The Brightest Night (5 page)

This was one of those ideas that Sunny’s friends would totally ignore if she suggested it, but would love like crazy if it came from Clay or Tsunami. It was also something they would never, ever let her do herself. Too dangerous! Too risky! Send a dragon with fighting skills or camouflage scales. Not their undersized, cheerful, silly little sister.

Well, I’m the only one here. And I know I can do it.

She waited until the sun was halfway up the sky, and then she carefully worked her way closer, hopping from tree to tree and giving herself as much cover as she could. There were a few spots where she was exposed and her golden scales caught the light, but when she finally came to rest on a branch within sight of the NightWings, all three of them were sleeping soundly.

Starflight said there were never any NightWing guards posted in their fortress. They’re used to being so isolated that no one could find them to attack them. It didn’t even occur to them to leave someone awake to keep watch.

She snorted.
They probably also figured no one would dare attack a group of amazing all-powerful NightWings.

Fierceteeth was curled in the curve of Strongwings’s underbelly, with her tail draped over his and her head resting on his shoulder. Sunny had no idea how Fierceteeth could sleep through those tree-rattling snores.

Preyhunter lay closer to the river, scrunched into a tight, tense ball, with his wings tucked close to him. In the daylight, Sunny could see how dull his scales were and how ill they all looked. Even Strongwings, who was built large and burly, looked underfed, and his snores rasped heavily as if his lungs and throat and nose were lined with claws.

Sunny studied the ground around Preyhunter until she spotted a corner of black glass sticking out from under one of his wings. He was keeping the Obsidian Mirror very close.

How can I get it without waking him up?

She glanced at the other two again, then quietly slid down her tree until her talons touched the grass. The river bubbled over smooth gray rocks, not much more than a stream. Small purple wildflowers bent under her claws as Sunny tiptoed over to the sleeping NightWing.

He looked miserable, even in his sleep. His jaw was clenched, his talons twitched defensively, and his forked black tongue flickered in and out as he muttered something to himself. When Sunny crouched beside him, she realized he was shivering.

I guess it was pretty hot, living on a volcano.
The air didn’t feel cold to her, here on the outskirts of the jungle, but perhaps he wasn’t used to it. Or perhaps he was sick.

It felt strange to be so close to an unfamiliar NightWing. For the first six years of her life, Sunny had known exactly seven dragons: Clay, Tsunami, Starflight, Glory, and their three guardians, Webs, Dune, and Kestrel.

Two of those seven dragons were dead now. She knew the guardians had never been particularly kind to the dragonets, but they were still the only parents she’d ever had, and she missed them. Her friends had never stopped to grieve for Dune and Kestrel — she wasn’t even sure they were sad about their deaths at all. She’d tried not to show how it upset her, but at night, curled up beside Clay, when she was sure he’d sleep through it, sometimes she’d let herself cry for them.

She reached toward the sliver of obsidian, but before she even touched it, Preyhunter whimpered in his sleep, and she snatched her talons back.

None of the dragons moved for a long moment.

Maybe this is a bad idea. I could make things worse if I get myself caught.

But if she could get the mirror away from them, that would be one less weapon in their claws. They’d be flying blind, with no idea what Glory was planning and no way to know if Burn would receive them with open wings. Not to mention Sunny could probably use that mirror herself.

She reached out again and noticed the trembling that shuddered through Preyhunter’s scales. Maybe he wasn’t cold. Maybe it was a nightmare.

Maybe he’s dreaming about the terrible things he’s done. Or perhaps he’s dreaming about the volcano exploding.

She hesitated, and then unfolded one of her wings, spreading it gently over his back. She was too small to cover him completely, but the warmth that radiated from her scales spread as far over him as she could reach. She held her breath, trying not to touch him.

Preyhunter let out a long, shuddering sigh, and then the shivering stopped. He took another deep breath, and Sunny saw the tension in his snout, jaws, and neck relax. A ripple went through his wings and his claws unclenched. He stopped muttering, and even his closed eyes seemed to smooth over, as if he were shifting into a deeper, calmer sleep.

Sunny waited a long moment, feeling sorry for this dragon even though she really didn’t want to. She couldn’t help wondering what she herself might have been like if she’d grown up on the NightWing island. Desperate and sad? Mean and hungry?

She reached for the mirror again, and suddenly Preyhunter spoke.

“Please.”

Sunny froze. His eyes were still closed. Across the clearing, Fierceteeth shifted her wings and coughed.

“Please don’t make me,” Preyhunter said, more softly. “Mother, it’s awful.”

A stab of sympathy shot through Sunny, and she curled her tail in closer.
Remember what he’s planning and what he said and what he’s done.
But it was hard not to imagine herself in his scales.

Gently she used her front talons to slide the mirror out from under his wing. Her warmth had relaxed his grip on it, so he wasn’t clutching it so tightly, and it only took a moment until it was resting coldly between her claws. The obsidian felt thin, like a layer of ice, and the edges were sharp as teeth. Sunny could see her distorted reflection in the dark glass.

She took a careful step back, then another, and folded her wings back in. Preyhunter made a lost, mournful noise, and his claws twitched as if he were trying to pull the warmth back into him.

Will they guess I’m the one who stole it? What if they come looking for me?

She glanced around the clearing. A large, flat gray boulder took up most of the ground between the three dragons, with bright yellow dandelions dotting the edges like topaz gemstones around a pendant.

I’ll leave them a message…. Something that won’t sound like me. Maybe something that’ll scare them.

Her own heart was drumming frantically against her ribs like a caged bird. She wanted to get out of there before any of them woke up. But she had a strong feeling that there was something to this idea.

She dipped a claw in the dark red mud that lined the river and wrote on the boulder, in tall, jagged letters:

TURN BACK. YOU FLY TOWARD YOUR DEATH.

Totally spooky,
she thought with satisfaction. It even looked like maybe it could have been written in blood.
That should at least creep them out, even if it doesn’t send them scurrying back to the rainforest.

Sunny took a step back, and then suddenly Strongwings let out the loudest snore yet, and Fierceteeth rolled over to swat him with her wing.

“Shut your noisy snout or so help me I will rip it off with my claws!” she hollered.

Sunny bolted into the sky and didn’t stop flying until she reached the dense green canopy of the jungle again.

When she finally glanced back, there was no movement from the NightWings’ copse of trees. Strongwings had even started snoring again.

I guess she was yelling at him in her sleep. Or she went right back to sleep and didn’t notice me there.

Sunny carefully tucked the mirror under one wing and used her talons to clamber up and along the trees until she found a spot where the leaves overlapped so thickly it was like a small green cave around her. She studied the mirror. What had Preyhunter done to activate it?

“Starflight,” she said softly to the cold obsidian, and then she breathed a small plume of smoke across the surface.

As it had before, the smoke twined and twisted around the mirror, then vanished. Sunny could feel the mirror thrumming faintly between her claws. It was sort of horrible — a sick, slithering sensation through her blood, as if it were pulling something out of Sunny’s heart.

A faint black tendril of smoke curled up from the center of the mirror, barely visible in the green-tinted sunshine. It didn’t speak, but when Sunny leaned closer, she could hear the faint sound of breath going in and out.

He’s alive.

Two pale blue wisps of smoke drifted by, close to the edge of the mirror.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” whispered one.

“The queen said this is what ‘fire’ can do,” murmured the other. “It seems almost as bad as venom, if you ask me.”

From their voices, Sunny guessed they were two of the healer RainWings she’d befriended while she was helping take care of Webs. RainWing healers were odd, specializing mostly in saying comforting things and offering more fruit to eat. But occasionally they were really specifically knowledgeable, like about jaguar bites, or what to do if you ate too many mangoes, or how to make salves for tails that had been used for swinging from rough branches one too many times.

“I’d rather be Kinkajou than him right now,” said the first. “She’s healing well.”

“Did you see the messenger who was here before?” The second curl of blue smoke moved, looping around the black smoke as if checking on it, and then sliding back to the first. “That big brown dragon sent a message for Sunny. I wasn’t sure whether to tell him we haven’t seen her. I don’t want to worry the queen when she has so many NightWings to deal with.”

“I say don’t start a panic. She’s around somewhere.”

This was similar to the RainWings’ attitude toward their own missing dragons, some of which had been gone as long as a year by the time Glory rescued them.
Well, that’s fine,
Sunny thought.
I don’t need or want my friends looking for me. They have enough to do.

The black smoke stirred, as if the faintest breath of wind had touched it. “Sunny?” Starflight whispered.

But … poor Starflight.
She curled her tail in around her talons and sighed.

“Shh, we woke him by talking about her,” admonished the first healer. “Let’s get him another sleeping dart.”

Sunny cleared the mirror and held it between her claws for a moment. She disliked it more and more the longer she held it. It had a chilling wrongness to it, like the tunnels, that made her scales feel as if invisible spiders were crawling all over her.

But there were things she needed to know — like what the warring SandWing queens were plotting. The Obsidian Mirror could help her figure out if any of them was an immediate threat to Sunny’s friends.

I should at least try one of them. The most dangerous one.
She hesitated, and then whispered, “Blister,” to the dark glass.

The pale yellow twist of smoke that rose from the center this time had the same chilling stillness that Blister had; it barely even moved in the breeze.

“Be careful!” it hissed suddenly, and Sunny flinched away from the mirror. It was unsettling to hear Blister’s voice as if she were on the next branch over. “Close it up. Is he ready to go? All right, give him his gold, and tell him I’ll be there in a moment with final instructions.” The smoke dipped for a moment, then turned as another small twister touched down. “Anything?”

“No sign of any SeaWings, Your Majesty,” said the new arrival. “We waited half the day.”

Blister hissed, low and long. “I’ll win this war without them, then,” she growled. “Burn will be dead within a fortnight, and then I’ll kill Blaze with my own talons, and the SeaWings will get
nothing
when they come slithering out of the ocean begging for forgiveness. They’ll find my claws and the entire force of the SandWing army waiting instead. Coral has no idea what vengeance can really look like. Don’t touch that,” she snapped abruptly.

“Sorry, Your Majesty. What —”

“It’s my plan to end this war once and for all,” Blister said in a dark voice. “Without the SeaWings
or
the NightWings. So stay away from it. Any word from our spies in the Ice Kingdom?”

“No sign of the dragonets yet. Perhaps —”

“I know,” Blister snapped. “They could be somewhere else.” There was the sound of paper crackling. “I’ve been considering the possibilities. Hiding in the rainforest, perhaps.”

Sunny felt a chill down her spine.

“Or perhaps they’re dead,” said the soldier. “Especially if they tried going to the rainforest, from what I’ve heard about that place.”

“Hmmm,” Blister mused. “Dead. They’d never do anything so convenient for me. Even with a NightWing assassin after them, supposedly, if anything Morrowseer says can be trusted. Speaking of dragons I’m going to dismember as soon as I get my claws on them.”

She doesn’t know he’s dead — how could she?
Sunny gripped the branch below her, feeling terror shudder through her scales.
At least she’s not searching the rainforest yet.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Blister, her voice suddenly brisk. “I’m done with prophecies. I mean, I’ll still kill the dragonets when I find them, but first I have a war to win. My new plan will take care of Burn — and then the stronghold will fall, and the throne will be mine.” There was a chilling rattling sound, and the twist of smoke seemed to get a little darker.