They flew north immediately, as darkness began to stretch across the mountains below them and the tiny heartbeats of stars started to flicker in the sky. Peril felt light, lighter than she thought she’d ever felt before. She was like smoke on the wind, like a drift of dandelion seeds. She was free.

I have nothing to worry about anymore.

She did a flip in the air, swooped up behind her father — who was back in his SkyWing shape as Soar, although somehow without his ripped necklace; that was weird, she should ask him how he’d done that later; probably by enchanting something else, whatever, no big deal — and tackled him so he toppled sideways and had to do a funny frantic flapping spiral to recover.

Peril laughed and laughed. “I’ve never been able to do that to anyone before!” she cried. “I’ve always wanted to tackle someone in midair!” She zoomed around him and nudged one of his wings heartily with one of hers, unbalancing him again. “And that! I’ve always wanted to do that!”

“Could you perhaps save some of your affectionate impulses for when I’m not fighting an updraft?” Chameleon asked, ducking out of her way as she dive-bombed him again. “I mean, I love it, thank you, but it’s a little vigorous for night flying, for me.”

“You’re the best,” Peril said. She couldn’t stop herself from bodychecking him in the side again. “That was the last time, I promise!” she called as he reeled away. “Because when we get to the Sky Palace, there will be lots of dragons to do this to! I’m going to nudge wings and poke tails and HUG EVERYONE!”

“No,” Queen Scarlet said sharply. She swung around and lined herself up to fly alongside Peril. “You can’t do that. Not until I have the throne back. No one can know that you’re powerless now — I need the threat of you, which should be as effective as the actual fire of you, after the last seven years. Once we’ve secured the throne and I’ve killed Ruby, then you can be as dippy and cuddly and stupid as you want.”

“Oh,” Peril said, her light dimming a little. She had been hoping for a triumphant return as Safe Peril, Ordinary Peril, one of you, a regular SkyWing who can totally just be part of the tribe now, let’s be friends, hooray!

But Queen Scarlet had a point. She needed Peril’s help, and that’s what Peril was here for, after all.

“All right,” Peril said with a flick of her tail. “It won’t take long to make you queen again anyway.”

“You’ll have to pay attention,” said the queen. “Don’t do anything stupid. Act exactly as you always have and don’t touch anything. In fact, don’t say anything either. Just stand there and look menacing.”

“I can do that!” Peril said cheerfully. “I’ll practice my menacing face right now. Rrrrgh. Hrrgrrrmbrrgh. Rrrroarrrrg.”

“You sound like you’re digesting an overweight grizzly bear,” Scarlet commented acidly.

“I think it’s perfect,” said Chameleon.

“Thanks, Dad,” Peril said, grinning.

“Dragonets,” Scarlet muttered. “I never saw the appeal.” The Sky Palace came into view ahead of them, its towers and turrets and spires jutting through the clouds around the mountain peaks like long spindly claws. The fading sunlight seemed to catch for a moment in the queen’s eyes, adding a glimmer of menace to her yellow gaze as she regarded the palace.

“That’s why this never occurred to me before,” she went on. “But I should have remembered … it was only a couple of months before the whole catastrophe.”

Chameleon cleared his throat and the queen glanced at him, trading some kind of significant unspoken message.

“Won’t there be guards?” Chameleon asked quickly. “Patrolling around the mountains?”

“Not as many as there would be if Ruby were home,” Queen Scarlet said. “But she’s still off hunting for me and trying to identify missing heads. It’s the perfect opportunity to take over … and get the leverage I need to keep it that way.”

Two SkyWings suddenly emerged from the mist, flapping toward them with spears clutched in their talons and fearsome scowls etched on their snouts.

“Still,” Chameleon said, “um … any guards seems like a problem, right?”

“Not for us,” Queen Scarlet said, tossing her head triumphantly at Peril. “Let’s go, darling.”

Darling! Peril thought with delight as she soared up behind the queen. That’s me. She does love me!

The two guards lifted their spears when they saw Queen Scarlet approaching — but a moment later they saw Peril, and she saw them recognize her, and she saw the fear that engulfed them. One dropped his spear and turned tail instantly, fleeing back to the palace as fast as his wings could carry him. The other hovered indecisively for a moment, shifting her weapon from talon to talon and flicking her tail like a leaf about to be blown off a tree. Then she, too, broke down and fled.

Peril watched them go, feeling hurt and lonely and misunderstood exactly the way she always had, and trying to reach for that part of her that was too fierce and scary to care.

But it’s different now, she told herself. It’ll all be different once they know that I’m normal. Maybe we’ll even be friends. That would be cool; I’ve never had a real friend before.

Something poked at the corners of her mind. Oh — that SeaWing. Turtle. I guess he was sort of a friend, apart from lying to me.

She realized that she should tell Queen Scarlet that the SeaWings had an animus. That was definitely the kind of thing the queen would want to know, plus it would be pretty impressive to be the dragon who got to tell her such an important and surprising secret.

She twisted toward the queen, but Scarlet was already in a dive, aiming for an opening high in one of the towers. It was a room Peril had never been to, as far as she could remember, and she flew after Scarlet, puzzling over what it could be.

If she’d had a normal dragonethood, she might have been able to guess from the murmur of little voices that came through the windows.

Then again, if she’d had a normal dragonethood, she’d have spent most of it right here.

They swooped through the highest opening of the tower, straight into an enormous space full of SkyWing dragonets.

The wingery, Peril realized. Of course I’d never have been allowed in here. Staying out of the way of clumsy, floppy dragonets was always the hardest thing about moving around the palace. In fact, the danger of running into Peril was probably why most dragonets were confined to the wingery until they had better control of their limbs.

The youngest dragonets were play-fighting on the floor, far below Peril, near the base of the tower, where black and gold rugs overlapped. Toy weapons were scattered around them, blunt spears and dented shields leaning haphazardly against balls and attack dummies and what appeared to be toy cooking supplies stacked with bits of half-chewed goat bones and other snacks.

Slightly older dragonets swarmed the walls and climbing structures above the rugs, clambering busily along fake rocky outcroppings and jumping to gradually higher and higher platforms. A few of them slipped and fell, but the padded rugs below caught them without injury.

At the highest levels, closer to the ceiling, was space for flying practice — longer spaces to cross with each leap, ropes to catch on midflight, obstacles to practice swerving around. Here the biggest dragonets stretched their wings, red and orange swerving around one another as they catcalled and showed off new moves.

They all seemed so happy. Not just happy — unworried. Like nothing could trouble them, like all they needed was a place to fly and friends to fly with.

What would I be like if I’d grown up in this wingery? Peril wondered. Would I have friends? Would I giggle like that?

The memory of Turtle tugged at her again and she shook it off. She’d known him for, what, four days? That hardly counted as true friendship. He was probably glad she was gone.

The walls in here were not as embellished with gold and jewels as the rest of the palace; Peril wondered if Queen Scarlet didn’t trust dragonets to keep their grubby claws off her treasure. Instead, the room was full of light and air from windows and skylights, most of which were barred — especially on the lower levels — so none of the crawlers or new fliers could fall out.

The only decoration was a portrait of Scarlet five times the size of the actual queen. It covered a huge swathe of wall, forcing dragonets to find ways to climb or flap around it. Queen Scarlet’s perfect orange scales, bright yellow eyes, and cascades of jewelry glowed over the whole wingery, as if she were approving of their play while also imprinting their young brains with the constant reminder that she was the queen (and always would be, hinted her expression).

In fact, it was surprising that Ruby hadn’t taken that down yet, Peril reflected. Perhaps the interior design of her palace wasn’t quite as high a priority for her as it had been for her mother.

Look how beautiful Scarlet was, Peril thought. She glanced at the disfiguring scar Glory had left on the queen’s face and gave a little shudder of pity.

Glory … how did she get to the queen? What was I doing when that happened? How did I fail her?

Queen Scarlet swooped to a perch at the peak of the tower, on a winding branch carved from wood. It twisted across the roof as though it was the finish line for all the dragonets trying to reach the top of the room. Peril wanted to sit on it herself — her wings were starting to get tired — but she remembered that she was still supposed to be all firescales, so instead she made herself hover just below the queen.

A hush fell over the wingery — very slowly, as several dragonets were too busy playing to notice either the growing quiet or the giant dragon glowering from above. But Queen Scarlet waited, smoke hissing from her snout and ears.

As they noticed her, many of the dragonets let out squeals of fear. A few of them near the floor dove under whatever they could reach, hiding their faces behind shields or rugs or goat-spattered saucepots, although their trembling tails were still stuck out in the open.

A few of the others began to whisper …

“Is that the dragon in the picture?”

“That’s not the old missing queen, is it?”

“What wrong with her face?”

“She don’t look like her picture.”

“How’d she get all meltedish?”

“That’s really gross. Gross like Cardinal drooling when he sleeps.”

“Shut up!”

“Way grosser than that.”

“I wish my face was all melty and scary!”

“Ew, you do not, we would so never play with you if it was.”

“But you’d be scared of me and then I could creep up on anyone in the dark and give them nightmares forever! It would be awesome!”

“Yuck. I bet she can’t even look in mirrors anymore.”

“My mom said she used to be wicked scary.”

“And kind of mean, not like Queen Ruby.”

“She look kind of meanish now, I thinking.”

“Should we be more scared?”

Gradually the whispers, too, fell silent under Queen Scarlet’s withering glare.

“Hello, dragonets,” she finally hissed. “I am your queen — Queen Scarlet of the SkyWings. I have returned to take my throne, but I need something from you. Someone, actually.”

“Excuse me,” a little voice piped up. “I thinking maybe you in the wrong palace maybe? We already has a queen. Queen Ruby, she super-nice.”

“Ruby is not your queen,” Scarlet snarled. “She is an imposter! I am your queen!”

“What’s a nimposser?” asked another voice.

“It’s furry and sleeps upside down and has a really chewy tail,” said another. “Melty-Face, ma’am, you’s wrong, Ruby’s not furry at all. An’ I bet her tail’s not chewy either but I hasn’t checked.”

“She’s a very nice queen,” offered yet another dragonet, “and she visits all the time and knows all our names and says sorry when she bumps into someone and brings us snacks and we like her lots.”

“Maybe you could be queen of someone else?” a small orange dragonet suggested. “ ’Cause we already gots a good one but I hears that there’s some NightWings maybe lookin’ for a new queen? And maybe because they spooky, too, maybe they like your spooky face?”

“Oo, yes,” a few others agreed. “She’d be super-good spooky! They could change their name to SpookyWings or NightmareFaces!”

“STOP TALKING THIS INSTANT,” Queen Scarlet bellowed. Peril was finding it close to impossible to keep a straight face. She wished there had been a chorus of impertinent dragonets around for every conversation she’d ever had with the queen. Perched on the windowsill, Chameleon wasn’t even trying to hide how his shoulders were shaking with laughter.

“Sheesh,” one of the little voices muttered as they subsided. “Jus’ makin’ some helpful suggestibles, no need to be crankmonstery.”

“I am looking,” Queen Scarlet said, cold and clear, with iron in her voice, “for a dragonet named Cliff.”

Now everyone really was silent. The SkyWing dragonets glanced around uneasily, and then gradually one head after another turned toward a small, dark red dragon with a long neck who was clinging to a platform near the ground. He looked no more than eight or nine months old.

He stared up at Queen Scarlet and Peril, his tiny claws trembling. Suddenly Peril didn’t feel like laughing anymore.

A grim smile spread across Queen Scarlet’s face.

“Hello, little prince,” she said. “I thought it was time for you to meet your grandmother.”