn’t even handle landing to have a civil conversation, then WHY SHOULD SHE DO ALL THE WORK of keeping things polite? SERIOUSLY.

Still, she could probably have guessed what would happen next.

Winter whirled with a roar and shot a blast of frostbreath at one of her wings. As she’d learned over many arena battles with IceWings, this did essentially nothing except make the spot feel numb for a few minutes while her firescales combated the ice.

But it was still rude and she didn’t like it.

She flung herself into the air and blasted fire right back at him. Clay’s voice in her head made her aim to his left so she wouldn’t actually hurt him … but surely it was all right to scare him a little bit.

He shot out of the way, no doubt congratulating himself on moving so quickly rather than realizing she’d deliberately spared him. With a deft flip of his tail, the IceWing dodged below her and then swung up suddenly to frostbreath her back legs before looping away again.

“That doesn’t do anything to me, you one-trick dragon,” she cried. “How about some claw-to-claw combat, or are you too much of a coward for that?”

Whether or not he was a coward, he was fast. He swept around her in dizzying spirals, flashing headaches straight into her skull with every sun-reflecting spin. She lashed out with her front claws, half sure she wouldn’t catch him, and half starting not to care if she did because this dragon was SERIOUSLY ASKING FOR IT.

Fighting in the air was hard! How did dragons focus on staying aloft and attacking and defending all at the same time? She’d never practiced against an opponent in the sky. Her wings felt all clumsy and in the way.

Why didn’t Scarlet let me learn to fight properly, if this is how dragons normally do it? Why did she only pit me against prisoners with their wings bound?

For the first time in her life, Peril began to wonder if maybe she wasn’t actually the most dangerous dragon in Pyrrhia.

But I am! I am! I just have to touch him and he’s dead!

Wait.

That would be BAD.

That would be very, very bad, Peril suddenly remembered. This was one of Clay’s Jade Mountain students. He was Turtle’s friend. Even though he technically attacked her first, she still knew how much trouble she’d be in if she hurt him.

“Stop!” she yelled. “Don’t make me kill you!”

Nope, that wasn’t the right thing to say either.

She tucked in her wings abruptly and dove toward the arch, trying to put a safe distance between her and Winter.

But at that exact moment, he did another flip to swoop below her again.

And the two dragons collided in midair.

Fire and ice, copper and silver … Winter and certain death.