Qibli couldn’t watch this anymore. He couldn’t stand seeing Vulture this close to Darkstalker, the two of them chuckling together like best friends plotting to tear apart the world.
“Let’s check the gardens for Moon,” he whispered to Winter. On a night as clear as this, he had a feeling she would be outside under the stars.
“I want to watch him a bit longer,” Winter said, flicking his tail at Darkstalker. “In case he says anything else about fighting the IceWings.”
Qibli hesitated. He didn’t want to leave Winter alone — but he felt something tugging him toward Moon, like he was a broken vase and she was the piece that would fit him all back together. “All right,” he whispered. He slipped away from the balcony edge. “Meet you back in Anemone’s room?”
Winter nodded absently. His breath had left small traces of frost on the stonework of the railing.
Qibli followed the breeze he could feel wafting through the corridors until he reached a grand staircase that swept down into the terraces of gardens. At least, he could tell that there used to be orderly terraces around the levels of the palace, but the plants had rioted in the last several centuries. Vines and ivy had wrapped their way around the stonework a hundred times over, and it was hard to tell where the gardens were supposed to begin and end anymore.
He stopped for a moment, looking up at the moons, and then suddenly he got a strong, horrible creeping feeling along his spine … like someone was staring at him from one of the shadows … like he was being watched.
He was definitely being watched.
He vaulted quickly over the railing and into a large, leafy bush. Acidly fragrant flowers assaulted his nose as he tried to calm his breathing.
He couldn’t see anyone. No NightWing guards appeared, no super soldiers with enhanced sight or whatever other magical abilities Darkstalker might have thrown around.
The staircase was silent. The shadows were still.
And yet he was sure. Something had been watching him. Something that could still be out there, waiting. Someone, he corrected himself. There’s no such thing as ghosts. There are no vengeful spirits haunting this palace. I am not hiding from a phantom.
In these ruins, though, it was all too easy to imagine something unearthly whispering through the crumbling halls.
Qibli crept through the greenery as soundlessly as he could, keeping close to the wall where the vegetation would hide him. The prickling feeling in his scales slowly subsided, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he finally reached a spot out of sight of the staircase.
He rounded the corner and collided head-on with a very sturdy bit of empty space.
Empty space that yelped with joy and tackled him as he staggered back dizzily.
“Qibli!” cried the empty space. “You’re here! You’re really here! SHHHHH!”
A pair of invisible talons closed around his snout and he felt the flutter of wings around his face for a long moment.
“All right, he’s still there,” she whispered, “but keep it down, would you?”
The talons retreated as Qibli muffled a laugh. “Kinkajou?” he whispered. “I hope?”
“Oh, yes, it’s me!” she said softly. An outline of her wings and face shimmered into view briefly before her scales shifted back to camouflage. “I’m investigating a suspicious character.”
Suddenly her talons wrapped around his mouth again. “Shh, he just turned around!”
“Mm mmsbmms chmmmr?” Qibli inquired.
She tipped his head toward a half-tumbled tower that rose out of a swarm of ivy by the edge of the terrace. He spotted a dragon snooping around the base of the tower, picking up anything that glinted.
“I was on a mission,” Kinkajou whispered, “exploring the palace, just like that intrepid detective in the scrolls Moon was helping me copy back at school. And then I saw the weirdest thing — a MudWing. Here, in the old Night Kingdom! Just sauntering around the palace like it was his own personal swamp!”
Qibli stared alertly at the distant dragon. A MudWing. It has to be Bog. He must have come with Vulture.
“So I followed him,” she said, “very stealthily, it was awesome, you’d be so impressed, and then he went into a room and closed the door. And I stood there thinking about ways to keep spying on him, but then the door opened and out came a NightWing. Well, that’s not so weird, right? So I waited until the NightWing was halfway down the hall and then I zipped into the room because he’d left the door open and guess what? The MudWing was gone. I guess out the window? But I couldn’t see him anywhere. So I figured I’d follow his friend over there. He’s kind of a big honking NightWing, I have to say. And a little boring; all he’s done is steal little crumbs of treasure wherever he can find them.”
Yup. Bog. Or rather, in this form, Shapeshifter.
He tapped her claws and she let go of his snout. “Kinkajou,” he whispered, “don’t freak out. But I’m pretty sure that’s the dragon who attacked you in the Sky Kingdom.”
Little splashes of startled orange appeared in the air as Kinkajou’s scales reacted. “No way,” she whispered. “The one who can change shapes? Peril’s dad?”
Oh, right. Qibli had actually managed to forget that part of it. “Turtle told you about him?”
“He sure did,” she said fiercely. “I owe that guy a few broken bones and a coma.”
“We were hoping he’d disappear forever after we took Darkstalker’s scroll away from him,” Qibli whispered. “But now he’s working for my sinister grandfather and pretending to be a MudWing. We need to take away his shapeshifting spells.”
“On it,” said Kinkajou.
Qibli pounced at the empty air and managed to catch her tail before she darted away. “Not by yourself!” he said. “He’s enchanted this shape to have extra strength and super-hot fire or something. Maybe invulnerable scales, too. We do not want to get in a fight with this version of him, if we can help it.”
“Awww,” Kinkajou said. “Can’t I just spit a little venom in his face?”
“I think your stealth mode is what we need here,” Qibli said. “Sorry. Face full of venom can be Plan B.”
“All right, fine. So I sneak up and grab — what am I grabbing?”
“He carries his transformation spells inside pieces of jewelry in a brown leather pouch. Last time I saw him, it was tied under one of his wings, so it won’t be easy to get. And then he’ll also be wearing something containing his NightWing spell.” He squinted at the moonlit dragon. “The good news is he’s wearing a lot less jewelry now than he was before. But it could be anything — I see an earring, three bracelets, a ring, and a couple of necklaces on him.”
“It’s the earring,” Kinkajou said confidently. “He was wearing all that other stuff when he was a MudWing. The earring is what’s new.”
Qibli tried to give the empty air a skeptical expression.
“I was being a detective!” she said. “I was being super observant! I mean, OK, I missed the part about how he was actually the exact same dragon, but I did notice the matching treasure. I just thought the MudWing had handed over all his jewelry for some reason. It’s not like that makes less sense than ‘he shapeshifted into a whole other tribe of dragon.’”
“The earring,” Qibli murmured. “All right, all I can think of is I distract him and you try to lift the pouch. We might not be able to get the earring, but at least he’ll be stuck with only one form instead of seven.”
“You distracting him doesn’t sound very safe,” Kinkajou pointed out.
“I’ll be fine. We have a solid Plan B, right?” He grinned and had the unique experience of sensing that the air was grinning back at him.
Shapeshifter had found something in the ruins of the tower and was exhaling little bits of flame so he could peer at it. Qibli let the branches crackle under his feet as he approached, and the NightWing whirled around. His face contorted angrily.
“You again!” he snarled.
“I come in peace,” Qibli said quickly, spreading his wings. “I just want to talk.”
“That would be wise,” said Shapeshifter. “This form could snap your neck as easily as breathing if you come any closer.”
Oh, Kinkajou, please be so careful.
“Sure, all right,” Qibli said. “I’ll stay right here. I just wanted to ask whether you’re ever planning to see Peril again.”
“Why should I?” Shapeshifter snorted. “She betrayed me. She turned me in to Queen Ruby and then she helped you all steal my scroll.”
“To be fair,” Qibli said, “you really kind of betrayed her first.”
“But she betrayed me more!” he complained. “Besides, she doesn’t want to see me again either.”
“I don’t know about that,” Qibli said. “I told her I ran into you in the Kingdom of Sand, and she asked me to give you something, if I saw you again.”
“Yeah, right.” Shapeshifter took a step toward him, squinting. “What is it?”
“Just an earring,” Qibli said. He held out one of the amber and gold earrings, shiny and warm on his palm. “It’s not as fancy as your other treasure, I know. But Peril felt bad about what happened. She wanted you to have something that would make you think of her.”
He forced himself to keep breathing normally. Shapeshifter stomped another few steps closer and studied the earring with an avaricious gleam in his eye.
“Kind of small,” he muttered. “Not very sparkly.” He frowned at Qibli. “Looks like yours.”
“I bought them both at the same shop in Possibility,” he said. “She couldn’t touch it herself, obviously, or it would melt. But she said to get one just like mine.”
“Hmph. Seems like a pathetic peace offering, after what she did.” Shapeshifter grumbled softly to himself for a long, anxiety-inducing moment. But the lure of treasure, any treasure, was too strong for Peril’s father to resist. He snatched the earring out of Qibli’s talons and immediately put it on.
“Tell her I don’t forgive her, though,” he snapped. “Tell her this isn’t over and I still — I — hey, what’s happening?!” He flared his wings, which had rippled suddenly from black to lime green, and Qibli saw a blur of movement in the air as his pouch was quickly sliced away and vanished behind Kinkajou’s back.
“NO!” Chameleon roared, now fully transformed back into his real self, who was much scrawnier and less intimidating than any of his false shapes. “This was a trick! You lying SandWing!” He reached up to the earring, but Qibli lunged forward and seized his talons.
“I’m sorry!” he shouted over the thunder of Chameleon beating his wings around Qibli’s head. “Peril let you keep your shapes because a part of her still loves you, even after what you did to her. But we can’t trust you with them!”
Chameleon let out a yell and Qibli looked up to see that the silver earring was gone from his other ear.
Nice work, Kinkajou.
“You can’t do this to me!” Chameleon hissed, snapping his jaws at Qibli’s face. “I’m nothing without my shapes! You can’t leave me as a useless RainWing! Where am I supposed to go?”
“Go back to the rainforest,” Qibli suggested. “Queen Glory is very fair. She’ll take care of you.”
“I would NEVER —” Chameleon started, and then a chunk of stone from the tower above them came toppling down and cracked him on the head. Chameleon’s eyes rolled up and he slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Qibli blinked down at him, then up at the tower. “Whoa,” he said. “That was —”
“Awesome?” Kinkajou finished, popping into view on the tower. “I thought so.” She bounded down from the ruins and landed beside him, beaming.
“You were perfect,” he said.
“I still think he deserves a face full of venom,” she said, “but yeah, that wasn’t bad. You were perfect, too. I mean, I’m not quite sure what you did, but it was very impressive.”
He hugged her. “It’s so great to see you awake,” he said. “I was so, so worried about you.”
“Pshaw. Me? I’m too tough to be taken out by a super-strong shapeshifting traitorface,” Kinkajou said brightly. Her scales had turned the most startling shade of lemon yellow splashed with pink. “Plus, I can’t die, because I’m, like, Queen Glory’s best friend and she needs me. And Moon needs me to keep her head on straight! And we have to stop Darkstalker! And rescue Turtle!”
“I know,” he said. “We will. Do you want to hang on to those?” He pointed to the pouch of shapeshifting jewelry. “Or we could destroy them now. When Chameleon wakes up, he might come looking for them.”
“Then I’m definitely keeping them,” she said, twisting around to tie it under her wing the same way he’d had it. “I am absolutely up for having a heated discussion with this dragon, anytime he’d like to try me.”
He smiled at her. “So what heroic feat should we perform next?”
“I’m still working on finding out where Turtle is being held,” she said. “You should go find Moon and convince her to leave with us as soon as possible. Do you think you can do that?”
Qibli’s heart thumped as if it was flipping over. “Where is she?” he asked.
“Down there.” Kinkajou pointed to the square far below the palace. Qibli saw a torch flickering — and a figure carrying that torch who slipped into the vast building across from the palace.
It’s Moon. She’s right there right there right there.
“Go on, sort her out,” Kinkajou said, and her eyes were mischievous like she’d read exactly what she expected to on his face. “I’ll see you soon.” She let her scales shimmer back into the colors of the background.
That tugging was taking over Qibli’s heart again, and a moment later he was soaring down toward the square, his wings skimming the tops of the wild palace trees.