Chapter 1

Duskwings

"Run!" I hear the screams as dragons shove roughly past me, racing to get to the exit. I topple onto the ground, feeling it rumble beneath my talons. "Run! The volcano's erupting!"

The ground feels dangerously thin, and my wing dips into a stream of bright red-orange lava. My wing shrivels in the blistering heat, and I scream out in agony.

Dragons are standing at the entrance to the tunnel, making us swear allegiance to a new queen- not just any queen, but a RainWing! Some NightWings try to argue. You fools, I think. You must do anything you can to get out of here! I feel a rush of hatred surge through me. They are holding us up; if I die here, it will be their fault.

I twist around, looking for my mother, but she's nowhere to be found. She probably passed through the tunnel, I think, not caring about what happened to her own daughter, of course. That sounded just like something Mother would do; she's always looking out to save her own scales.

The ground shakes more forcefully now, and just when I think I'm going to be left behind, Fearless snatches me up off of the ground and tugs me towards the tunnel. She pulls me close and whacks away those in front of her with her tail. As she drags me past the tunnel, she shouts, "Queen Glory!"

"Queen Glory!" I say weakly.

"Let's go, Duskwings," says Fearless, grasping my talon tightly in hers. She's pretty much just dragging me along, but I'm frozen with the pain of my wing.

"You saved me," I whisper hoarsely. When even my mother didn't come back for me.

"It was nothing," Fearless says. "Come on, come on, we gotta get out of here."

And behind me, it happens. I feel it before I hear it. The ground rattles with the force of a hundred dragons, almost knocking me off my feet. The smoke stifles me, filling up my snout and my throat until I choke. And the sound is deafening. The boom, rattle, snap.

The shaking in the ground is so strong, neither of us can stand up.

I know what's going to happen before it does. There's enough time for me to feel a stab of fear before my head cracks into the ground.

Black.

When I wake up, I know that I'm somewhere different. I know it by the way the sunlight streams through the curtains and by the very air, which is fresh and clear and doesn't hurt to inhale.

I'm lying in a hammock woven of reeds, in a neat-and-tidy room. There's more sun than anyone could hardly believe. I can actually see the sky, right outside my window, and it's a startling shade of light blue I've never seen before.

There are only three other dragons here, and only one is a NightWing. I stare at him, lying unconsious in the bed next to mine, a purplish-black dragon a little older than me. He has a bandage over his eyes. I find it odd that I don't know him. There are so few NightWing dragonets on the island- I mean, there were so few NightWing dragonets.

The other is a small RainWing about a year younger than I am. I think she got hit by RainWing venom- there are three small black splashes in a triangle on her wing. The third is also a RainWing, but she looks thin and underfed. They're both unconsious.

Was I injured in the explosion? There's a faint buzzing in my right ear. Oh my three moons. Am I going deaf? I squinch my eyes shut and try to imagine that possibility. Would my mother even care if I went deaf?

It hurts to admit that I don't think she would.

My wing is wrapped in a tight leaf bandage. The pain is gone, though. Instead it's numb. I can't feel a thing, even the bandages. Why doesn't it hurt?

There's something unsettling about this place. It seems so perfect, I find it a little hard to believe. Am I even alive? Maybe I'm in heaven. But I don't think heaven looks like a healer's hut in the rainforest.

Where is Fearless? Is she okay? What if she died? Fear seizes my heart like sharp talons. If she died... it would be my fault. She came back to help me. I don't think I could live with the guilt of that happening. If she died, I as good as murdered her.

But it's not your fault she came back for you... a treacherous voice whispers inside my head. You didn't ask her to come back for you, and you didn't ask for the other NightWings to push you into that lava.

But a tiny part of me still blames myself.

I gradually adjust to the rainforest. They leave me a bowl of fruits by my bedside, and I learn to tell one fruit from another. Bananas are disgusting, and they leave a dry feeling in my throat. Cloudberries are good, though. My favorite are clawmentines. They're juicy orange fruits made of tiny dragon-claw slices that form a round sphere.

One of the things that amazes me most is the sky. When it's not blue, it turns black. Not immediately- it changes from blue to orange and pink and finally to black in an array of colors called a "sunset". I like when it's black the best, though, because it's soothing. It's not like the smoky gray-black of the sky back in the fortress. You can see the stars, little dots that sparkle like diamonds, or the scales under my wings. Outside my window, I can sometimes see the moon.

I'm so glad I'm here. I feel a flash of anger at the NightWing leaders for making us stay there when we could have been here all along. When I sleep, I see flashes of the Night Kingdom again. Smoke, lava, fiery death. I try to stay awake as long as I can, to avoid the nightmares. When I'm awake, everything is okay. When I'm awake, I am safe.

The only problem with being awake it that there's nothing to do. There are a few scrolls next to my bedside, and I read them over and over and over. There are only three of them, and I've read one of them before, but reading scrolls means I have something to think about besides all that has happened.

Most of the time, though, I have nothing to do but eat fruits and watch the other patients. The thin RainWing wakes up a few times, but she seems lost in her own world and doesn't talk to me. Her eyes are wide and bloodshot, and every few minutes she mutters something under her breath. The NightWing is still unconsious, but a couple of dragons came to visit him- a MudWing, a SeaWing, and a SandWing-looking-thing. They even read him a scroll, one of the ones I don't have. I want to tell them he can't hear them, but I don't.

When they leave, I can't help myself. I call out, "Wait!"

The SandWing-looking dragon turns around. She's the one holding the scroll. "Us?"

"Can I- can I borrow your scroll?" I ask, biting my lip. It's only now that I realize how hoarse my voice is, dusty from misuse. "I- I- there's nothing to do. I just... was hoping, maybe I could borrow it?"

"Of course!" The SandWing beams. She walks back over to me and hands me the scroll.

"Thanks," I whisper, unrolling the scroll. It's one that I recognize very well: Tales of the NightWings. It's full of lies and fabrications about how awesome NightWings are, but right now, it seems a lot more appealing than Goodnight, Moons, which I've read eight times already, or Scavenger Dens of Pyrrhia, which I've read ten.