“Cliff?” Peril cried. “CLIFF?”

Chameleon flared his wings with a horrified expression. “Where did he go?”

Peril ran to the opposite edge of the tower. Had he rolled off in his sleep? It was a long, long way down. Wouldn’t he have woken up and cried out? Wouldn’t they have heard him?

She frantically searched the slick wet rocks and rooftops below for a broken red figure.

And then, through a break in the fog, she saw a tiny flapping shape struggling in the rain.

“He can fly!” she cried.

“That little liar!” Chameleon yelled. “After him!” He leaped from the tower and plummeted toward the dragonet.

“You know,” Peril called, catching up to him, “I thought I remembered that SkyWing dragonets could fly pretty young. That’s so funny that Scarlet didn’t know that because she avoids dragonets like the plague.” Rain pelted her wings and snout and scales, falling harder and harder every moment.

“Shut up and catch him!” Chameleon shouted, nearly drowned out by a crack of thunder. “Or we lose the palace and Scarlet kills us both!”

She wouldn’t dare! Peril thought. Well, all right, she might dare. But she can’t, not if I take off this necklace and use my firescales again!

The locket thumped against her chest, and Peril realized it must have a scrap of that scroll inside of it. Enchanted to make her normal. She hadn’t seen her father write it — in fact, it had been all ready for her, so he must have written it before they even met.

Because he loves me. Because he understood what it’s like to be different, and he predicted my wish to be normal.

There was something, though … something that still felt wrong …

Cliff looked over his shoulder and saw the two dragons hurtling toward him. With a terrified squeak, he flung himself through the nearest window and disappeared.

Worse luck, it was a window big enough for a year-old dragonet, but too small for Peril or her father’s SkyWing shape.

Chameleon roared in frustration. “You know the palace!” he shouted at Peril. “How do we get in there?” He thumped the stone wall with his tail.

Peril wiped rain from her eyes and looked around. The window was in a covered rampart that led to the central keep of the palace — the keep where the throne room, the Great Hall, and Ruby’s prison were.

“Come on,” she said, beating her wings. One option was going through the open wall of the throne room, but if Queen Scarlet was in there, things would get ugly fast. A better choice was to fly to the top of the keep and enter through the open roof, like she had done once to rescue Kestrel … she shook her head hard. Who did I do that with? Why is it all fuzzy?

As they soared up the cliffside, Peril had a dizzying sense of déjà vu — a feeling of wild freedom, terror, and hope that didn’t match the current situation at all. She glanced behind her and realized she was expecting to see someone other than her father.

Who?

A moment later they reached the top and dove through the hole into the Great Hall, which was as eerie and deserted as the rest of the palace. Peril saw one or two snouts poke out curiously at the sound of her wingbeats and then vanish in a hurry. A guard stood listlessly by the throne room, but she didn’t even look up as Peril flew by.

Down at the bottom of the hall, Ruby was trapped below a grate of metal bars, in the lowliest prison Scarlet had been able to come up with, for her least favorite prisoners. I guess someone fixed the grate, Peril thought, remembering her own claws burning through those very bars.

Two SkyWings stood beside the grate, looking less like guards and more like guardians. They were staring up at the commotion of Peril and Chameleon diving toward them, and so they didn’t see the small red shape that darted into the room from a hall behind them.

Prince Cliff reached the prison bars before Peril did. He threw himself on top of the grate and reached through, clasping one of his mother’s talons in both of his.

“Cliff!” Ruby cried. “Get back!”

And suddenly, a moment before Peril touched down on the stone floor, Ruby came surging out of her cell, flinging aside the crisscrossed bars as if they were nothing.

As if it wasn’t actually locked.

Or never really fixed at all.

That’s it, Peril thought. Ruby wouldn’t have wanted a prison like that anyway. And the SkyWings who locked her in were loyal to her — they only pretended to do it, enough to make Scarlet believe it.

She isn’t giving up. She’s not the mouse her mother thinks she is.

What else is Scarlet wrong about?

The two guards threw their wings open, facing Peril in battle positions, as Ruby cleared the cell in one leap and caught her son up in her arms.

“I knew you could do it,” she said to him. “You clever, clever, clever little moonbeam.”

“I’m not a moonbeam!” he protested, snuggling into her chest. “Today I’m a super-secret stealth agent flier hero of the world.”

“Yes, you are,” she said.

A deafening roar suddenly shook the entire hall. Peril pressed her talons over her ears, unconsciously trying to make herself as small as possible. This was a familiar roar; a roar that always heralded shouting, scorn, and severe punishments. Queen Scarlet could never hit her, of course, but she’d found plenty of other ways to make Peril’s life miserable.

The SkyWing queen seemed to arrive from everywhere at once, her flapping orange wings filling Peril’s whole field of vision.

“NO!” Scarlet shrieked, hurtling past the guards and slamming straight into Ruby and Cliff. The three of them tumbled and crashed into the back wall, and before Ruby could stand up again, Scarlet grabbed her neck and pinned her against the stone. Cliff scrambled under his mother’s wing and she tightened it around him, glaring at Scarlet.

“You think you’re so smart, pathetic daughter,” Scarlet hissed. “But your love for this dragonet is a weakness. After I kill you, do you want to know what I’m going to do to him? I’m going to make him fear me. I’m going to make him so loyal to me that he’ll forget your name. He’ll obey my every command.”

“Will not,” Cliff said defiantly.

Scarlet ignored him. “I’ll use him until he becomes a dragon you wouldn’t recognize. By the time I’m done with him, he’d kill you with his own talons if I tell him to.”

“Will not,” Cliff said again, sounding both outraged and scared. “Would never!”

“He’ll be my adorable little weapon,” said Scarlet, “and he’ll forget all about you. I will be his everything.”

I’m the only one who cares about you.

No one will ever love you except me.

You’ll always be a monster to everyone else.

Scarlet’s words rang louder and louder in Peril’s head. What she was describing — that’s what she did to me.

She made me obedient. She made me loyal to her. She made me think I had no choice.

But I do.

“Stop!” Peril shouted. She stepped forward, and for a moment the guards wavered, as if wondering whether this was the right moment to sacrifice themselves on her burning scales. She stepped forward again, and they parted before her, leaving her a clear path to the tangle of royal family members.

Queen Scarlet glowered at Peril with narrow yellow eyes. “What did you say?”

“I won’t let you hurt Cliff,” Peril said. “I won’t let you do any of that to him either. It’s not right. He’s not your toy, and if you can’t earn a dragon’s loyalty by being a good queen, then you don’t deserve it at all.” She reached for the black chain around her neck and saw Scarlet’s eyes widen.

“No!” Chameleon cried. “Don’t take that off!”

Three moons. I am under a spell. It hit Peril with the force of a thousand suns. There’s something else in the enchantment. Ruby was right.

My father betrayed me.

Peril ripped the necklace over her head and dropped it just as the metal began to sizzle.