Midnight. Library. 5.

Cricket tried all day to focus on what that “5” meant, but she couldn’t keep her buzzing mind away from the mystery of her parents. She leaned over the ledge and trailed her claws through the cold, dark water. Beside her, Blue shivered as though he felt the chill traveling through her bones into his.

Cadelle is not your mother. Father is not your father.

Dragonfly Square was busy in the early evening as everyone bustled home from work to change into their nighttime glamour before going out again. Swordtail, watching through the spyhole, reported that Cadelle had sailed off with a very orange male dragon, but Cricket couldn’t bring herself to watch.

Her whole life she’d been waiting for her mother to care about her. She didn’t know how to dig up those seeds and replant them. She’d wanted something true she could put in front of her parents so she could say, “Look, here’s why I’m different. Look, I found all the answers. Look, here’s why you should love me anyway.”

But they would never care. She wasn’t theirs.

So whose was she? Where were her real parents?

It was also unsettling, as she thought over their conversation, to realize that nothing she’d said had made any difference to Katydid (who is not actually my sister, Cricket thought before her brain shied away from thinking about that). Cricket rubbed her forehead and tried to pull her scarves closer, but they didn’t make her any warmer. She’d tried to tell Katydid about Wasp’s lies, and Katydid had acted like the truth was just another story, another version of the world, instead of the only real version.

Wouldn’t you rather know the truth?

No.

I think you’re exaggerating.

I’m sure she had her reasons.

How could Katydid say that? Queen Wasp lied so that the HiveWings could take over Pantala, and she nearly wiped out the LeafWings to do it. She made them all think they were following Clearsight’s plan. She convinced everyone she had the right to rule over the SilkWings — that the HiveWings were the strongest tribe, that they deserved everything they wanted. She turned her own dragons into murderers and monsters.

Maybe that’s what Katydid didn’t want to see.

Maybe I just need to try again. If I show her the Book … if she meets Blue and Sundew and takes a moment to understand them … if I tell her everything and try harder, she’ll have to see. She’ll have to hear me.

“Are you all right?” Blue whispered, taking one of her talons in his.

“Oh — sort of. Not really,” she whispered back. “Cold. Also my whole life was a lie. But mostly cold.” She nudged her glasses up and tried to smile at him.

“I can maybe help with that,” he said. A softly glowing thread of flamesilk unfolded from his wrist, snaking out toward her scales. She started to pull away, but he held on to her gently. “Wait,” he said. “I’ve been experimenting. This kind shouldn’t burn you.”

Cricket went still, realizing again how much she trusted him. The gold thread reached for her like a vine growing too fast; it wound around her claws and his and spiraled up toward her shoulder. Everywhere the flamesilk touched her scales, warmth sank in, quietly spreading into her bones.

“Oh, wow,” she said softly. “It’s like magic, Blue.”

“Right?” he said. “I thought it would be much scarier. But I kind of love my flamesilk … is that weird?”

She shook her head. “I love it, too.” She glanced over to the other side of the ledge, where Swordtail had accidentally fallen asleep on Sundew’s cape. The LeafWing sat pinned beside his snoring head, glowering and tapping one of her pouches with an ominous look in her eyes.

“I miss my moms,” Blue said softly.

“Oh,” Cricket said. “I’m so sorry, Blue.”

“As I was coming out of the cocoon,” he said, “for a moment I forgot everything that had happened. I thought I would open my eyes and Mother and Silverspot would be there, waiting for me and smiling and ready to hug me and take me flying. I’ve been trying not to think about them too much … but, just for a moment, that felt so real. I hope they’re all right. They must be worried about me and Luna, especially with all those posters up.”

Cricket leaned into him. “Queen Wasp won’t hurt them,” she said. “It wouldn’t accomplish anything, and she’s very efficient. Maybe there’s a way to get a message to them? Let’s think. If we could find a SilkWing going to Cicada Hive …” She tried to think of SilkWings who traveled between the Hives — traders? Messengers?

“You’ve been really quiet all day,” Blue said.

She sighed. “I know. It’s … my sister told me that my parents aren’t my parents.”

In the glow from the flamesilk, she saw his eyes widen. “Wow.” He thought about that for a moment. “So who are your real parents?”

“I don’t know.” And how was Lady Scarab connected? She couldn’t be Lady Scarab’s daughter, could she? But then why wouldn’t Scarab have kept her? That was too weird to even brush with her wings. Scarab had had one daughter, Lady Jewel, ages and ages ago. Cricket couldn’t fit into her brain the possibility that Scarab had had another egg, decades later, with some mystery dragon and then given it away to Cadelle.

“Katydid didn’t tell you anything else?” he asked.

She shook her head. “She really didn’t want to. Blue, this has to be connected to why I’m different from the other HiveWings, doesn’t it? Maybe one of my real parents is resistant to the mind control, too. Maybe Queen Wasp found out, and that’s why they had to hide me with another family.”

He was silent, and she tipped her snout toward him. “Blue?”

“I just can’t imagine leaving my dragonet with someone else,” he said. “That must have been so hard. There must have been a really big reason they couldn’t keep you.” His eyes met hers again and then dropped away quickly. “Like … if they weren’t supposed to be together at all.”

She gasped and covered her snout with her talons. Across the water tower, Sundew twisted to look at them.

It would never have entered her head before she met Blue. She wouldn’t have been able to imagine it, until it changed her own life.

“You think one of my parents was a SilkWing?” she whispered.

“Do you?” he whispered back.

It’s not possible. Is it?

Am I a hybrid?

Would hybrids be immune to the mind control? SilkWings are. Is that why I am?

It seems like such an obvious possible answer … why didn’t I ever think of it before?

Because I thought I knew my parents.

Is that the answer?

But if that’s the answer … how do we save the other HiveWings? We can’t exactly turn them all into hybrids.

“I don’t know.” She tried to think of all the SilkWings she’d ever met. Had any of them acted strange, like maybe they were secretly her mother or father? Not that she could remember. There was no science on potential SilkWing-HiveWing hybrids. They were so forbidden it wasn’t even conceivable to study the idea. Wouldn’t there be something more … more SilkWing about her, if she were a hybrid?

Blue’s antennae twitched. “It’s almost midnight,” he said.

“Thank the trees,” Sundew responded. She yanked her cape out from under Swordtail, dumping him into the vat of water. When he came up sputtering and indignant, she flung her tail around his snout. “Shush, you great screech owl. It’s time to go.”

“It’ll be all right,” Blue said softly to Cricket, under the noise of Swordtail hauling himself out of the water. “I’m sure whatever happened, your real parents loved you and wished they could have kept you.”

Cricket was not so sure, but she was relieved to be moving again, out of the tower and on their way to the library, a place that had always been full of answers for her. She hoped the Chrysalis SilkWings would be like that, too. Full of answers … if she could figure out what “5” meant and find them.

The library was a few levels up from Cadelle’s neighborhood, just above the Jewel Hive Nest and below several levels of expensive ballrooms and wealthy mansions. It was one of Cricket’s favorite places in all the Hives, and she always wondered why Jewel Hive was only famous for the Glitterbazaar. Why didn’t other dragons ever talk about the library that took up an entire level, containing every book ever written by a HiveWing? Perhaps because it didn’t fit with the image of Jewel Hive — no one imagined the dragons here choosing reading over shopping or jewelry-making.

And yet for some reason Lady Jewel wanted this library, Cricket thought as they crept up to the enormous double doors at the front entrance. She made sure it was built into her Hive plans. None of the other Hives have one quite this big, not even Mantis Hive, which is supposed to be the smart Hive, the academic center of innovation. Cricket looked up at the flying beetles carved over the doors. The joke in the other Hives was that Lady Jewel couldn’t even read, although surely that wasn’t really true. Still … why did Jewel want a library that she apparently never goes into?

Despite Jewel Hive’s reputation, the library was never empty, at least as far as Cricket had seen. There were always dragonets everywhere — sprawled along the tops of bookshelves, curled in the window nooks, lying in the hammocks, and reading, reading, reading.

But now, near midnight, it was closed and deserted. The front doors faced the entrance from the ramps; there was a small plaza here, outside the library walls, with a circle of benches arranged around a statue of Clearsight.

Cricket loved this statue, too. Clearsight had her nose in a book — not The Book, just a book — and she was reading. She didn’t look like an avenging prophet announcing the doom of all the tribes. She looked as though she might glance up any moment, see Cricket, and say, “Oh my gosh, have you read this one? It’s amazing!”

The entire library level was vibrating from the shouts and music of a party above them. The flamesilk globes overhead shook and swayed and sent shadows wobbling across the front of the library. Tiny flecks of treestuff drifted down, making Cricket sneeze.

“Where’s the Chrysalis?” Sundew whispered to Swordtail.

He spread his wings in a “how would I know?” gesture, and she rolled her eyes.

“You’re not the most useful revolutionary,” she hissed. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“I’m better with Luna around,” he said wistfully.

Sundew hopped up the library steps and tried the doors, but they were locked. “So if we can’t get in,” she said, turning with a swirl of her cape, “the meeting must be out here in the plaza, right?”

Cricket looked around. It felt as if they were completely alone on this level. They’d passed other dragons on the ramps up and down, but it was the glittering hours of the night: all of them were going past the library to the gatherings above, to glitter and see and be seen glittering.

“Have you ever noticed that glitter is a word that quickly loses its meaning if you say it too much?” she said to Blue. “Glitter. Glitter. Glittering. Isn’t it super weird now?”

“You’re super weird,” he said affectionately. “Why isn’t this library as sparkly as the rest of the Hive?”

She glanced up at the towering walls of treestuff. It was true; unlike most of Jewel Hive, the library wasn’t shimmering with embedded jewels and tiles and decorations. It did have expensive wooden doors, saved from some long-ago building that must also have been a library, because they had books carved all over them.

Cricket remembered Sundew slashing her claws through the sculpted face of Queen Wasp on the doors of Wasp Hive. She wondered how long it had taken to carve the doors there and here, and whether there was any way to repair the damage, and who still knew the skills of wood carving and what kinds of tools were required …

Blue climbed the steps and touched the wooden door lightly with his talons. She saw a sad look cross his face as he glanced over at Sundew.

He’s thinking about what she might be feeling, Cricket guessed. That thing he does, where he’s always in someone else’s head. She thought it was fascinating; she wished she could remember to do it like he did.

I could try now … he’s thinking … hmmmm. Maybe that seeing wood used for doors must make Sundew sad … because she misses the trees?

“Any ideas?” Sundew barked, poking Cricket’s shoulder. “You three look half asleep. Do I need to bring up Belladonna’s other plan and our time limit? You do want to find the Chrysalis, don’t you?”

Cricket shivered at the reminder. The Chrysalis had to have answers for them, if they wanted to stop Belladonna and the other LeafWings.

“It doesn’t seem like they’re coming,” Swordtail said. He peered off along the walls in either direction.

“We’re missing something,” Cricket said. “Five. That was the third part of the message. Five … doors of the library? But there are only these, from the ramps, and another set at the back that open out to the savanna. Those will be closed at night, too.” She scanned the plaza. “There are only four benches. Nothing with a five on it, right?”

Blue squinted at the doors. “I don’t see any fives up here.”

“Maybe the statue … like where the message was hidden in the Glitterbazaar?” Cricket walked around the statue of Clearsight, looking for tiny cracks where another leaf might be stuffed. Nothing in the base. Nothing under Clearsight’s talons. Her neck curved toward the book, the row of spines spiraling along her back down her tail.

The spines were the only thing Cricket could see where there were more than five of them. She hopped up onto the statue’s base and reached up to the top of Clearsight’s head. One, two, three, four, five spines down her back — and there was something lodged under the fifth one.

A key.

She tugged it out and studied it in the light of the flickering flamesilk globes.

“What is it?” Sundew asked, resting her front talons on the base of the statue and lifting her neck to see.

“Our way into the library, I think,” Cricket said.

Sure enough, the key fit the lock on the doors. Swordtail heaved one side open and they slipped inside, one by one, while Cricket returned the key to its hiding spot and then followed them. Inside, there was a bolt to lock the doors again behind them.

A kind of peace settled over Cricket as she stepped into the library. She always felt this way when she was surrounded by books. She belonged here, even if she didn’t fit anywhere else. In here there were answers and information and thousands of stories waiting for her to fold herself into them. She was always safe inside a book.

And this was her favorite of all the libraries she knew. Shelves radiated out from the central desk in every direction, like a sunburst, and more aisles with more books filled the balconies overhead. Beloved characters were painted on the walls, golden glass and copper wire dragons holding books hung from the ceiling far overhead, and blue silk tapestries filled the rest of the open space, woven with quotes about reading.

“Hm,” Sundew said quietly, glancing around. “There’s a lot of dead trees in here.”

Cricket was startled out of her peace. “They’re not — I mean, maybe — but they’re books! Books are everything!”

“And they’re not all made from trees, right?” Blue offered.

“Right.” Cricket shook out her wings, taking a calming breath. “We mostly make paper from silk now.”

“Oh, good,” Sundew answered. “You used up our resources and moved on to exploiting a different tribe.”

“But the books are for us, too,” Blue said. “For everyone. I’d give all my silk to help build a place like this.” He ducked his head and looked at Cricket, and she wished she could throw her wings around him and tell him how wonderful he was.

Sundew wasn’t wrong. She kept opening Cricket’s eyes in moments when Cricket hadn’t realized they were closed. But Blue was the reason she could keep them open and still feel all the things she felt. He saw Cricket; he understood completely what this place meant to her.

“Shh,” Sundew said, flicking her tail in front of Swordtail’s face even though he hadn’t said anything at all. She pointed up and gave Cricket a quizzical look.

She could hear it, too. Voices arguing, somewhere upstairs.

They could have flown up to the balcony that overlooked the first floor, but their wingbeats might have scared away the other dragons. If they can hear anything over their own voices, that is, Cricket thought as they crept up the stairs instead. This was certainly the loudest stealth meeting of a secret rebellion she’d ever heard.

“No, you’re doing it wrong!” one of them shouted. “It’s like you don’t even care about what we’re trying to do here!”

“I’m focusing on what’s actually important!” another one yelled back. “Tearing apart other SilkWings isn’t going to get us anywhere!”

“We have to fix the problems in our own tribe before we can stand together,” the first voice insisted. “I mean, if I think Argus is a lazy caterpillar who doesn’t understand our mission, then it’s useful for me to yell at him until he sorts himself out.”

“I think it’s cowardly,” the second voice snapped back. “It’s easy to yell at Argus because he’s on our side. It’s a lot easier than standing up to the dragons we’re supposed to be fighting.”

“I’m sure your intentions are good, Morpho,” pleaded a third voice as Cricket and her friends crept through the stacks. “But what if you’ve scared him away and he never comes back?”

“Then good riddance,” the first voice snapped.

“No!” shouted the second. “We need every dragon we can get on our side! I’d rather have fifty SilkWings who are at least trying to do the right thing than three who are perfect in every way by your standards.”

Sundew crouched and snuck a glance around the last corner. Through the bookshelves, Cricket could see bright blue wings flashing open and closed, and the pale yellow scales of another dragon close by. They were in the back corner of the library, farthest from the front doors, near a wall of windows that looked out onto the dark savanna. Cricket remembered this reading nook with its hammocks and pillows. The flamesilk lamps were covered for the night, but their light still glowed dimly through the dark silk shades, illuminating the books scattered on the windowsills and the floor.

They should be more careful, Cricket thought nervously. Dragons flew between the levels all night in Jewel Hive, flitting from one party to another. Someone could easily fly past the library windows, glance inside, and wonder why a group of SilkWings was in the library after dark.

“You go out there first,” Sundew whispered to Swordtail. “Make sure they don’t freak out when they see the rest of us.”

“Me?” Swordtail said. “I mean, right. Me. Introductions. No freaking out. No problem.” He squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. “What should I say?”

“Just figure it out,” Sundew hissed.

“You’ll be great,” Blue added reassuringly as Sundew shoved Swordtail toward the squabbling dragons.

“Right,” Swordtail said. He cleared his throat and stepped between the hammocks, into the dim circle of light. “Excuse me? Hi.”

The SilkWings whirled around and stared at him.

“I’m looking for the Chrysalis,” said Swordtail.

One of the dragons snorted and spread his wings at the other two SilkWings with him. “Well, congratulations,” he said. “You’ve found us.”