The Lost Heir (7 page)

Overwhelmed, Tsunami spread her wings to float on the water and gazed around.

They were inside the island, surrounded by towering cliffs on all sides. Far above them, sunlight filtered through a thick green canopy — the vines and treetops she’d seen from the sky, woven so thickly it looked like a jungle from above. Like an emerald umbrella over the island, the canopy protected the Summer Palace from view and gave the light a sea-green quality that made Tsunami feel like she was still underwater.

Waterfalls cascaded down from several holes in the cliffs, like slender dragon tails of silver, bursting into spray as they hit the lake. The only exit Tsunami could see was the tunnel behind her.

Four pillars of blue-tinted white stone spiraled out of the water, winding toward one another until they formed a towering pavilion in the middle of the lake. The pavilion had twelve circular levels, each one smaller than the one below. There were few walls, most of them very low, and the whole structure was latticed with curving shapes and holes and little wading pools. It didn’t look like it had been built; it looked as if it had grown that way, although Tsunami was pretty sure that was impossible.

Dragons were clustered along the edges of the pavilion, on ledges of the cliffs, and all across the water. She’d never seen so many faces like her own, dark blues and pale greens and sharp see-in-the-dark eyes staring.

The only sound was the splashing of the waterfalls, the soft hush of dragons breathing, and the quiet lapping of waves on the beaches around the lake.

After a moment, Starflight spotted the nearest stretch of sand and set off for it in a frantic paddle that sounded horribly loud in the silence. Sunny and Clay and Glory followed him.

Tsunami stayed where she was, ignoring the tiredness that was flooding her scales. She wanted to make a good impression on the dragons of her kingdom. Many of them were floating on the water, like she was, but many more were perched in cave openings all along the cliff or on rocks that jutted out of the water, while others lined the shallow beaches. Tsunami wondered what they’d all been doing before she appeared to capture their attention.

She spotted Shark hunched on one of the spirals of the closest pillar. She rather thought he should have given some sort of welcome speech, but he only stared at her with his pale, unblinking little eyes.

In the story, the royal parents had swept forward with a parade and a whole orchestra to welcome back their missing princess. But her parents weren’t here yet, and now that she thought about it, dolphins playing harps would probably be a bit silly looking.

Well, she was a future queen, and she wasn’t going to be intimidated by crowds of staring dragons. She shook her head and lifted her neck out of the water.

“Hello, fellow SeaWings,” she called, and then paused as her voice echoed off the rocks, much louder than she’d expected. “I’m Tsunami, and, um — I’m very happy to be home at last, and — and I look forward to meeting each of you.”

Three moons, was that the most awful speech in the history of Pyrrhia? What were all these still, silent faces thinking? Could the dragons see Tsunami’s natural royalty? Were they excited that she’d be their queen one day?

She remembered her royal stripe patterns and lifted her wings out of the water so everyone could see them. To be sure they were visible, she lit them up, and then, with a sinking feeling, remembered what she’d accidentally said to Riptide. She really, really hoped she hadn’t just told her entire kingdom that they had delicious fish breath or something.

A murmur ran around the gathered dragons, but she couldn’t tell if it was good murmuring or bad murmuring. She turned to Riptide, who was watching Shark with a grim expression.

“I think you should take me somewhere I can wait for my mother,” Tsunami suggested in a low voice — or she thought it was low, but the echoes still skipped back to her across the water. And now there was more murmuring. Tsunami wished she had NightWing powers so she could hear the dragons’ thoughts.

“Up there,” said Riptide, nodding to the top of the pavilion. He glanced at Shark again. “You should bring your friends.”

The other dragonets were sprawled on the white pebbles of the beach, in front of a tall cave opening lined with sand. They had their wings spread out and were gasping in a rather undignified way. All except for Glory, who was sitting neatly by the cave, peering in. Her silver scales were now mottled with azure blue. Any SeaWings who weren’t staring at Tsunami were staring at her.

Tsunami thwacked the water with her tail to get their attention. When Clay finally looked over, she pointed to the pavilion. He nodded, and she lifted into the air. Her wings felt heavy out of the water, and it took a few beats to get her balance. She wished the SeaWings would go back to whatever they were supposed to be doing.

Riptide flew up beside her. He looked uncomfortable with all the scrutiny as well.

“Tell me about the Summer Palace,” Tsunami said, trying to distract herself.

He flicked his tail at the cliffs. “Guest rooms are in the caves. Queen Blister usually stays in the one closest to the tunnel. We brought in extra sand to line the floor for her, and it’s the only cave where fire is allowed.” His snout turned toward the pavilion as they flew higher. “She meets with Queen Coral on the second level from the top, which is only for visiting royalty. Each level has a different purpose — for instance, there’s a floor for dragonet school visits, one for celebration spectacles, and one for war planning. When they are here instead of the Deep Palace, the Council meets on this level, halfway up.”

He paused, beating his wings, so Tsunami could look across the middle level. Twelve dragon-sized pools were arranged in a circle with small channels running from one to the next and crisscrossing the center. Glittering emeralds the size of fish eggs, which were embedded in the stone, spelled out words by each pool. Tsunami saw one marked
TREASURY
, one labeled
DEFENSE
, and another that said
SECRETS & SPIES
. Before she could read any further, Riptide turned to fly higher.

“Council?” Tsunami said, catching up to him.

“They prefer the Deep Palace, as does the queen,” Riptide said. “Only Shark and Lagoon are here at the moment.”

Tsunami had no idea what he was talking about, but she didn’t want to reveal how ignorant she was of SeaWing politics. She wondered if there was anything about a council in Starflight’s favorite scrolls.

“So which level is for missing princesses?” she joked.

“I think the top pavilion would be best,” Riptide said. “That’s for new visitors, and we hardly ever have any of those. Queen Blister was probably the last — oh, no, it was that NightWing.” He landed gracefully on the uppermost ledge of the pavilion, his claws catching on polished ridges in the bluish-white stone.

“What NightWing?” Tsunami asked, landing beside him. This level was bigger than she’d expected. A spiraling starburst of webbed talon-print shapes was carved into the floor and filled with glittering water, lined all along the bottom with tiny pearls. Tsunami realized the pattern was the same as the one on her wings.

“I don’t know,” Riptide answered her. “He only spoke with Her Majesty and Queen Blister, and all I heard was that he wanted to fly out through the canopy instead of the tunnel — but of course they wouldn’t let him do that. He looked big and bad-tempered.”

“Sounds like Morrowseer,” Tsunami muttered, although she didn’t exactly have a lot of other NightWings to compare him to. But he seemed more meddlesome than the rest of them. While most of the tribe hid in their secret location, being all mysterious and unhelpfully powerful, Morrowseer kept turning up . . . delivering the dragonet prophecy, inspecting the dragonets, trying to get Glory killed, saving Starflight (but no one else) from the SkyWings, then giving him back once everyone had escaped. Tsunami could easily imagine him poking around here, although she couldn’t guess why.

Riptide glanced down at the dragons below, including Shark, who hadn’t moved from his spot on the pillar. “I can’t believe you spoke to Shark like that,” he whispered. “I’ve never seen
anyone
talk back to him, apart from the queen and Queen Blister.”

“He deserved it,” Tsunami said, settling her wings. “Arrogant blowfish-head. When I’m queen, I’ll make him go sit in a lagoon and grow seaweed.”

Riptide coughed hard to cover a laugh. “Don’t
talk
like that!” he whispered. “Don’t you know the difference between brave and reckless? Shark will eat you and your friends for lunch if he thinks you’re a threat to him.”

“Pfft,” Tsunami said. “He can try.” She shoved away the creepy memory of Shark’s unblinking, malicious eyes.

“By the moons, you make me ner vous,” Riptide said.

One end of the top floor was raised and carved into a magnificent dragon throne, studded with emeralds and sapphires and shot through with gold lines in the shape of waves. Beside and below the throne was another, smaller throne carved to match, with the same patterns made of tinier gemstones.

Tsunami tilted her head at the second throne. It looked too small to be for a king. So was this for her? Had Queen Coral prepared a throne for her missing daughter, waiting all these years for her to come fill it?

She took a step toward it, her heart pounding with excitement. A throne of her own! Already!

The arrival of her friends stopped her, as the four dragonets crashed down around the ledge. Sunny landed lightly, avoiding the channels of water, but Clay somehow stumbled as his claws hit the stone and nearly somersaulted right off the other side. Glory darted in his way and pushed him back, then made another loop around and landed close to the throne. Her green eyes studied it closely; she looked almost ready to climb onto it herself.

Starflight arrived last, catching on to the side and pitching forward as if his wings had barely been strong enough to carry him. He lay there like a woeful black puddle for a moment, taking deep breaths. Sunny hopped over a watery footprint to nudge his wing gently.

Tsunami managed not to roll her eyes, but really. Couldn’t everyone at least
try
to act a
little
more impressive?

“This is a really big thing!” Clay said to her and Riptide. His tail accidentally splashed Glory, but she was too busy looking at the throne to snap at him. “I mean, this thing we’re standing on. What do you call it? It’s really tall — taller than our prisons in the Sky Kingdom, I think.” He peered over the edge, missing Riptide’s sharp look. Tsunami realized they hadn’t told him about being captured by Queen Scarlet and the SkyWings.

“I like it,” Clay went on, sitting down and splashing Glory again. “Of course, it’s much nicer to be this high when your wings are free. But at least the SkyWings gave us a pig sometimes. Do you have pigs? Octopi would be all right instead if you don’t. Or squid. Or manatees. I could go for a manatee right now. Or a whale. I’m not fussy, is what I’m saying. Say, how did you make this big thing? Did it take forever to build?”

Riptide blinked for a moment, following Clay’s train of thought. “The pavilion? An animus SeaWing designed it, many generations ago, and magicked the stone to grow this way,” Riptide said. “Even so, it took nearly ten years to reach this form.”

“Wow,” said Clay, and Tsunami couldn’t help being impressed, too. She hadn’t realized animus dragons had that kind of power. In their lessons, Webs had told them animus dragons could enchant chess pieces to play themselves. Sometimes they left curses on their jewels to poison anyone who tried to steal them. But making a whole pavilion grow from stone — that seemed like strong magic, more powerful than anything the NightWings could do.

Starflight was clearly thinking the same thing, judging from his disgruntled snout. Tsunami hurriedly interrupted before he could begin a lecture.

“This top level is where Queen Coral meets new visitors, like us,” she said importantly to her friends. “So when she arrives, everyone
please
act like dragonets of destiny instead of half-drowned seagulls, for goodness’ sake.”

Sunny looked wounded, and Starflight sniffed loudly while Glory turned up her snout like she wasn’t taking any orders from Tsunami. Clay poked his nose over the edge and blinked at the lower pavilion tiers.

“Which level is the feasting on?” he asked. “You do have feasting, right?” His wide brown eyes turned to Riptide. “No reason. Just wondering.”

“Sure, sometimes we have feasts,” Riptide said. “Especially when Queen Blister is —”

A commotion from below interrupted him. Tsunami sprang to the edge and gazed down at the lake.

A huge blue SeaWing, exactly the color of Tsunami’s scales, burst out of the tunnel. Vines of pearls were woven around her horns and neck and wings, and a twisted white horn with a wicked-looking point was attached to the end of her tail. She had odd black stains on her claws, but she was the most beautiful sight Tsunami had ever seen.

All over the palace, dragons were folding down into low bows.

This had to be her mother — queen of the SeaWings. Tsunami reached to grab Riptide’s forearm, feeling dizzy with joy.