Glory took a deep breath and studied her audience.

Most of the dragons looked confused, but a few had dark purple stripes rippling over their scales — guilt and shame, living right next to pride on the color spectrum.

Hmmm, Glory thought. That’s about all the noble speechifying I’ve got in me. Somehow it had always seemed more believable and less awkward in the scrolls she read. The stirring speech was always where chapters ended — but right now a host of dragons were just staring at her, and she couldn’t remember anything from the stories about what you did at the end of a noble speech or how to slink away gracefully afterward.

“So there,” said Kinkajou, sticking out her tongue at Bromeliad.

Glory was pretty sure that wasn’t it.

“What do we do now?” Kinkajou asked Glory brightly. The blue-gray was gone from her scales and all her energy had returned. “Never mind, I know exactly what we’re doing first. Finding something decent to eat!”

Glory turned her back on her wide-eyed audience and focused on Kinkajou. “You go ahead. I have to tell my friends what just happened. And also find someone to teach me every thing about RainWing skills in the next day.”

“I can do that!” Kinkajou said. “After I eat. I’m going to eat every piece of fruit in the rainforest. Where should I meet you?”

“Try the healers’ hut,” Glory said with a sigh. “Bring Mangrove, too.”

Kinkajou shot off into the trees. Glory swiveled her head around and checked that Silver was still asleep on her shoulder. Ignoring the crowd, she spread her wings and flew away. If she remembered Magnificent’s directions correctly, the healers’ treehouse was not far.

She spotted the red berries growing on the balcony and swooped down to a treehouse whose leafy roof was dotted with skylight holes. Inside, only two of the beds were taken: one by Webs, and the other by a sleeping RainWing with a bandage on his snout, as if he had bumped into a tree while flying around. Three RainWings in shades of white and soothing blue were gathered in a corner, eating bananas and talking in low voices.

Sure enough, Sunny and Starflight were crouched beside Webs, watching him anxiously. Well, Sunny was watching Webs. As usual, Starflight was watching Sunny.

Webs was sprawled across a nest of spider-shaped leaves in the sunlight. He was asleep, breathing peacefully for the first time since Blister had attacked him. Sunny was right; the cactus juice clearly was working. The scratch on his tail wasn’t completely healed, but the edges looked much less raw and the black had faded instead of spreading further.

“I guess you saved him,” Glory remarked, sliding up beside them.

“I hope so,” Sunny said. “But he’s still really sad. He keeps mumbling in his sleep about how it’s his fault the SkyWings found and destroyed the Summer Palace.”

“Well. It is,” Glory said.

“Oh, very sympathetic,” Starflight said. “Come on. Webs didn’t know Crocodile was following him.”

Crocodile — the last dragon Glory had used her venom on before the Night Kingdom. She saw a flash of the MudWing’s terrified face and shoved the thought away. That was self-defense. It was always self-defense. The kind of self-defense her fellow RainWings really needed to learn.

Sunny brushed Glory’s shoulder with her wing, and Glory flinched back. “You should put something on your scratches,” Sunny said.

“This isn’t a scratch,” Glory informed her, pointing to the bleeding slash on her back leg, which had started to throb in a fiercely painful way. “It’s a battle wound.”

“Yes, you’re very tough and scary,” Sunny said. She beckoned to the white and blue RainWings while Glory wondered if that was sarcasm. Sarcasm from Sunny? It didn’t seem likely. She twisted to watch as the RainWings dabbed some kind of paste on her injuries.

“Watch it,” she hissed, but after a moment the stinging faded, and all she could feel was cool numbness. Glory studied the wounds and sniffed the paste, which smelled a bit like mint. “Hmmm,” she said finally. “A dragonet named Kinkajou is on her way here. She needs some of that, too.” She caught Sunny’s significant look and gave the healers a nod. “Thanks.”

“Where’s your army?” Starflight asked Glory, only a little snidely.

“They’re . . . a work in progress,” said Glory. Sunny leaned over Webs, adjusting the dressing on his injury. “So, by the way,” Glory went on, “I’ve decided to be queen of the RainWings.”

Sunny tripped, and Webs let out an “oof” as she landed on him, but he didn’t wake up. Starflight turned to stare at Glory incredulously.

“But why? You’ve never wanted to be a queen,” he said.

“You don’t know that,” said Glory. She was aware of the healers hovering just within earshot, trying to look busy but obviously eavesdropping. “It just didn’t come up because we were too busy hearing about how much Tsunami wanted to be queen. Anyway, I have to if I want to lead them into battle against the NightWings.”

“Battle?” Starflight said anxiously.

“I think you’ll be a great queen,” said Sunny with a flutter of her golden wings.

“RRRBBL,” agreed the sloth, waking up and leaning around Glory’s neck.

“Maybe we don’t have to fight the NightWings,” Starflight said in a plaintive voice. “Let me talk to them. Maybe I can find out why they’ve been taking RainWings in the first place.”

“They still need rescuing,” Glory snapped.

“Maybe the NightWings will let them go,” Starflight said. “Maybe if I explain to them —”

“That keeping dragons tied up in caves is wrong?” Glory said. “Sure, that’s probably never occurred to them. Or that they should have asked politely before stealing RainWing venom?”

“And don’t forget the MudWings,” Sunny added. “Why did they kill those two soldiers?”

Glory had forgotten about the dead MudWings. If that had been the NightWings, too — then what on Pyrrhia were they up to?

“Listen,” she said to Starflight, “I know you don’t want to meet your tribe for the first time on the opposite side of a battlefield. But they can’t be trusted. It’s not even safe for you; we have no idea whether Deathbringer was supposed to kill you as well.”

“They would never kill me!” Starflight protested. “I’m one of them!”

“Barely,” said Glory. “Anyway, I’d rather find out the truth with a whole lot of venom as backup, wouldn’t you?”

Starflight twisted his talons together. Glory glanced out the nearest window and saw a pair of dragons shift quickly to camouflage on the branch outside. She squinted and thought she could see shimmers of movement on several other branches as well. Apparently her tribe was finally interested in her.

“Wait,” said Sunny, sitting up and flaring her wings. “If you want to be queen, don’t you have to kill Magnificent?”

“They have this whole no-kill ing way of taking the throne,” Glory said. “They’re RainWings, of course they do.”

“They do? That’s fantastic,” Sunny said with unexpected intensity. “That’s how all the tribes should do it. Maybe after we stop the war we can teach everyone the RainWing way of changing queens.”

Glory gave her a quizzical look. That was a lot of enthusiasm for a RainWing way of doing things. She was pretty sure most dragons wouldn’t feel that way.

“Why don’t we take our revolution one step at a time,” she said, flicking her tail at Sunny. “The other tribes have been doing things their way for hundreds of years.”

“So?” Sunny said. “Things can change.”

“If queens didn’t kill their challengers,” Starflight interjected, “what would stop the challengers from trying again the next day, and the next? Or if the challenger won, the queen could just come try to take it back. Instead of ruling her kingdom, a queen would have to spend all her time simply trying to keep her throne.”

“Then we make new rules,” Sunny said stubbornly. “Like she can only be challenged at certain times of the year, or each challenger can try twice before giving up, or something like that. We’re dragons, not caterpillars. We can do things differently if we choose to.”

“Dragons are dragons, Sunny,” Glory said. “Fighting is part of our nature.”

“Not for the RainWings,” Sunny said, “and they’re dragons, too.”

“But —” But there’s something wrong with them, Glory thought. She didn’t want to say that out loud with the healers listening — and however many dragons were just outside the window — but she knew Starflight must be thinking it, too.

“Maybe RainWings are more evolved than the rest of us,” Sunny said. “Maybe all dragons should try to be more like them. They’re happy, aren’t they?”

True, Glory thought. But maybe I could have been happy as Queen Scarlet’s prisoner, as long as I got to lie in the sun and eat pineapple all day. And then where would my friends be?

“I don’t think it’s enough to just be happy,” Glory said slowly. “I think you have to care about something, too. Like other dragons who need you, for instance. And you still have to be ready to fight, just in case some creepy ‘less evolved’ dragons decide to invade your territory and kidnap a bunch of you.”

“I don’t believe anyone can be truly happy without scrolls,” Starflight said wistfully. “I haven’t seen a scroll in weeks and I’m perfectly miserable.”

“Poor Starflight,” Sunny said with genuine sympathy, brushing his wings with hers. “Well, when Glory is queen she can fix all that. Starflight can teach everyone to read, and Tsunami can teach them to defend themselves.”

“And we’ll make a list of all the eggs and all the dragons in the tribe so no one will ever get lost again, plus save the missing RainWings and choose a SandWing queen and stop the war,” Glory said. “No problem. Give me a week.”

Sunny beamed as if this sounded like a perfectly reasonable plan to her.

When I’m queen, Glory thought. I like the sound of that.

Through one of the windows, Glory saw Kinkajou and Mangrove approaching. A few more curious dragons were tailing them through the trees, and Glory spotted more eyes watching from the leaves.

Mangrove was an unexpected dappled mixture of bright yellow and lime green. Excited and terrified, she thought, but more complicated. With the return of Kinkajou, now he knew that Orchid was alive — but he also knew what an awful place she was in and how hard it would be to get her back. Glory hoped Clay and Tsunami were ready to stop him if he tried to dash through the tunnel and do any rescuing by himself.

“Well, before we change the fundamental essence of dragons and revamp the RainWing tribe, first I have to win,” she said. “So right now I have to go train for this contest thing tomorrow. If anyone wants to come watch while the others guard the tunnel, it’s in the Arboretum at sunrise.”

“I’ll be there,” Sunny said. “It’ll be nice to know a queen we actually like.”

“If you win,” Starflight added gloomily.

“I will win,” Glory said, glancing again at Mangrove’s scales. She thought of Orchid and the other rainforest dragons, chained and muzzled and fed rotting prey, imprisoned away from the sun and their own tribe. “I have to.”