The Hive Queen (Wings of Fire, Book 12) Read online

  CONTENTS

  HALF-TITLE PAGE

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  MAP OF PANTALA

  A GUIDE TO THE DRAGONS OF PANTALA

  HIVEWINGS

  SILKWINGS

  LEAFWINGS

  THE LOST CONTINENT PROPHECY

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  COPYRIGHT

  Description: red, yellow, and/or orange, but always mixed with some black scales; four wings

  Abilities: vary from dragon to dragon; examples include deadly stingers that can extend from their wrists to stab their enemies; venom in their teeth or claws; a paralyzing toxin that can immobilize their prey; or boiling acid sprayed from a stinger on their tails

  Queen: Queen Wasp

  Description: SilkWing dragonets are born wingless, but go through a metamorphosis at age six, when they develop four huge wings and silk-spinning abilities; as beautiful and gentle as butterflies, with scales in any color under the sun, except black

  Abilities: can spin silk from glands on their wrists to create webs or other woven articles; can detect vibrations with their antennae to assess threats

  Queen: Queen Wasp (the last SilkWing queen, before the Tree Wars, was Queen Monarch)

  Description: wiped out during the Tree Wars with the HiveWings, but while they lived, this tribe had green and brown scales and wings shaped like leaves

  Abilities: could absorb energy from sunlight and were accomplished gardeners; some were rumored to have unusual control over plants

  Queen: last known queen of the LeafWings was Queen Sequoia, about fifty years ago, at the time of the Tree Wars

  Turn your eyes, your wings, your fire

  To the land across the sea

  Where dragons are poisoned and dragons are dying

  And no one can ever be free.

  A secret lurks inside their eggs.

  A secret hides within their book.

  A secret buried far below

  May save those brave enough to look.

  Open your hearts, your minds, your wings

  To the dragons who flee from the Hive.

  Face a great evil with talons united

  Or none of the tribes will survive.

  The ocean swept across Moon’s claws, as dark and speckled with stars as her own scales.

  She’d always thought of the sea as the edge of the world. Once you got there, that was it; you couldn’t go any farther.

  But now she knew that wasn’t true.

  A dragon had been blown ashore, all the way from across the ocean — a dragon from a tribe nobody in Pyrrhia had ever seen before. A dragon with four wings instead of two; a dragon with long furling antennae and scales like sliced gems and the ability to spin silk that burned.

  Luna was proof that there was a continent far on the other side of the sea, filled with strange dragons.

  Dragons who need my help, she says.

  Moon shivered. That couldn’t be right. They didn’t need her, of all dragons.

  It was Moon’s fault that Darkstalker had nearly taken over all of Pyrrhia; her fault that he’d killed so many IceWings, including their queen. She’d seen too much good in him and not enough of the bad. It was too soon for her to trust another dragon with a story of persecution. She wanted to use her visions to help the world … but she was not ready to have the fate of any more tribes in her talons.

  But Luna wanted Moon to save all the SilkWings. Luna thought Moon was the second coming of Clearsight, who was apparently the number one beloved ancient goddess of Pantala.

  So, no pressure there.

  She can tell us what’s going to happen next! Luna’s brain sang. She can see everything the HiveWings will do! She can predict Queen Wasp’s next move and then the Chrysalis will know how to stop her!

  It was like that all day long. Luna had extremely grand ideas of Moon’s abilities and shining dreams of how they would change everything.

  She was so wound up, in fact, about Moon’s ability to see the future that Moon hadn’t quite found the courage yet to tell her she could also read minds.

  It was really awkward, hearing all of Luna’s thoughts about her and Qibli and Jerboa, and honestly it was getting more awkward every moment that Moon didn’t tell her. If she’d had any extra skyfire, she would have slipped it to Luna somehow, to silence the pileup of expectations. But she didn’t have any, so telling her wouldn’t help much anyway.

  I should, though. It’s wrong not to.

  Moon sighed.

  She’s seeing the future RIGHT NOW! came a thought, loud and clear, from right behind her. Moon winced and turned around to find Luna bounding over the sand. Well, trying to bound over the sand. The sand had a way of sinking out suddenly from under one’s talons, so it was impossible to get any sort of bounding rhythm.

  Those were partly Luna’s thoughts. Moon sometimes got tangled up with them when they were too close to her own. She wasn’t sure why, but there was something more entangling about Luna’s mind than other dragons’.

  “Why are you out here by yourself?” Luna asked, settling next to Moon in a spray of sand.

  “I like to look at the moons sometimes,” Moon answered, and then laughed. “That’s my whole name, actually. Moonwatcher.”

  “My name means ‘moon’ in the old language, did you know that?” Luna asked. “Now it’s a kind of moth.” She dug a tiny hole in the sand in front of her and dropped a thread of flamesilk into it. The glow warmed Moon’s talons.

  “I didn’t know that,” Moon said, but she liked hearing it. It made her feel a little closer to Luna, who could be a bit intense sometimes. “What’s the old language?”

  Luna shrugged. “I don’t know … the language everyone spoke in Pantala before Clearsight arrived?”

  “Clearsight changed your language?” Moon said, surprised.

  “I think so. I heard a story once, anyway, that we all speak Dragon because of her.”

  That explained why the Pantalans and Pyrrhians could understand each other, but Moon was still puzzled. Why didn’t Clearsight learn their language instead?

  Maybe she foresaw that we’d need to communicate with each other one day.

  Or maybe she just hoped for it.

  “Are you having a vision?” Luna asked hopefully.

  “No!” Moon said. “Sorry … no, nothing yet.”

  Luna’s wings slid down into the sand and she picked up a seashell, fiddling with it as though focusing on it would keep her from crying.

  “I am really sorry, Luna,” Moon said. “I don’t know how to get you back to Pantala. Nothing in my visions has shown me that.”

  “I’m worried about my little brother,” Luna said, throwing the seashell into the ocean. “And Swordtail. He must be losing his mind.”

  “Qibli will think of something,” Moon said. “He usually does.” She hesitated. “Luna … I don’t know if it’s a good idea to tell you this, but I’ve bee
n hearing a prophecy in my head.”

  “A prophecy?” Luna echoed.

  “It started with my vision of you in Jerboa’s hut. I could hear a few words — and now, whenever I’m with you, it gets clearer and clearer. I don’t completely understand it. And I’m afraid it might scare you.”

  “I’m not easily scared,” Luna said. “Please tell me.”

  Moon sensed movement behind her, and then a few stray grumbling thoughts in a voice she recognized. Qibli had returned successful, then. Well, he could hear this, and so could the two dragons with him.

  She took Luna’s talons between her own, closed her eyes, and let her mind clear so the words of the prophecy could flow through her. She did not love this bit. Cryptic rhyming prophecies were not as useful as visions, in her opinion, and the last one had gone to a pretty terrifying place. But the last one had also saved her and her friends, so she couldn’t ignore them.

  “Turn your eyes, your wings, your fire,” she whispered, “to the land across the sea.” She felt Luna’s shiver all through her own scales.

  “Where dragons are poisoned, and dragons are dying,

  And no one can ever be free.

  A secret lurks inside their eggs.

  A secret hides within their book.

  A secret buried far below

  May save those brave enough to look.

  Open your hearts, your minds, your wings

  To the dragons who flee from the Hive.

  Face a great evil with talons united

  Or none of the tribes will survive.”

  Silence fell. Moon took a few deep breaths.

  “I know the secret in the book,” Luna said thoughtfully, “but what’s the secret in the eggs? And the buried one … maybe that’s the flamesilks. No one can ever be free, that’s definitely true. A great evil. Hmm … maybe the HiveWings are the great evil?”

  “Yeesh,” Qibli said, coming up and nudging one of Moon’s wings with his. “Didn’t we just face a great evil? That should count, I say, if anyone asks me. Great evil, faced. Done. Take it off the to-do list.”

  She opened her eyes and smiled at him.

  “Sounds like a new great evil,” their friend Turtle said nervously from beside him. “Can I vote no on any more great evils in our lifetime?”

  “Hey, Turtle,” Moon said. “Hey, Tsunami.”

  The tall blue SeaWing founder of Jade Mountain Academy gave her an exasperated face. “Moon,” she said. “I feel like I was really clear about not having anything to do with any more prophecies.”

  “They just happen to me,” Moon protested. “I’m sorry!”

  “Moon,” Luna whispered, poking her surreptitiously with her tail. “Who are these dragons?”

  “Oh — sorry, of course,” Moon said. “Luna, this is our friend Turtle and his sister, Tsunami. They’re from the SeaWing tribe. Thank you for going to get them, Qibli.”

  “Well, I thought that maybe Turtle here could make us something,” Qibli said carefully, “which would perhaps take us across the ocean. So that Luna can get home.”

  “Oh?” Luna said, squinting at Turtle. “Like my silk sail?”

  “But one we can steer — or something like that,” Moon said. She and Qibli had agreed that they should wait to tell Luna about animus magic. If she got this excited and full of glorious vengeful plans over Moon’s future-seeing, goodness knows how she would feel about real magic and all the things it could do to her enemy tribe.

  Things we can’t let her do, Qibli and Moon agreed. Animus magic was too dangerous.

  But something made by animus magic that could get her home — that wouldn’t hurt anyone. Qibli had offered to ask Turtle if he’d be willing to do that.

  “Right,” Turtle said. “Make something. So here’s the thing. I can’t.”

  “Oh,” Moon said. “That’s all right, Turtle, we understand. Your soul —”

  “No, no,” Turtle said, looking worried. “That’s not it. I mean, I actually tried and … I can’t.”

  Qibli made a face at Moon, like “It’s true! I have no idea why!”

  “Luna,” Moon said. “Can you give us a moment?”

  “Sure.” The four-winged dragon turned and trudged slowly back to Jerboa’s hut, limping on her injured ankle. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up, her mind thought sadly, and Moon felt awful for her.

  “Poor lost dragon,” Tsunami said. “It must be so weird for her to be here, surrounded by strangers, with no way to get home.”

  “So what’s wrong, Turtle?” Moon asked as soon as Luna was out of earshot.

  “I don’t know!” Turtle said, flinging up his wings. “I can’t do any animus spells all of a sudden! I’ve tried all kinds of little things and nothing works!”

  “Three moons,” she said, blinking in confusion and alarm.

  “Here’s the really weird part — I don’t think Anemone can, either,” he said. “Right before Qibli came to get us, she was telling me about a spell she tried to restore Tamarin’s sight. I’d been thinking of trying one for Starflight’s, so we were comparing notes. But she said it didn’t work, and she couldn’t figure out why.”

  Turtle turned to give Qibli a severe look. “I suspect,” he said, “that Qibli broke animus magic.”

  “ME?” Qibli cried. “What did I do?”

  “The soul spells!” Turtle said. “Remember how you carefully planned them out with us? To protect our souls and make sure we can only do magic that doesn’t affect another dragon’s free will?”

  “And no magic that’s selfishly motivated,” Qibli said. “Right. We all agreed safeguards would be helpful.”

  “Except I think it ruled out everything,” Turtle said. “Maybe everything we do could be considered ‘selfishly motivated’ or affect someone’s free will in some way. So now none of our spells work.”

  “Oh my goodness,” said Moon.

  “That is — no, that’s — that’s ridiculous,” Qibli protested. “I did not break animus magic. I do not think I broke animus magic. That makes no — let me think about this.”

  “Did you try taking off your soul spell objects to see if it would work without them?” Moon asked.

  “Anemone didn’t want to,” Turtle said, “but I did, just to try a small spell, and it still didn’t work.” He pointed at Qibli. “Broken.”

  “If it still didn’t work without the soul spell, then it’s not the soul spell,” Qibli said. “And therefore not me who broke animus magic.”

  “It really feels like it is you, though,” Turtle said.

  “Maybe something else is going on,” Moon said, worried. Darkstalker flashed through her mind, making plans, tinkering with dragons’ powers. She knew he was gone now; he’d been turned into a dragonet with no powers and no memory of his past. But sometimes in her nightmares he still managed to mess with her friends. “What if someone else did this to you?” Or left something behind that did this to you — some kind of safeguard. He could have done that, couldn’t he? So if he ever lost his powers, so would everyone else?

  “There isn’t anyone who could do that,” Qibli said gently. He’d had to wake her up from some of those nightmares, so he knew what she was thinking as clearly as though he had mind-reading abilities, too. “This is just a glitch, not a sinister plan. We’ll fix it.”

  “What about Jerboa?” Tsunami asked. “Is her magic working? She’s an animus dragon, too, right?”

  “Sort of. But she’s an animus dragon who won’t touch her magic,” Moon said. “We can’t ask her for help with this.”

  “Well, all right, then let’s not,” Tsunami said. “You guys, we don’t need animus magic.”

  “We don’t?” Turtle tipped his head up to look at her.

  Tsunami grinned with all her teeth. “My friends and I solved plenty of problems without animus magic, thank you very much. It’s called being resourceful. And smart. And totally heroic, no prophecies required.”

  “All right, Smarty McSquid,” Turtle said. “S
o how would you and your resourceful, heroic friends solve this problem?”

  “Well, step one is we need more information, right?” Tsunami said. “We want to go over there to see if Luna’s stories are all true. To find out what’s really going on and whether we should get involved.”

  “I think she’s telling the truth, from what I can see in her mind,” Moon said, “but it is hard to get a full picture of the situation. I wish we could go scout it out and see if there is a way we can help her.”

  “Maybe also what the great evil is?” Qibli suggested. “A heads-up about that would be super.”

  “So we need to get to the other continent,” Tsunami said. “We don’t need a magic flying sail thing to do that.”

  “Oh, ah,” Qibli said. “Well, I mean. I did think of this. It’s why I got you two, specifically. Just so we’re clear that I thought of this first.”

  “Thought of what?” Turtle asked.

  “To get to the lost continent, Turtle,” Tsunami said, sweeping one wing out toward the ocean, “all you and I have to do is swim there.”

  For most of her life, Cricket’s best friends were books.

  Books accepted you the way you were and shared all their secrets with you.

  Books never told you to stop asking questions or accused you of being nosy and annoying. Books never said, “Cricket, you don’t need to know that, mind your own business.”

  In books, everything had an explanation. She especially liked nonfiction: lots of facts and things had to make sense. If a question came up, eventually you got the answer. Every mystery was solved by the end. Facts fit together. When you wanted something explained, there it was, with no whispering or cold stares or slammed doors.

  Another thing she liked about books was the fact that one of them had probably saved her life.

  It was a giant book called The Architecture of the Hives, Expanded Edition — now with sections on Hydroponics and Silk Bridges!, which, technically, belonged to her mother, and therefore, technically, was off-limits to “tiny grubby dragonet talons,” which was why two-year-old Cricket was hiding in a cupboard with it the first time everyone lost their minds.

  “Why is this book so in love with itself?” little Cricket muttered. All she’d wanted to know was how to get from her home in Cicada Hive to the Temple of Clearsight in Wasp Hive, preferably in some clever, really fast way where she could be home that same night and nobody would notice she’d been gone. She just wanted to see it again, even if only for a moment.