The Lost Heir (19 page)

Bright morning light filtered through the canopy, casting puddles of green sunshine all across the Summer Palace. Tsunami opened and closed her wings, grateful that she didn’t have to be at the Council meeting with Blister that was going on overhead. After last night’s battle in the hatchery, Tsunami just wanted a break from scheming dragon queens and war plans for a little while.

The little emerald-green dragonet romped on the beach, kicking up sand and stopping in surprise when it drifted into her nose. She sneezed hard enough to knock herself backward, then sat up and gave Tsunami an indignant look.

“Well, stop putting sand in your nose, then,” Tsunami suggested.

Her little sister shook herself, spotted a tiny crab digging in the sand, and pounced. The crab vanished into its hole, and the dragonet looked at her empty talons in confusion.

“What’s her name?” Sunny asked. She leaned into Tsunami’s side for a moment, and Tsunami felt a fizz of relief in her chest. Sunny had forgiven her, or forgotten she was mad in the first place. Either one was fine with Tsunami.

“I’m trying to think of the perfect name,” Tsunami said. “Mother said it was up to me.”

The dragonet glanced up from her digging. Sand covered her snout like a mustache.

“Maybe you should call her Walrus,” Glory offered, dissolving in giggles.

“She’s not a Walrus!” Tsunami said. “She’s much more dignified than that!”

The dragonet jumped at an insect in the air, lost her balance, and landed with her head in the sand and her tail sticking straight up. She flailed her wings furiously until Sunny gently lifted her free.

“Very,” Glory said. “Very dignified.”

“She’s awfully cute,” Clay said. “I think she has your snout, Tsunami.”

Tsunami flicked her tail, pleased. She looked around proudly and noticed that Starflight was sitting a short way from the rest of them. He was staring up at the pavilion with an anxious expression, running sand through his claws.

Glory followed her gaze. She leaned over and poked the NightWing sharply in the ribs.

“What’s going on with you?” Glory demanded. “Why are you crawling around licking Blister’s talons?”

“I’m not!” he protested.

“You really are,” Tsunami said. Starflight wouldn’t meet their eyes.

“I just think she’d be a good queen,” he mumbled.

“No, you don’t,” Glory said. “Back under the mountain, you specifically said she was kind of evil and probably had sinister plans for all of Pyrrhia.”

“Oh, you did say that,” Clay agreed. He poked a hole in the sand for the dragonet to climb into. “I remember that.”

Starflight flashed him an annoyed look. “
That
you remember?”

“So why do you suddenly
looooove
her so much?” Tsunami asked. Her little sister rolled into the hole and then jumped back out, flapping her wings to shake off the sand.

“Blister’s smart,” Starflight stammered. “She’s — uh — she’s better than Burn or Blaze.”

“I don’t like her,” Sunny said, to Tsunami’s surprise.

“Really?” Starflight said, his wings drooping.

Sunny shook her head. “She called me ‘sweet’ like that’s all anyone needs to know about me.”

“But you are sweet,” Clay said, patting her head.

“It kind of does sum you up,” Tsunami agreed. Sunny scowled at both of them in a way Tsunami thought was pretty cute. “But I agree that I don’t like her either. More than that, I don’t trust her. I think we need to meet Blaze. Maybe all the stories about her brainlessness have been exaggerated.”

“Doubtful,” said Starflight glumly.

“So we can go?” Glory asked Tsunami. “And look for Blaze? You mean we’re done here?”

Even the baby dragon stopped digging for a moment to look at Tsunami. She felt a stab of guilt at the hopeful expressions on her friends’ faces. She hadn’t realized they wanted to leave the Kingdom of the Sea so badly.

Wingbeats sounded in the air above them, and they all looked up to see Coral, Anemone, Blister, and Moray circling down from the Summer Palace pavilion.

The green dragonet scampered up to Anemone as soon as she landed and tackled one of her talons. Anemone laughed and flipped her over. Their little sister yelped, struggled upright again, and started clawing her way up Anemone’s leg.

“Have you picked a name?” Anemone asked Tsunami.

“What do you think of Auklet?” Tsunami said.

“That’s a kind of seabird,” Starflight said in his know-it-all voice to Clay.

“Oh,” Clay said. “Cool. I mean, I knew that.”

Tsunami liked the look on her mother’s face, watching the two sisters. She looked proud, protective, happy for them. Tsunami was right about her: Queen Coral wouldn’t kill her own daughters, even though one of them would one day grow up to take her place. She cared about them, perhaps a little too much, but Tsunami thought that was better than not caring at all.

She wondered if Blister or Burn had any dragonets. Starflight would know; it must be in the scrolls somewhere. Tsunami had a feeling Blister would happily kill off her own dragonets if she thought it was necessary. Those glittering black eyes hid more secrets and plans than Tsunami wanted to know about.

“Orca’s statue has been destroyed,” Queen Coral said with a sigh. “It was so beautiful, too. She was so talented. I can’t believe she hid her animus powers from me.
She
could have trained with Whirlpool, too.”

“Wow. She really missed out,” Tsunami said, winking at Anemone.

“We’ll have to examine all the things she carved,” Coral mused. “Just to make sure there aren’t any other enchantments lurking around.”

“We’re sure it was Orca, right?” Tsunami asked. “No one else in the palace could be an animus?” She wasn’t able to stop herself from glancing at Moray, who glared back.

Coral shook her head. “Before we destroyed it, Anemone reanimated the statue and made it reveal who had enchanted it. It said Orca, plain as day.” She sighed again. “Orca carved that statue and dedicated it to the hatchery shortly before she challenged me. I gather she expected to win, so she was setting up a way to get rid of her possible heirs and challengers.”

“That explains her last words to you,” Moray hissed.

“Yes,” said Coral sadly. “She said, ‘I did this all wrong. You’re going to rule forever, aren’t you, Mother? You should thank me. No one can stop you now.’ ” The queen looked down at Anemone and Auklet, playing in the sand. She stroked Anemone’s head with a wistful expression.

“But . . .” Clay said hesitantly. “But if Orca was the assassin, then who attacked Tsunami in the tunnel?”

Queen Coral shrugged. “We’ll catch them eventually,” she said. “That’s how stories work.”

Anemone gave Tsunami a frustrated look.

Tsunami still thought that her attacker might have been Shark. He was already out of prison, patrolling the Summer Palace with a bad-tempered expression on his snout. And he certainly hadn’t been pleased or supportive when she staggered out of the hatchery with the dragonet, blood pouring from her gills. She reached up and touched the seaweed bandage on her neck. Her ribs ached whenever she moved, too, but the healers said she just had to rest and let the fractures fix themselves.

Rest! The dragonets of destiny have no time for rest!
she thought ruefully.

“Now that we know the real assassin,” Tsunami reminded Coral, “you promised to set Riptide free.”

“I know I did,” said the queen. “But I’m not sure quite what to do with him. Clearly he can’t stay in my kingdom. He’ll have to crawl back to those Talons of Peace and see if they’ll take him.”

“Maybe he can come with us,” Tsunami said, then snapped her mouth shut. But it was too late. Coral and Blister were both staring at her in a very uncomfortable way.

“With you?” Coral said slowly. “Are you going somewhere?”

“We — I — yes — I think we should,” Tsunami said. She felt her friends shifting closer together behind her. “I don’t belong here, Mother. I wanted to, but — I’m only causing trouble, and I’m not doing what I was hatched to do. I don’t speak the underwater language. I don’t understand the Council. You have two daughters now who could be great queens one day.” She nodded at Anemone. “But my destiny is somewhere else. I have to go stop the war. With my friends.”

“And how do you plan to do that?” Blister said softly.

“I don’t know,” Tsunami said. “We’ll figure it out.”

“We were thinking we should go meet Blaze,” Clay suggested. “Just to be fair.”

Ack, Clay, shut up,
Tsunami thought with a wince.

“But it won’t change how we — I mean that we think you’re —” Starflight said hurriedly to Blister, then trailed off under Tsunami’s baleful look.

“No,” said Blister. The diamond patterns on her back writhed as she stepped closer. “No one is leaving.”

“You can’t tell us what to do,” Tsunami said.

“
I
am your choice,” Blister hissed. “The Ni — the Talons of Peace want
me
.”

“Oh?” Glory said. “Do they know that?”

“It’s not their decision anyway!” Tsunami said.

“Your lives could be very easy from here on,” said Blister. “All you have to do is tell everyone the dragonets of destiny have chosen me as the next SandWing queen. And you can do that from here, where I can keep an eye on you.”

“Where you can keep us prisoner, you mean,” Tsunami said angrily. “We’ve had quite enough of that, thank you. Mother, tell her you wouldn’t do that to me.”

Queen Coral gave Blister an anxious look. “My dear, I’m sure they will still choose you after meeting Blaze. No one would choose
her
in a million years.”

“Perhaps, but first they have to survive that long,” Blister said smoothly. “You know better than anyone how dangerous it is out there, Coral. Remember what happened to Gill. We’ll really be protecting the dragonets by keeping them here.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” Coral said, sounding relieved. “She’s right, Tsunami. Just stay here and we’ll take good care of all of you.”

Tsunami looked back at her friends. Starflight looked miserable, but the others — they looked hopeful, as if they trusted Tsunami to get them out.

“This isn’t the right place for my friends either,” Tsunami said. “Glory wants to go home — right, Glory? And Sunny should find her parents. It’s not fair that I get to do those things and they don’t. We just —” She squared her wings. “We have to go, and if you try to keep us, you’ll be no better than the Talons or Queen Scarlet.”

Blister glared at Starflight. “Don’t you have something to say about this, NightWing?”

He stared miserably at his talons and didn’t respond.

She hissed. “Useless. There
is
something wrong with all of you, isn’t there? But you’re the dragonets I have, and I’m not letting you go.” Blister turned to Coral. “Throw them in your prison.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Tsunami said. “Mother? Right? You wouldn’t do that?”

“It might help your decision,” Blister hissed, “if you knew exactly
who
killed your husband in the SkyWing arena.”

Tsunami felt her scales turn to ice. This was it. The moment her secrets came out and she got what she deserved.

Coral’s gills flared and her eyes widened. “What are you saying?”

“You know he died in the arena,” Blister said. “But do you know who his opponent was? The dragon who ripped the life out of him?”

“Maybe you should also know,” Starflight said suddenly, “that Blister killed Kestrel and is lying to you about it. And that she wants Webs dead for her own reasons and doesn’t care about your daughters at all.”

Blister arched her neck like a cobra and hissed at him. Starflight threw his wings over his head as if he expected her tail to come stabbing down. But all she said was, “You’ll be sorry for that, useless NightWing.”

Coral wrapped her wings around Anemone and Auklet and took a step back toward the water. She looked from Blister to Tsunami like she wasn’t sure who to trust anymore.

“Don’t listen to them, Coral,” Blister said. “They’re only dragonets. And dragonets never know what’s best for them.”

“I think we can be pretty sure
prison
isn’t at the top of the list, though,” Tsunami snapped. “And from now on, Blister, you show some respect and address my mother as Queen Coral.”

Smoke curled from Blister’s snout. Tsunami wondered what Coral would do if the SandWing attacked the dragonets of destiny right in front of her.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Coral said, signaling with her tail. A platoon of SeaWing guards appeared from one of the caves. “But for your own safety, Tsunami, you’re staying here for now.”

“Mother!” Tsunami yelled. She smacked a guard in the snout with her tail and bared her teeth at another. “Think for yourself for once! Let us go!”

But Queen Coral turned away, avoiding Blister’s gaze as well. She curled Auklet into one of her talons and flew back to the pavilion with her daughters.

Tsunami fought the guards, but there were too many of them, and her ribs were still screaming with pain from the night before. One by one, each of the dragonets was overpowered and dragged off to the same prison cave where Riptide and Webs had disappeared the day before.