“All you have to do is watch the sky,” Foxglove said for the eightieth time. “Stay right here and don’t move. If you see a dragon, remember everything about it, and tell us later, when we come back for you. Do NOT leave this tree on your own.”

“Oh my goodness, we know!” Daffodil said, laughing. “We’ll stay put.”

“We promise,” Ivy added. She wound one arm around the branch above her.

“Violet?” Foxglove asked sternly.

“I promise, too!” Violet rolled her eyes and shoved herself up to a higher limb.

“If you three misbehave, Commander Brook will never let any fourteen-year-olds outside alone ever again,” Foxglove said. “Think of your responsibility to future annoying teenagers.”

“It’s all we ever think of,” Daffodil said sweetly.

“We’ll be right here when you get back,” Ivy said.

Foxglove made a hm sound and swung down out of the tree. Squirrel and two others were waiting for her on the ground, ready to escort a fruit-gathering party. The Wingwatchers would keep an eye out for dragons, help everyone hide if it was necessary, and bring them home safely.

That’s what Wingwatchers do, Ivy thought, watching them leave. They’re protectors and researchers. They’re not secret revolutionaries. They’re not, no matter what Violet thinks. She hadn’t seen any signs of a secret conspiracy during their first year of official training — but then again, she had to be the last Wingwatcher anyone would trust with information like that.

Ivy, Violet, and Daffodil were only skygazing today. This was their third time officially skygazing outside, but the first time they were being left alone to do it. Ivy had practiced a lot with Foxglove, but most of the adult Wingwatchers didn’t know that, so she had to pretend it was all new and exciting to her.

Then again, she wasn’t really pretending. It was still pretty exciting. She could forget all her underground city worries when she watched for dragons.

Violet had seen a sand dragon once, on a secret trip outside with Ivy and Foxglove, but Daffodil still hadn’t seen any, and she was infinitely outraged about that.

Ivy rested her back against the trunk and stared up into the blue sky.

“So,” Violet said as soon as the Wingwatchers and fruit gatherers were out of sight, “I haven’t had ANY luck with either secret. Have you?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Daffodil. “Although I kind of forgot we were supposed to be working on that.”

Violet sighed expressively. “Ivy?”

“I asked my mother again about Uncle Stone,” Ivy said. “But she said I’m still too young to hear about it.”

“By all the dragons,” Violet said. “How bad is this secret if fourteen is too young to know it?!”

“I don’t think it’s because she’s fourteen,” Daffodil offered. “I think it’s because she’s Ivy, and her mom never wants her to know anything.”

Ivy couldn’t argue with that. There were lots of things she only knew because Violet and Daffodil had explained them to her.

“I haven’t even tried finding anything about the, um, the other secret,” Ivy said. “I figure obviously no one will talk to me about it.” And maybe I don’t really want them to.

“No one should talk to anyone about it!” Daffodil said. “It’s way too dangerous!”

“Hey, you’re the one whose life was RUINED when Pine was banished,” Violet pointed out. “I’m basically doing this for you.”

“You know nothing about love, Violet!” Daffodil cried. “And you are not doing this for me at all; you’re doing it because you’re nosy and can’t stand it when other people know things that you don’t.”

“Only when they’re important!” Violet said. “I thought you’d be all about starting a revolution. Causing chaos is literally your favorite thing.”

“I don’t have a problem with chaos. Or revolution! I have a problem with one of my best friends acting like an idiot. You can’t be sure all the Wingwatchers are part of this imaginary secret revolution. If you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, they could turn you in for treason, and then you’ll be banished, and then it’ll suddenly be a lot quieter and less stressful around here, so actually, never mind, you keep being you.”

Ivy laughed. Out here, with the wind blowing in her hair and the leaves rustling around them and dragons somewhere in the sky, even her friends bickering over dangerous conspiracies felt joyful.

It was still weird to see Daffodil without a speck of yellow on her anywhere — weird, also, to see Violet running through the woods and jumping over fallen trees instead of reading a book. But weird in a good way. Ivy was so, so happy to be outside, in the amazing sunlit world, with them.

Even though they were talking about a revolution against her dad, today it just … didn’t seem real. It was hard to believe that people could be so mad at each other when there was all this sky and millions of trees and towers of beautiful gold-lined clouds overhead.

And in those clouds …

“Hey,” she whispered. “Do you guys see that?”

It was so far up that she wasn’t even sure it was a dragon, except that there wasn’t anything else it could be. Birds didn’t reflect the sunlight in little flashes; no bird was that big or the color of diamonds, not at the same time.

Daffodil inhaled sharply and clambered onto the branch right next to Ivy so she could rest her head on Ivy’s shoulder and look in the same direction.

“Daffodil!” Violet whispered sternly. “You’re not supposed to MOVE when you’re skygazing!”

“Violet!” Daffodil whispered back in the same tone. “You’re not supposed to BE ANNOYING when you’re skygazing!”

Violet snorted and cupped her hands around her eyes to stare at the distant shape.

“You really aren’t supposed to move,” Ivy whispered softly in Daffodil’s ear.

“Shhh,” Daffodil whispered back. She squeezed Ivy’s hand. “My first dragon!”

Ivy more than understood what she was feeling. She still felt it, a little thrill all the way along her skin, every time she saw one.

The dragon circled, swooping lower and lower. It was flying in an odd, loopy way, jerking sideways, then flapping back, then jerking sideways again. It kept shaking its whole body like a wet dog trying to get dry.

“Huh,” Daffodil whispered. “I thought they’d be a little more graceful.”

“I think there’s something wrong with this one,” Ivy whispered back.

“Quit having conversations without me,” Violet hissed from her higher branch.

“Shhhh,” Daffodil said to her with a supercilious face.

As it came closer, Ivy started to feel a new shiver of exhilaration. She was pretty sure this was a kind of dragon she’d never seen before.

It had scales as purely white as the snow on distant mountains, glimmering like cut glass. Its face was narrow, and the spikes along its back were long and sharp. More deadly-looking spikes bristled like needles from the end of its tail.

“By the stars,” Ivy breathed, remembering the drawings in the guide. “I think that’s an ice dragon.”

“It’s so shiny,” Daffodil whispered.

“Why is it flying so weird?” Violet asked. “Is it coming to land?”

The ice dragon shook itself again and then dove toward the forest, plummeting like a comet out of the sky. Daffodil clutched Ivy’s arm and Ivy held tight to the branch above her, trying to keep as still as she could. The Wingwatcher’s Guide said ice dragons had sharper eyesight than most other kinds. Even if this dragon was injured, it could probably still snatch them out of the tree and eat them if it saw them.

The dragon crashed into the trees about half a mile away, smashing through the branches and disappearing from sight.

“Oh my goodness,” Daffodil whispered.

“Should we go see if it’s all right?” Violet asked.

“Violet!” Ivy said. “Foxglove specifically said to stay right here. I’m pretty sure ‘don’t go charging up to a wounded dragon’ was implied!”

“But think of how well you could draw it if you got really close to it,” Violet wheedled.

“I’m with Violet,” Daffodil said. “Let’s go look at it.”

“How is it that when you two finally agree on something, it’s the WORST thing?” Ivy demanded. “No. We promised Foxglove. I want to see it up close, too, but we can’t disobey her! They’ll make us stay inside for the next two years! Maybe longer!”

She was saved from the rest of this argument by the sound of footsteps running through the trees. They all froze, listening, until they saw Squirrel appear below the tree.

“Oh, good,” he said when he saw them. “We saw a dragon land nearby and Foxglove sent me to check on you.”

“Check on us?” Violet asked. “Or make sure we stayed put?”

“Both,” he said with a grin.

“We weren’t going anywhere!” Daffodil said innocently.

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Violet agreed.

“Ivy wanted to, but we told her no,” Daffodil added. Ivy swatted her, and she dissolved in giggles.

“I’ll just stay here and keep you company,” Squirrel said. “Not because we don’t trust you, but because we remember being young Wingwatchers, too.”

Violet sighed.

“We think it might be wounded,” Ivy said to Squirrel. “It was flying all weird and landed in a really awkward way.”

“Foxglove is going to — carefully — scout out the situation,” Squirrel said. “She’ll let us know what she finds.”

“Wait. Do you hear that?” Violet asked, leaning forward on her branch.

They all fell silent for a moment.

Thrashing — and panting — coming from the direction where the dragon had landed. It wasn’t loud enough to be a dragon, surely. But something was heading in their direction.

Squirrel silently reached up and swung himself into the tree. He crouched right below Ivy, and they all stared toward the sounds.

Something shoved through the bushes, breaking a few branches and shaking the leaves. Something staggered into the clear space below them, breathing heavily. Something paused, maybe fell or collapsed, flattening the grass.

But they couldn’t see it. They could see the vegetation moving around it; there was a clear outline of something heavy lying below them now. They could still hear it, gasping for breath. It sounded like a human.

So why couldn’t they see it?

Daffodil quietly worked a pine cone off the branch next to her. Before Ivy realized what she was up to, Daffodil leaned forward and dropped the pine cone squarely into the center of the flattened grass.

The something let out a yelp — a very human yelp — and then there were some scrambling-around noises.

“Oh, thank the moons,” said an extremely human voice. “Wingwatchers.” The shape seemed to collapse into the grass again.

“Halt there,” Squirrel said sternly. “Who are you?”

“Can’t you —” There was a pause. “Oh. Oh, right.”

Ivy’s uncle Stone suddenly appeared below them. He looked bedraggled, windblown, bruised, and thinner than before, but it was unmistakably him.

Daffodil let out a squeak of surprise.

“Uncle Stone!” Ivy said. She scrambled down to the branch next to Squirrel. “Permission to get down, sir?”

“I — I guess this is an unusual case,” Squirrel said. “Sure.”

Ivy jumped down to the ground and smiled up at her uncle. Not as far up as the last time she’d seen him … was it nearly two years ago?

He stared back at her as if she were a ghost.

“Are you all right?” Ivy asked.

He pressed his fingers into his eyes for a moment, as if rubbing out an old image, and then blinked at her again. “You’re my niece,” he said. “Ivy.” His voice was rusty, as though he hadn’t used it much in a while.

“Of course I am,” she said. “Where have you been?”

“And how did you do that?” Violet demanded from above. “Appear from thin air like that?”

Stone squinted up. “How many Wingwatchers do you have in that tree?”

“You should get up there, too,” Ivy said, reaching for his hand. “We just saw a dragon land not too far away.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I was … well, riding it isn’t exactly the right description.”

“What?” Daffodil shrieked.

“Shhh!” Squirrel glared at her. “Keep it down!”

“Riding a dragon?” Ivy echoed, awestruck.

“I needed to get back here,” he said. “It seemed like the fastest way?” He gestured ruefully to his torn clothes and the trickles of blood coming from his knees, arms, and face. “Probably should have chosen a less spiky dragon.”

“So … it was helping you?” Ivy asked.

Uncle Stone frowned at her. “Of course not. It didn’t know I was on board — or rather, it knew that something was on top of it, but it didn’t know what.”

“How is that possible?” Violet asked.

“You could steer it, even though it didn’t know you were there?” Ivy asked.

“Well,” he said. “Not very well. I think it was coming this way anyhow.”

“Invisibility!” Violet shouted suddenly.

“SHHHHHHH!” Squirrel tried again.

“You can make yourself invisible! That’s it, isn’t it?” Violet said. She was leaning over so far she was nearly falling out of the tree.

Stone sighed. “Don’t tell anyone, please.” He opened his fist to reveal a long, thin, coiled chain made of a silvery-black metal. “It was in the sand queen’s treasure. Heath let me have it because he didn’t know what it could do.” He shook it out and looped one end over his neck, vanishing the moment it touched him.

“Oh my stars,” Daffodil breathed. “Actual. Magic.”

Stone reappeared, lifting the chain off his neck. He collected the coils into a tangle in his fist, then stuffed it in one of his pockets. “That’s how I survived out there,” he said.

“Where?” Violet demanded. “Where did you go, and why?”

Stone looked down at Ivy with the sad eyes she remembered from every family dinner. “I had a dream that Rose was still alive, and so I went looking for her, but the desert nearly killed me, and then I ended up in a dragon city, which took me forever to escape, and the whole expedition was a disaster, and I don’t know what I was thinking. She’s been dead for almost twenty years. There’s no way she could have survived even a day out there among the dragons, on her own.”

Ivy met Violet’s eyes, then Daffodil’s. They all looked back at Stone.

“Um,” said Ivy. “Who’s Rose?”