Glory shifted on her branch and sighed. The night clung to her wings like hot, sticky cobwebs. A vine of moon-colored flowers nearby filled the air with a smell like muskrats rolled in lemons. It was not pleasant.

“You didn’t have to stay,” Tsunami whispered.

“Yes, I did,” Glory said. “I know you. No matter what you see, you’ll leap out of this tree and attack it if you’re here by yourself.”

“I —” Tsunami paused. “Well. I still might do that.”

“Then at least I’ll be here to help,” Glory said, grinning in the dark.

They crouched like that for a while, listening to the creaking, chirping sounds of the rainforest at night. Some kind of insect was desperately announcing the end of the world in a shrill whine from the top of their tree. If Glory had been able to see it, she would have eaten it in a heartbeat, just to shut it up.

They’d spent the rest of last night and today in the RainWing village, recovering from their long flight. Sunny had squeezed the cactus juice into Webs’s wound and reported jubilantly that she thought it was working.

The others had stayed there for tonight; Glory thought it was unlikely that they’d catch the mystery monster on their first night watching, and they looked pretty exhausted. She’d also made Mangrove promise not to follow them again, and she’d left Silver with Sunny, because the only thing they knew for sure was that the monster ate sloths.

“What did you think of Blaze?” Tsunami asked in a whisper. “Should we choose her?”

“I don’t know,” Glory whispered back. “I didn’t really like her. Did you?”

“She really needed to shut up about SkyWings,” Tsunami said. Glory couldn’t agree more, but she was glad Tsunami had said it instead of her.

“She seemed much less sinister than Burn or Blister,” Glory said. “But also completely incompetent. Is it fair to give the SandWings a totally useless queen like that? And she’s certainly not going to win the war just by us saying she should.”

“That’s true,” Tsunami said. “She’d never survive in actual combat, especially against one of her sisters.”

“Anyway,” Glory said. “It’s not up to me. You guys decide whatever you want. I mean, since I’m not in the prophecy anyhow, so I shouldn’t get a say.”

“Stop talking like that or I will thump you,” Tsunami said in a loud hiss. Glory could feel her glaring even in the dark, and she felt obscurely pleased.

“Shhh,” Glory said, flicking her tail at Tsunami’s wings. “What was that?”

Snap.

Both dragons froze with their heads lifted. Glory’s ears twitched.

Snap. Sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiither.

“That’s it,” Glory whispered. Her heart was pounding again. She tried to squint through the darkness at the boulder, but she couldn’t see anything moving. The sounds of something large rustled through the undergrowth. It was breathing heavily, snuffling in and out like a congested rhinoceros.

“It didn’t come out of the hole,” Tsunami whispered. “It’s on the other side of the creek, near the other tree. But I can’t — I’m not sure —” She leaned forward, trying to see under the branches.

Suddenly another noise reached them, as if from a long way away.

It sounded like . . . whistling.

Glory leaned forward, listening intently. It was the dragonets song — the one she’d last heard when the prisoners were singing it in the SkyWing arena.

“The dragonets are coming . . .

They’re coming to save the day . . .

They’re coming to fight . . . for they know what’s right . . .

The dragonets . . .”

Someone was whistling their song.

“That is coming from the hole,” Tsunami whispered. She crouched to peer through the leaves.

A dark shape appeared at the opening of the boulder. At the same time, the dragons heard thumping and crackling as the mystery creature fled back into the forest.

Glory cursed under her breath and leaped to her feet. “Should we go after it?”

But Tsunami had already launched herself out of the tree and flung herself at the boulder. She collided with the shape there and they both yelped with pain, rolling and grappling on the ground.

Glory sprang after her and seized the new dragon’s tail. The three of them wrestled until Glory and Tsunami had him pinned down and Glory could sit on his chest.

She was not particularly surprised to discover it was Deathbringer. The NightWing had sand between his claws and an unrepentant expression on his face, from what she could see in the ripples of moonlight that made it through the leaves overhead.

“What kind of assassin stalks his prey and whistles at the same time?” Glory asked him.

“We should kill him right now,” Tsunami hissed.

“You scared our monster away,” Glory said, poking his snout. “So now we’re extra-mad at you.”

“Yes, that, plus the trying to kill us,” Tsunami said.

“What monster?” Deathbringer said, a little too innocently. Glory peered at him with growing suspicion. Did he know something?

“Did you follow us through the tunnel?” she asked. “Or did you already know it was there?”

“How would I know it was there?” he asked.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” she said.

“Let’s take him back to the village and interrogate him,” Tsunami said.

“I don’t think that’s safe,” Glory said. “I mean, for the RainWings. Or for the others. We should keep him as far away from everyone as possible.”

Tsunami wrinkled her snout, thinking. “Or,” she said, “we go back to plan A. Kill him right now.”

“Tsunami, I don’t think you want to do that any more than I do,” Glory said.

That shut her up. Glory had noticed Tsunami getting queasier about kill ing other dragons after her experiences in the SkyWing arena. Self-defense was one thing, but they had Deathbringer trapped under their talons.

“All right,” Tsunami said finally, after a long pause. “You’re right. I don’t want to. But I was hoping he’d think we wanted to, so good job backing me up on that.”

“Sorry I couldn’t read your mind like a stupid NightWing,” Glory said. “Speaking of which, are you the mind-reading kind of NightWing?” She narrowed her eyes at Deathbringer. “What am I thinking right now?”

“That I’m much too charming, clever, and good-looking to kill?” he guessed.

That was actually a little closer to accurate than Glory liked. She flared her ruff and poked his snout again. “Wrong,” she said. “I’m thinking that you’re starting to be an awful lot of trouble. Have you decided to kill me after all?”

The rakish grin faded from Deathbringer’s face. He studied her as though he were seriously considering the question.

“Not sure I like the length of this pause,” Glory said.

“I’ve been wondering if there’s an alternative,” said Deathbringer. “But that’s not usually my call.”

“Whose is it?” Tsunami demanded. “The NightWing queen?”

Deathbringer made a peculiar expression which Glory couldn’t interpret. “I can’t say.”

“I don’t understand why any NightWings would want me dead,” Glory said.

“That has become ever more mystifying to me as well,” Deathbringer said, in a manner that managed to sound both gallant and truthful.

“So you’re mystified,” Glory said. “But you’ll still probably do it.”

“I wouldn’t say probably,” Deathbringer offered. “I’d say maybe.”

“I wouldn’t call that reassuring,” Glory shot back. “I’d call that the opposite of reassuring.”

He grinned at her again. He really needed to quit doing that. It was very distracting.

“So what do we do with him?” Tsunami asked her. “We can’t let him go. And we can’t take him back to the RainWing village.”

“We could tie him up, leave him in the forest, and hope the monster eats him,” Glory said. She squinted at Deathbringer’s face. He didn’t look even a little bit worried. “Did we mention the monster?” she asked him. “It’s been abducting or possibly eating RainWings around here. I bet it’ll be pretty excited to find you all tied up.”

“Oh, no,” Deathbringer said. “Please don’t leave me alone where a monster could get me.”

Glory opened her mouth and then closed it. She’d just had a possibly brilliant and perfectly terrible idea. One she’d have to think about for a minute. She poked him in the snout again.

“Was that sarcasm?” she asked. “Tsunami, did that sound weirdly sarcastic to you?”

“Like he doesn’t believe in monsters,” Tsunami said. “Which I’m not sure I do either, just for the record.”

Or he’s in cahoots with it, Glory thought. Or at least he knows what it is and isn’t afraid of it. She decided not to say this out loud. Tsunami’s enthusiasm for interrogation might spring up again, and Glory was fairly sure it would be a waste of time. They weren’t going to get anything useful out of Deathbringer by looking fierce and demanding answers.

Besides, now that a plan was forming in her mind, she wanted to try it out. Which meant she had to get rid of Tsunami.

“Let’s drag him away from the tunnel and tie him up,” she said. “Then you go tell the others, and we can take turns watching him until he decides to tell us who wants us dead and why.”

“And which of us,” Tsunami suggested. “He said he was sent to kill a few of us, not just you.”

“And also, you know, how to avoid it,” said Glory.

“You’ll have to wait awhile,” Deathbringer said. “I’m not allowed to tell you anything.”

Tsunami and Glory ignored this. They ripped vines down from the trees and wrapped the strongest ones around his wings. Tsunami tied his talons together so he couldn’t run, slid a rope around his neck, and prodded him ahead of them into the forest. After a short walk, they found a tree that Tsunami approved of and tied him to it with the tightest knots they could muster.

“He’ll burn through these vines the moment we walk away,” Tsunami pointed out.

“So we don’t walk away,” Glory said. “You go tell the others. I’ll sit here with my extremely deadly secret weapon pointed at him.”

“What’s that?” asked Deathbringer. “Wait, let me guess. Your rapier wit.”

“Try to escape and find out the dead way,” Glory offered.

He leaned back against the tree, looking perfectly comfortable and thoroughly uninterested in escaping. Peculiar dragon, Glory thought.

“Send back Clay first,” Glory suggested to Tsunami. “He can take the next watch.”

“I hope you hear how bossy you’re being,” Tsunami said. “I’m letting it slide for now, but I’ll remember this.”

“Oh, go away.” Glory flapped her wings at her until the SeaWing lifted off into the darkness.

As her wingbeats faded, the night sounds of the rainforest settled over them. An orchestra of insects warbled and chirped away as the trees rustled, night birds called, and frogs muttered in the background like a disgruntled audience.

“It’s so noisy here,” Deathbringer said after a moment. “So alive.”

“Is it not like that where you come from?” Glory asked.

“It’s a lot quieter in the Ice Kingdom,” he pointed out. “And the Kingdom of Sand.” He didn’t say anything about the NightWing home, but she didn’t really expect him to.

She stared into the trees, thinking hard. Once Clay arrived to take her place, she could slip away. No one would notice she was missing for a while. She could go out and look for the monster by herself, which was the best way to do anything, if you asked her.

“Don’t do it,” said Deathbringer suddenly.

“You better not be reading my mind,” she snapped.

“I don’t have to,” he said. “You have ‘I’m about to do something stupid’ written all over your face.”

“It’s not stupid,” she said. “It’s quite clever. And it might be the only way to catch the monster.”

“Maybe you should leave the monster alone,” he said. “Forget about it. Get back to the prophecy-fulfilling business.”

That stopped her for a moment. The prophecy — putting an end to the war — was important. Finding a few RainWings hardly compared. But she’d made a promise.

“I’m not even in the stupid prophecy,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “But I bet you’d still be remarkably good at making it come true.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “And the RainWings are my tribe. They need my help.” She felt a burst of certainty in her chest. “And I have to do this on my own.”

“Wait,” said Deathbringer, with a gratifying note of alarm in his voice. “Why? You have friends. Let them help you.”

Glory shook her head. “They can’t help me with this. The monster, or whatever is out there, isn’t going to approach a group of dragonets. It attacks RainWings who are out in the forest alone.”

“So you’re —”

Glory smiled at Deathbringer. “I’m going to use myself as bait.”