“Remind me why we’re walking toward the place with the monster and the screaming and the something that kills dragons?” Clay asked.

“We could go somewhere else,” Starflight said. “Maybe to the IceWings?”

“IceWings! Yes!” Clay said. “That sounds like a great plan. Let’s do that. No mysterious dragon-killing things in the Ice Kingdom. Right? What are those animals they have up there? Penguins? I bet I could beat a penguin or two in battle. Couldn’t I? How big are they? Maybe just one penguin.”

“So we can freeze to death instead,” Glory said. A rumor and a couple of dead soldiers were not going to scare her away from her home when she was finally this close. “Fantastic plan, Starflight. Not to mention the Ice Kingdom is half a continent away while the rainforest is right here.”

“Besides, Webs will never make it all the way to the Ice Kingdom,” Sunny chimed in. She glanced nervously up at the trees, which seemed to be getting taller and taller as they walked.

It was also warmer the farther they went, and up in the vines overhead Glory could see flashes of color. The bright summer yellows and purples and blues might have been birds or flowers, but they were definitely not typical of the brown, brown, brown Mud Kingdom. Glory wasn’t sure, but she guessed the dragonets were in the rainforest for real now.

The gnarled claw shapes of the marsh trees were half a day behind them and so were the MudWing bodies. Tsunami had wanted to stop and search the area for clues, but she’d been outvoted by the other dragonets when Starflight pointed out that now they’d really be in trouble if they were caught right next to a double murder . . . not to mention whatever had killed the soldiers couldn’t have gone far. That was enough to get everyone, even Webs, to fly through the night, and they’d circled down to walk again only once the sun was up and they were looking for food.

“See?” Glory said to Clay and Starflight. “Even Sunny is acting braver than you scaredy-scavengers.”

“Even Sunny?” the SandWing flared. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m brave! I’m brave all the time!” She lashed her tail and ducked away when Clay reached to pat her on the head.

Warm bursts of sunlight nudged through the leafy canopy, making all their scales glow. Glory let her scales turn whatever color they wanted. A shimmery beetle green spread all over her, touched here and there with curls of amber. She liked the feeling of matching the trees and sunbeams.

We’ll be there soon, she thought with a shiver of anticipation. But I mustn’t get my hopes up. Maybe it won’t be what I imagined. It just has to be better than life under the mountain, trapped in a cave by guardians who hate me. I’m not setting the bar too high here, I think.

Something crackled off to their left, but when Glory whipped around, all she saw was a shaggy gray sloth, hanging from a tree and blinking sleepily at her.

“Have I mentioned this place makes me nervous?” Clay asked.

“Only about a thousand times,” Glory said.

“I wish we knew what the MudWings were talking about,” Sunny said. “How can they live right next to the rainforest and not know why it’s dangerous?”

“How can the RainWings live in the rainforest if it’s all that dangerous?” Glory countered.

Webs sniffed faintly, the first sound he’d made in a while. He muttered, “Because they’re RainWings. They probably haven’t even noticed.”

Glory glared at him. “Maybe you’d like a matching venomous wound on your other side,” she snarled.

Tsunami whirled and grabbed Webs’s snout. The bigger SeaWing snorted with surprise and tried to jerk back, but she held him firmly so she could glare into his face.

“All right, enough. What do you know about this?” she demanded. “You’re the only one who’s been to the rainforest. Does it have some kind of monster?” She shook his snout, none too gently. “Stop drooping like a wet fern and tell us what you know.”

“Nuffing,” Webs mumbled through Tsunami’s grip.

“Stamp on his tail,” Glory suggested. “Or poke that scratch. That’ll get him talking.”

“Don’t be horrible,” Sunny said. She nudged their guardian’s shoulder with her snout. “Webs, please warn us if you know something. It’s not safe for you either.”

Webs sighed, and Tsunami let go of him.

“I swear I don’t know anything about a monster,” he said. “I didn’t see anything dangerous when I snuck in to steal Glory’s egg. Honestly it was really easy. It was the night before the brightest night, so you could tell which eggs were about to hatch, and I just took one and flew back to the mountains. I didn’t even run into any RainWings, let alone a monster.”

“My parents weren’t guarding their nest?” Glory asked.

Webs looked down at his talons and shook his head.

That doesn’t mean anything, Glory thought, but she remembered the MudWing village and Clay’s mother, who had sold one of her eggs to the Talons of Peace for a couple of cows. She hadn’t missed Clay at all, and she certainly didn’t want him back. Glory hoped her parents wouldn’t be like that.

Both Clay and Tsunami had been disappointed. Maybe parent dragons were always disappointing . . . especially when you’d spent years dreaming about what they might be like.

Well, Glory didn’t particularly care whether her parents were the most amazing dragons in the world. She just wanted to meet other RainWings and show her friends that they weren’t all lazy fruit-eaters, like the other tribes thought. With their camouflage scales and secret venom, surely they had to be tougher and stronger than anyone suspected.

“Maybe it’s a new monster,” Clay suggested. “Something that’s come to the rainforest since you were here six years ago.”

“Maybe,” Webs said. “The Talons never sent anyone down this way.”

“I can’t tell you much about this place either,” Starflight said, worrying at one of his claws. “There were almost no scrolls about the rainforest or the dragons who live here.”

Glory knew that. She’d memorized every reference she could find anywhere to the RainWings, and all put together they told her essentially nothing. There’d been one scroll called Dangers of the Rainforest, so she knew a fair amount about quicksand, poisonous snakes, and deadly bugs. But even that one barely mentioned the RainWings themselves, and certainly nothing about creatures big enough to massacre the MudWing soldiers.

Something chattered loudly in the branches overhead and they all jumped.

“It was just a monkey,” Glory said fiercely, clamping down on her nerves so her scales wouldn’t change color. “Or a . . . a toucan or something.”

“Can we eat toucans?” Clay asked hopefully.

“Only if we can catch them,” Tsunami said. She flexed her wings and glanced up at the branches and vines overhead.

Glory wasn’t hungry anymore, now that the sun had finally come out. Each touch of sunlight felt as if it filled her up better than any cow. With a twinge of guilt, she remembered the SkyWing palace and the sculptured tree Queen Scarlet had set up to display Glory on, like a piece of trea sure.

There had been so much sun there — nothing like she’d ever had in her whole life under the mountain. Queen Scarlet would roll Glory into the sunlight and let her change colors however she wanted all day long. She didn’t try to talk to her. She never touched her or yelled at her or insulted her or compared her to anyone. Scarlet’s only wish had been for Glory to sleep and be beautiful.

But I didn’t love it, Glory told herself fiercely. It was just new and different. A new, different way to be a prisoner and have my life chosen for me. I’m more than a lump of trea sure.

I guess Scarlet found that out the hard way.

“CAW! CAW!”

Tsunami leaped into battle pose, her teeth bared, with Clay a step behind her. The others stopped as she glared around, looking for the source of the noise.

“I’m telling you,” Glory said. “It’s only toucans. There’s nothing to be scared of. You’re just jumpy.”

“Now why would we be jumpy?” Tsunami said. “Oh, right. The dead bodies.”

“At least I told you about them,” Glory said, her ruff flaring. “You saw a dead body — of someone we knew — on day one in the Kingdom of the Sea and decided not to tell us.”

“Guys —” Starflight said.

“That was different! That was Kestrel!” Tsunami cried. “I had to find a way to tell you properly.”

“Super job you did there,” Glory said.

“GUYS!” Starflight yelled. They stopped and looked back at him. He was turning in frantic circles, staring out at the trees. It took Glory a moment, but she realized what he was looking for right before he said, “Where’s Sunny?”

They all fell silent.

Sunny had vanished into thin air.