The world around Leaf had suddenly come into bright, sharp focus, as though he’d been underwater up until Rose said Wren’s name and shocked him into this new place. As though maybe he’d been underwater since he was eight years old.

It’s probably not her, he tried to tell himself. Don’t get your hopes up. How could it possibly be her?

Because it’s ME! Wren shouted in his head. Of COURSE I would survive being fed to dragons! I probably ate THEM!

But if it was her and she was really alive, what should he do? What could he do? He felt like he should be running, but which way and how?

This is my actual destiny, he thought. Finding Wren. This is what I should have been doing my whole entire life. I should have known she survived; I should have left home that same night and tried to find her. That was my true purpose. It is. I just had no idea.

“You said east?” he said to Rose. “How long ago did she leave?”

“Long enough that you won’t catch her on foot,” Rose pointed out.

“On horseback?” Ivy suggested. “Our horses are pretty tired but …” She trailed off as Rose shook her head.

“No, what you need,” Rose said briskly, “is another dragon. One that’s faster than Sky, which is most of them, I suspect. I mean, he’s cute, but he’s much smaller than Smolder.”

“Yes,” Ivy cried. “You have to follow her on a dragon!”

Leaf’s legs decided to stop working for a moment, and he sat down hard on one of the shiny green pillows.

“You two are both living in a fantasy world,” Stone said, pointing at Ivy and Rose. “Where dragons can ever be cute or sweet or friendly. In the real world, dragons are monsters who eat people. A dragon will definitely eat this poor boy if you try to make him ride one.”

“They are not monsters!” Rose cried in outrage.

“And you did it yourself,” Ivy interjected. “Uncle Stone, you rode a dragon from the desert back to Valor. Remember? With your invisibility necklace on? Leaf could do the same thing.”

He frowned at her, working his jaw so his beard went up and down. “I’ve also stabbed a dragon queen in the eye,” he said. “I wouldn’t consider myself a role model.”

“But that proves it can be done!” Ivy said. “Leaf, you’ll do anything to get to Wren, wouldn’t you? Even ride a dragon?”

“Yes,” he said, and then he stood up and said it again, this time in a voice they could all hear. “Yes. I’ll do it.”

“Then I know just the dragon,” Rose said, leaping off the pillows. “I call her Sweetface. She’s one of the night patrols, and I think she’s actually sort of fond of humans, so even if she realizes there’s a human on her, with luck she won’t eat you.”

“Fond of humans,” Stone muttered as they followed Rose out of the room through a fascinating little human-sized flap built into the door. “For breakfast, maybe.”

“I’d offer you Smolder,” Rose said apologetically, ignoring Stone, “but he’s VERY stubborn and just a smidgen bit lazy, and there’s no way he’ll fly out into the desert in the middle of the night.” She crossed the tiled terrace and jumped down into the courtyard.

“What makes you think this dragon is fond of humans?” Ivy asked. The three moons were all high overhead as they crossed through more courtyards, winding back through the palace toward the outer wall.

“Well, she loves me anyway!” Rose said with a laugh. “She makes these hilarious cooing noises every time she sees me, like I’m an adorable baby rabbit or something. Sometimes she sneaks me treats, even though I’m pretty sure Smolder has grumbled at her about it.”

“So you are a pet,” Stone growled.

Rose shrugged. “I don’t see it that way. Besides, even if I am, I’m a pet who gets to fly on a dragon. Which is objectively awesome. Leaf will tell you I’m right when he gets back.”

“If he gets back,” Stone muttered ominously.

Leaf was having a hard time concentrating on the conversation between freaking out about Wren and freaking out about being moments away from trying to ride a dragon. “Do you have any advice?” he asked Stone. “Like, any tips on dragon riding?”

“Number one, don’t do it,” Stone said, rather predictably. “Number two, if you must be an idiot, hang on tight.”

Leaf caught Ivy and Rose doing matching eye rolls.

“I thought twenty-year-old you was curmudgeonly,” Rose said, elbowing him in the side. “I had no idea how much worse you could get!”

“Wait, he was like this even back then?” Ivy asked.

“Like what?” Stone demanded.

“Brooding?” Rose offered. “Overprotective? A little judgy? Yeah, definitely.”

Ivy giggled, and Stone gave Rose an offended look. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “How am I supposed to be an intimidating authority figure to my niece if you keep making fun of me?”

Even through his nervousness, Leaf could see that being around Rose was bringing down some of the walls around Stone. Ivy thought finding Rose would fix her dad … but I think the person it’s going to help the most is Stone. The real Dragonslayer.

They finally reached a tower not far from the outer wall and everyone fell silent as they focused on climbing the spiral staircase inside. Several of the stairs were covered in drifts of sand that had blown in through the narrow windows. Leaf got the feeling the stairs were rarely used; he guessed most dragons would just fly to the top, and he wondered whether there were any who preferred the stairs, or why they’d been built in the first place.

It was an exhausting climb, with each stair nearly as tall as they were, and by the end he and Rose were helping pull Ivy and Stone up the last few steps. At the top, they emerged onto a huge stone circle high above the rest of the palace. There was no railing, nothing to stop a person from walking right off the edge, which gave Leaf a weird lurch of dizziness. He tried looking up instead, into the endless spray of stars that glittered overhead. A comet blazed in the center of them all, bright as one of the moons and nearly as big.

The wind tugged at them, colder and clearer away from the stench of blood in the palace.

“There’s nobody up here,” Ivy pointed out.

“She’ll be here soon,” Rose said. “She flies out to scout the desert a few times a night. You and Stone should hide, and I’ll distract her so Leaf can climb on.” She gestured to the invisibility chain.

Ivy gently draped it over Leaf’s head and looped it around his neck a few times. Her hands paused on his shoulders, and she pulled him into a hug.

“It’s so weird to hug someone you can’t see!” she whispered.

“Thank you for helping me,” he whispered back.

“I hope you find Wren.” Her breath was warm against his neck. “And bring her back so I can meet her and her dragon. I mean, I hope you find her so you can see her again, not just so I can meet her dragon. I mean, that would be amazing, but that’s not the only — you know what I mean.”

He laughed. “I shouldn’t take this,” he said, touching the chain and moving one of her hands to rest on the links. “You’ll need it to get out of the palace.”

“You need it more,” she said. “Besides, apparently we’re friends with the prince of the sand dragons, so I think we’ll be OK.” She hesitated, then slid her hands up his neck to cup his face. “I hope you’ll come back, though. I mean, I understand if you need to stay on her trail once you’re out there. But if you don’t catch her tonight, and Sweetface brings you back here, I promise you, Leaf, I’ll help you look for her. We’ll find your sister, no matter what.”

“I will come back to you,” he promised. “And I’ll help you free your friends.”

She smiled. “Hey, quit that. I’m the one making noble declarations about your destiny right now.”

“But noble declarations are my whole thing!” he said with a grin.

She pulled his face closer and reached up to kiss him, but her lips landed awkwardly on the side of his nose and she broke away with a laugh.

“All right, it is even weirder to kiss someone you can’t see,” she said, or mostly said, before he interrupted by kissing her back.

“Here she comes!” Rose whispered. “Ivy, hide!”

“Good luck,” Ivy said against his lips, and then Leaf’s arms were empty, and she was vanishing down the stairs after Stone.

He looked through his hands, feeling about a hundred million different things, and then he looked up and saw pale yellow scales and long curved claws descending toward him. He stepped back as the dragon landed in a gust of warm air and cocked her head at Rose.

Just another dragon, he told himself. You should be an expert on these by now, Leaf. How many other humans have been carried around by four different dragons and still survived? If Rose is right, this one is like the brown one. Not terrifying at all.

It wasn’t an entirely convincing speech, though, with the massive dragon towering only a few steps away from him, her venomous tail coiled up like a scorpion’s behind her.

Rose waved up at the dragon and bounced on her toes a little bit. “Hi, Sweetface!” she called. “Who’s a big sweet dragon?”

The sand dragon’s face cracked into a giant grin and she lowered her head to Rose’s eye level. “Oooorble roooargooor,” Sweetface warbled affectionately.

This is my chance! Leaf realized. Rose made a little gesture with her hand and he sprinted over to the dragon’s front leg, which was bent in a crouch. He made a flying leap onto the smooth scales and scrambled up toward her shoulder.

“ROAWR?” Sweetface made a puzzled noise and shook her leg as if she’d felt an insect on it. Leaf had to throw himself up the last stretch, grabbing her wing and tossing himself onto her back.

At the same time, Rose burst into song and started dancing a busy, foot-stamping dance in front of the dragon. Sweetface swung her head back and stared at her for a moment with a delighted expression, then looked over her shoulder again to see what was on her back.

Leaf lay still, wedged between the frill along her spine and the curve of her wing. Sweetface shook herself all over, then twisted her neck around the other way, clearly confused about why she could feel something on top of her, but not see anything.

Rose stopped dancing and patted one of Sweetface’s talons. The dragon looked down at her and smiled again, and then lifted her head as a second sand dragon came whooshing in over the outer wall. The two dragons roared something at each other.

And suddenly Sweetface crouched, sprang into the air, and flung out her wings. Leaf was so startled by the jolt that he nearly slid right off her, but he managed to grab her spinal frill at the last moment. He held on for dear life as the dragon soared over the palace wall and out into the desert sky.

I’m flying, he thought in a terrified daze. I’m flying! Wren! I’M ON A DRAGON!

So am I, he imagined her saying with a nonchalant shrug. And mine’s cuter.

The sand rushed past below him in a blur. In the moonlight, the dragon’s scales were as pale and colorless as the desert below, flickering with shadows as her wings beat up and down, up and down.

This is a terrible idea. Which way did Wren go? Even if I knew, I can’t steer this dragon. Are we going east? I think we are. Yes, when he risked lifting his head, he saw a ridge of dark mountains on the horizon ahead.

Sweetface shook herself and peered over her shoulder again. Leaf imagined being her; it must feel like having an invisible squirrel on you would feel to a human. Fairly unsettling, he was sure, but he was also in a spot too awkward for her to reach with her talons. He hoped her scales were less sensitive than skin, and maybe she would get used to his weight after a while.

She flew straight toward the mountains for a long while, scanning the desert and the skies with sharp movements of her head. Leaf tried to search the sky, too, for any sign of a dragon up ahead. He couldn’t hear anything except the rush of wind, the steady thrum of the dragon’s wings, and the faint thump of her heartbeat.

Was that something? A flicker of motion in the distance, flying over the silver ribbon of a river …

Sweetface saw it, too. She whipped her head toward it, then tilted her wings to soar closer.

Leaf held his breath as they approached. It was another dragon, as pale as Sweetface in the moonlight, flapping its wings with slow, concentrated effort. Leaf wasn’t sure if he was imagining the dark shape curled on its back.

They were close, nearly close enough to fly right over the strange dragon in a few more wingbeats, when Sweetface checked herself in the air, made a noncommittal noise, and veered back toward the palace.

Wait! Leaf thought frantically. We were so close!

He pressed his feet into the dragon’s wing, trying to turn her around. She yelped and twisted in a circle, reaching for her back. He ducked her claws and threw his arms around her neck and leaned hard to the right. With another, more alarmed yelp, she flung her wings out and shook herself vigorously. She was as determined not to turn around as he was to make her turn, but she was probably a hundred times heavier than he was.

“WREN!” Leaf shouted desperately, at the top of his lungs. “WREN! OVER HERE!”

He did not see Sweetface’s tail come swinging out of the sky behind him. Suddenly he felt the side of it smack into his chest, knocking him straight off her back.

With his last coherent thought, he yanked the chain over his head as he fell.