Anemone was in the middle of a history lesson, listening to Webs drone on and on about the history of Pyrrhia and how the NightWings rose to power and blah blah blah.

She really couldn't care less.

This is BORING. Sometimes I wonder if the real reason mother is letting me stay here is because she hopes I'll forget about trying to become queen after having my head filled with random facts.

Anemone still hadn't given up her plans to eventually defeat her mother in battle and take the SeaWing throne. It would certainly be much harder now that she couldn't use animus magic for selfish reasons, but someday, she would.

In the meantime, I'm stuck here.

The only exciting thing that had happened within the last month had been when Moon, Qibli, Turtle, and Kinkajou all went missing, only to show up a few days later with Kinkajou still gone. Her older sister Tsunami had gone to rescue her from something, and now Kinkajou was in the hospital cave awaiting treatment.

As far as gossip went, there was still no word from Tamarin or Pike as to what had happened. She strongly suspected that Tsunami was hiding something important from everyone to avoid a school wide panic.

Hiding what, though?

Just then, Clay poked his head into the cave. "Is Anemone in here?" he asked Webs.

"Over here!" she called. There was something wrong with the look in Clay's eyes. His usual smile was missing from his face.

Did something happen to that RainWing?

She followed Clay outside the cave. But he didn't stop there. He led her all the way to his private cave. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Looking around, she saw Tsunami, Sunny, and Starflight.

"What's going on?"

Starflight spoke first. "Anemone, we're about to tell you something very important, and need you to promise not to tell anybody."

Anemone frowned. "Tsunami, what did you do this time?"

"I didn't do anything!" Tsunami snapped. "Just promise not to tell anyone, including your closest friends. Understand?"

Anemone flinched at the urgency in Tsunami's voice. "Okay, okay, I promise. Now what is it?"

Tsunami quickly went over what had happened to Kinkajou, and how it happened. When she finished, Anemone spoke. "So what do you want me to do about it? Clearly animus magic has no effect on him."

"We don't need you to kill him, Anemone," said Sunny. "We just need you to find him. We'll take care of the rest."

Anemone scoffed. "You guys? How? Taking on dragons is one thing, but this is something completely different."

In answer, Tsunami held out her right talon.

In it was a black stone, smooth, shiny, and attractive, but at the same time, their was something about it that made Anemone want to wrench it out of her sister's talons and smash it to pieces.

"What is that?" she asked.

Tsunami grinned. "It's the key to sealing Adamant away," she explained. "We found it in Kinkajou's talons. She told me that this was the stone that Adamant was trapped inside originally."

Clay smiled. "If my hunch is right, all we have to do is get him to make contact with it, and he'll be trapped again."

Anemone frowned. "And if your hunch is wrong?"

Clay opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly a burst of fire flew across the room. Sunny screamed, and Tsunami leaped into a battle stance, but Clay just groaned. "Peril, how long have you been listening?"

Peril stalked into the cave, glaring at Anemone. "I didn't here anything important. Just something about how we're all going to DIE and this princess INSULTING your intelligence!"

Clay sighed. "Peril, she was just asking me a question."

Peril's scales seemed to cool down a bit, but she was still glaring at Anemone.

Geez, you need to cool down, Anemone thought. She wasn't especially fond of Peril. Even if everyone else had forgiven her months ago for all the deaths she had caused, she, Anemone, would NEVER forgive a SkyWing for anything.

They destroyed our Summer Palace.

She knew she shouldn't think like that. The war had been over for a year. But she still felt so angry.

"Well," Tsunami said, recovering from her initial shock. "Anemone, I need you to go to cast a spell that will tell us where Adamant is."

"No problem," Anemone responded. Grabbing a blank scroll off of Clay's desk, she said: "I enchant this paper to tell me the exact location of Adamant!"

Nothing happened.

"What? Maybe it needs different wording," Anemone said. "I enchant this paper to put down in writing where Adamant is hiding!"

Still nothing.

"Why isn't it working?" Sunny asked frantically.

"I know why," said a voice that sounded very much like...

"Turtle!" Anemone exclaimed.

"HOW MANY MORE DRAGONS ARE GOING TO EAVESDROP ON OUR PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS!?" Tsunami roared.

"No one," said Turtle, unsmiling. "But I know why Anemone's spell won't work."

"Why?" Anemone demanded.

"Because animus magic has stopped working."