Dangerous Gift Page 8

  “OK, that’s enough words,” Snowfall said, waving him away. He blinked a few times, and then resumed his stretching. The sound of clanking drew Snowfall’s attention back to the fire.

  Luna had taken one of the threads of her flamesilk and twisted it into a long wire, which she held between her talons.

  She can hold fire?

  Snowfall watched as Luna bent over a SilkWing’s talons and carefully traced the flame thread across the metal cuff on the SilkWing’s wrist. A singed line appeared on the metal, and then, as Luna traced it over and over, the fire burned through the cuff and it thunked into the sand.

  Luna and the SilkWing grinned at each other, and then she turned to the next dragon’s cuff to do the same.

  As strange powers went, this one wasn’t the scariest. Snowfall had fought plenty of dragons who breathed fire; the flamesilk was just a weirder, slower-moving version of that, basically.

  Which probably means they can do something else, but they’re hiding it, she thought huffily. Even the RainWings aren’t as harmless and mellow as these twits. The SilkWings probably have secret venom, too, and they’re just waiting for a chance to spring it on us!

  Snowfall rubbed her own wrists under the gift of stealth. In her dream last night, she’d been wearing a wrist cuff like all the SilkWings. It was horribly heavy, she remembered now. She — dream her — had felt as though it might drag her down into the ocean. There was an inscription on it that allowed her in and out of Yellowjacket Hive.

  Yellowjacket Hive. What a melodramatic name my dream brain came up with.

  Or probably I heard someone say it yesterday and just don’t remember it.

  She glanced around, but the sapphire-spotted dragon (Atala?) was still asleep. Snowfall felt an irrational desire to run over and shake her, to yell “Luna’s burning off the wrist cuffs! You can finally be free of it! Hurry, get it off!”

  Wait, there had been letters carved into her palm, too. Letters that signified her parents and her own name … why would I KNOW that?

  Her scales prickled uncomfortably.

  “Hey,” she said to the same SilkWing she’d interrogated before. He was now standing in line to get his cuff burned off, and he jumped when Snowfall accosted him again. “Show me your right talon.”

  “Um,” he said, but he held it out agreeably. Sure enough, three letters were carved into his palm, a triangle of old, deliberate scars.

  “What do these mean?” Snowfall asked.

  “The big one is an L for my name,” he said. “Which is Lappet, if that’s not too much information. Then the two little ones are my parents’ initials.”

  “Why would your parents do this to you?” Snowfall frowned — the cuts must have been deep and fairly painful to leave permanent marks like these.

  “They didn’t,” he said. “The HiveWings did this.” Something flashed in his eyes, the first strong emotion she’d seen from him. “They do this to all the SilkWing dragonets. It’s one of the ways they keep track of us.”

  “So they can control us. YOU, I mean, obviously you,” Snowfall corrected herself quickly. “The HiveWings and Queen Wasp. They control your whole tribe.”

  He pulled back his talon and clenched it into a fist. “They did,” he said. “But we were going to fight them. We’ve been planning to change things, we just — didn’t know how.”

  “That’s what the Chrysalis is,” Snowfall realized. “Your resistance group.”

  Lappet gave her a very confused, slightly suspicious look. “How do you know about the Chrysalis?”

  That is a REALLY EXCELLENT QUESTION, Lappet. “I must have heard someone talking about it yesterday,” she said.

  Or.

  Or her dream was actually real, after all. And she’d actually been inside one of Atala’s memories.

  She didn’t want to ask, but she kind of had to. “Do you know that dragon?” she asked, pointing at the SilkWing with blue spots. “What’s her name?”

  “Atala,” he said cautiously.

  ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH NO. It could still be a coincidence! Maybe I heard someone say it! Maybe my subconscious gathered a whole heck ton of information without my realizing it.

  Or theory two: giant magical conspiracy. Equally possible!

  “What else can you do?” she demanded. “Do SilkWings have other powers? Like sharing dreams or possessing other dragons or anything like that?”

  “N-no,” Lappet said, edging a step away from her. “Flamesilk is the only ‘power’ SilkWings have, if you’d call it that.”

  “Shooting fire from your wrists? Yeah, that counts as a power, butterfly — dragon,” she amended before she could say “butterfly-brain.” Would that even be an insult to a SilkWing? “What about the LeafWings? Do they have any dream powers?”

  “Not that I know of,” he said. “Why? Did, uh … did something happen?”

  “NO!” she barked. “Three moons! Stop BEING SO NOSY, LAPPET.” She turned in a flurry of sand and stomped down the beach toward the water.

  If he was telling the truth, and she’d had a real inside-another-dragon’s-head dream, and it really really wasn’t sent by one of the weird new tribes, then this was someone else’s fault.

  Or rather, something else’s fault.

  Theory three: The most annoying one, because of the FACE Lynx will give me if it’s true.

  If something else had sent her that dream, Snowfall had an awful suspicion that she knew exactly which smug little accessory was to blame.

  “Everything is fine,” Snowfall muttered to herself. She glowered at the silvery fish flickering around her talons. The ocean was unpleasantly warmer here than it was up around the Ice Kingdom. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’m definitely not wearing a piece of haunted jewelry. It’ll slide off easily any moment and then I’ll feel silly.”

  The gift of vision …

  “NO,” she barked at the ring. “It’s not possible! How could an ICEWING object give me WEIRD DREAMS about WEIRD FARAWAY DRAGONS THAT WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO EXIST?”

  The last thing she needed was mystical visions of total strangers. How was that supposed to help her be a strong, powerful, excellent queen? Who was the idiot animus that would come up with something like this?

  If she had to have a magic “vision,” couldn’t it be of someone useful? Like, say, a certain scheming sister who might be plotting to take her throne?

  And even if it was the source of the dream, that didn’t explain why it wouldn’t come off now.

  She soaked the ring until her claws started to feel numb, and then she yanked on it as hard as she could.

  Ow. It wasn’t even budging.

  “Great Ice Spirits,” she hissed at the opal. “What is wrong with you?” She tried wedging a claw underneath the band, but it was on too tight. She tried wiggling it furiously, but it wouldn’t even spin around her claw. She tried smashing the opal into a rock sticking out of the water, but that just made her talons hurt, and the opal twinkled saucily at her, completely intact.

  “What ARE you doing?” said Lynx’s voice behind her.

  “Nothing!” Snowfall called over her shoulder. She stuck the ring back in the water and turned around with her most serenely regal face on.

  Lynx did a thing with her eyebrows that meant something like, “I know you’re lying but I can’t say you are because you’re the queen but maybe you should just admit it because my eyebrows are so onto you.”

  “Well, you were doing that nothing very vigorously,” Lynx said. “So I wondered. You know. A whole lot of vigorous nothing before breakfast.”

  “Maybe I have had breakfast,” Snowfall observed. “You wouldn’t know, since you’ve been asleep half the morning.”

  “I do know that you have not,” Lynx said, “because I asked your guards and they said you’ve been out here for ages, doing battle with either your own claws or an invisible shark.”

  Snowfall bristled and shot a dark look at her guards, who were lined up on the beach with concerned
expressions. “Is that what they said?”

  “No,” Lynx admitted. “They just said you haven’t had breakfast yet. I interpreted the rest by watching you for a few minutes.”

  “I am having a swim,” Snowfall said, lifting her chin. “There is nothing unusual about that.”

  “I’ve seen you swim!” Lynx said. “You don’t usually look quite so much like an agitated squid.”

  “I’m just going to start making a mental list,” Snowfall informed her. “So that when we get home, I can execute you for all your treason at once.”

  “Once would probably be enough,” Lynx said, laughing. She flicked a spray of water at Snowfall with her tail. “Come on, Snowfall. Even queens need someone to talk to. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing is wrong!” Snowfall protested. “I’m just having a small problem with this ring I can’t get off, but it’s not important. I mean, not compared to ‘what are we going to do with all these homeless dragons and the bad things they’re running away from,’ like, seriously.”

  Lynx tilted her head and studied Snowfall for a moment as though she were a palm tree that had suddenly sprouted in the middle of the Ice Palace. “They’ll be all right now that they’re here,” she said finally. “Let me see that ring.”

  Snowfall grudgingly held out her talons, and Lynx gripped the ring between her claws. She pulled and wiggled it and tried sliding her claws under it and yanked some more, until Snowfall finally got fed up and snatched her arm back.

  “Well, YOU’RE no use,” Snowfall hissed. “No surprise there.” She dunked her claws in the water again.

  But now Lynx looked worried, which meant she was about to get very annoying. “It’s really not moving at all,” she said. “Snowfall … was that ring from the Forbidden Treasury? Is it animus-touched?”

  Snowfall frowned and shook a piece of seaweed off her tail. “Yes. But it doesn’t work.”

  “Are you sure?” Lynx asked. “What is it supposed to do?”

  “It’s … supposed to make your eyesight sharper,” Snowfall said. “But it didn’t make any difference at all, which is why I want it off.”

  “Were there any notes?” Lynx pressed. “About how to use it or what it did for other queens or who made it?”

  “No!” Snowfall said. “Nobody wrote an encyclopedia about it! It’s not that complicated! Put on the ring, get better vision!”

  “But that isn’t what happened,” Lynx said. “Wait, were there any notes?” Her expression shifted to the most absolutely irritating wide-eyed alarm. “Did you just put it on without knowing anything about it?”

  “Why not?” Snowfall snapped. “Better vision would be helpful!”

  “But what if there’s a catch?” Lynx cried. “What if there’s a secret downside to the spell? What if the animus dragon who made it added a curse to the magic?”

  Or what if it does something entirely different than I thought it did? Snowfall shoved that thought away.

  “Then we wouldn’t have kept it!” she snarled at Lynx. “It wouldn’t still BE in our treasury if it was evil! Some cursed queen before us would have destroyed it!”

  “Unless it was enchanted so it could never be destroyed!” Lynx yelped, sounding uncomfortably like Snowfall’s inner monologue. “Maybe it magically shows up in the Forbidden Treasury once every hundred years to ensnare some new hapless queen!”

  “I’m not HAPLESS!” Snowfall shouted. “Who’s being paranoid now? It was a gift for IceWing queens! So it’s supposed to make us stronger and safer! Like the wall and the Ice Cliff!”

  “Personally, I don’t think it makes our tribe stronger for us all to be constantly pitted against each other,” Lynx cried. “And I don’t think cutting us off from the other tribes makes us safer either!”

  “Wow,” Snowfall said with a hiss. “Questioning the most fundamental gifts that hold our tribe together? You really don’t belong in the First Circle! What kind of IceWing are you?”

  “The kind who actually thinks for herself sometimes,” Lynx said, flinging up her wings and accidentally splashing a small fish into Snowfall’s face. “The kind who wants you to be a better queen than the ones we’ve had before, because I know you and I know you can be. But feel free to keep living your life by the rules of that oppressive wall, if that’s all you want, and feel free to move me down to the bottom of the list when we get home.” She took a step toward the beach, then turned back for one more shot. “If that mysterious magic ring even lets you get home. After everything animus magic has done to us, I can’t believe you’d throw yourself into its talons again!”

  She splashed away furiously. Snowfall threw herself under the water and screamed out her rage in a flurry of bubbles.

  This was why she didn’t tell anyone her problems! Because they would definitely make them worse!

  Lynx was not right. It was just a stupid broken ring.

  Snowfall had definitely not misinterpreted what a gift of vision might mean and this had NOTHING TO DO WITH HER DREAM LAST NIGHT. NO. She WOULD NOT STAND FOR IT.

  When she surfaced again, Lynx was with the strangers by the fire, where some of the littlest dragonets were building a kind of treelike termite mound out of the sand. Snowfall squinted at them as two young LeafWings pounced on the shape and stomped it flat.

  The opal ring winked gold-blue-lavender in the morning light.

  I’m not afraid of you, Snowfall thought fiercely. I’m getting rid of you today, even if I have to cut off my own claw to do it.

  She would get this ring off and throw it into the ocean, and then she would make sure the strange dragons went to Sanctuary, and then she would go home and everything would go back to the normal, everyday anxiety festival her life was supposed to be.

  Snowfall splashed her way back onto the beach, waving regally at her guards. Nothing to see here. No queens losing their royal minds. Certainly not.

  She waited until she was sure Lynx wasn’t watching her, and then she tried smothering her claws in palm oil from one of the jars outside Jerboa’s hut. That didn’t work either; it only left Snowfall’s talons feeling greasy.

  “Oh, please,” Jerboa said acidly from the doorway. “Help yourself. My stuff is everybody’s stuff, evidently.”

  “This is your fault,” Snowfall said, brandishing the now extremely shiny ring.

  “That you’re wearing too much hideous jewelry?” Jerboa said. “Makes sense. I do have that effect on dragons.”

  “I wouldn’t need this if your stupid magic worked,” Snowfall said with a flick of her wings. “Have you checked today? Is it working now?”

  The frown lines in Jerboa’s face deepened. “No. It’s not working for anyone.” She glanced back into the hut; Snowfall wasn’t sure why.

  “Really definitely?” Snowfall asked. She held out her front talons. “Let’s test it. Tell this ring to slide off my claw.”

  Jerboa sighed and cast another glance around, but no other dragons were close enough to pay attention to them. The SandWing reached out and tapped the ring twice. “Come off the queen’s claw this instant,” she said.

  The ring didn’t move. Snowfall tried pulling on it again, but it was just as stuck as before. She growled softly.

  “Is it animus-touched?” Jerboa asked, finally sounding curious.

  “I thought so,” Snowfall said. “But it seems to be flipping broken.”

  “Animus-touched by who?” Jerboa frowned again. “When?”

  “Like thousands of years ago,” Snowfall said with a sigh. “By the worst IceWing animus in history, I’m guessing! Some kind of worm-brained sand-snorter! WHY would ANYONE enchant a ring to STAY ON SOMEONE’S CLAW? What kind of stupid waste of magic is that?”

  Jerboa scratched her jaw thoughtfully, but her tense expression had relaxed. “Maybe it’s enchanted to frustrate easily annoyed queens into learning some patience.”

  “BOO HISS!” Snowfall shouted. Several of the SilkWings jumped and turned to see what the noise was. She lowered her voice
again. “I don’t need an ancient accessory to teach me anything! I’m very patient! I have been queen for months without stabbing anybody in the face with an icicle, despite lots of dragons highly deserving it.”

  “Well,” Jerboa said, “if my magic comes back, I’ll make removing your ring my top priority, how about that?”

  “No need,” Snowfall said. “I have another plan.” She narrowed her eyes at Jerboa and added in a whisper, “But if it does come back, tell me right away!”

  Jerboa’s expression was quite far from reassuring, but she ducked into her hut without saying anything else. Snowfall caught a glimpse of the NightWing inside, still fast asleep. She moved away as quickly as she could — the last thing she needed was that dragon poking around inside her head! It was bad enough to have Lynx making worried eyes at her all the time; she didn’t need any NightWings thinking she was weak (or cursed by weird jewelry).

  Over by the fire, Luna was finally alone, more or less, surrounded by a mound of discarded wrist cuffs. Most of the other SilkWings had gone off to gather coconuts or lie quietly on the warm sand, and Lynx was up in the sky, flying with one of the LeafWings.

  Snowfall sidled up to Luna. The SilkWing dropped the cuff she’d been holding and eyed Snowfall with alarm.

  “Hey,” Snowfall said gruffly. “That fire thread thing. Can you try that on my ring? It’s stuck and it’s annoying me.”

  “You’re the queen of the IceWings, right?” Luna said, lifting her chin. “The one who kicked my tribe out of your kingdom yesterday?”

  “Lucky for you,” Snowfall pointed out. “Or they wouldn’t be here, having this touching reunion with you.”

  Luna rolled her eyes and held out her claws. “Show me.”

  Snowfall gingerly offered the talon with the ring on it. Luna picked up a filament of fire from the sand beside her and bent over their twined claws.

  The burning filament brushed the silver curve of the ring once, twice, three times, without even leaving a trace on the metal. Luna frowned and tried again. The heat was enormously uncomfortable that close to Snowfall’s scales, and she didn’t like the feel of this SilkWing gripping her talons either. But she held still, glaring into the opal’s shimmering depths, until Luna finally said, “That’s so weird. Sorry, Your Majesty. It’s not working.”