Wings of Fire Book Four: The Dark Secret (20 page)

“Maybe,” Starflight said. “In fact, probably — but I think being a good dragon is about the choices you make no matter where you are or who raised you or how. The NightWings chose to kidnap and torture RainWings. That makes it hard for me to feel sorry for them.”

“True,” Fatespeaker said, and lapsed into uncharacteristic silence for the rest of the flight.

The orange RainWing led them to a tree house that matched the one in the dream Starflight had stepped into. The walls were mostly open to the outside, letting sunshine and fresh air pour in, and Glory stood behind a wooden desk, although there were no scrolls in front of her in real life. Three small RainWings were lined up before her in varying shades of green, apparently relaying reports from around the forest.

Glory saw Starflight coming and flared her wings.

“Starflight!” she cried joyfully. She jabbed her own forearm with one of her claws. “I’m not dreaming. You’re really here!”

He landed beside her. “We found a way out — Fatespeaker and I — this is Fatespeaker — because I had to come warn you,” he said. His eyes drifted to the trees around them. “Where’s Sunny?”

“Teaching a dragonet class how to read, or helping the healers with Webs, I think,” Glory said, waving her claws. “Warn me about what?”

“The NightWings are planning to attack you tonight at midnight,” Starflight said. “Maybe sooner, if they figure out where I’ve gone and why.”

“Tonight?”
Glory rubbed her front talons over her head. “Go get me Mangrove,” she said to one of the small RainWings. “And you, find Grandeur.” The two of them nodded and flew off in a hurry.

“I have some ideas for defense,” Starflight started.

“I hope one of those ideas is ‘attack them first,’” Glory said. “Because that’s my plan.” She glanced out the window at the position of the sun in the sky. “I can get my army ready to fly in an hour. Sure. Organizing RainWings, no problem. It’s only roughly as hard as getting a hundred butterflies to fly in a straight line.”

“Starflight?”

A glimmer of gold scales flashed in the corner of his eye, and Starflight felt his whole body fill with light as he turned around and came face-to-face with Sunny.

Sunny spread her warm golden wings and Starflight fitted his own wings around hers for a hug. It always felt like exactly where he should be, even if just for a moment.

“I’m so glad you’re all right!” she said, stepping back and examining him for injuries. “I was checking on Webs and then this SkyWing came in, of all things, and I was showing the healers how to get the cactus milk into his wound when someone said two NightWings brought him in and I knew it must be you. You know,
I
wanted to go through and find you, but Glory said no.” She wrinkled her snout at the new queen.

“Glory was right. It’s too dangerous there,” Starflight said.

“Oh, please. Where have we been lately that
isn’t
dangerous?” Sunny said. “All the more reason we should go rescue you. Although I wasn’t really worried, because of course you had to be fine so we could fulfill the prophecy, right? And look, you rescued yourself, which is so impressive.”

Starflight guessed that the grin on his own face was probably a little goofy, but he couldn’t seem to squelch it.

“And you are?” Fatespeaker interjected, clearing her throat and sidling so close to Starflight that she bumped one of his wings.

“I’m Sunny,” said the little SandWing. She tilted her head at Fatespeaker. “Wow, your silver scales are so cool. That one looks like a bracelet — like you were born with your own treasure.”

Fatespeaker’s wings relaxed a little. She held out her talons to peer at the anklet of star-bright scales. “I never thought of it like that. I was about to say
your
scales are a great color. All the SandWings I’ve met were sort of pale and dusty-looking.”

“I know, I’m weird,” Sunny said agreeably. “You’re the alternate NightWing, right? Glory said Starflight had lots of nice things to say about you.” Fatespeaker gave Starflight a delighted look that made him unaccountably nervous. “What was it like growing up in the Talons of Peace camp?”

“So bizarre,” Fatespeaker said, folding her wings and leaning toward Sunny. “We were always moving so no one could find us. And everyone talked about peace, but it seemed like all we were doing was avoiding soldiers and waiting for the prophecy to come true.”

“But it must have been amazing to live with so many dragons from different tribes,” Sunny said, her eyes shining. “You’d get to see what really makes them different, and the ways they’re all the same, too.”

“I was thinking about that!” Fatespeaker said. “I was the only NightWing, so I was always trying to figure out which other tribe I was most like. But —”

“— you could find something in common with all of them,” Sunny guessed.

“Exactly!”

“All right,” Glory interrupted. “As strangely adorable as you two are, I need you to either go away and discover your twin souls somewhere else, or focus on battle planning with me.”

“Battle planning,” Fatespeaker and Sunny said simultaneously.

Glory gave Starflight an odd, somewhat amused look, and he shifted uncomfortably, although he wasn’t sure why. He liked that Fatespeaker and Sunny liked each other, but it also made him weirdly uneasy.

Luckily, at that moment, Mangrove arrived with the elegant older dragon Starflight had seen in Kinkajou’s dream.

“Let’s take this meeting to the tunnel,” Glory said. “I need Tsunami’s and Clay’s input, too.” She gathered her wings and soared off the balcony into the trees.

Fatespeaker and Sunny went next, talking to each other as they flew. Starflight followed, trying to keep his mind on the impending attack. Only a few minutes of sunshine and fresh air, and he was already finding it hard to believe what he’d gone through on the NightWing island — or that an army of angry dragons was preparing to destroy all of this before the next sunrise.

Once they were all gathered, within sight of the tunnel but out of hearing distance to be safe, Glory had Starflight explain everything he’d heard in the council chamber.

“So at least some of them are afraid of us,” she said when he’d finished.

“I’d say most of them,” Starflight said. “I mean, I think that’s the whole reason they’ve been kidnapping RainWings and studying them, and why they haven’t attacked before. They’re terrified of your venom.”

Glory showed her teeth and hissed. “They should be.”

“Yours, maybe,” Tsunami said. “But the rest of these dragons — I really can’t guarantee that any of them will use it on another dragon, even in a life-or-death situation. They’ve been told their whole lives to never, ever use it as a weapon. I’ve done my best, but you try changing an entire tribal philosophy of life in three days.”

“I know,” Glory said, starting to pace.

“Which I’m not even sure we should,” Sunny interjected. “I
like
their philosophy.”

“I could do it,” Grandeur said. “Attack another dragon with my venom, I mean, for the sake of my tribe. But I agree that the others would have trouble.” She glanced at Mangrove.

“I’d try,” he said. “For Orchid. She’s really still alive?” he asked Starflight.

“And waiting for you,” Fatespeaker said. “Starflight told her you were looking for her, and she said she’d survive until you came.”

A faint wave of pink rippled across Mangrove’s scales.

“I’m worried about attacking first,” Clay said. “We’d have to come out the other end one at a time. If they’re smart, they’ll be waiting, and then they can pick us off one by one.
But if we wait here and let them attack, we could do that to them instead — we’d be in the stronger position.”

“I don’t want them in my rainforest,” Glory snapped. “If they think they’re losing, they’ll set the whole place on fire just to be horrible. Besides, we have to go
there
to rescue the RainWings. Even if we drive back their attack, we’d still have to go through at some point, and we’ll have wasted resources on our defense. No, we go to them first. We just have to find a way to get everyone past the guards at the entrance.”

“I have an idea,” Sunny said.

“Changing your scales will help,” Tsunami said at the same time. “They won’t see the RainWings coming along the tunnel if you’re all camouflaged. Then maybe we burst out and start attacking and hope we’ve surprised them.”

“Doubtful,” Starflight said. “Once Morrowseer figures out I went through, they’ll be on high alert at the tunnel opening.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” said Sunny. “The one I have, I mean.”

“We need to choose the bravest RainWings for the first wave,” Glory said. “Tsunami, I want you to make a list for me, based on what you’ve noticed during training.”

Tsunami snorted. “A ‘brave’ list might be asking a lot. You can have a ‘less sleepy than the others’ list.”

“One does not speak to a queen that way of her citizens,” Glory said with mock haughtiness, then lapsed back into her regular voice. “Anyway, I think the RainWings
will surprise you. I’ve been meeting them all, one by one, as fast as I can, and they’re a lot more complicated than they seem.”

“Doesn’t anyone want to hear my idea?” Sunny asked.

“I do,” said Starflight, but Glory was already speaking to Mangrove.

“We have to make sure that we pair up related RainWings in each squadron, so there’s always someone to counteract the venom if there’s an accident. I know Sunny’s been taking notes on that, so make sure we use her chart when we form the squadrons.”

With a stab of jealousy, Starflight saw Sunny lean toward Clay and whisper in his ear. Sometimes it seemed to him as though Sunny and Clay were always together, like the MudWing was the one she could trust more than any other dragon. He wished he could be that for her instead. But he wasn’t anything like Clay, and the truth was, if he had to choose someone to trust with his life, he’d pick Clay over himself as well.

“I don’t know how to prepare them to fight NightWing fire,” Tsunami said, a little hopelessly. “Most of these dragons have never even
seen
fire. They’ll probably think it’s shiny and pretty and try to touch it.”

Glory coiled her tail and stared at the sky through the trees. Starflight guessed from her expression that she was thinking about how RainWings were going to die — there was no way to avoid it. Becoming queen of an entire tribe all of a sudden was hard enough. But leading dragons into
battle, especially woefully underprepared dragons, was something none of the dragonets knew anything about or ever wanted to do.

We wanted to stop the war — not start a whole new one.

Do the RainWings have any chance against the armor-clad, fiercely desperate, violently unhappy NightWings? Are we all going to die today?

We’re only dragonets. We shouldn’t be leading anyone to their deaths.

But this is happening no matter what we do. We have no choice now.

“I tried to draw a map of what I could remember of the island,” Glory said to Starflight. “I want you to fill in as many details as you can. I guess we should have several dragons go straight to the prison caves and try to free the trapped RainWings.”

“Queen Splendor is inside the fortress,” Starflight said. “In the same dungeon as Deathbringer.”

“Oh,” Glory said, and several colors shifted across her scales at once. “So another wing should go in there — maybe Tsunami can lead that group —”

“SLEEPING DARTS!” Clay suddenly yelled, making everyone jump.

Glory stared at him. “What?”

“Those sleeping darts the RainWings used to knock us out, when we first got to the rainforest,” Clay said. He nudged Sunny forward. “Sunny says the healers have hundreds of
them. The RainWings use them all the time — they play this game where they try to sneak up on each other before getting shot.”

“That’s true!” Mangrove said, lashing his tail. “And we take turns patrolling so we can shoot strange dragons who come into the forest, like you five, which is even more fun.”

“Every RainWing already has a blowgun,” Sunny said. “Arm them all with as many sleeping darts as they can carry, and use those instead of fighting.”

“That’s it!” Glory flared her wings, turning dark purple with lightning bolts of excited gold all along her scales. “That’s exactly how RainWings should fight!”

“It was Sunny’s idea,” Clay said, nodding down at the SandWing.

“Maybe we can do this without casualties,” Glory said animatedly. “Clay and Sunny, you’re in charge of arming all the RainWings. Get all the sleeping darts you can find. Mangrove, Grandeur, it’s time to tell the village. Everyone who’s willing to fight, meet by the stream here in one hour. We’re doing this before nightfall.” She turned to Starflight as the others flew off. “Let’s review the map. Tell me everything you know.”

Tsunami unrolled a giant leaf with a sketchy map of the NightWing island marked out on it in some kind of dark fruit ink.

War is coming. There’s no time to be scared,
Starflight told
himself as he leaned over the map.
You can’t be the most cowardly dragon on Pyrrhia right now. Remember, you’ve read all the history scrolls you could find about famous battles. Now use that knowledge.

It’s time to prove that you really do belong in this prophecy.