The Lost Heir (17 page)

Queen Coral hissed softly. “I’ll call my guards,” she said.

“Wait.” Blister lifted one claw. Her voice barely stirred the air. “We want to catch whoever it is, not scare them away.” She flicked her tail. “Come.” Quietly she slid over the side of the pavilion and flew to the cliff wall.

Coral and Anemone went after her, and Tsunami followed close behind. She wasn’t sure she’d been invited, but she didn’t care.

Blister landed on a ledge beside the tallest waterfall. The water spilled out of a hole high above, nearly at the level of the canopy. It rushed in torrents down the cliff wall, dividing around boulders and sending out small clouds of spray.

And it was loud, loud enough to hide the sound of their wingbeats as the four of them flew higher, staying close to the falls.

She is clever,
Tsunami thought, glancing at Blister.
Why does that make me more ner vous about her instead of less?

At the top of the waterfall, the SandWing hovered for a moment, studying the canopy with her glittering dark eyes. From this high, the dragons far below looked like lizards, scurrying around the pavilion and swimming in the lake. Tsunami spotted Whirlpool, paddling frantically in circles with his talons outstretched. He was still trying to catch the pearl necklace as it twisted away from him.

The canopy was thick and green, with vines twisted together over centuries and leaves the size of dragon talons. Up close, Tsunami could also see small blue flowers shaped like broken eggshells shining in the small sunlit gaps.

Something stirred the leaves. Something was crawling through the vines not far from the edge of the cliff. Something the size of a dragon.

“A spy,” Queen Coral hissed under her breath.

Suddenly Blister darted up into the leaves, quick as a cobra striking. She sank her talons into the hidden dragon and ripped it out of the canopy. In the same movement, she whirled and threw the dragon at Tsunami.

Startled, Tsunami reached to catch him and found herself face-to-face with Webs.

Webs, one of the guardians from the Talons of Peace. The traitor who had stolen her egg from the Royal Hatchery, who had never taught her the underwater language.

She barely had time to register the terror on his face before he slammed into her, and they both crashed into the cliff wall. He flapped his wings, pulling back, and she caught her breath as she righted herself.

“Oh,” Blister said, sounding disappointed. “It’s just a SeaWing.”

“Not just a SeaWing.” Queen Coral seized Webs by his neck and shook him. Her green eyes were sparks of rage and triumph. “This is Webs, our tribe’s biggest traitor. I’ve been looking for him for years.”

“Your Majesty,” Webs croaked. He scrabbled at his throat. “Please. I’ve come to beg for mercy.”

“Mercy,”
Coral hissed. “After what you did.” She shook him again, harder. “Mercy denied.” She flung him into the air and slammed her tail into the side of his head with a horrible-sounding
CRACK.
Webs went limp, his eyes closed, and he plummeted toward the lake below.

“Webs!” Tsunami yelled. She knew she should hate him, too, considering the life he’d forced on her. But she found herself diving after him.

All over the Summer Palace, SeaWings stopped to look up, gaping at the sight of a dragon falling from the sky. None of them moved to help him. Tsunami beat her wings desperately, trying to catch up. Would he die if he hit the water from such a height?

“Clay!” she shouted. “Clay! Help!”

Clay immediately burst out of their cave, blinking and befuddled but ready.

“Catch him!” Tsunami shouted, pointing. Clay shot away from the cliff, banking around to intercept Webs’s body as he fell. The two dragons collided in midair, and Clay tumbled, trying to hang on to the heavier, larger dragon.

But he slowed him down enough for Tsunami to catch up. She lifted Webs from the other side until his front half rested on Clay’s back and his back half lay across her shoulders. Carefully she and Clay struggled over to the pavilion, collapsing on the first level they could reach — the library, as it turned out.

Webs sprawled across the black and blue talon prints, his head lolling to the side. Blood trickled out of one ear.

“Wake up,” Tsunami said, shaking him. “Come on, you can’t die. Not before I get a chance to yell at you.”

“Where did he come from?” Clay asked.

Thump, thump, thump.
The other three dragonets landed around them. Glory looked down her nose at Webs, dark green zigzagging through her wings. Sunny crouched beside his head. The egg was cradled underneath her, making it hard for her to get too close, but she reached out and touched his snout with one front talon.

“Webs?” she said softly. “What are you
doing
here?”

“Search the area.” Tsunami heard Queen Coral’s voice barking orders. “Make sure there are no more Talons of Peace lurking around.” She spat out the words
Talons of Peace
as if they tasted like rotten fish.

Tsunami glanced up uneasily at the canopy overhead, where a dragon-sized gap now yawned in the green leaves. A bolt of sunlight shone through, and she couldn’t help but worry what else might find its way through the protective cover. Had Blister thought about that at all before she struck? Surely she wouldn’t deliberately endanger her allies . . . but maybe she didn’t care about them enough to treat their defenses cautiously.

Queen Coral swooped into the library, her face majestic with fury. She loomed over Webs as Blister, Anemone, and Moray all arrived behind her.

“Why would you save his life?” the queen hissed at Tsunami. “After every thing he did to you?”

I don’t know,
Tsunami thought. Why didn’t she want Webs dead? It had been instinct that sent her flying after him.
Maybe I want to give Riptide a chance to meet his father, like I never really got to. Or maybe I’m not ready to lose our last guardian yet.
For most of her life, she’d only known seven dragons, and two of them had died in the last ten days. That seemed like more than enough to her.

“I thought he might have information we need,” she lied. “Maybe about the Talons —”

“Or,” Blister interjected smoothly, “perhaps now we can find out how he snuck into the Royal Hatchery to steal the egg. Clever dragonet. Tsunami must get her brains from you.”

Queen Coral hissed and glared down at Webs. “I suppose interrogating him would be useful,” she said. “Moray, wake him up.”

Moray dove over the edge and returned with a large clamshell full of seawater. She threw this in Webs’s face with no particular gentleness. Sunny let out a little yelp and jumped away from the splash.

Webs coughed and sputtered and snorted water back out his nostrils. He sat up slowly, holding his head and gingerly wiping his snout dry.

His gaze landed first on the dragonets, and Tsunami was surprised to see his whole face light up with joy. He stared from Clay to Glory to Starflight as if he couldn’t believe they were all alive. He held out his front talons, and Sunny clutched the one closest to her, smiling back at him.

“But the SkyWings,” he said. “I thought you were dead! How did you — ?”

“We escaped,” Glory said coldly.

“No thanks to the Talons of Peace,” Tsunami added. “Or stupid unhelpful Morrowseer.”

“It was amazing,” Sunny said. “You should have seen us! We —”

“We’ll tell you about it some other time,” Clay interrupted. Sunny looked up at him, then over at the SeaWings, and snapped her mouth shut.

Webs saw Queen Coral and the thunderous look on her face, and Blister coiled menacingly behind her. He shuddered, then winced as if that had made his head hurt even more.

“Welcome back,” Coral snarled at him. “I thought you were too cowardly to ever return here.”

“I know I am not worthy of your mercy, Your Majesty,” Webs said, staggering to his feet so he could kneel in front of her. “But I heard — I hoped . . .”

“Why did you steal one of
my
eggs?” Queen Coral demanded. “You could have stolen from any other dragon in the Kingdom of the Sea.”

Tsunami’s wings twitched.
And that would have been all right? Are you only angry because he stole from you? Not because a dragonet’s life was ruined?

“It had to be an egg due to hatch on the brightest night,” Webs said in a wavering voice. “And it had to fit the prophecy —
the SeaWing egg of deepest blue
. I’d seen your eggs when I was guarding them, before I . . . before I left.”

“You mean ran away,” Coral snarled. “In the middle of a battle.”

Looking at Webs, Tsunami couldn’t believe he was Riptide’s father. Riptide was so much stronger and braver than this shivering old dragon.

“I remembered her egg,” Webs pressed on, his wings drooping. “It was so blue — it had to be the right one. I’m so sorry, Your Majesty,” he said in a rush. “But the prophecy is so important. I would never have betrayed you for anything else, but for peace . . . How could I not do as the Talons asked?”

“So how did you get into the hatchery?” Coral’s tail lashed threateningly. “I had guards posted at that door every moment until the eggs hatched.”

Tsunami leaned toward him. If he knew of a secret way in, surely that would point them to the dragonet killer.

Webs hung his head. “I drugged the guards,” he said. “I — I knew someone who helped me slip a sleeping potion into their evening meal. They were asleep when I crawled in and out again with the egg. It wasn’t their fault.”

“Well,” Coral said dismissively, “I killed them anyway. As for the
someone
who helped you — your wife, I assume?”

Webs flinched.

“I wondered about that,” Coral said. Her expression was mildly pleased, as if she was finally putting the pieces of an old puzzle into place. “Stupid of her not to run away with you. Of course, that’s why she was reassigned from the kitchens to active duty in the war soon after. Too bad that first battle was such a bloodbath.”

Webs looked as if all the light had been scraped out of his scales. Sunny made a woeful, sympathetic noise and edged closer, twining her tail around his. Even Glory looked a little sorry for him.

Tsunami had never thought about Webs leaving behind a family until she met Riptide. Even then, she hadn’t pictured him abandoning a wife and baby dragonet. Maybe he really did care about the prophecy more than anything, if he was willing to give up so much for it. She would not have made the same choice, herself.

“Now I know the dragonets are safe,” Webs said quietly. “So you can do whatever you like to me.”

“I will,” Coral rumbled. “We can start with you telling me where to find the Talons of Peace.”

“Why?” Tsunami asked as Webs shook his head. “Why would you want to find them?”

Coral showed all her sharp white teeth. “Revenge, dear. They stole from me, and no one has ever gotten away with that. Now I must hunt them down and exterminate them.”

“Don’t you have more important things to do?” Tsunami demanded. “I think they’re awful dragons, yes, with a really misguided sense of how to raise dragonets to fulfill a prophecy. But all they want to do is end the war. Isn’t that what everyone wants?”

“We’re not trying to
end
the war,” Blister said in her slithering voice. “We’re trying to
win
it. I hope you can see the difference.”

“But kill ing the Talons of Peace won’t help with that. They haven’t hurt anyone but us five,” Tsunami said, waving her talons at the other dragonets.

“In fact,” Starflight said out of the blue, “they almost certainly saved Tsunami’s life.”

The NightWing froze as everyone turned to stare at him. Queen Coral hissed menacingly. Even Webs looked confused.

“What?” Coral growled.

“Well,” Starflight stammered, “the — the — the other female dragonets in her hatching — all died. The same way every one of your potential heirs has died. Whoever is kill ing them, Webs took her egg away before the assassin could get to it. If her egg had stayed in the hatchery, she’d be dead. By stealing her, he — and the Talons of Peace — actually saved her life. Uh. Right?”

Tsunami felt like she was shape-shifting, all of her bones being shoved from one skin into another.
No. The Talons of Peace ruined my life. I’ve always known that. It’s the truest thing I know. They didn’t
save
me.

But she knew in her scales that Starflight was right. They did save her. By accident, but they did. Webs did.

She remembered all her dreams of how her life should have been if she’d hatched here and been raised by her own mother. None of them would have happened. She’d have been dead within the first week, her neck snapped like the sad little dragonet in the eggshell.

“Your Majesty!” The small messenger dragon from before — Urchin, Tsunami remembered — tumbled out of the air and skidded to a stop at Queen Coral’s claws. He bowed as low as he could, covering his head. “We found a suspicious dragon lurking outside. He must be working with Webs.”

“Bring him to me,” Queen Coral growled in a voice that rang off the cavern walls.

Urchin pointed down at the tunnel, and they all leaned over to see Piranha and a troop of SeaWing soldiers dragging someone into the Summer Palace. They heaved him out of the water to fly him up to the queen. His webbed talons flopped to the side, his eyes were closed, and a claw mark slashed along his sky-blue scales was bleeding heavily.