Sundew woke before dawn, her heart pounding. She couldn’t remember her dreams, exactly, but she felt as though insects had been crawling all over her. Wasps, perhaps, thousands and thousands of wasps with eyes fathoms deep.

She slipped away from Cricket and Blue, who were still asleep, curled together like intertwining vines. Swordtail was sprawled on Blue’s other side, snoring lightly.

The tree branches shook as she climbed to the top, swaying in the breeze. Up here, she could smell the ocean; she could hear the cries of seagulls and birds of prey as they swooped by high overhead. Away from the jostling noise of the jungle plants, her leafspeak could discern the faraway murmurs of savanna grasses.

But this morning, there were other smells, other sounds. This morning she could smell dragons; she could hear hundreds of talons shuffling; she could sense the plants under their feet being smothered, struggling to survive.

And from the very top of the tree, she could see them. Columns of HiveWings lined the plain on the other side of the Snarling River, stretching to the horizon. Orange and gold and black scales, diaphanous wings flickering, each dragon in its place, an exact distance from every other dragon. They looked too precisely placed to be real, but they were real. The HiveWing prisoner had been right; it seemed as though Wasp had summoned every HiveWing in the tribe for this.

She’s hoping to wipe us out with one fell swoop, Sundew realized. She’s going to throw everything at us. She wants to finish this today.

Finish us.

“It’s terrifying, isn’t it?”

Sundew turned to find Mandrake perched on another high branch nearby. His eyes were tired, and she wondered whether he’d slept as poorly as she had, or maybe not at all.

“We’ll stop them,” she said. “We have to.”

The sky was shading toward pale gray, streaked with pink. The sun would slip over the horizon behind Sundew very soon.

If there’s a chance we’re all going to die today …

“Mandrake,” she said. “I’m not going to marry you.”

“I know,” he said, giving her a real smile for once. “I’ve always known that.”

“Really?” she said. “Because it’s not about you. You’re one of the few dragons I actually like. But you’re not Willow. And she’s the only dragon I want to marry.”

“I hope you do,” he said. “I hope the antidote works. I hope this whole horrible thing ends and we all get to live happily ever after.”

His smile faded as he returned his gaze to the vast army below them.

Sundew squinted down at the river, searching for the bonfire pile. It looked pitifully small from up here, especially next to all those thousands of HiveWings.

“Does that look like enough antidote to you?” she asked him.

He shook his head, looking grim. “No. Not even close.”

It’s not going to be enough. The smoke might reach the first few rows of dragons … but that will leave thousands more still behind them, still under Wasp’s control.

Thousands more still coming for us.

Panic surged through her like a jolt of toxin.

“I’m going to make more,” she said. “Come with me and help!”

He nodded and followed her. She scrambled down the tree until she found an open gap in the branches where she could spread her wings and drop down to the jungle floor.

It was still very dark down here, but Sundew let her leafspeak reach down into the soil and out through the root systems, tracing them along until she found water. A stream, a tributary of the Snarling River. That would be the best place to grow more heart of salvation, in the mud along the banks, where the damp earth could help it along.

She heard cracking branches overhead and looked up to see Cricket flailing her way down, catching on every vine and cobweb as she did. Mandrake ducked out of the way as the HiveWing landed in an ungraceful sprawl. She hopped to her feet, shaking herself off.

“You don’t have to come with us,” Sundew pointed out.

“Sure I do,” Cricket said. “I can help carry roots! I can harvest them while you make more grow! Also I really want to watch; I didn’t get nearly enough of a chance to watch that chokecherry grow, and I imagine it’ll be really awesome. I mean, scientifically speaking. I wish I could make plants grow just by thinking at them!”

“Well, it’s slightly more complicated than that,” Sundew said, “but all right, come along.”

They hurried through the jungle until they reached the stream, which wound between small pitcher plants and gurgled over smooth stones. Long feathery ferns leaned over the water, as if plotting how to steal it all for themselves.

Sundew found a patch of dirt, dug a hole, and planted a piece of the root in it. It looked pale and ghostly against the dark wet earth, like a grub that had wiggled its way up from the depths of the underground, or the haunted spirit of a real plant. She could still see patches of its white skin winking through the dirt as she covered it up, until finally it was completely buried.

Mandrake took another piece and moved farther upstream to do the same thing. Cricket stayed beside Sundew, with her tail wrapped around her talons, watching curiously. She wisely (and surprisingly) kept quiet as Sundew dug her claws into the earth and closed her eyes, summoning all the power of her leafspeak.

Hello, little plant. We need your help.

Hmmm, the plant murmured back softly.

You want to grow, Sundew told it. Let me help you grow. You can grow big and grand and wild, with so many roots you won’t need them all …

Grow wild spread far … the plant echoed, more or less, stretching its tendrils like a centipede unwinding. Grow far spread wild …

There was some kind of block between Sundew and the plant; she could reach it, but she couldn’t wrap herself all around it. She could feel it growing, but she couldn’t latch on to its exact voice. She felt as if she was hearing it reflected off another surface. It was hard to describe … like a sound just out of range that she knew she’d recognize if she got a bit closer.

Come forth, Sundew called. Be here. Let me see you.

The plant’s response felt like rustling in the back of her brain. Yessss, it whispered, yesss, coming, growing, spreading, taking, and then suddenly it was as loud as a waterfall YESSS HERE NOW, it roared, as vines shot from the earth and blasted across the ground all around them.

Sundew recoiled, her leafspeak recognizing them before her eyes did. She stared in disbelief as the vines kept growing, spreading, laughing inside her mind, red-and-green leaves unfurling, white flowers and evil-eyed seeds everywhere.

The antidote wasn’t a new plant. There was no “heart of salvation.”

She was looking at the breath of evil.