Wings of Fire Book Three: The Hidden Kingdom (18 page)

“Don’t give me that smug face,” Glory snapped.

“This isn’t my smug face, it’s my heroic face,” Deathbringer said. “And how funny is this? First I was your prisoner, now you’re mine?”

“Perhaps you haven’t heard what I do to dragons who try to keep me prisoner,” Glory said with a hiss.

“All right, stop it, you two.” Clay flapped up behind Deathbringer and landed beside Glory.

“Clay!” Glory cried. “What are you doing here?”

“We came to rescue you,” he said, nudging her wing with his. “Aren’t you pleased?”

“I’m right in the middle of rescuing myself,” Glory said. She was having a hard time keeping her scales black when the sight of Clay made her feel as pink as her ridiculous brother. “Maybe some other time.”

“Don’t listen to her!” Kinkajou cried. “We definitely need rescuing! Please rescue us!”

“How did you even get here?” Glory asked. “I mean, how did you know to look for me here?”

Clay nodded at Deathbringer, who flicked his tail and managed to look even
more
smug. “He talked me into it. When you didn’t come back, he told me he knew where you’d gone and that he’d help me find you if I set him free.”

“Sounds like a trick,” Glory said, eyeing Deathbringer suspiciously. Why would he work against his fellow NightWings? Was this a way to get Clay into their clutches as well?

“Let’s escape first and ask skeptical questions later,” said Kinkajou. She jumped into the air, wings flapping.

“Sensible dragonet,” said Deathbringer. He gave Glory an unreadable look — teasing but worried, and self-satisfied but sweet all at once. “You can express your undying gratitude to me later. I’ll wait.”

“Go ahead and hold your breath,” Glory suggested.

“Up you go,” Clay said. He spread his wings so Glory could climb onto his back.

She hesitated for a moment. Part of her said,
You can do this yourself. You don’t need help. Just get your wings free and save your own scales.

But there wasn’t time, and although she couldn’t trust Deathbringer, there was no one more trustworthy than Clay. She clambered onto his back, still holding the spear and awkwardly adjusting her balance without her wings.

He was in the air almost before she could get her talons around his neck. She slipped sideways and nearly knocked him into the lava. Clay’s tail brushed the bubbling, red-hot river below and he lurched upward with a hiss of pain.

“It’s all right,” he said quickly. “It’ll heal fast, don’t worry.”

Fire-re sis tant scales like Clay’s would definitely have come in handy here
, Glory thought, glancing down as he flew higher. She saw several other caves overlooking the lava river, but no snouts sticking out.

“We have to get the other RainWings,” she shouted in Clay’s ear. “We have to set them all free.”

“Now?” he asked. “We’ll be lucky if
we
make it out without getting caught.”

“I can’t just leave them here,” she cried. “I promised Mangrove I’d find Orchid.”

“And you did,” he said. “Now you know where she is, we can come back and get her. With backup.” He glanced over his shoulder and put on a burst of speed. “Lots and lots of backup.”

Glory looked behind them as well and saw a cluster of NightWings standing on a high rocky ledge. Three of them were pointing at Clay and shouting to the others. Black-scaled heads were turning toward the sky all across the volcano.

She also saw Kinkajou flapping madly to keep up with them. What she didn’t see was a certain dangerous know-it-all assassin.

“Deathbringer’s not with us!” she called.

“Of course not,” Clay called back. He swooped down between two curved stone columns and banked right. “His tribe can’t know he helped us.”

Glory thought uneasily of the dragon she’d wounded, back in the prison cave. Surely he had seen Deathbringer and overheard their conversation. But really that was Deathbringer’s problem. “What happened to his mission? The one about kill ing us? Remember?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to anymore,” Clay said with a shrug.

Suspicious
, Glory thought.
Or as Kinkajou would say, mega-suspicious.

And yet she also felt a weird loss, like she wished she’d had a chance to say good-bye. She twisted to look back again, but he really wasn’t there.
Ah, well. Maybe the next time he shows up to kill me.

She realized that Clay was winging rapidly toward the black-sand beach that ringed the island at the base of the volcano. Twisted, leafless trees grew on the volcano’s slopes, like bones sticking out of the dirt. Beyond the beach, the ocean roared and churned, gray and unfriendly and speckled with foam.

“Um, Clay?” Glory said. “We’re not flying back to the rainforest across that ocean, are we?”

“No way,” Clay said. “I don’t even know which way the rest of Pyrrhia is, or how far. Do you?”

“Nope,” Glory said. “But it makes sense to me that the NightWings live on an island — one that’s not on any maps. I would have thought they’d pick a nicer one, though. This place is ghastly.” She coughed, wondering if the smell of rotten eggs would ever clear out of her snout.

Clay dove toward a cave halfway up a small rocky cliff at one end of the beach.

“The passage to the rainforest is in there,” he called. “Get ready to fight.”

“Always. Ready,” panted Kinkajou beside them. Glory opened her mouth and tasted the smoky air. She couldn’t see any guards on the beach below.

“Didn’t you have to fight them on your way out of the tunnel?” she asked.

“No — Deathbringer went ahead of me and distracted them. But they’ll be back by now.”

“Also,” Kinkajou gasped. “Company. Behind.”

Glory didn’t have to look back; she’d already heard the wingbeats, and she didn’t really want to know exactly how many NightWings were on their tails. She gripped the spear in her claws, imagining Morrowseer on the pointy end of it.

The cave yawned wide in front of them. Clay didn’t slow down as he shot between the rocky walls. Glory blinked, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, and then she saw the light of a fire glowing up ahead.

Four NightWings were gathered around the fire, each of them carrying one of the wicked-looking spears. The
wrongness
feeling emanated from a perfectly circular hole in the rock wall behind them. And they were clearly not planning on letting anyone get to it.

We have to get past them
fast, Glory thought.
Or else we’ll have all the ones behind us to deal with as well.

The first guard saw them coming, jumped up, and slammed into Clay. Glory catapulted over his head, dropping the spear and just missing the fire as she crashed into one of the other dragons. Talons seized her tail and wings and more talons fumbled for her snout.
Not happening
, Glory thought. No one would muzzle her weapon again.

Her jaw sprang open and she swung her neck around, spraying venom at the guard who was trying to hold her down. Black droplets spattered across his chest. Screaming, he leaped back and stumbled into the fire, then fled toward the beach with smoke rising from his scales.

The other two guards pounced on Glory from behind, wrestling her back down again. They were both huge, the size of Morrowseer, with metal armor buckled over their underbellies and strange helmets protecting their snouts. Glory’s face was pressed into the ground. She lashed her tail furiously, trying to smack them the way Tsunami would have, but one of the guards stepped on it and pinned it down.

Glory struggled against the weight of the two dragons. Above her, Clay was battling the first NightWing. Their claws clashed and bouts of fire blasted through the air.

Kinkajou
, Glory thought. Where had she gone? Had she made it into the tunnel?

The tiny dragonet suddenly popped up behind the guards, holding the spear Glory had dropped. She swung it hard and smacked one of the NightWings on the head with the blunt end. He tottered sideways with a yell, then whipped around with a murderous gleam in his eyes.

“Kinkajou!” Glory shouted. “Use your venom!”

“But —” Kinkajou said, dodging a swipe of the NightWing’s claws. “I don’t —”

“Or the spear! The pointy end this time!”

Kinkajou looked down at the spear with a surprised expression. She hefted it and jabbed it at the guard as he came at her again. He knocked it aside and thrust his own spear at her. Kinkajou yelped and Glory saw a streak of blood slashed across her neck.

Glory clenched her talons with rage. How
dare
he. Kinkajou was just a tiny dragonet. Not only that, she was a RainWing, which meant she’d never been trained to fight.

There was just one guard holding Glory down at the moment. She thought of Sunny’s tricks from battle training and stopped struggling. On top of her, the guard let out a pleased hiss.

Glory let her scales ripple into the color of the rocks below her.

“Foolish RainWing,” hissed the guard. “I can still feel you. I can still see your wing bindings.”

Glory knew that, but she was hoping the strangeness of holding something he couldn’t see would make him slower. Taking a deep breath, she suddenly twisted herself into a tight spiral. The NightWing’s talons slipped on her scales, and she was able to get her tail free for a moment — long enough to swing it around and jab him sharply in the middle of his back.

Sunny loved this move, and at first none of them had understood why. If she’d had a poisonous barb on her tail like other SandWings, it would have been terrifying — but with a harmless tail, what was the point?

Then they’d each experienced it and discovered there was something freaky and unsettling about it. It felt like being hit by lightning at just the wrong spot. It was as if their scales knew they
could
have been badly injured — if there had been poison at the tip of that tail, it would have paralyzed their spines instantly and killed them a few moments later. So it was weirdly chilling, and an effective distraction in the middle of a fight.

Glory had no idea if this would work when a RainWing did it to a NightWing, but it was worth a try.

The guard stiffened as if he’d just been shocked by one of the electric eels in Queen Coral’s prison. It was only for a moment, but in that moment Glory was able to throw him off her and free her snout. She went straight for Kinkajou’s attacker, shooting venom at all the exposed scales she could see.

He screamed and slammed back into the rocks. Glory saw another gash along Kinkajou’s side. The little dragonet was shaking, and her scales were ripples of pale green and white.

Claws seized Glory’s tail before she could get to Kinkajou.

“Get out of here!” Glory shouted, pointing at the hole. “Go!”

Kinkajou hesitated, looking beyond Glory at the NightWing guard. For a moment, Glory was certain that she’d disobey and stay to help fight. But then, without arguing, Kinkajou darted for the tunnel and vanished into the darkness.

Well, good
, Glory thought as a spear viciously clocked her in the head.
Someone being sensible for once. Unlike my friends.
She tried to turn around, but the NightWing threw her into the wall. Stars spun dizzily in Glory’s vision.
Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out.
If the NightWings recaptured her, she’d never get another chance to use her venom and escape. They’d probably let her starve to death instead.

Blurrily she saw Clay suddenly drop out of the air, and her heart leaped into her throat. Was he hurt? She staggered a step toward him, but a sharp pain in her back leg stopped her. The guard had stabbed her with his spear.

Glory hissed angrily and lunged for the spear as the guard pulled it back. He stabbed it at her again, violent and fast, and she felt it scratch her underbelly like a sharp line of bee stings.

At the same time, Clay landed right in the middle of the fire. Flames licked at his underbelly and wings, and a scorched smell filled the cave. Glory’s scales hurt just looking at him. Even if he healed fast, she knew his skin was burning right now.

Clenching his jaw, Clay crouched and picked up smoldering coals from the fire in his talons. The NightWing in the air above him didn’t have time to figure out what was coming. Clay flung the coals right in the guard’s face and started grabbing and throwing more as the guard frantically clawed at his snout.

“Clay!” Glory yelled as her own opponent flung her off-balance. Glory fell backward and the NightWing was on her in an instant, wrapping his strong talons around her snout to force it shut.

Red-hot coals came flying through the air. Most bounced off the dragon’s armor, and one ricocheted painfully against Glory’s bound wings, but a few found the gaps in the armor and slid inside. The guard let go of Glory and started clawing at his armor, howling with pain.

Glory had just made it to her feet again when someone grabbed her shoulders. She whipped around with a hiss and barely managed to stop herself from shooting venom in Clay’s face.

“Quick!” he cried, shoving her onto his back. She grabbed his neck again as he bunched his legs and flung himself over the guards at the hole. One of the injured NightWings lunged for Clay’s tail, but when he saw Glory opening her mouth, he flinched away.