The Brightest Night

  “All the SandWings?” Glory said. “I don’t see how that could work.”

  “They’ll never agree to it,” Deathbringer said, shaking his head. “The sisters. They haven’t been in one place together in over eighteen years. They certainly won’t put the decision about the throne in the claws of their future subjects.”

  “Well, that’s what we’re going to try,” Sunny said stubbornly. “I think we can get them all together, especially if you guys help me. But if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. I’m doing it anyway.” She settled her wings back and looked at her friends defiantly.

  There was a long pause. Sunny could imagine what they were thinking, what they were about to say. “Oh, Sunny. It’s a sweet idea, but it’ll never work. You have too much faith in the goodness of dragons. You’re so naïve and ridiculous. Why don’t you work on a project here in the rainforest instead, like counting bananas or something? Your crazy ideas and obsession with the prophecy is just —”

  “All right,” said Clay. “I’m in.”

  Sunny’s heart leaped. She beamed at him.

  “Me too,” said Starflight, struggling to his feet. “It’s worth a try. I want it to work.”

  “But you need to rest!” Fatespeaker protested.

  “We need to be safe,” Starflight said, “and we won’t be safe, and neither will our friends and all the dragons who count on us, until the war is over.”

  “I agree,” said Glory. “I’ll help, too. Although I can’t leave my dragons here for long, not with the NightWings so close by and not settled yet.”

  “The NightWings are your dragons, too, now,” Deathbringer pointed out. Sunny caught the way he looked at Glory and thought, What he really means is: I am yours, now and forever.

  Is that how Starflight feels about me? She glanced at him, with his sad bandaged eyes and determined expression. I don’t … I don’t think that’s how I feel about him. I mean, I love him … but not like that.

  “Fine!” Tsunami said. “Fine, yes, of course I’m in. It’s never going to work, but I’ll do it. Whatever it is. So. Then. What are we doing?”

  Suddenly they were all looking at Sunny; even Starflight’s face was tilted in her direction.

  You wanted their attention. You wanted them to listen to you. You’d better earn this.

  “We start by sending a message to Burn, Blister, and Blaze,” she said firmly. “We start with Blister — and we get to her through the Talons of Peace.”

  “This is awesome,” Tsunami said. “I’m so excited. Going to see my very favorite dragons in all of Pyrrhia.”

  “Are you being Glory now?” Sunny asked. “Queen of Sarcasm?”

  “I can be sarcastic, too! She doesn’t get to be queen of everything,” Tsunami grumbled. She tilted her wings to do another sweep over the shoreline. They were on the eastern outskirts of the Mud Kingdom, on the edge of the Kingdom of the Sea. Below them, the ocean rushed up onto the beach and then back, wave upon white-topped wave. The sky was gray from edge to edge, and the air was wet with something that couldn’t decide if it was mist or rain.

  It was dreary. Sunny missed the hot, dry desert. You couldn’t even tell it was almost the middle of the day; the sun was well hidden behind those ranks of clouds. Her wings felt unpleasantly damp as she circled around behind Tsunami.

  “Where is that blasted MudWing?” Tsunami muttered, scanning the beach.

  “I wish we hadn’t had to bring him,” Sunny said. “I’m not convinced he really knows where he’s going. I wish we could have brought our MudWing instead.”

  “Our MudWing doesn’t know where the Talons of Peace camp is,” Tsunami pointed out. “Ochre supposedly does.”

  Ochre was the disagreeable MudWing Sunny had met in the rainforest; it turned out he was one of the alternate dragonets as well. So he’d grown up with the Talons of Peace and had agreed to go back to them and guide Sunny and Tsunami there.

  The other two options, Flame and Fatespeaker, had had slightly more violent reactions. Fatespeaker had declared passionately that she wouldn’t leave Starflight’s side — she said he needed her, which gave Sunny another jealous twinge — and added that the Talons never particularly liked her anyway.

  Flame, on the other talon, had thrown an entire bowl of mangoes at them and roared that he wasn’t letting anyone see him with his face all destroyed, least of all the Talons who’d just handed him over to the stupid NightWings in the first place.

  So they were stuck with Ochre. Which had meant three days of travel with a dragonet whom Sunny liked less and less. He was like the not-funny, not-adorable opposite of Clay, constantly hungry but in a pushy way instead of a sweetly embarrassed way. He’d even made himself a sack out of leaves with a handle of vines that he could hang over his neck, and he’d filled this with half the fruits in the rainforest, as far as Sunny could tell. That way he could eat and fly at the same time, dripping bright yellow and purple juice all over his brown scales and spattering the ground below them. And, incidentally, refusing to share, not that she wanted anything from a bag he’d drooled all over anyway.

  “Besides,” Tsunami added, “Glory still needs Clay back at camp, to help with the NightWings. Especially if Queen Scarlet is on her way.”

  “I don’t understand why she hasn’t come after us yet,” Sunny said with a shiver. She glanced down at her own small necklace, a pouch containing the dreamvisitor. They’d been using it for the last few days to check in with her friends back in the rainforest, but so far everything was quiet there. It made Sunny’s scales feel wriggly and oversized, not knowing where Scarlet was and what she was plotting.

  Tsunami followed her gaze to the dreamvisitor pouch. “We could have avoided this whole trip,” she pointed out.

  Sunny shook her head. “It’s not safe. If we used the dreamvisitor to contact Blister — or even the Talons of Peace — or to check on Scarlet — they might catch a glimpse of the rainforest and realize where we are. Like I figured out where the scavenger was when she dreamvisited me. Or Glory said she caught a glimpse of the weirdling tower behind Scarlet, too. We couldn’t risk it.”

  “I know,” Tsunami sighed. “So here we are, looking for the Talons of Peace. My —”

  “Your favorite dragons,” Sunny finished for her.

  “I don’t trust them,” Tsunami added.

  “That’s why you’re here,” Sunny agreed. “Because you think otherwise they might grab me and do something nefarious.”

  “Trapping us in an underground cave for six years comes to mind,” Tsunami muttered.

  Sunny squinted at a dark shape winging out of the fog up ahead. “That’s Ochre, right?”

  “And there’s someone with him,” Tsunami said, snapping her head up and frowning fiercely. “A few someones.” As the group of dragons came closer, she hmmphed with surprise. “I’ve seen that dragon before,” she told Sunny. “The one in the lead, the SeaWing with the black spirals on his scales. I saw him meeting with Riptide, the very first time I saw Riptide in the Kingdom of the Sea. I didn’t realize at the time that he was with the Talons of Peace.”

  “He’s flashing something at us,” Sunny pointed out. The SeaWing’s glow-in-the-dark scales were lighting up in some kind of pattern.

  Tsunami growled. “If he’s with the Talons, he should know that I don’t understand Aquatic, since he was probably one of the squid-heads who made the decision not to teach it to me. Maybe I should go over there and thump him and then pretend I misunderstood what he was saying.”

  “I think he’s just suggesting we land,” Sunny guessed, since all the approaching dragons were now veering down toward the beach.

  “Well. Sure. I could have figured that out,” Tsunami said. “But he didn’t have to rub my snout in it, did he?” She flapped on ahead and Sunny followed.

  They landed on the sand, which was wet and clumpy between Sunny’s claws. Across from them were Ochre and five dragons from the Talons of Peace: an IceWing, a SkyWing, a SandWing, and two SeaWings
— one of them green with black spirals on his scales, the other sky-blue with dark blue horns.

  Wait, Sunny thought. I know that other SeaWing….

  “Riptide!” Tsunami cried.

  The blue dragon’s whole face lit up. “You’re alive!” he said, stepping forward.

  “That’s far enough,” said the other SeaWing, flaring one wing in Riptide’s way.

  “Of course I am,” Tsunami said to Riptide, ignoring the green dragon. “What are you doing with these —”

  Sunny kicked her as hard as she could. Remember why we’re here, Tsunami. No insulting the dragons we’re asking for help.

  Tsunami glared at her, but she seemed to get the message. “With the Talons of Peace?” she finished.

  “Queen Coral threw me out,” Riptide said sadly, furrowing lines in the sand with his claws. “She considered killing me, or imprisoning me again, but she said I’d fought bravely in the battle at the Summer Palace. So she let me leave with my life. And I didn’t know where else to go — I thought the Talons might know where you were, but …” he trailed off.

  “But we had no idea,” said the other SeaWing in a clipped, cold voice.

  Tsunami gave him an incredulous look. “You’re not seriously mad at us, are you? Because no. I am mad at you; that’s how this works.”

  “This is Nautilus,” Riptide interjected quickly. “The leader of the Talons of Peace.”

  “For now,” growled the SkyWing, flicking her red tail back and forth and glowering through a trail of smoke. “Do you have the other dragonets?” She jerked her head at Ochre, who was munching his way through a banana and eyeing the seashells around his claws as if he was wondering whether they might be edible, too.

  “We don’t ‘have’ them,” Tsunami said.

  “But we know where two of them are,” Sunny added. “Our friends helped them get away from the NightWings.”

  “They didn’t want to come back here, though,” Tsunami said. “We offered.”

  The SkyWing scowled at her. “Which two?”

  “Is Viper one of them?” demanded the SandWing.

  Uh-oh, Sunny thought. She shook her head, but before she could answer, the IceWing hissed, “There’s a dragon coming this way.”

  They all turned and saw someone flying over the cliffs around the beach, high above their heads. The sun caught on red scales and all the dragons on the sand tensed. Is it a SkyWing scout? One of Ruby’s soldiers, or someone working for Burn?

  Or Queen Scarlet? Sunny thought worriedly before she realized this dragon was smaller and a different color.

  He was also clearly heading toward them, as if he’d been watching them for a while.

  “That looks like Flame,” said the SkyWing, squinting. “But it can’t be. What’s wrong with his face?”

  “It might be Flame,” Sunny said, glancing at Tsunami. “He could have followed us. Maybe he changed his mind about coming back.”

  “Maybe he just didn’t want to fly with us,” Tsunami said. “Or with him anyway.” She flipped her tail at Ochre.

  “Flame?” called the SkyWing. “Flame?”

  The dragonet was soaring down toward the sand now; when he heard his name, he faltered in midflight and nearly crash-landed on the dunes.

  “Mother?” he called back, wobbling upright again.

  The SkyWing shoved past Sunny and Tsunami and caught Flame as he dropped toward her. She let out a roar at the sight of his face.

  “What happened to you? Who did this?” She wrapped her wings around him and pulled him close.

  Flame seemed to collapse into her, burying his head in her neck. Sunny heard muffled sobbing and felt a wrenching stab of pity for the SkyWing dragonet. She’d only ever seen his mean, prickly, grouchy side, but clearly he could be someone else with someone who really cared about him.

  I miss my mother, she thought, wishing she had large warm wings wrapped around her right then. I guess I’ve always missed her. But I miss her even more now that I know her. Thorn was so far away, on the other side of the continent. Sunny folded back her wings and lifted her chin. I’ll see her again soon. As soon as this war is over.

  “That’s Avalanche,” Riptide said quietly to Tsunami, nodding at Flame’s mother. “She’s a spy, so she normally lives in the Sky Palace, and she left Flame here to keep him out of the war.” He hesitated. “She was away when Morrowseer came and took the dragonets. She was furious when she came back and found him gone. She nearly killed Nautilus.”

  Nautilus shifted uneasily on his talons. “Some dragons don’t understand the things we have to do for peace,” he said, but not in a way that sounded like he meant it. “Do — do I want to know what happened to the others?” he asked.

  “Fatespeaker is fine,” Sunny said, “but we don’t know what happened to Squid, and Viper is dead.”

  The SandWing across from her snarled and raised his venomous tail. “How?”

  “An accident in the Night Kingdom,” Tsunami answered. “Viper was fighting and fell into some lava. It was her tail that did that to Flame’s face.”

  “We need Morrowseer,” Nautilus growled. “Several of us would like to have words with him. Words and teeth and claws.”

  “And tails,” added the SandWing. He looked angry but not devastated. Sunny wondered if he was an uncle instead of Viper’s father, or something like that.

  “Morrowseer is dead, too,” Sunny said. “So we need your help.”

  “Oh, really,” said Nautilus. “Suddenly the wonderful independent dragonets need us?”

  “Don’t be a rotting tooth,” Tsunami said to him. “If you want this prophecy fulfilled and this war stopped, you’ll help us, so shut up.”

  He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then settled for flashing something with his luminescent stripes that Sunny guessed she wouldn’t want translated.

  “We need to send a message to Blister,” she said. “You’re the only ones we could think of who might be able to reach her.”

  “She’s looking for you pretty seriously,” Riptide said. “You probably just have to stand out in the open for a day and she’ll land on you.”

  “Right, sure,” Tsunami answered. “Except we’re trying to do this in a not-ending-up-dead way.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “Good idea. I support that plan.”

  “What do you want us to tell her?” Nautilus asked. “If we can get in touch with her and if we agree to do this.”

  Sunny looked him in the eye, knowing perfectly well that he’d do anything she said, if it meant a chance at peace. He may have made some terrible decisions over the last seven years, but she believed that he did care about one thing very much, and that was ending the war.

  “Tell her to meet us on the tenth midnight from tonight,” she said. “In the entrance courtyard of the stronghold in the Kingdom of Sand. If she doesn’t show up, she forfeits her chance to be queen.”

  “This is it?” the SandWing demanded. “You’re fulfilling the prophecy and choosing a queen? It’s Blister?”

  “Come along and see,” Sunny offered. “Anyone who wants to. Bring all the Talons of Peace. If it goes the way it should, you won’t be fugitives anymore. If Blister shows up and everything goes as planned, then the war will be over.”

  “We’ll think about it,” Nautilus said, but even he had an unmistakable undercurrent of excitement in his voice.

  “It’s important you tell her,” Sunny insisted. “We don’t know how else to reach her.”

  “We’re not, like, friends with her,” Riptide said. “Just so you know. It’s not like the Talons of Peace are working with her, I swear.”

  “But you can find her?” Tsunami asked.

  “She sends one of her soldiers to the ruins of the Summer Palace pretty much every day,” Nautilus said. “Hoping for a message from Queen Coral. That’s how we’ll reach her.”

  “Good,” Tsunami said.

  “Thank you,” Sunny added. She turned to Tsunami. “Then we’d better
go.” So we can send our messages to the other two sisters. We only have ten days now.

  Tsunami swept her tail through the sand and looked over at Riptide.

  “I could … come with you,” he said hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure he’d be welcome.

  “I think,” Tsunami said, “it’d be better if you stay and make sure Blister shows up at the stronghold. Then bring some of the Talons of Peace with you — and I’ll see you there?”

  He nodded, tilting his wings back with a hopeful expression.

  “All right,” Tsunami said. “See you soon.” It sounded like a promise.

  “Bye, Ochre,” Sunny said, making one last effort to be friendly to the unlikable dragon. The MudWing had gotten his claws stuck in a pineapple as he tried to peel it and was now trying to shake it off. “Have a nice life.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. He accidentally whacked himself in the snout with the top of the pineapple and yelped with pain.

  Tsunami and Sunny rolled their eyes at each other and lifted off into the sky. They flew over Flame and his mother, still wrapped around each other on the beach. Sunny felt another jab of pity, although she knew the SkyWing dragonet didn’t want to be seen that way.

  She glanced back as they reached the edge of the beach and saw that the other dragons had turned to leave, but Riptide was still staring after them.

  “Are you all right?” Sunny asked Tsunami. “I mean, about Riptide? Have you forgiven him for lying to you about being a Talon?”

  Tsunami gave her a rueful look. “It’s complicated,” she said. “I hate being lied to and the Talons are the worst … but when I saw that he was alive, I was just — really, really happy. Is that weird?”

  “No,” Sunny said. “I know what you mean.”

  “I’ll see how I feel after the war is over,” Tsunami said. “When everything’s a little more normal. Not that we know anything about normal or what that’s supposed to look like, right? But then I think — well, we’ll see.”

  “I hope Blister shows up,” Sunny said as they soared up over the cliffs. “I hope this works.”