The Lost Heir (6 page)

She spotted a formation of blue and green dragons flying toward them — fifteen or more, with huge wings and bared teeth. She could hear them hissing from a distance.

“Uh-oh,” Riptide muttered.

“Clay, stop and hover,” Tsunami instructed. He paused in the air, with Glory close beside him.

“What’s happening?” Sunny asked, lifting her head from Starflight’s shoulder as they caught up. Starflight, for once, didn’t say anything. His jaw was set, and it looked like he was using all his energy to stay aloft with Sunny.

“The advance guard,” Riptide said. He swung in a slow circle around the group and stopped in front again, facing the incoming dragons. “They make sure no one even gets close to the Summer Palace.”

A few moments later, they were surrounded. The flapping wingbeats filled their ears and pushed the air currents around.

“Rrrriptide,” growled the dragon in the lead. His scales were a green so dull it was almost gray, like stone where moss had been scraped away. He had tiny bone-pale eyes that never seemed to blink under a knobbly protruding forehead, and his horns twisted strangely toward each other. Tsunami noticed that, unlike Riptide, the new dragon had no battle scars. Which either meant he stayed away from the fighting — or he was a very skilled fighter.

“What are you dragging home now?” he snarled.

Riptide looked him straight in the eyes. “I’ve found the missing princess.”

That’s not how
I
would have put it,
Tsunami thought. I
was the one doing all the finding out there.

A ripple of shock went through the other SeaWings. Tsunami’s scales felt like insects were crawling under them as the guards all stared at her. She lifted her snout and tried to look regal and imposing.

“Oh, really?” said the leader. “You, Riptide? Of all dragons? What an unusual coincidence.” His unsettling eyes scanned Tsunami from wing tips to claws, as if she were a dead eel someone had left half-eaten on the beach. Tsunami wanted to shred the skeptical, arrogant look right off his face.

“And who are you?” Tsunami demanded.

Riptide winced. “This is Shark,” he said. “Commander of palace defense and brother to the queen.”

“Oh,
really
,” Tsunami said, deliberately making her tone even more insolent and challenging than Shark’s. She was not about to start her life with the SeaWings by kowtowing to every soldier dragon who came along. Even if he was her uncle.

Shark narrowed his eyes until they nearly disappeared into his scales. “What makes you believe this snip of a dragon comes from the stolen royal egg?” he asked Riptide.

“Why, do you lose a lot of eggs?” Tsunami jumped in. “Maybe whoever’s in charge of defense isn’t doing such a good job, then. Oh, wait, that’s you, isn’t it?”

“Her story makes sense,” Riptide said desperately. “She knew about — about Webs. He raised her. And look at the glow patterns under her wings.”

All of the SeaWings craned their necks to stare at Tsunami’s wings. She snapped at a couple who got too close, then peered around to see what they were seeing.

Under her wings, when she lit them up, the luminescent stripes formed spirals around the outer edges. Starbursts shaped like webbed dragon footprints branched away from the lines in the middle. Was that weird? She glanced at the other SeaWings. Most of them had smaller starbursts and no spirals. Only Shark’s patterns matched her own.

Because we’re both royal.
She lifted her head and met his gaze triumphantly.
But one day
I
shall be queen, and you will always be nothing but a soldier.

Shark let out a long hissing breath. “Very well,” he said. “Kill the other four and bring her.”

“Don’t you touch them!” Tsunami yelled. She whirled and smacked a SeaWing out of the sky as he reached for Clay. Starflight had already ducked below Clay’s massive wings. Glory drew her neck back and bared her fangs.

“I am the queen’s daughter, and I order you to leave these dragonets alone,” Tsunami shouted.

The guards looked from her to Shark uncertainly. His eyes were pale reflecting pools, hiding his thoughts. He slowly raised one talon and made a strange circling motion with it — a sign in the SeaWing language, Tsunami guessed. Whatever it was, it worked. To Tsunami’s relief, the guards backed away.

But when she glanced at Riptide, she noticed that he still looked tense and unhappy.
Maybe he’s just afraid of Shark,
she thought.

“Very good,” she said, trying to sound like she was in command. “Now take us to my mother.”

“The queen is conducting business at the Deep Palace,” Shark said flatly. “We will take you to the Summer Palace, where you may wait for her.” He made another talon signal, and two of the guards broke away from the group, winging off across the water.
Taking the message to my mother,
Tsunami thought, her wings expanding with joy. They were so close to every thing she’d always imagined.
I’m going to meet my parents today.

Islands flashed by below them as they flew on, now with a tight guard of SeaWings. Some of the islands were small patches of sand, barely big enough for one dragon to land on, and others were towering, jagged rocks shooting out of the water. Ahead, Tsunami saw one that looked like a huge dragon skeleton, with holes and gaps all through the pale stone.

The stone skeleton’s nose pointed toward another island, this one ringed with forbidding-looking rocks and presenting only a high, sheer cliff face on all sides. The top was a rioting jungle. Thick green vines and trees pressed so close together that there was not a single spot clear enough to land on.

Tsunami was startled when Shark suddenly swerved and dove toward the base of the cliff. He splashed down between two spiraling rocks, sharp and evenly matched like dragon horns, and vanished into the azure water.

She blinked. Where had he gone? The water was so clear here that she could see fat black turtles strolling across the sand at the bottom of the sea.

But then, one by one, half the guards around them dove for the same spot, and each of them disappeared the same way — gone before the bubbles of their splash had cleared.

“Clay, stop,” she said, brushing his wing. “Riptide?”

“It’s the entrance to the Summer Palace,” Riptide said. “There’s no other way in. You’ll all have to swim.”

Sunny let out a small, unhappy noise. “How far?” she asked Riptide.

“You only have to stay underwater for short swims,” he answered. “It has been redesigned so Queen Blister in particular can visit.”

“And she hates water,” Sunny said hopefully, “since she’s a SandWing, too.”

“Is she, uh — is she here now?” Starflight asked.

Riptide shook his head. “She is not fond of swimming, and even after all the changes we’ve made, she rarely visits.”

Tsunami was secretly a bit relieved to hear that. After meeting Burn, she wasn’t looking forward to encountering the other two rival SandWing sisters. What if they were all equally dangerous and crazy and controlling?

But eventually the dragonets would have to choose one of the three to win the war. To be fair, Tsunami thought they probably needed to meet both Blister and Blaze.

Then again, if Tsunami’s mother liked Blister — enough to alter her palace to accommodate her — surely that was a sign in Blister’s favor, wasn’t it? Maybe they didn’t have to meet Blaze. Maybe supporting the SeaWings and Blister would be the obvious right thing to do.

“Stay close behind me,” Riptide said. “I’ll light up my stripes so you can follow, and I’ll flash them to signal you to surface at the breathing spots.”

“Um,” Clay said. “So . . . about this blindfold, uh . . . any chance —”

“Once we’re in the tunnel,” Riptide answered. He turned and dove for the dragon-horn rocks.

Tsunami flipped her tail into Clay’s front talons and dove after Riptide, towing Clay behind her. Her scales tingled with excitement.

“Deep breath, Clay,” she called.

She was not far behind Riptide when he dove into the water, but even so, she nearly lost him in the fizz of bubbles that swarmed up in her face as she splashed down. She blinked frantically, searching for a hole or a tunnel entrance.

Long, sun-colored tendrils of kelp grew up from the sandy floor, glowing an orange gold in the light filtering down from above. They were clustered around the base of the cliff, waving like a forest of octopus arms as tall as the five dragonets laid end to end.

The hole in the cliff must be hidden by the tendrils, but where?

Then Tsunami saw Riptide’s glowing tail knocking the golden kelp curtain aside, and she plunged after him. It was hard to swim as fast as she wanted to with Clay clinging to her tail. She could feel him trying to beat his wings and kick helpfully, but he kept accidentally whacking into under water boulders and slowing her down.

She poked her head into the forest and felt the tendrils of kelp slide and slither around her snout. Up close she could see little clear globules growing on them. These were surprisingly sticky, while the rest of the tendril was slippery smooth. It felt like gigantic golden inchworms were swarming around her.

She had to swim through a thick patch, following the glimmer of Riptide’s lit-up tail, before reaching the cliff wall. Suddenly the tendrils slithered away and popped her out into a dark underwater tunnel.

Not entirely dark — Riptide was directly in front of her, his luminescent stripes all glowing. He reached around her, guided Clay into the tunnel, and unwrapped the seaweed blindfold. Clay blinked and rubbed his talons against his eyes, then immediately turned back toward the faint sunlight, searching for the others.

Glory came through next, her snout wrinkling as she pushed tendrils off her wings. Tsunami noticed that her scales had ripples of the orange-gold color crisscrossing the silver that had been there before. She wondered if Glory had done that deliberately or if her scales automatically tried to match their environment when she was stressed.

After a long pause, Starflight burst through after her. His face was puffed up like he was about to explode and, on his back, Sunny was shivering violently.

Riptide flashed the lights in his tail and shot upward, aiming for a hole in the tunnel roof not far inside the entrance. Tsunami was expecting more of a swim and was surprised when her head almost immediately popped out into air.

It wasn’t much air — a tiny cavern, barely lit by a faraway gleam of sunlight up a long narrow chimney. The dragons’ bodies were still in the watery tunnel below. There was only enough room in the cavern for their heads, all gathered closely in the pool. Tsunami could see right away that there was nowhere to climb out. This was a place to stop and breathe, nothing more.

Sunny and Starflight both gasped for air like they hadn’t breathed in months. Clay fumbled in the dark to pat Sunny’s head and pulled her blindfold off as well.

“Good thing this breathing hole is here,” Clay remarked to Riptide. “So close to the entrance, I mean.”

Riptide inclined his head in a sort of nod. “Queen Blister insisted on it.”

Tsunami felt the whoosh of several SeaWing guards swimming past below them. She knew there would be a few of them bringing up the rear, making sure none of the dragonets ran off to spread the news of the Summer Palace’s secret location.

She couldn’t keep her wings still. They thrummed like trapped dragonflies, wanting to spring loose. She was
so close
. This was her palace! Her dragons were only a few wingbeats away! After six years of imagining what this would be like, she didn’t think she could stand another minute of waiting.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” she said, splashing the others enthusiastically with her tail.

“Good grief,” Glory said with a shake. “It’s like you’ve been possessed by Sunny or something.”

“Come
on
, we’re almost there.” Tsunami flashed her stripes happily, and the other dragonets covered their eyes.

“I can swim from here,” Sunny said to Starflight. “Or I’ll hold on to Clay if you all go too fast.”

Starflight looked disappointed and relieved at the same time.

Riptide sank below the surface, and Tsunami ducked after him, too excited to wait for the others.

Now it was easy to follow Riptide’s glowing scales. The tunnel twisted up and down and around corners, with frequent stops like the first for breathing. Too frequent, if you asked Tsunami; each one made her want to bang her head into the cliff walls. She lost count after the fourth stop, but there had to be at least ten. How long was this tunnel?

Then suddenly, finally, there was light ahead — real light, not glowing scales. A moment later they swam out of the tunnel into an open lake, lifted their heads above the water, and breathed in deeply. Green-tinted sunlight dazzled their eyes at first, but as her vision cleared, Tsunami saw dragons.

Over a hundred blue and green dragons surrounded them, all of them staring expectantly at Tsunami.

Her tribe. Her dragons. Her future subjects.

They had reached the Summer Palace of the SeaWings, in the heart of the Kingdom of the Sea.