Given a choice between the IceWing queen and a NightWing assassin, Glory wasn’t sure she’d actually prefer the IceWing queen. Imprisonment in the Sky Kingdom and in Queen Coral’s Summer Palace had been bad enough — if they wound up in Glacier’s dungeon, they’d probably all freeze to death by the end of the day.

“Let me go right now,” she said to Deathbringer.

To her immense surprise, he did. He stepped back, his talons raised to look harmless, and actually dared to smile at her.

“Time to go,” Tsunami ordered. “They’ll be here in about two minutes.”

“Oh, no, wait,” Blaze said. She spread her wings and waved at the incoming ice dragons. “You should meet Glacier. You’ll like her.”

“We can’t leave Blaze here with him,” Clay said, pointing to Deathbringer.

“That’s true,” Glory said. She narrowed her eyes at the assassin. “You have ten seconds to take off, or we’ll knock you out and leave you for the IceWings to deal with.”

“Shouldn’t we do that anyway?” Blaze asked. “I mean, he did try to kill me. Queen Glacier will be so mad. This one time, a SkyWing flew all the way here and nearly got me while I was getting some sun and Glacier literally ripped off his wings before she killed him. It was really gross but also kind of sweet, you know, like she really cares about me.”

Or she really cares about all the land she’ll get if you become queen, Glory thought.

Sunny looked faintly sick. “Guess what I don’t want to see,” she said. “One dragon ripping the wings off another dragon. Not ever, thanks.”

“All right, I’m convinced,” Deathbringer said, backing away. “But you really should have let me kill her.” He paused with his wings spread and gave Glory a cheeky grin. “So when can I see you again?”

“Get out of here,” Glory said, glad that Jambu wasn’t there to loudly interpret the colors that were trying to shift through her scales.

Deathbringer bolted into the sky. Blaze followed him with her eyes for a moment, then seemed to lose interest. She turned to Clay and Tsunami with a winning smile.

“Please don’t go,” Blaze said. “Queen Glacier will be so grateful to you for saving my life. Now we can have that party I mentioned!”

“Sorry,” Tsunami said. “We are not sticking around to become captives again.”

“We’ll, uh — we’ll be in touch,” Clay said. “Keep applying pressure to this until a healer can look at it.”

Blaze rallied herself to stand upright and give them all a little nod. “It was delightful to meet you,” she said. “Even if you are missing a SkyWing. And some of you are a little funny-looking. I promise you’ll be pleased if you choose me.” She waved a wing weakly in the direction of the desert. “I can offer you whatever land you want. You could each have land enough for a palace of your own!”

“Quit giving away your territory,” Glory snapped. “I know the Kingdom of Sand is big, but life in the desert is tough, and your subjects need every oasis. And if you do become queen, you’ll need to rebuild your treasury somehow, so remember that, too.”

“Queenly advice from a RainWing.” Blaze giggled as if the pain in her neck was making her loopy. “Now I have heard every thing.”

Glory frowned at her, but the SandWing didn’t seem to notice.

“Come on,” Clay said gently to Sunny, urging her up.

Sunny held her bloodstained talons out, and Starflight jumped forward to take them between his. “You’ll feel better once we’re in the desert,” he said.

“Don’t let them follow us,” Tsunami said to Blaze as the others took off.

“They’ll be too busy rescuing me,” Blaze said, lying down in a graceful, melodramatic pose.

Glory and Tsunami exchanged eye rolls and lifted into the air. The IceWings were almost upon them; they had to fly as fast as they could.

Tsunami faltered for a moment as she went aloft.

“Does it hurt?” Glory asked, flying close to her. “Will you make it to the passage?”

“I’ll be fine,” Tsunami said through gritted teeth. “It’s just a cut.” After a moment, she added, “But yes, it hurts.”

Glory stayed alongside her as they flew through the cold, pale blue sky. She glanced back several times, but saw no sign of IceWings in pursuit. No sign of a NightWing trailing them either.

“Glory,” Tsunami said after a bit. “Can I ask you something? Why didn’t you use your venom on that assassin?”

Glory felt a tinge of embarrassed pink creeping along her scales and fought it back until she matched the sky.

“That wasn’t an invitation to disappear,” Tsunami said.

“I just didn’t feel like kill ing him,” Glory answered. “I don’t want to kill any more than I have to.”

“But he is literally on a mission to kill you,” Tsunami said. “Killing him first is kind of the definition of self-defense.”

“Maybe,” Glory said. “I just — it didn’t feel like he was trying to kill me.”

Tsunami shook her head. “All right, but so you know, from where I was standing, it certainly looked like it.”

“Whatever,” Glory said. “We’ll probably never see him again. The real question is why the NightWings are getting so involved. First they try to get us to choose Blister — and then they send an assassin to kill us? Don’t they want their prophecy to come true?”

“Maybe, like everyone else, they only want it to come true their way,” Tsunami grumbled.

“What’s their way?” Glory wondered. “What difference does it make to them who the queen of the SandWings is?”

“I have no idea,” Tsunami admitted.

“Well, if they have something to say about this war,” Glory said, “they can come on out and fight it instead of hiding and making vague predictions every few years.”

“And sending assassins,” Tsunami added. “Cowards.”

It wasn’t often that Tsunami and Glory agreed about something. Glory couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a conversation this long without arguing. It wasn’t that she disliked Tsunami — she didn’t even really mind her bossiness. But she did feel like someone needed to talk back whenever Tsunami started acting like the boss of everyone, just to make sure Tsunami’s head didn’t get too big for the rest of her.

On the other talon, Tsunami had been much better since their escape from the Kingdom of the Sea. Glory could see that she was trying to include the others more, instead of just telling them all what to do. And Tsunami never talked about her future as a queen anymore, when it used to be her favorite topic of conversation. Maybe she’d meant it when she said she didn’t belong in the Kingdom of the Sea. Maybe she’d really given up on ruling her tribe one day.

It was dark by the time they spotted Burn’s stronghold in the distance and the semicircle of cacti they were looking for. Glory and Tsunami spiraled down to the ground and found Starflight frantically digging in the sand.

“The hole is gone!” he cried. “It’s disappeared!”

A bolt of green panic shot through Glory’s scales. Trapped between the IceWings and Burn, with an assassin out hunting them, was not how she wanted to spend the night.

“It’s not gone,” Clay said firmly. “Let me dig.” He muscled Starflight aside, looked up at the cacti, and started to dig in a slightly different spot.

“What are you doing?” Tsunami called to Sunny, who looked like she was trying to tango with a cactus up the hill.

“You heard what Blaze said,” Sunny panted. “If we take this back, maybe we can heal Webs. Ouch!” She flinched back from the thorns, shaking her front talons.

“We don’t need the whole cactus,” Tsunami said, amused. “Break off one of those arm things and bring that instead.”

“That is what I’m trying to do,” Sunny said irately. Tsunami floundered up the sandy rise to help her. Glory noticed that Sunny had used sand to rub off some of the bloodstains, but there was still dark dried blood caught between her scales and talons.

“There,” Clay said. “Found it.” He swiped some more sand away from the entrance to the tunnel.

Starflight let out his breath. “Oh,” he said. “That must be why no one’s spotted it before. The wind covers it with new sand every day.” He edged toward the tunnel. “So . . . we can go?”

Glory checked the sky again as Sunny and Tsunami slid back toward them with a chunk of cactus. No dragons anywhere that she could see. She nodded at the tunnel and Starflight darted gratefully inside. The others followed, one by one. Glory went last, piling up as much sand behind her as she could.

As she came out of the tunnel into the dark forest, a ball of fur exploded from the tree above her and landed on her neck. The sloth wrapped her arms and legs around Glory’s neck and began warbling and chirruping furiously.

“I think I’m being scolded,” Glory said to Clay. She reached up and smoothed Silver’s fur.

“WRRRRB,” the sloth said sternly, snuggling in closer.

Sunny dove into the stream above the waterfall, washing Blaze’s blood off her scales. Glory realized that Jambu was gone, but Mangrove was sitting beside the stream. His wings drooped as he stared into the water.

“I assume you didn’t see any sign of the missing RainWings there,” Glory said to him.

He shook his head. “Nothing anywhere in that fort. I slipped in when a patrol of SandWings came out. I searched the whole place.” He kicked a clump of reeds. “Useless waste of time.”

“Probably,” Glory said, “but at least now we know.”

“How are we going to find Orchid?” he asked.

Glory stared at the hole in the boulder. In the dark, with only a sliver of moonlight slipping through the trees, it looked like a mouth, jaws wide open to swallow dragons whole.

“We heard something here a couple of nights ago,” she said. “Maybe if we lie in wait we’ll catch it again.” She turned and looked at Tsunami. “All we need is someone who can see in the dark.”