The Brightest Night by Tui T. Sutherland Read Free Book Online

slithering inside of her faded, but she felt more tired and sick than she had in a while. I hope I don’t have to use this thing too often.
    So I’d better try to keep an eye on them.
    She ducked through the leaves and flew straight up until she slipped through the whispering green canopy, straight into blinding sunlight.
    On the western horizon, already no bigger than claws, she could see the three black shapes winging away toward the mountains. She followed, feeling better and stronger with each moment of sun on her scales.
    The Kingdom of Sand. The desert. Just on the other side of those mountains.
    I’m going home.

Sunny followed the NightWings for three days as they navigated the foothills and then the snowier heights of the mountain crags. They slept in the shadow of Jade Mountain, listening to the wind howling around the twin peaks. She only had to use the mirror once more, when she lost sight of them, and it helped her catch up to them again.
    She would have loved to sneak back into their camp and leave more scary messages, but she knew they’d take turns staying awake to keep watch after losing the mirror. And she resisted the temptation to use the mirror on her friends or on Blister again, although she kept worrying about Blister’s new plan. Still, she wanted to avoid that sick, slithery feeling as much as possible.
    From the mountaintops, they flew down through densely forested foothills, and off in the distance ahead of them Sunny began to see something that shimmered white and hazy across the horizon.
    The desert, she thought with a prickle of anticipation. She’d been there once before, when the dragonets found the tunnel from the rainforest into the Kingdom of Sand. They’d had to chase Mangrove all the way to the borderlands of the Ice Kingdom. So she’d spent two days flying over the desert, but hardly any time down on the sand, where her talons really wanted to be.
    And no time at all looking for my parents . Her thoughts kept circling back to that as she flew, with no one to talk to and nothing else to distract her from worrying about the prophecy.
    Her friends had all found some kind of family by now — even if some of it was disappointing family, and no one was quite what they’d expected. Clay’s mother was awful, but his brothers and sisters were a lot like him, according to Clay. Tsunami’s mother was the queen of the SeaWings, who had tried to imprison them, but Tsunami had two little sisters, too: Anemone and Auklet.
    Glory had no way to figure out who her parents were, thanks to the way RainWings kept their eggs all together, but she’d found a brother, Jambu (even if he was a bit silly), and also Grandeur, who was perhaps a great-grandmother or great-aunt or something like that. Poor Starflight had really had it the worst of all, between Mastermind for a dad and Fierceteeth as his sister.
    But at least they knew — at least they’d found someone . They all had dragons who wanted them in some way.
    Why did my parents leave me?
    She had almost nothing to go on if she ever wanted to look for her family. All Kestrel had said was, “Dune found Sunny’s egg in the desert, hidden near the Scorpion Den.”
    The Scorpion Den. I don’t even know what that is. She’d seen it marked on the map, but she didn’t remember reading about it in any scrolls.
    Oh! Her wings missed a beat as she finally remembered where she’d heard about Jade Mountain. It was something Kestrel said the last time we saw her. “When you realize you need me, you can send me a message through the dragon of Jade Mountain.”
    She twisted to look back at the fanged mountain. So a dragon lived there — one who dealt with at least some of the Talons of Peace. That could be useful to keep in mind. Although … who would live somewhere so sinister? She wondered which tribe it was from, and why he or she lived alone.
    When she turned back around, she saw the distant shapes of the NightWings diving toward the forest below