Cricket whirled and bolted up the stairs. Behind her, the queen laughed and laughed, an eerie awful cackle that was like something else trying to crawl out through Cadelle’s normal laugh.

She made it to the next floor just as three more white-eyed HiveWings burst through the windows, shattering the shutters and ripping down the dark gray curtains. Cricket threw the empty paint pot and paintbrush at them, spattering bright pink droplets everywhere, and hurtled up to the top level, across the guest room and out onto the balcony.

HiveWings were swarming toward Cadelle’s house. She could see dragons on every street, running or flying in her direction. The queen had watched Cricket slip through her claws at the Temple of Clearsight; she wasn’t going to let her escape again.

Cricket threw herself off the balcony and flew as hard as she could toward the open ledges that led to the savanna. I escaped the Temple. I can do it again. If I fly and fly …

But this time she didn’t have Sundew with her, and the sky was too far away, and there were too many HiveWings, and the queen controlled them all.

They came from everywhere, boiling up from the ground and the windows and the ceilings like an explosion of fire ants. They were tiny dragonets and hulking soldiers and glittering socialites in their jewels and sparkles and finery, but none of them were themselves anymore. They were a swarm; they were the thousand claws of Queen Wasp. They had become mindless weapons.

Cricket had been terrified of the white-eyed dragons ever since that morning when she was two years old. Now she was the dragon they hunted, the dragon who didn’t move in unison with everyone else. The dragon who couldn’t escape.

She felt talons slam into her back and throw her to the ground. A red-striped HiveWing shot a blast of acid that just missed her shoulder and hissed into the treestuff beside her head. As she tried to roll away, another drove his wrist stingers into the edge of her wings, pinning her to the ground. Cricket shrieked with pain as Cadelle landed on her chest.

Her grandmother did not look triumphant or enraged or even interested. Her face was entirely blank while she held down her granddaughter so a black HiveWing with yellow spots could shoot something painful and paralyzing into Cricket’s wings.

Cricket turned her head away from Cadelle’s empty face and saw SilkWings watching from the windows and the sidewalks.

Last chance.

Through the haze of pain, she yelled, “The queen is lying to you! The Book never said she should rule you! It was all a lie!” and she thought she saw something — sympathy? confusion? surprise? — flicker in their faces.

And then the yellow-spotted HiveWing shoved his stinger into her neck. Her throat closed over the words she still wanted to say. Her vocal cords radiated with agony and her head flopped over, her neck muscles refusing to work for her anymore.

The HiveWings seized her frozen wings and dragged her away, away from the frightened SilkWing faces and up the ramps, up and up and up to the prison at the center of Lady Jewel’s palace.

Every time Cricket thought about the library in Jewel Hive and thought, Maybe Lady Jewel isn’t so bad after all, she always made herself remember the prison, which Jewel had insisted on building within her own palace walls instead of somewhere a civilized distance away. No one knew why she wanted her prison so close, or what happened to the dragons that disappeared inside it.

I guess I’m about to find out, Cricket thought bleakly as they passed through the blue-and-gold-and-beetle-green silk-spangled gates of Jewel’s palace. All the walls inside seemed to be full of windows, so the gray afternoon light and the sound of raindrops and the scent of a storm carried through the entire palace. For a moment, the breeze brushed Cricket’s face, whispering of the freedom outside.

And then the HiveWings descended a staircase and Cricket’s wings scraped over the black stone threshold that marked the end of Jewel’s public palace and the beginning of the secret prison. She wished she could lift her head to see where she was being taken, but all she could do was watch the scuffed floor pass below her, scarred with long trails of desperate claw marks.

Down here there were no windows, and the flamesilk lanterns were few and far between, leaving patches of darkness between dim pools of light. Cricket could hear mournful singing coming from one of the cells as they passed by. Another prisoner called to her — “Hey! What did you do? What did she do? Come on, tell me something!” — but she couldn’t answer, and her guards ignored him.

At the end of an interminable corridor, the dragons holding her finally stopped and unlocked a cell. They tossed her inside and she fell face-first, barely catching herself on numb talons before the weight of her paralyzed wings knocked her down. With an enormous effort, she rolled onto her back to see her captors.

“That was easier than I expected,” said the queen as one of the HiveWings locked the door. Another HiveWing leaned against the bars, grinning at her. The queen’s voice came from both of them at once, which was still immensely creepy. “You really were a fool to come back into a Hive. And for what? A little bit of graffiti, a few pamphlets that will be ash by evening? Poor naïve little dragonet. As though anyone would believe you over their queen.”

Cricket couldn’t speak; she wasn’t sure she would have been able to even if her throat hadn’t been paralyzed. She’d never been so scared in her entire life, except maybe the moment when the queen had seen her through the Librarian’s eyes, and she’d realized her secret was lost forever.

“It must have been so hard for you,” the queen went on, making one of the dragons run his claws along the bars. “Feeling so different, so alone. Watching everyone else come together in my Hive mind, but always left out.” The two HiveWings leaned closer and pressed their faces to the bars, as though she might force them to squeeze through. “But I have good news for you, little dragon. You don’t have to be different anymore.” Their tongues flickered out and in and out in terrifying unison.

“I can fix you,” hissed the queen. “I’m on my way right now. And when I get there … I can make you just like everybody else. Aren’t you lucky?”

The HiveWings stepped back, their pale eyes still fixed on Cricket. She felt a tear run down her face and couldn’t do anything to stop it.

“See you soon, little problem dragon.”

The sound of their tails slithering away seemed to last forever as Cricket lay there, alone in the near dark.

Sundew and Blue weren’t expecting her until sunset. They wouldn’t even look for her until after the queen had already come and done … whatever she was going to do.

No one is coming to rescue me. They’ll never find me in time.

The queen is going to take my mind and make it hers.

Cricket covered her ears and closed her eyes and prayed to the only dragon who could possibly hear her.

Clearsight, please be listening. Please. Please save me.