Sundew sometimes liked to imagine that she could fly all the way around the world without stopping, using nothing but her fury to keep her going.

When she got tired, she’d think about all the things that made her angry.

HiveWings.

HiveWings.

HiveWings.

Queen Wasp.

The murder of the trees.

The attempted murder of my entire tribe.

HiveWings.

Mother and Father …

No, those weren’t allowed on this list.

HiveWings. Sundew imagined stabbing her claws into their necks, ripping their smug expressions off their faces, choking them with strangler vines, releasing fire ants into their eyeballs …

A flash of yellow and black caught her eye, and she whipped her head toward it with a hiss.

“Sorry!” Cricket dropped to a different air current and called up, “I didn’t mean to startle you!”

“You didn’t,” Sundew snapped. It was sort of difficult to rage-fly on the power of hating HiveWings when there were two HiveWings flying right alongside her, being extremely noisy and distracting. Also when one of those HiveWings was sort of practically almost a friendish kind of dragon, maybe, and the other was the size of a large mango and madly in love with Sundew.

“SNUDOO!” cried the little dragonet tied snugly to Cricket’s chest. Bumblebee reached her tiny talons toward Sundew. “MRBLE SNUDOO!”

“Is that tiny lizard trying to say my name?” Sundew asked, alarmed. “How did THAT happen?”

“She’s very smart,” Cricket said proudly.

“Not if she thinks she wants my attention,” Sundew pointed out. She turned her head north again, beating her wings harder.

There was a dark line on the horizon ahead. They were almost there.

The Poison Jungle. Home. Or Never-home, as some of the LeafWings called it, but the only home Sundew had ever known. Her tribe’s true home, the rest of the continent, covered in vast ancient forests, only existed in stories of the old days and dreams for the future.

Sundew breathed and flew.

Each wingbeat brought her closer.

Closer to the thorn-sharp, fangs-bared, twisted safety of the Poison Jungle.

Closer to the dragon she wasn’t allowed to think about.

She felt the pouch she kept over her heart thump once, twice, again, in rhythm with her wings. It was the only pouch, out of the many wrapped around her, that didn’t hold venomous insects or useful plants.

Inside it was nothing but a small jade frog.

Which didn’t help with the not-thinking-about. It served, in fact, the opposite purpose.

But Sundew still brought it with her everywhere. As long as her parents, Belladonna and Hemlock, didn’t know what it meant, they couldn’t do anything about it.

“Um — Sundew?” Blue asked nervously from her left. She tilted her head toward him. It was weird to know a SilkWing, after years of scoffing about how beautiful and useless they were. Even weirder, he’d turned out to not be useless at all. Flamesilk. I should have been a flamesilk. If I had the power of fire …

Well, I sort of do, now that we have Blue.

That thought made her uncomfortable, and she wasn’t sure why. She bared her teeth at a passing starling, and it nearly fell out of the sky in fright.

Blue’s wings glimmered azure in the rays of the setting sun. “Um. Isn’t the Poison Jungle … really dangerous?”

“Or is that a lie?” Swordtail asked from her other side. “Like, maybe LeafWings spread stories exaggerating how dangerous it is so that no one else would go there? That would make sense; I bet that’s it.”

Sundew laughed. “How could we spread stories?” she said. “We haven’t communicated with any SilkWings or HiveWings since the end of the Tree Wars fifty years ago. We were supposed to be extinct. That was kind of your whole goal, remember?”

“Not our goal,” Blue protested in distress.

“No, everything you’ve heard about the jungle is true,” Sundew said to Swordtail. “Queen Wasp sent a few expeditions to the Poison Jungle looking for resources and trying to make sure no dragons were hiding from her there. Almost all of them died; the rest are the ones who brought the stories back to you.”

She frowned. “One of the expeditions was sent to burn down the jungle, because Wasp wanted no more trees anywhere. None of those dragons survived.” She flicked her tail. “We helped the jungle make sure of that. No one who comes for the trees again will be allowed to live.”

“But then how have you survived?” Blue asked. “How can there be a whole tribe living in a place that’s so dangerous for dragons?”

“We didn’t have a choice,” Sundew answered. “It’s easier when you grow up knowing what to avoid and how to treat snakebites and where the quicksand is. Nowadays we only lose a few dragons a year to the carnivorous plants.”

“The what now?” Swordtail said, his voice rising an octave. “CARNIVOROUS WHATS?”

“Yeah, you will probably get eaten,” Sundew said with a shrug. “They always get the loud flappy ones. And that HiveWing dragonet is cobra lily food for sure.”

“ZAMEE!” Bumblebee shouted from behind them.

“I am not enjoying this conversation,” Swordtail observed.

“Do we have to go to the place with the certain death?” Blue asked.

“Yes, because it’s my home,” Sundew said. “And also the only place you’ll be safe from Queen Wasp after burning down her greenhouse of mind-control plants.” And also because there’s a dragon there who I’m definitely not thinking about and certainly do not think about all the time.

“We’d be safe across the ocean, wouldn’t we?” Cricket offered, flying back into Sundew’s line of sight. “In the Distant Kingdoms?”

Sundew laughed. “If you would all like to fly out to sea in search of an imaginary continent, go for it.” She thought, but did not add: Except for you, Blue. You belong to the LeafWings now.

The group fell silent as they drew closer to the edge of the Poison Jungle. The Snarling River, dark and swift-flowing, marked the boundary, but the jungle was always prowling across the line. Pitcher plants and cobra lilies grew thick along the shores on both sides, and every time Sundew flew this way, she saw more plants extending their tendrils across the water, more twisted little thorn trees starting to muscle their way up on the wrong side.

If we set it free, the Poison Jungle could devour the continent for us, and all the HiveWings, too.

If I set it free. I could unleash the jungle and send it forth to strangle our enemies.

I won’t, though. I don’t want a Pantala covered in poisonous, dragon-eating plants. I want the Pantala of the old stories: the giant forests that stretched from shore to shore.

She closed her talons into fists.

But if I can’t have that, feeding all the HiveWings to overgrown bladderworts is a solid plan B.

Sundew was over the river when she realized the others had stopped, hovering in midair to stare at the trees. She swung around and flew back to them.

“They’re so big,” Cricket said in an awestruck voice. Her gold-orange wings hummed like a cloud of dragonflies. The late-afternoon sunlight caught in her glasses, reflecting the rippling water below. “I didn’t know trees grew so enormous. Some of them look as tall as the Hives! How old are they? Can you tell? Would they all get that big if they lived that long? Are they all dangerous? Oh, please tell me you have books about all these plants!”

“I want to know how you can fly in there when everything’s so close together,” Swordtail declared, squinting at the tangles of vines, fallen trees, giant spiderwebs, and thickets of plants that wove impassable barriers between the trees.

“It feels like one vast creature with a million eyes,” Blue added softly. “I can almost hear it breathing … like it’s waiting for us.”

The others stared at him, and even Sundew, who was used to the creepy aura of the Poison Jungle, felt a trickle of ice run through her veins.

“Arglerarrrgh flort,” Bumblebee announced, jabbing Cricket’s chin with one of her claws and breaking the spell. “Eeeepow? Snudoo?” She reached hopefully toward Sundew.

“I think ‘eeeepow’ means ‘eat now,’ ” Cricket explained with a sigh. “She’s been yelling it for the last half a continent.”

“EeeeeeeeeeeeePOW!” Bumblebee demonstrated with expansive arm gestures, trying to wiggle out of her sling. “EEEEEEEEEEpow!”

“You can wait until we get to the village,” Sundew said sternly. “Don’t make that face at me. No whining, or you can wait until tomorrow morning.”

Bumblebee flopped slowly over backward so her head and wings drooped toward the river below. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeenever,” she said, mournfully and distinctly.

“Awww,” Cricket said, tucking the dragonet back into place and patting her head. “She’s such a quick learner.” Bumblebee snuggled into her chest and gave a loud, dramatic sigh.

Sundew turned to Swordtail. “We keep the outer layers of the jungle as wild and impenetrable as possible,” she said. “For obvious reasons.”

“Obv — oh, she means you,” he said to Cricket. “The obvious reasons are your murdery tribe and your evil queen.”

“Swordtail, come on,” Blue said, drawing closer to Cricket.

“Your tribe isn’t exactly welcome here either, SilkWing,” Sundew pointed out. She had a feeling she was going to get a pretty strong reaction when they got to the LeafWing village. But it was Belladonna’s fault for leaving and setting a Hive on fire instead of waiting for Sundew to meet her, as she’d promised. If she didn’t want Sundew bringing strangers into the jungle, she should have stayed in one place till they came.

Sundew looked up at the press of jostling tree trunks that rose before them. “Flying gets easier farther in,” she explained. “But for now, we climb. Follow me, stay close — and don’t touch anything I haven’t touched first.”

She arced her wings and caught an air current that smelled faintly of salt and distant whales. It lifted her up and up, toward the swaying tops of the trees.

Up here, the branches were like thousands of long spider monkey arms. They reached and caught one another, bending back and looping around, fuzzy with pale green moss or marked with the scratches of dragon, jaguar, and tamarin claws.

The spot where the makahiyas grew was well camouflaged; other plants with similar leaves had been planted all around it up and down and along the wall of foliage. But Sundew never had any trouble finding it. She could have flown to it with her eyes closed. She could sense the vibrations of the makahiya leaves like quiet music in her head; they were higher and trembled more than the vibrations of other plants.

Sundew slowed down and brushed her tail lightly across the center of the makahiya cluster. At once the long, oval, fern-like leaves began folding together, pair after pair along the stems like butterfly wings closing up. As they closed, they revealed a gap in the branches behind them, just large enough for a dragon to fit through.

“Whoa,” Blue whispered. “I’ve never seen a plant do that before.”

“Oh, I think … they’re called ‘touch-me-nots,’ aren’t they?” Cricket asked Sundew.

“That’s one name for them,” Sundew answered.

“Oooooo,” said Swordtail. “That sounds super dangerous! Touch me not — or you will DIE!”

Sundew snickered, and Cricket covered her snout to hide her smile. “Actually,” Sundew said to Swordtail, “this is probably the only plant up here that won’t kill you.”

“Hmm,” he said skeptically, squinting at the folded leaves as he followed Sundew through the hole.

Stepping into the jungle always felt like plunging underwater, if that water was actually thick green soup, in a cauldron, boiling, and full of insects. Sundew hissed at a mosquito the size of her ear, and it veered away in search of more docile prey. Behind her, Cricket let out a yelp and lifted one talon to reveal a crushed mess of yellowy-orange ooze that had probably been a tree slug.

“Oooom-yum?” Bumblebee inquired, reaching for it. “Eeee?”

“No,” Cricket said. “GROSS, Bumblebee!”

“GWOSE!” Bumblebee cried, waking up an anaconda as thick as Sundew’s tail in the next tree over. The snake raised its head slowly and narrowed its eyes at the little dragonet.

“Shhh. Let’s move,” Sundew whispered. She ran lightly along the branch and leaped to another, then scrambled up to one that crisscrossed above them. The trees shook as the other dragons tried clumsily to follow her.

Sundew could sense the message spreading through the trees. Something new. Leaves whispered to leaves; roots and networks of underground filaments flickered the news along like twigs in a current. Watch listen be safe caution stand guard. She didn’t have time to dig her talons into the dirt and shape the story. She had to hope she could get her dragons to the village quickly, and then she could take a moment to talk to the trees.

“You’re like a monkey,” Swordtail panted, catching up to her when she stopped to wait for them. “I mean — in a good way — like a — very fast — jumps — good jumps — not foodishly — I mean, not in a dinner way — just, so fast.” He wheezed to a stop.

Cricket balanced along the branch to a spot behind him, digging in her claws in a way that made Sundew wince. The trees wouldn’t like that. But Bumblebee kept lunging sideways, nearly out of her sling, reaching for bright flowers or shining beetles, so Sundew could see why Cricket needed to hold on tight.

Bringing up the rear behind her was Blue, who looked as if he was trying to swallow the jungle with his eyes.

“It’s scary, like being high up in the webs,” he said thoughtfully, “but loud, like the inside of the Hives, except the buzzing isn’t in a language you can understand.”

“And the smell is way worse,” Swordtail observed.

Sundew bristled. “No, it isn’t! The smell of hundreds of dragons trapped in one structure is much worse! This is what plants and fresh air and freedom smell like!”

“Isn’t it also what rotting plants smell like?” he asked. “And dead animals? And … I don’t know what else … swamp gas?”

“You smell like swamp gas!” she said furiously.

“I’m sorry,” Blue interjected. “I only meant it’s interesting. I’m trying to map it onto something I’ve felt before, but it’s so different from anywhere I’ve been.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Swordtail agreed, giving Sundew an abashed look. “It’s not that bad. Some of it is kind of cool. Like that flower right below us — look, Blue, it’s like an enormous wild pink open book. I mean, SO pink! And it actually smells kind of —”

“DO NOT —” Sundew shouted as he leaned toward it, sniffing.

But it was too late. Swordtail’s nose brushed the pink surface, and the plant’s jaws snapped shut around him, yanking him off the branch and swallowing him whole.

In an instant, Swordtail was gone.