Dangerous Gift 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

  CHAPTER 10

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  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; or a paralyzing toxin that can immobilize their prey; others can spray boiling acid 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.

  Swordtail blinked awake in a haze of smoke. Smoke clung to the air and filled his nose; even the savanna grass seemed to still have wisps of smoke clinging to its blades. There were dragons all around him — hundreds, maybe thousands of dragons — but he didn’t know any of them.

  They were all lying in the tall grass, and on the other side of the smoky sky, he could see the blurred outline of the sun.

  The last thing he remembered was falling asleep at night, in the jungle, next to Blue and Cricket and Sundew. Before that, he could remember lying there, listening to the carnivorous plants rustle and slither nearby, thinking about the battle to come. He remembered watching Blue rub his wrists nervously at the spots where his flamesilk glowed in the dark.

  Flamesilk. Fire. Blue was going to set the bonfire of heart of salvation aflame, and the smoke would be the antidote to the breath of evil. His fire was going to set all the HiveWings free from Wasp’s mind control. If it worked, maybe there wouldn’t be a battle at all.

  The smoke in the air suggested that there had definitely been a fire — a much bigger fire than one pile of roots could have produced, in fact.

  But what had happened?

  How did I get here?

  He pushed himself up to standing and winced.

  Everything hurt. His muscles ached as though he’d been flying for days. Even his claws felt bruised and sore.

  From the sounds of the moaning and grumbling around him, many of these strange dragons felt the same way.

  He suddenly realized that most of them were HiveWings. His enemies.

  Why am I lying in the savanna, surrounded by HiveWings?

  Did they capture me?

  If so, they were doing a pathetic job of keeping him prisoner. No one was even looking at him. He wasn’t tied up. He could fly away right now.

  Which way, though?

  Which way was Blue?

  Or Luna. If I could fly to Luna, I would. So what if there was an entire ocean between them? He would find his way there, to her.

  Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust as soon as he figured out where in Pantala he was.

  He squinted around, looking for a landmark. Even if there was nothing but savanna around him, that would be a clue.

  But there was something: two Hives, visible in the distance, with glimmering webs stretching between them. Which meant the Poison Jungle should be in the other …

  A cloud of black smoke covered the horizon behind him, reaching from ground to sky.

  Is that the jungle?

  And suddenly he had a memory — a memory of standing beside Blue as flamesilk spiraled out of Blue’s wrists onto the pile of roots. Swordtail remembered his own claws clutching a spear with sharp thorns twisting from one end. He remembered staring at the rows of HiveWings, all of them eerily still and white-eyed. They hadn’t moved as he and Blue approached the pyre. They hadn’t swarmed forward to try to stop them. They hadn’t even looked at him.

  He remembered now how that had worried him.

  But he’d put his faith in the antidote. He’d watched the green-tinged smoke rise and fill the air, drifting over the front ranks of the HiveWing army. Slinking around his own head, and Blue’s.

  And then he’d felt his claws twitch and sink into the ground. His wings opened, but he hadn’t moved them. His head turned toward Blue, and his mouth moved, and something that wasn’t him spoke through him.

  “Two little SilkWings, all for me. Just what I always wanted. And one of them a flamesilk! So nice when a plan sprouts exactly the way it’s supposed to.”

  Blue had stared back at him, his talons also firmly planted. The LeafWings flying down from the trees would not have been able to tell that there was anything wrong. Only Swordtail could see the panic in Blue’s eyes. Only the two of them knew that they were paralyzed inside their bodies, controlled by someone — or something else.

  It felt like the toxin the HiveWings used on Misbehaver’s Way prisoners, but worse.

  The rest of his memories came flooding back. The smoke spreading over the LeafWings. Sequoia and Belladonna and Nettle caught by the breath of evil, just as Swordtail was. Blue’s talons turning toward the jungle. His fire burning it all down.

  Swordtail crouched into the savanna grass, trying to breathe. It was morning now. They must have spent the whole previous day scorching the Poison Jungle. He remembered being in the squadron that was sent to gather all the breath of evil from its hidden lair, before the fire reached that area.

  He also remembered searching for the rest of the LeafWings. The thing inside him had driven him relentlessly through the crackling, smoking trees, looking for Sundew and Cricket and the young LeafWing princess. That was probably why he was so sore and singed and scratched-up. It was a miracle
he hadn’t been eaten by a frantic dying plant along the way.

  But he didn’t remember finding any LeafWings.

  Swordtail jumped to his feet, ignoring the pain in his talons. He spun, searching the savanna around him.

  Hundreds of HiveWings, a few LeafWings — but nobody he recognized. No Sundew. How had she escaped the smoke by the battlefield? Oh, wait … she hadn’t been there when Blue went to burn the roots. He didn’t know where she’d gone, but maybe that meant her mind hadn’t been taken over.

  And if they’d searched all day for her with no luck, maybe she’d really escaped, along with Cricket and the rest of the LeafWings who hadn’t been near the smoke.

  Where could they be?

  He lifted one talon gingerly, then the other. He was controlling himself right now. His head felt curiously light, as if it had been caught in the grip of someone’s talons all night and they’d just released him. Cautiously he started walking through the grass, toward a flicker of bright blue wings near one of the shrubs.

  Blue? If he could find Blue, they could fly away together. Maybe the mind control had been temporary. Or maybe it didn’t work over long distances; maybe they could fly out over the ocean, as far as they could possibly get, and escape its clutches that way.

  It was Blue. Swordtail could see soot smudged along Blue’s face and limbs and wings, but it was unmistakably him, asleep, with his brow furrowed in worry.

  Swordtail was a few steps away from his friend when his legs suddenly froze. He felt a chill sweep through him, all his scales shivering away from believing that they’d been taken over again.

  “Nice try,” his own voice whispered. His wings folded in and he dropped to the ground, stuck in place. Trapped. So close to Blue, but so far from himself.

  She has me in her claws, he thought. But she can’t read my mind; she can’t stop me from thinking. Or hoping.

  Blue and I may be stuck here, but I believe Sundew and Cricket escaped. Maybe they went to find Luna.

  And if they did, I know they’ll come back for us. They’ll find a way to set us free.

  We just have to survive until they do.

  The youngest queen in the history of the Ice Kingdom was going to be the very best queen of the IceWings ever. Ever ever. THE BEST.

  She was going to keep all her dragons safe. They were all going to be healthy and prosperous and safe and no one was going to die of any more evil magic plagues, like the one that killed the previous queen.

  NO ONE.

  NOT ON HER WATCH.

  Queen Snowfall had a plan, or at least, she had a firm death grip on an idea that was kind of like a plan.

  That plan was: STAY AWAY FROM OTHER DRAGONS.

  No more getting involved in other tribes’ stupid wars. No more summits with queens who talked down to her or eyed her as if she might be the one to start the next war. No more interactions with NightWings, ever.

  None of this intertribal peace talk empathy-building drum circle nonsense!

  IceWings were a GREAT tribe. They didn’t NEED any other tribes. Those subjects of hers who wanted to go explore, to meet other dragons and study in their perilous, flammable schools? They needed to be STUFFED INTO IGLOOS until they came to their senses.

  (Her council had talked her into letting a few IceWings go to Jade Mountain Academy, for now, instead of using her excellent igloo plan. There had been so much alarming enthusiasm for the idea of “connecting with the other tribes.” WHY, was her question. How could anyone even want to be around strange dragons after what had happened to their tribe? She was hoping the students they’d sent would come back with stories about how terrible the academy was, and that by then all the other curious IceWings would have forgotten about ever wanting to leave.)

  No, in Snowfall’s vision of her reign, all IceWings would stay IN the kingdom, where she could keep an eye on them. Other dragons would stay OUT of the kingdom and there would be NO MORE dealing with tribes that weren’t them.

  It was a good plan, a straightforward plan, a nice, safe, brilliant plan.

  Except for the problems.

  Problems like queens who kept sending her messages about alliances and trade and building more schools like Jade Mountain Academy. (Shut UP, Queen Ruby; go AWAY, Queen Glory; deal with your OWN STUPID DRAGONS, Queen Thorn!)

  Problems like the IceWings on her own council who wanted to meet with the NightWings and try to “build a bridge” over “centuries of violence and hatred” after the blast of magic empathy that had ended their last battle.

  Problems like not knowing exactly where everyone was, and having to wonder whether the missing dragons in question had left the Ice Kingdom or were still lurking around somewhere, maybe plotting some cold-blooded murder.

  Most urgent, though, was the problem that hundreds of strange dragons were apparently flying toward her shores at that very moment.

  “You’re sure they aren’t NightWings?” she demanded again.

  Her scout managed not to sigh, but she could tell that he wanted to, which was VERY DISRESPECTFUL and maybe she should have him punished. Wasn’t that what a fierce, powerful very-best-queen-ever would do? Punish dragons for disobeying her, or thinking about disobeying her, or making faces as if they were trying not to make faces?

  “I could see flashes of different colors from their scales,” he repeated. “I promise you, my queen. Mostly green, but many, many other colors as well. No black dragons. They’re not NightWings.”

  Snowfall paced from one corner of the balcony to the other. They were high on one of the tallest spires of the palace, with the wind whisking pellets of ice all around them. The sun was low in the sky off to the west, painting the clouds gold and orange as it sank into the sea. She knew they were out there, but no matter how fiercely Snowfall glared at it, she couldn’t see any dragons flying out of the sunset.

  She wondered if NightWings had found a way to disguise their scales. Maybe Darkstalker wasn’t really gone, even though all those not-IceWings at the Jade Mountain Academy promised he was. Maybe he was still out there, and he’d come up with a way to turn NightWings into multicolored rainbow dragons, and then he’d sent them far out into the ocean to fly in an enormous arc so they could come at the Ice Kingdom from the west and avoid the Great Ice Cliff and soon they would be here to kill her and her entire tribe.

  This was not far-fetched freaking out! This was completely reasonable, justified freaking out!

  Her scout was looking at her as if he thought she might be losing her mind, though. She had to put her queen face back on and act as if an invasion of alarming rainbow dragons was the sort of thing excellent queens such as herself could easily handle, no problem.

  “Well, if they’re not NightWings, what are they?” she asked. He hesitated, and she answered her own question. “RainWings? I mean, RainWings. Of course. That’s the only tribe with many colors, so … perhaps with SeaWings; those can be green. It’s probably a group of RainWings and SeaWings.” Why would RainWings and SeaWings form an alliance to invade my kingdom from the west? her brain screamed. Coral and Glory have betrayed me! They decided I’m too young to be queen and they’re coming for my throne! Which is very unfair because Glory is the same age as I am and she’s queen of TWO tribes!

  All right, Queen Glory probably wasn’t coming to depose Snowfall because of her age. See, her brain could figure that out, and so it was, ipso facto, working perfectly reasonably, and that meant all these other worries were entirely legitimate.

  Also, the RainWing tribe hadn’t invaded another kingdom in literally hundreds of years. They hadn’t even participated in the War of SandWing Succession. All they wanted to do was snooze around the rainforest eating papayas. They would be an utterly useless invasion force. If Glory did want to invade another kingdom, she’d have to do it with her NightWings, who liked attacking and killing and stabbing and violence and lying and destroying things.

  So maybe Glory found a way to turn NightWings into rainbow dragons and sent them this
way and so they ARE NightWings after all!

  Snowfall rubbed her head, which was throbbing as though someone had shoved icicles through her temples.

  “I don’t … think … the RainWings and SeaWings would attack us,” the scout said cautiously.

  “Is your job thinking?” Snowfall shouted, making him jump. “ARE YOU AN EXPERT THINKER? Did we accidentally assign you to scouting because we missed your GIANT AMAZING BRAIN and all the AMAZING THINKS it could have shared with us?! DOES IT SEEM LIKELY THAT YOUR THINKING WOULD INTEREST ME?”

  “N-n-no, Your Majesty,” he stammered.

  “No,” she agreed. “You are a scout. Go scout again and come back with real, actual information.”

  He flew away immediately, and then she spent seven minutes worrying about whether she’d been too harsh with him and whether an excellent queen would have said any of that, and whether a certain sister of hers would have been more serene and therefore more excellent, and then another twelve minutes growling at herself about how excellent queens didn’t second-guess themselves and how she needed to be more decisive, and then she realized that she was accidentally thinking about murdery black dragons trying to murder her again, and she had to lie down and cover her face for a moment.

  When she finally sat up, her aunt Tundra was standing in the doorway of the balcony, watching her with impassive raised eyebrows.

  “Hello,” Snowfall said haughtily. I was definitely not panicking. I was resting my eyes in a very normal queenly fashion. I do not need to explain myself. I am the queen and therefore whatever I do is queenly, no matter what her eyebrows think!

  “Good evening,” said her aunt. “It is time for the wall.”

  “Of course it is,” Snowfall said. “How MARVELOUS. My FAVORITE PART OF THE DAY.”

  Tundra had a face that repelled sarcasm. No matter what Snowfall said, no matter her tone of voice, it all slid right off that frozen expression. Tundra inclined her head slightly and held out the jeweled box that contained the IceWing crown.

  As a little dragonet princess, Snowfall had looked forward to wearing the crown her entire life. Diamonds! Sparkles! Power! Everything she’d always wanted!