Cricket woke up the next morning into a feeling of lingering dread. She had dreamed about losing the orphan egg, about Queen Wasp stabbing her in the heart with her mind-control poison, about Sundew opening her palms and unleashing an army of swarming black insects that covered Pantala from coast to coast.

She opened her eyes and found herself curled tight around the egg. Cool scales rested against her back, and when she peeked over her shoulder, she found Blue asleep with one wing tented over hers.

Sundew had brought them to a peninsula northeast of Jewel Hive, to a cave at the bottom of the seaside cliffs, but when they arrived late the night before, there was no sign of Belladonna or Hemlock. It had still been raining when they crept into the shallow nook and curled up on the damp rocks, but sometime in the night the rain must have stopped. There was no more thunder; the howling wind had finally dozed off. She could see the waters of Dragonfly Bay outside, leaden and gray like the clouds above them.

Carefully Cricket slid herself up to sitting and checked the egg.

There was a crack along the top of the shell.

Her heart stopped, and she touched it gently with one claw, then held the egg up to listen to it. Is the dragonet all right? Did I crack the egg?

As soon as she lifted it, a brisk tapping sound came from inside the shell. Something poked at the crack from the other side.

Is it HATCHING?

Cricket knew she shouldn’t be quite so alarmed. Hatching was, in fact, what eggs did. This one had to hatch at some point.

But she’d really thought she’d have a few more days first! How could she possibly have grabbed an egg that close to hatching? The queen had originally planned to visit three days later — surely she timed her visits to catch all the eggs before their hatching times?

“No,” Cricket said firmly to the egg. “It is NOT TIME TO HATCH YET.”

The tapping paused, and then picked up speed.

“Stop that!” Cricket said. “What are you doing? You’re not ready to hatch! You can’t come out!” She put one talon over the crack, covering it up.

The dragonet inside jabbed her palm with one of its claws.

“Stay,” Cricket ordered. “Stay IN THERE.”

“That sounds like it’s going well,” Sundew commented from across the cave, opening one bleary eye to glare at her.

“It cannot possibly be time for this egg to hatch,” Cricket said.

“I think it disagrees with you,” Sundew observed.

Blue sat up, yawning, and looked over Cricket’s shoulder. “Maybe it thinks it’s time to hatch because it’s not in the Nest anymore.”

“Oh my stars,” Cricket said. “Is that a thing? A real thing? Can it really tell it’s not in the Nest?”

“Well, the light is different, and the noises outside the shell, and it’s being moved around a lot more — so maybe?” Blue guessed.

“I thought you were the one who knew things,” Sundew said to Cricket.

“Not about eggs and dragonets and hatching!” Cricket said. “I’ve never studied those! I know about seeds and dirt and plants and … oh no, Blue, you might be right. Are eggs like seeds? Like if you put them in the right conditions, they grow?”

He spread his wings with an “I have no idea” expression.

“Baby,” Cricket said to the egg. “Small dragon. This would be a VERY SILLY place and time to hatch. Do not do it.”

A claw poked straight through the crack and wiggled gleefully at her.

Cricket gave Sundew a helpless look.

“This was your brilliant idea,” Sundew said. “Don’t look at me. I don’t want anything to do with any dragonets. Especially a HiveWing dragonet.” She jumped to her feet. “I’ll go get us something to eat. Yes, that’s what I should do.” She hurried out of the cave, casting the egg a suspicious look as she went by.

“It’s going to be very confused,” Blue said. “Don’t you think? Or maybe not; I guess it probably doesn’t have any expectations about what hatching will be like. I wonder if it’s scared.”

The egg was rocking merrily back and forth, emitting tiny squeaks. “Somehow I think not,” Cricket said.

More cracks spidered out from the first one. Delighted with its success, the dragonet kicked harder, finally sending a fragment of eggshell flying off to whap into Cricket’s nose.

“I’m serious!” Cricket yelped at it. “Stop hatching right now!”

The eggshell cracked in half in her talons. The pieces fell away, leaving a small black-and-yellow dragonet sitting between her claws, happily shaking bits of eggshell and goop off her wings.

“Whoa.” Blue leaned closer and blinked at it.

“Oh no,” said Cricket.

“Yim!” declared the dragonet, accidentally whacking Blue in the snout with her tail.

“Awwww,” Swordtail said from across the cave. “Look how cute she is!”

“Rrrrpt,” the dragonet agreed. She seized one of Cricket’s claws and started chewing on it.

“No, thank you, OW,” Cricket said, tugging her off and lifting her up so they were eye to eye.

“OW,” the dragonet mimicked solemnly. “OW.” She reached for Cricket’s ear with a hungry expression.

“She is cute,” Blue said, smiling.

“She is trying to eat me,” Cricket pointed out. “Sundew! I know you can hear me! Did you find any food?”

Sundew poked her head into the cave. “I perhaps should have mentioned this sooner,” she said, “but I rather intensely dislike small dragonets.”

“GORB,” the dragonet said sternly. “OW.”

“Here,” Sundew said, tossing a fish across the cave to Cricket. Blue jumped forward and caught it for her. “But don’t you dare let it think food comes from me!”

Cricket gave the fish to the dragonet and set her down in a small hollow in the rocks. The baby stuck the fish in her mouth, chewed vigorously for a moment, and then keeled over and fell asleep.

“So cute,” Swordtail said again, inching closer to grin at her.

“She needs a name,” Blue said. They all looked down at her black scales, striped with wide fuzzy swaths of bright yellow.

“She looks kind of like a bumblebee,” Cricket said.

“Bumblebee,” Swordtail echoed. “I like that.”

“Me too,” Blue agreed.

“I have no opinion,” Sundew offered from her spot halfway out the door.

“Come peek at her,” Swordtail said. “It’s safe while she’s sleeping.”

“Not interested,” Sundew said firmly.

Cricket leaned down and picked up the two halves of the eggshell. The dragonet seemed normal, as far as she could tell, if perhaps a little noisy and hyper and ravenous. Although she really had no idea what a normal dragonet should be like. Bumblebee hadn’t gone white-eyed in the twenty heartbeats she’d been awake, anyhow. Cricket wasn’t quite sure what the next step of this experiment was. Wait until Queen Wasp did look out of her eyes? If that happened, what would they do with Bumblebee? Abandon her somewhere?

I won’t ever do that.

But it’s not going to happen. She was only injected once. Like me, probably. She’ll be free.

Something caught her attention and she squinted at the eggshells for a moment.

“Blue,” she said, “do you see this?”

He leaned over and looked. “That’s the inside of Bumblebee’s shell? It looks kind of … greenish.”

“Let me see.” Sundew crossed the cave and Cricket held the shells up to the light. There was definitely some kind of green residue dusting the inside of the shells.

Sundew took one shell and poked the green part, but it didn’t brush off. It looked like a thin green crust, almost baked onto the shell. She frowned at it for a moment, then lifted it to her snout and sniffed it.

“Yuck,” Swordtail declared.

“I know this smell,” Sundew said. She stared out at the bay for a moment, then sniffed it again.

Cricket sniffed the one she was holding. It had a dark, leaf-rot scent, with something unpleasantly peppery lurking inside it. There was something a little familiar about it, but nothing she could identify.

“I spent four days surrounded by this smell,” Sundew said.

“What?” Cricket said, startled. “Where?”

“It comes from a plant,” Sundew said. “And Queen Wasp’s private greenhouse is full of it.”