Dangerous Gift Read online

  Until the moment it officially became hers, when it became clear what Queen Snowfall had had to lose to get it.

  And now it was her least favorite thing in the world.

  Well … maybe Tundra’s face was her least favorite thing in the world. But they usually came together, so she could hate them both simultaneously.

  Snowfall opened the box with an irritated sigh and lifted out the glittering, diamond-encrusted monstrosity. Spiraling spikes like icicles jutted up into the air, around a cluster of crystalline jewels and twisted silver arches. It weighed as much as a small polar bear and made her neck hurt the moment she put it on.

  But she couldn’t let Tundra see that. She tipped her chin up and flared her wings to usher her aunt ahead of her.

  Everyone says the war is over. Everyone says Darkstalker is gone. Everyone says the NightWings won’t attack us again.

  But everyone could be wrong. THE NIGHTWINGS CAN’T BE TRUSTED. They want me dead. They want all of us dead. If I could find a way to wipe them all out first, I should.

  Tundra’s necklace of SkyWing teeth clicked noisily as they strode through the palace. Snowfall pressed her talons to her eyes for a moment, trying to drive the headache away.

  Being the queen, it turned out, was like living inside a snowstorm that never ended. She tried so hard to start each day all new, with a list and a plan and energy. She’d get so much done! Each new problem was a mere snowflake. She could tackle them one by one. Little sparkly quick-melting problems.

  Except the snowflakes piled up faster than she could fly, sparkles on sparkles on fluff on ice on cold on heavy wet layers of slush and freezing clumps, and by night she was buried far below them.

  And then, every night, just when it was all too much, her aunt Tundra would appear with her cold marble face, and that meant it was time for the wall.

  According to the ancient tradition of the tribe, every night the queen of the IceWings had to consider the wall that listed every important dragon in the tribe, and then she had to adjust the rankings of all the dragons in the aristocracy.

  Every. Night.

  Whose idea WAS this?

  Snowfall had always considered the wall, known as the gift of order, to be one of the best magic things in the kingdom. She used to wake up before the sun and soar down to the courtyard to see where her name was each morning. She loved watching the word Snowfall climb higher and higher as she worked and trained and studied, until she was at the very top of the dragonets’ side of the rankings. And there it stayed, moon after moon — apart from that unfortunate blip when her cousins messed everything up for a few days.

  But then Winter was gone, and Hailstorm moved over to the adult wall, and Snowfall was in her proper place at the top again, and it was excellent to look at. BEST DRAGONET IN THE WHOLE KINGDOM, the wall reassured her, morning after morning. YOU’RE DOING GREAT. EVEN YOUR MOTHER THINKS SO. SHE PUT YOU RIGHT HERE AT THE TOP BECAUSE SHE SEES HOW UNDENIABLY GREAT YOU ARE.

  Sometimes it felt like a secret message from Queen Glacier. Like, don’t worry, I remember you, even though we haven’t been in the same room in a while. I am quite pleased to have a daughter like you. I appreciate that you are not embarrassing me.

  It wasn’t like that now.

  The wall did not tell Snowfall she was undeniably great anymore. It said WELL? and MAKE SOME DECISIONS and STOP DITHERING and A GOOD QUEEN WOULD HAVE NO TROUBLE WITH THIS and WHAT HAPPENED TO BEING THE BEST QUEEN EVER? WHY ARE YOU SUCH A DISASTER?

  There were no more messages, unspoken or otherwise, from her mother.

  Now the word Snowfall was set apart, in its own little queen corner, off by itself. Now the task of reordering the rankings every night was her job, and Snowfall had begun to suspect that the gift of order was less a gift and more an act of twisted revenge. Some queen must have angered her animus somehow, and he or she had responded by crafting this torture device, perfectly designed to drive IceWing queens insane for the rest of time.

  Once upon a time, Snowfall had thought she would love this part of being queen. The fate of all her dragons in her own talons! The power to lift up those most loyal and knock down her enemies!

  But it didn’t feel like power. It felt like work, pinning her down like the weight of the crown.

  Icy rain drizzled down as Snowfall stared up at the wall of rankings. The light globe floating over her shoulder lit up the names in front of her. Behind her, the three moons illuminated the snowy courtyard. Silver, empty, cold, and wet, speckled with weird shadows from the light tree.

  Empty.

  Only twenty IceWings had died of the plague (only), plus thirteen more in the battle with the NightWings, but since Snowfall became queen, the palace had felt as empty as if the entire tribe had vanished into thin air the day Queen Glacier died.

  The entire tribe, that is, in addition to the one sister who had actually vanished.

  Maybe the rest of the IceWings deliberately made themselves scarce whenever they saw her coming. Maybe that was always what it was like for a queen.

  “Well?” Tundra asked smoothly. “Who are you going to move?”

  YEAH, agreed the wall. YOUR MOTHER NEVER TOOK THIS LONG.

  Snowfall’s head hurt. Her teeth hurt. Why did her teeth hurt?

  Every night she had to do this.

  Even when she had much more urgent crises to deal with than the hierarchy of palace dragons. Such as the dragons that were coming across the ocean right at this moment, preparing to tramp their dangerous talons all over her snowy kingdom.

  She wished she had a list of their names, and an entire history of their tribes, and an explanation for their behavior and an outline of what they were planning to do when they got here, plus a battle strategy for getting rid of them.

  Tundra cleared her throat.

  Right. The wall.

  Snowfall adjusted the heavy crown on her aching head. She couldn’t remember even seeing half these dragons today. How was she supposed to know whether they deserved to move up or down?

  When everyone avoided her, or spoke to her in polite monosyllables, where was she supposed to hear about the squabbles, mistakes, outrages, or triumphs in their freezing little aristocratic world?

  How did Mother always know everything?

  Snowfall glanced sideways at her aunt. Tundra had lost her husband, Narwhal, in the IceWing-NightWing battle. One of her children lived in exile and another was in prison awaiting trial, while the third was recovering from a very bizarre magic spell. Snowfall didn’t know quite what to think of Hailstorm these days. He seemed rigidly perfect on the outside and all melted together on the inside.

  Tundra looked exactly the same, though. Snowfall never saw a hint of sadness or rage or resentment in her face. Even though they both knew perfectly well that Tundra had always hoped her daughter, Icicle, would take the throne from Glacier before Snowfall could.

  Never going to happen now, Snowfall thought. After all those years of competing, suddenly I’m the queen and Icicle’s locked in the dungeon for being a traitor, and none of it was up to me in the end.

  She lifted her chin. Act like a queen. All the time. No matter how much your teeth hurt.

  Hailstorm could go up a notch. He hadn’t annoyed her at all today, and it would please Tundra, so perhaps she’d let Snowfall cut this short without too many more changes.

  Snowfall stabbed her claws into Hailstorm’s name and dragged him up a spot. She left Tundra’s name where it was — safely in the First Circle, ever since Narwhal sacrificed himself to save the new queen.

  She also left Crystal up among the top ten names, even though she could feel Tundra glaring at it intently every night. Wherever Crystal was, she was still a princess. She hadn’t done anything terrible that Snowfall knew of. She wasn’t definitely out there trying to raise an army to steal Snowfall’s throne, and she wasn’t certainly hiding in the palace trying to poison Snowfall’s food. She was only maybe doing those things. Snowfall couldn’t knock her down the list f
or maybe crimes, even if the maybeness of them was terrifying enough.

  If she left Crystal’s name in place, she hoped it would look as though she wasn’t afraid of her sister at all.

  She reordered a few other names, trying to keep her eyebrows arched in a bored, haughty way. So easy, this boring task, her eyebrows yawned. Easiest task in the world, definitely not frying all my brain cells.

  “Really?” Tundra said once, as Snowfall slid her uncle Permafrost down a notch (for pointing out, again, how easy it would be for SeaWings to invade from the northern ocean side of the Ice Kingdom, a reminder that Snowfall really DID NOT NEED right now, thanks very much). Tundra snapped her jaw shut as Snowfall glared at her.

  Finally Snowfall stepped back, shaking her talons. Her claws felt as if they might shiver into a million pieces in a moment. The wall always made them feel that way, and they were always fine after a while, but it was unpleasant.

  “That’s your … final decision?” Tundra said with just a hint of skepticism in her voice, easily denied if Snowfall had snapped at her.

  “Yes.” Snowfall couldn’t take another moment of this. She had to figure out what to do about the approaching dragons. The only other IceWing who knew was the scout who’d reported it to her. That animus SandWing, Jerboa, knew, too. Snowfall had gone to her for a spell to protect them, but it hadn’t been any help because animus magic was BROKEN, or Jerboa was lying to her, and either way she was useless.

  So Snowfall needed to deal with the invasion by herself, somehow, although so far her strategy of pacing around her throne room all night hadn’t been particularly effective.

  Even so. Alone. That was what she wanted to be. Or, specifically, somewhere far away from Tundra.

  She wrestled the giant crown off her head and shoved it into her aunt’s talons. Her headache eased a little.

  “Go away,” she snapped. “Now.”

  Tundra bowed and swept off, leaving only a faint vibration of disapproval in the air behind her. She never said anything obvious to remind Snowfall that, only a few months ago, Tundra and Narwhal had been practically second-in-command to Queen Glacier. She never even hinted at memories of their former relationship. Back then, Snowfall had been so careful about every word she said, afraid of offending her aunt and falling down the ranks as a result.

  Snowfall knew Tundra must hate the fact that she had to bow to her niece now. And probably Snowfall wasn’t helping the situation by barking at her and ordering her around. She couldn’t help it, though; she was too overwhelmed by everything else to add “be more polite to Aunt Tundra” to her list.

  If there was one upside to being queen, surely it was that she could finally snap at dragons who deserved it. Couldn’t she?

  Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe that was worst queen behavior, not best queen. Maybe she was messing this all up every time she opened her mouth.

  She glanced up at the wall again.

  The wall didn’t say anything (of course it didn’t; it was a wall). But it was clearly thinking about how civil Queen Glacier always was, and it was definitely judging her.

  This is sane. It is normal to feel judged by magic walls. I am a perfectly sane queen with a well-functioning brain and everything is fine.

  Something snapped in the courtyard behind her.

  Snowfall whirled around and stared through the icy raindrops. It all looked the same: pale, icy, wet, weird shadows.

  But it wasn’t empty.

  Someone was there. Someone was watching her.

  It’s Darkstalker! He’s here to finish the job of killing us all. Or another NightWing. Or Crystal. Definitely a murdery dragon about to kill me!

  “Show yourself!” Snowfall shouted. “I know you’re there!” She inhaled a gust of frostbreath, ready to unleash freezing death on her assassin, and charged toward the tree of light. A figure moved among the branches, wings spreading, and Snowfall bared her teeth.

  “Ack!” the figure shouted. “Stop! Snowfall! It’s me!” The dragon tumbled out of the tree and landed awkwardly among its roots, trying to stand and bow and duck behind the trunk at the same time.

  Snowfall skidded to a stop. The dragon’s scales were white, freckled with dark blue, not black. Not a NightWing. The dark blue meant it wasn’t Crystal either. She swallowed her frostbreath back down and lowered her head to squint at the spy.

  “Lynx?”

  “Hi,” said the dragonet. “Hello. Thank you for not freezing me. Hi, Snowfall.”

  “Queen Snowfall,” Snowfall snapped automatically. Lynx had been her biggest competition all through school and training, at least after Hailstorm was captured by SkyWings. She was only the daughter of a minor noble, but she was hardworking and clever and good at making teachers like her, and Snowfall had wanted to strangle her more than a thousand times.

  “Right,” Lynx said, glancing over her shoulder as though she was already regretting this conversation. “Queen Snowfall. Sorry.”

  She didn’t sound sorry. She sounded like she always had, challenging Snowfall to races around the palace or arguing over points of IceWing law in class.

  Snowfall narrowed her eyes. Lynx was still a year away from moving to the adult wall, and without Snowfall or any of the cousins left on there, Lynx had been sitting easily at the top of the dragonet list. But Snowfall could move her down. Snowfall could flick her all the way into the Seventh Circle if she wanted to. Snowfall was the QUEEN now. Deciding that Lynx was a disrespectful nobody who deserved to be squashed back into her place was absolutely Snowfall’s job.

  “What are you doing here?” Snowfall demanded. “Are you spying on me?”

  A normal dragon, with a healthy fear of punishment, would have denied it immediately. But Lynx made a rueful face, spread her wings, and said, “I am, actually.”

  “Wh — you are?” Snowfall scowled at her. “WHY?” Is she working with the NightWings? Or the invading dragons? Or Crystal? Or all of the above? Or writing to my cousin Winter about what a terrible job I’m doing? They were always too friendly, those two. Maybe she’s convinced him to round up a bunch of SeaWings to attack us! I don’t know why, but it’s possible!

  “Because I’m worried about you,” Lynx said frankly. “Snowfall, are you all right?”

  Snowfall’s ENTIRE BRAIN stopped working. It just rolled over and lay there, suddenly full of nothing to say after months of nonstop yelling about everything. Her mouth was all, hello? any thoughts? and the response was apparently, nope, just flap around like a bewildered walrus for a while.

  “Snowfall?” Lynx said after a moment. “Are you — did I break you?” She reached out and tapped lightly on Snowfall’s forehead.

  NOBODY TAPPED ON THE QUEEN’S FOREHEAD! Snowfall jumped back and stared at her. Nobody asked if the queen was “all right” either. She had never been asked that question, and certainly not since she became RULER OF THE WHOLE ICE KINGDOM.

  “Of course I’m all right,” she snapped. “I am the queen.”

  “Those … two things don’t necessarily go together,” Lynx observed. “I’d think maybe the opposite, actually.”

  “Why don’t you think I’m all right?” Snowfall demanded. “What are you trying to say? Do you think you’d be better at this than me?”

  “Oh my goodness.” Lynx edged away a step and looked even more concerned. “Not even remotely! I’d never want to be queen!”

  “The CORRECT ANSWER,” Snowfall said in an icy voice, “is NO, SNOWFALL, YOU’RE DOING AMAZING.”

  “You are doing amazing!” Lynx cried.

  “See, now I don’t believe you.” Snowfall wrenched a globe off the tree and batted it up at one of the windows that overlooked the courtyard. Some aristocrat was going to wake up in the morning and be very confused about why he had a second light globe bobbing gently around his room.

  Lynx watched it sail over their heads, then returned her gaze to Snowfall. “I’m just worried about the fact that the only dragons you ever get to talk to anymore are old and bossy and
kind of mean.”

  Snowfall let out a snort. That certainly described the council of powerful IceWings who’d nominated themselves to guide the new young queen.

  “Some would say I’m bossy and kind of mean, too,” she said to Lynx haughtily.

  “Oh, you are,” Lynx said (which was NOT the correct answer EITHER), “but that means you need to order some kind, agreeable dragons to hang out with you. Ones that won’t make your brain hurt all the time.”

  “Like you, I suppose?” Snowfall asked. How does she know that my brain hurts all the time?

  “No, no,” Lynx said. “I’m not agreeable at all. You’d be like, ‘fetch me a narwhal!’ and I’d be all, ‘urrrgggh, whyyyyy, narwhals are heaaaaavy and I’m reeeeeeeading,’ and you’d say, ‘but I want one! right now!’ and I’d say, ‘then go GET one, bossytail,’ and you’d bellow, ‘I AM YOUR QUEEN!’ and I’d be like, ‘yes, but this book is at a really exciting part though,’ and theeeeen you’d probably have me executed. I’d be so irritating! You already know this about me.”

  “How do you know that my brain hurts all the time?” Snowfall blurted. “I mean. That is. What makes you THINK that my brain hurts all the time?”

  “Well,” Lynx said carefully, flicking her tail. “You haven’t stopped frowning since the beginning of the plague. That would give anyone a headache, I’d think. And my brain is always tired, when all I have to do is study and train and stay at the top of the dragonet rankings. You have to do alllllll the queen stuff. And, you know. Also the … the sad bit.”

  “No, no.” Snowfall stamped right over Lynx’s last words. “No time for that. I can handle all the queen stuff. I’m not a lowly noble like you. I can do everything just fine. This is what I’ve been preparing for my whole life.”

  “Sure, but — there was supposed to be more of a whole life first,” Lynx pointed out. “Like, a couple more decades at least, I imagine.”

  “You don’t know that,” Snowfall said. “Maybe I was planning to challenge Mother for the throne, like, next week anyway. Because I’m so already ready to be queen.”