“Come, now,” Hawthorn purred when nobody answered him. “Make this easy on yourselves. Eat a tiny piece of the root or one of the seeds, and all your worries will be gone! Wouldn’t you like that? Who’ll go first?”

Sundew’s eyes were locked with Willow’s. The viper’s fangs were so close to Willow’s neck. No matter what Sundew tried, the moment she made a move, those fangs would sink in and Willow would be lost. Even if she could somehow kill Hawthorn in an instant — which wasn’t likely — she wasn’t sure that would stop the viper. As far as she could tell, the thing controlling all the dragons was also controlling the snakes.

So killing Hawthorn … even killing Wasp … might not be enough to stop it.

Willow blinked once, twice, three times. She slowly rolled her eyes down and to the left, at the mud between her and Hawthorn. Then she looked back at Sundew meaningfully.

“Wait, I have more questions first,” Cricket babbled. “Why aren’t your eyes white, like the dragons who are controlled by Wasp? Or your voice; why isn’t it all double weird like when Wasp talks through another dragon?”

Sundew shifted her gaze to Cricket, trying to look as though she was listening, when really all her attention was focused on her leafspeak. She had to weave it past the creepy shivering tangle of the breath of evil, burrowing through the earth around and below it. Her awareness slipped out of the nest of vines and across the stream, tiptoeing through the waterwheels.

The earth between Willow and Hawthorn … what had Willow seen there? What did she think Sundew could use? The pitcher plants here were too small to swallow a dragon; they had to content themselves with insects, frogs, and occasional small monkeys, but they were still very smug about it. Do you know what I ate today? Well, do you know what I ate? Self-important, like all pitcher plants everywhere. Even if Sundew made them enormous, they couldn’t attack Hawthorn or the snake for her. They caught their prey by sitting there with their gaping mouths open.

Sundew reached farther and found mushrooms, water lilies, and arrowroot — none of that would be helpful.

Wait …

There was a tiny sprout buried among the pitcher plants. Normally it wouldn’t survive another moon cycle; the self-satisfied plants around it would crowd it out of existence and steal all its prey until it wasted away.

But Sundew could save it, and maybe it could save them in exchange. She had to be precise, though … and fast.

Hawthorn was explaining something about cells and fungi to Cricket. Something about the hosts (or playthings) of hosts having the white eyes, but not the hosts themselves. She asked another, even more scientific question. She was stalling, whether she guessed what Sundew was doing or not.

Hello, beautiful plant, Sundew whispered with barely a shimmer of leafspeak. She didn’t want the thing to notice what she was doing, and she wouldn’t be surprised if it could overhear leafspeak conversations.

Oh, she realized suddenly. That’s what I was hearing in the trees. They sensed the breath of evil — they were warning one another of trouble — but Hawthorn was talking over them with his own leafspeak, telling them all was well. He was confusing them and me.

Frllp, the little plant said in a teeny-tiny voice.

Would you like to be bigger? Sundew asked in the plant’s own language. She sent it visions of sunshine pouring through its leaves, all the pitcher plants bowing before it, first choice of all the prey that wandered through. All the creatures it could eat.

Ooooooooo, the plant murmured.

I can make you strong, Sundew whispered, and big and tall, if you will eat one thing for me.

She showed it the viper. The slithering feel of it, the flickering danger of it, its exact location in space relative to where the sprout could be.

Oooo would love to eat that yes give please, the plant said, more or less.

It’s yours. Take it. Take it fast … NOW! Sundew shoved all her power through the systems connecting them, flooding the little plant with strength.

A swarm of sundew tentacles erupted from the earth near Hawthorn’s feet, bright red and green like the daylight version of the evil vines. The sundew shot up and out, all its arms growing as thick as anacondas in the space of a heartbeat, and one aimed straight and true for the viper around Willow’s neck.

The sticky droplets caught the snake’s tail, body, head, mouth all at once, yanking it up into the air. The viper writhed furiously, snapping at the tendrils of goo, but the sundew sucked it in and rolled it up fast, like a frog catching a fly on its tongue.

Or a grasshopper.

“How dare you!” Hawthorn roared.

Several of the tentacles had snared around Hawthorn as well as they shot from the ground, but Sundew could see that he was fighting them off with his own leafspeak. A few of them were withdrawing, reaching toward Willow instead as she backed away.

No! Sundew commanded. Eat that big one. The infected one. Leave the other. I helped you; listen to me.

Loud strong loud, whined the sundew. So loud hurts.

Even with her strength behind it, the sundew would give up soon; it was never meant to be an aggressive predator. She needed something else to fight Hawthorn with, and the vines were getting tighter and tighter around her.

Sundew looked around frantically and saw with horror that one of the vines had crawled up Cricket’s leg and wound around her neck, squeezing. Cricket was trying to bat it away with her wings, but her breath was already coming in choked gasps.

“Maybe I don’t need one more HiveWing,” Hawthorn growled. “Especially a deceitful, inquisitive one who won’t shut up.”

“Let her go!” Sundew shouted. “I’m the one who’s all the trouble! Fight me, not her!”

“I know you are,” the thing said. “But you will be useful to me. I’m going to use your leafspeak to retake my continent. Between you and Hawthorn — and I suppose this feeble worm over here,” he added, indicating Mandrake, “we can spread across all of Pantala in a matter of days.”

“I don’t think so,” Willow said from above him.

Hawthorn started to look up, but he was too slow to see the thorn as long as a dragon’s tail in her talons. Too slow and still too tangled in the sundew to escape or move or fight her off.

The sharp end of the thorn slammed into the base of his neck.

And he fell, killed instantly, as all the breath of evil vines screamed with fury.