Qibli couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept, but it didn’t matter — the wind lifted him high over the dunes and his wings felt charged with lightning as he swept closer and closer to the SandWing palace and his queen.

Please let Thorn be safe, he prayed. Please let Darkstalker be too busy with other things to have turned his thoughts to the SandWings yet.

For the first hour there had been dragons behind them, chasing them, but they seemed to have given up and gone back to the Scorpion Den. Qibli wondered how his grandfather was reacting right now, and what Onyx might do next, and what kind of terrible retribution was coming.

He flexed his front talons and studied the weather bracelets in the moonlight. There had to be a way to use these to stop Vulture … if he could only figure out how to use them.

“We’re almost there!” Ostrich called, doing a flip in the sky beside him.

Qibli looked up and saw the palace ahead. It still gave him a startling surge of fear and pride each time he saw it — like his first thought was always, instinctively, Oh no! We’re too close! Burn’s going to catch us and kill us all! and then he had to shift his brain over to No, wait — we defeated her — she’s gone, and that’s OUR palace now, with the best queen of all time ruling the kingdom.

The outer walls used to be lined with decapitated heads, in Burn’s day, but those were all gone now, and the stone had been scraped and scrubbed and painted to remove all trace of the blood that used to drip there. Thorn was considering knocking down the gruesome walls altogether, the way she’d knocked down the weirdling tower, since they only served to remind everyone of Burn — but she had been too busy with other kingdom business to get that done in the few months she’d been queen.

Guards lined the top of the wall, the bristling shadows of their spears looking like IceWing tail spikes. Lamplight glowed in several of the windows.

Cobra slowed and circled back to fly next to him. “Outclaws first,” she said with a toothy grin. She kept shifting the sack from one shoulder to the other as though it was heavy — or as though she was nervous.

“You’ll be safer here than with Grandfather,” Qibli told her.

“I’ll be safe wherever you are,” she said. Her eyes gleamed. “Perhaps we can take out Vulture and then you and I can rule the Scorpion Den. His whole compound and all that treasure would be ours.”

“If I were given the Scorpion Den to rule, the first thing I would do is turn that compound into a home for orphans and wounded soldiers,” Qibli said.

Cobra squinted at him, as if she couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not. “Right,” she said. “Of course. Me too.”

Two of the guards on the walls flew out to meet them. Even by the dim light of the slender moons, Qibli recognized them both from their Outclaw days.

“Tawny! Parch!” he cried. “I have to see the queen immediately!”

The two guards swooped around them, waving to Ostrich and tucking their spears back into their holsters.

“Of course you do, Qibli,” Parch said, laughing. “Let me guess — it’s an emergency!”

“It is!” Qibli insisted, ruffled. “It’s a danger you’d never even begin to imagine. I need to see her right now.”

“She’s in a meeting,” Tawny reminded Parch. “A really important meeting with that cool hybrid dragon from Possibility, remember?”

“Yeah, but it’s Qibli,” Parch said agreeably. “She won’t mind.”

Qibli remembered that Parch was one of the Outclaws who’d had the most trouble adapting to the new rules and strictures of the palace. He still behaved like a renegade of the Scorpion Den when it came to things like a dress code or showing up for guard duty on time. But not out of malice — Parch just assumed nobody would ever get mad at him, considering how many times he’d nearly died to save the other Outclaws. And that was pretty much true, even if it was maddening to see him joke with Thorn like she was a regular dragon and not a queen at all.

But tonight Parch’s disregard for the rules would work in Qibli’s favor. “Yes,” Qibli said, seizing one of Parch’s arms. “She’ll want to hear about this right away.”

Parch shrugged at Tawny. “Sounds important.”

Tawny rolled her eyes but waved them toward the palace. “All right, go ahead,” she said.

“Wait for me by the Oasis monument in the courtyard,” Qibli said to the others.

“I want to see Queen Thorn, too!” cried Ostrich.

“Seriously,” said Winter. “Suddenly we’re not invited inside?”

“Yeah,” Cobra protested. “Why can’t we come with you?”

“Because I need to explain you before Queen Thorn sees you,” Qibli said patiently.

He watched them flap down toward the enormous white stone courtyard, muttering to themselves, and then he dove toward one of the gardens. If Queen Thorn was meeting with an important dragon, he knew exactly where she’d have that meeting — her favorite room in the palace.

It wasn’t even a room, exactly; it was a tent made of flapping white fabric that Thorn had installed next to the largest palace pool, to remind her of her old Outclaw headquarters.

Qibli was right; he could hear the murmur of Thorn’s voice as he approached the tent, although the wind and the trickle of water obscured her words. Pale yellow and pink lilies drifted across the pool, bumping into the petals of fat crimson flowers from the tree overhead.

“Queen Thorn!” he called from outside. “It’s Qibli. May I enter?”

There was a pause, and then one of the walls was flung aside as Thorn peered out at him. “Qibli!” she cried, her face lighting up. “Maybe you can — no, wait — hang on.” She sat up straight and looked stern. “Why aren’t you in school, you ruffian?”

She’s all right. Qibli nearly collapsed with relief. He was still a step ahead of Darkstalker’s plans, at least for the Kingdom of Sand. It wasn’t too late. He could protect her right now, before the giant NightWing started wiping out all the queens in Pyrrhia, or whatever he was going to do.

“I need you to put this on,” he said, digging one of the earrings out of his bag. “Please. Right away. It’s urgent, and then I can explain.”

“Come on in,” Thorn said, beckoning.

Inside, the tent was lit by the warm glow of oil lamps and smelled like cinnamon and cardamom tea. There were two other dragons with the queen, and one of them, Qibli realized with surprise, was Smolder, the brother of Burn, Blister, and Blaze.

Onyx’s father, he realized with a shiver. Does he have any idea she exists?

The other dragon in the tent was a striking cobalt-blue color, shining like sapphires in the lamplight, with a white underbelly and dark black eyes. The spikes around his neck marked him as an IceWing, but he also had stripes under his wings that glowed phosphorescently in the semidarkness — like a SeaWing.

Tawny said there was a hybrid here, Qibli remembered. A SeaWing-IceWing hybrid apparently. He wondered how this dragon’s parents had met and fallen in love, when their kingdoms were so far apart and probably at war at the time. There must be a story there.

“Qibli, this is Typhoon.” Queen Thorn indicated the stranger, who nodded politely in Qibli’s direction. “He’s come with troubling news from Possibility.”

“That’s great,” Qibli said in a rush. “I mean, not great, I’m sure whatever it is is terrible, but before we get to that, maybe just quick fling this earring on? And then everything else can go back to being top priority, you bet.”

Smolder tried to hide his chuckling in his cup of tea, but not very successfully.

“This sounds rather suspicious,” Thorn said, holding out her talon. Qibli put the earring in her palm with trembling claws and she lifted it up to study the light bending through the warm amber. “I’m guessing there’s a spell on this,” she said astutely. “The question is, is it a good spell or a bad spell? And the answer depends on whether you’re under a spell, or possibly whether you have wrong information.”

“It’s a good spell,” Qibli said desperately. “I promise. It’ll protect you from something you really need protecting from, like, right now. Trust me.”

“I do,” said Thorn with calm certainty.

“Hang on,” said Smolder, watching her lift it to her ear. “Do we all? Is this the smartest plan? Should we, um, vote or something?”

“I’ve been spoiling him by letting him express his opinion now and then,” Thorn said to Qibli. She looked down her nose at Smolder. “I am the queen, you camel-chewing, snore-a-minute son of a toad.”

“Oh, right,” said Smolder. “Very dignified. Hard to argue with that kind of elegant turn of phrase.”

Thorn laughed, pulled out the small ruby that was already in one ear, and stabbed the enchanted earring through. “Hmmm. I feel the same,” she said to Smolder. “Have I been turned into a frog and just can’t tell?”

“An extremely beautiful frog,” Smolder promised. “One we’re all still proud to call our queen.”

“You are no help,” Thorn said, waving her claws at him. “But I suppose I’ll let you live, for today.”

Qibli sank gratefully onto one of the large red pillows. His queen was safe. His most important mission was complete, and now he could feel his exhaustion setting in.

“You really are worried about something,” Smolder said, studying him closely. Something darted under his feet and Qibli nearly jumped, thinking it was a wild animal — but it was only Smolder’s pet scavenger, Flower. She clambered casually up Smolder’s leg until she could sit on his shoulder and watch all the dragons.

I have to make sure Winter meets her, Qibli thought. He could learn a lot from Smolder about taking care of scavengers.

“I’ll tell you everything later,” he said to Thorn, pointedly looking only at her. Smolder was funny and interesting, but he wasn’t an Outclaw, and he looked horribly like Blister, and he had done Burn’s bidding all the way through the war, even including an attempt to imprison Thorn and Sunny so she could have them. Qibli was not prepared to trust him just yet.

“I’m sorry I interrupted you,” he said to Typhoon.

“Quite all right,” said Typhoon. “I would never want to get in the way of urgent accessorizing.”

Smolder snorted a laugh, which was helpful, because Qibli hadn’t been entirely sure if that was a joke. Typhoon had an excellent straight face.

“Tell Qibli what you told us,” Thorn said to the unusual-looking dragon.

Typhoon leaned forward and Qibli noticed a snail-shell earring in his left ear. “All the IceWings in Possibility are sick,” he said without preamble. “Three days ago, they were healthy and normal. There aren’t very many IceWings living in the town yet, so we tend to stay close. And then all of a sudden, every single one of them started coughing blood.”

A cold feeling ran down Qibli’s spine, like an IceWing claw trailing along the ridge of his back.

Could be a normal plague. Cities get them all the time.

“You say you all stay close,” Smolder observed. “So isn’t it likely that one dragon got sick and infected everyone else?”

“It happened too fast for that,” Typhoon said, shaking his head. “I’ve been studying medicine and disease for the last two years; I know how fevers like this usually spread. And no one is sick except the IceWings. This isn’t normal.”

“Why did you come to me, instead of Queen Glacier or Queen Coral?” Thorn asked.

“Because I think you’re the smartest and most capable queen in Pyrrhia right now,” Typhoon answered, looking her in the eye. “And to be honest, you were also the closest. My father is one of the most ill. If there’s any chance of saving him, we need someone who can act fast.”

“I have doctors I can send —” Thorn started.

“When exactly did the sickness hit?” Qibli interrupted. Thorn gave him a startled look, but she was still more Outclaw than queen, willing to give anyone a voice. Smolder, on the other talon, made a face as though he couldn’t understand why Qibli was allowed to keep his head.

“The night before last,” Typhoon answered. “Around midnight.”

That was Darkstalker’s first night of freedom.

Qibli remembered that Darkstalker had been away from Jade Mountain Academy for most of that night. What had he been doing?

Did he cast a spell to hurt the IceWings? Is he still looking for revenge, after thousands of years?

If so, how bad a spell is it? Is he trying to wipe out the entire tribe, or just weaken them?

“I know that look,” said Thorn, watching him sharply. “You’ve figured something out.”

“I think Typhoon is right,” said Qibli.

“That’s always nice to hear,” said the blue dragon with a wry smile.

“This isn’t a normal disease,” Qibli went on.

“Less nice,” Typhoon murmured ruefully.

“It’s not a disease at all,” Qibli said. “It’s a spell. And I think I know who cast it — an animus dragon who hates the IceWings.” A whole tribe under attack by such powerful magic. From a distance, and without even knowing that their enemy had arisen. They wouldn’t even know this was an attack; it would just seem like an illness. Darkstalker would be able to deny that it had anything to do with him, and even unbewitched dragons might believe him.

“All IceWings?” Thorn said sharply. “You mean this could be happening in the Ice Kingdom, too, not just in Possibility?”

“I’d assume it is,” said Qibli, flicking his tail.

But the world is different now than it was in Darkstalker’s time. In his time, the IceWings would have all been in the Ice Kingdom, isolated, where a plague could wipe them out without anyone knowing until it was over. In this world — a world with Possibility in it, and the Talons of Peace, and hybrid dragons and soldiers from different tribes who fought alongside one another in the Great War — in this world, we can see the dying dragons.

We can see them, and we can save them. We can stop him.

He looked at the animus-touched bracelets on his wrists again, itching to use them against Darkstalker. He wanted to throw a lightning bolt into the NightWing’s grinning face.

“We have to send someone to check on the Ice Kingdom,” Thorn said, leaping to her feet.

“You can’t,” Smolder pointed out reasonably. “Any of our dragons would freeze to death or be shot down by the Great Ice Cliff.”

“That’s right.” Thorn started to pace. “Queen Glacier warned me about the Ice Cliff.” She whirled toward Typhoon. “Can you cross the Cliff safely?”

“Yes,” he said. “Apparently half IceWing is IceWing enough.”

But not enough to be hit by the plague? Qibli wondered, and his spinning brain answered itself: Because Darkstalker is half IceWing, too. He must have left out hybrids, thinking there weren’t enough of them to save the others … and so his descendants, like Sunny, would be safe.

What about Winter? Why was he spared?

He thought of his IceWing friend standing outside in the palace courtyard with Ostrich and Cobra.

“Wait,” he said, standing up quickly. “I know a faster way we can find out what’s happening in the Ice Kingdom. But first, Queen Thorn — I need you to arrest my mother.”