The Hive Queen (Wings of Fire, Book 12)

by Tui T. Sutherland

Sundew appeared around a corner of a greenhouse and beckoned to them. They hurried to her on silent talons through the wet grass.

  “Just two guards patrolling the greenhouses, as far as I can see,” she said in a low voice. “Hard to tell from a distance, but they seem to have their own eyes. If we keep quiet, I think we can sneak past them.”

  “FLORBLE!” announced Bumblebee, popping her head out of the sling around Cricket.

  Sundew gave her a steely look. “Don’t even think about it, dragonet.”

  “BLEEMORK!” Bumblebee retorted at top volume. She squirmed around in the sling, pulled out the fish, which had not improved in smell over the course of the morning, and flung it at Sundew’s head.

  “I beg your pardon,” Sundew said, catching the fish and waving it at Bumblebee. “This was a perfectly good breakfast and it’s your own fault you’re hungry if you don’t want to eat it.”

  “SMEEBO SMEEBO SMEEBO!” Bumblebee said in the same tone, wagging her claw at Sundew.

  “Listen here,” Sundew said with a scowl. “We are on a STEALTH HORTICULTURAL MISSION and you are going to be ABSOLUTELY SILENT until we are done, do you understand?”

  “Loobleflooblegooble,” Bumblebee burbled, reaching toward Sundew with her front talons. “Herkleturklemisshoo.”

  “Nope. No. No, sir. Cricket, control your tiny monster.”

  “I think she wants you,” Cricket admitted. The dragonet was vigorously wiggling her way out of the sling, no matter how Cricket tried to pin her down.

  “Well, too bad!” Sundew snapped.

  “BOO BAH!” Bumblebee shouted enthusiastically.

  “Shhhhhh!” Swordtail tried, flapping his wings at her.

  Cricket hadn’t realized a dragonet that small could laugh already. Bumblebee’s whole face wrinkled up and she fell back into the sling, giggling hysterically.

  “So,” Sundew said to Cricket. “This is officially the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

  “She might be quieter if you take her,” Cricket suggested.

  “I’m not sure,” Blue said. “I think she likes it when you yell at her.”

  “Here,” Sundew said, digging into one of her pouches. “Give her this.”

  “I’m not sticking a sleepflower up a baby dragonet’s nose,” Cricket said protectively. “Or a centipede or a paralysis dart or whatever else you have in there.”

  “It’s just dried mango,” Sundew said. “Even I have yet to use a paralysis toxin on a baby dragonet.” She scowled at Bumblebee. “The key word there is YET, howler monkey.”

  “Yim yim yim,” Bumblebee agreed cheerfully, snatching the mango out of Sundew’s talons and stuffing it in her mouth. Her eyes went wide and she gave Sundew a worshipful look. “YIMMMM.”

  “What is this feeling of doom that just settled on me?” Sundew asked the sky.

  “You did have mango!” Swordtail said to her accusingly.

  “Can we please get on with bringing down the HiveWing queen now?” Sundew said to Bumblebee. The dragonet ignored her, snuggled into Cricket, and went to work on the mango.

  Swordtail and Sundew went first, padding swiftly through the aisles. Cricket felt a weird shiver of déjà vu, remembering the last time they were sneaking through these same greenhouses, early in the morning. That was before the queen knew Cricket’s secret, when Cricket still had the option of going home.

  That was before I knew her secrets, too.

  But now I do. I have the truth in my talons and I’m going to do something with it.

  The queen’s greenhouse loomed up before them, crowded with dark green leaves that pressed against the glass windows. Cricket couldn’t believe they’d been here before, standing in the middle of the queen’s secret, and hadn’t even realized it.

  One guard stood outside the door, idly reading the warning sign. His tail flicked back and forth across the grass, leaving a silvery trail through the wet blades. He didn’t look very worried about anyone coming to do battle with the plants.

  Sundew reached into one of her pouches and softly drew out a tiny hollow tube. She slipped something sharp into one end, raised the other to her mouth, and blew the dart at the guard.

  His tail went still on the grass; his wings stopped mid-flutter. His whole body was frozen in place.

  “FLORB,” Bumblebee said approvingly around the mango.

  “Drag him away from the greenhouse,” Sundew said to Swordtail. “He doesn’t need to go up in flames with it.”

  Cricket and Blue exchanged glances. She’s saving a random HiveWing. She’s making sure he doesn’t die. Cricket didn’t think Sundew would have done that before she knew them. If we could change her mind, maybe we can change others.

  Swordtail grappled with the paralyzed dragon while the other three sliced away the webs covering the greenhouse door and stepped inside. The heat and humidity swamped Cricket just as it had before. And now she recognized the smell, too, sharp and unpleasant amid the other scents of the plants around them.

  “It’s this one,” Sundew said, lifting a leaf on one of the vines that thronged the greenhouse, circling and choking the other plants. The stem of the vine was dark red with veins of bright green, and the leaves were the same in reverse, bright green with veins of red like streams of blood. Each was the size of a dragon talon with jagged, tough edges. It would have been perfectly appropriately creepy if it weren’t for the clusters of tiny white flowers nestled between the leaves.

  Sundew rubbed the leaf between her claws for a moment, frowning at it. “I don’t know what it is,” she said at length.

  “Me neither,” Cricket offered. “I don’t remember seeing it in any of my botany books, and I think I would.”

  “I know someone who might know.” Sundew used her claws to slice through the vine in two spots, making a cutting as long as her arm. She rolled it into a loose ball and tucked it into an empty pouch.

  “Is that a good idea?” Blue asked. “Shouldn’t we destroy all of it, so it can never grow again and no one can ever use it like she has?”

  “I think we need to know what it is,” Sundew said to him.

  “Me too,” Cricket agreed. “And maybe …” She hesitated, afraid to say it out loud.

  “Maybe there’s an antidote,” Sundew finished for her.

  Blue’s eyes widened.

  “Smorg bamfibo,” Bumblebee declared in Sundew’s solemnest voice.

  “I feel like you’re mocking me,” Sundew said to the dragonet.

  “Smeeg smog smockeefee,” the dragonet answered with enormous gravity, copying Sundew’s frown.

  Sundew raised one eyebrow at Cricket.

  “I swear I did not teach her to do that,” Cricket promised.

  “All right,” Sundew said, turning to sweep the greenhouse with her gaze. “Who wants to burn it all down?”

  There was a pause before she turned and leveled her gaze on Blue.

  “Oh, right, me,” Blue said. He stepped to the nearest cluster of vines and set his front talons on them. Fiery silk erupted from his wrists, catching and tangling through the leaves. Everywhere it touched, blades of flame flickered, smoked, curled into black ash or brightened into orange blossoms of fire.

  Heavy reddish-green smoke rose from the vines and Cricket covered her snout with one of her scarves. “Don’t breathe it in!” she shouted at the others. She wrapped another scarf around Bumblebee’s indignant face. “Blue, let’s go!” She tugged on his arm and turned to run to the door with Sundew.

  Blue followed them, pausing every few steps to shoot more fountains of flame over the vines. Cricket could hear the crackling fire building and spreading. The heat shot past tolerable and pressed against her scales, and she thought of the dragons in Bloodworm Hive, and wondered if this was what they’d felt as they fled their burning city.

  They threw open the door and tumbled onto the wet grass outside. Blue leaped out after them and slammed the door behind him, but it splintered into a million pieces as it hit the frame. Glass fragments exp
loded outward along with tongues of fire, roaring like angry dragons.

  Cricket curled her body around Bumblebee and ran to escape the flames and smoke. She nearly collided head-on with the second HiveWing guard, who started to grab her and then froze, staring openmouthed at the burning greenhouse.

  “That one is lost,” Cricket said, shaking her. “Get water and you can save the others. Make sure your friend is safe, too.” She turned to look around and saw the paralyzed guard lying a few greenhouses away; Swordtail was still trying to drag him a little farther. The grass was wet enough that Cricket hoped the fire wouldn’t spread, but she wasn’t sure. She didn’t want the other greenhouses to burn. They held the food and other resources for hundreds of dragons. Sundew’s parents might have been willing to burn them, but she thought Sundew wouldn’t.

  The guard pointed at the greenhouse. “The queen,” she stammered. “She — that’s her —”

  Cricket gripped her shoulders to get her attention. “That is where she kept the plant that lets her control us,” she said. “I saw her stabbing eggs in the Jewel Hive nest. She injects us before we’ve even hatched, do you understand? That plant gave her the Hive-mind power, and we burned it to take it away from her.”

  “What?” The guard shook her head, confused. “No, the queen — she has that power because she’s our queen —”

  “She had it because of a plant,” Cricket said. “She’s been poisoning us, our whole tribe, ever since the Tree Wars, maybe longer. You have to tell everyone.”

  The guard looked terrified. “Me?”

  “Yes,” Cricket said. “Knowing the truth isn’t enough if you don’t share it. Everyone needs to know.”

  “I … I have to save the greenhouses,” the guard said, pulling out of Cricket’s grip. She turned and ran toward the Hive.

  “She’ll be back with help soon,” Blue said at Cricket’s shoulder.

  “Swordtail, are you napping?” Sundew shouted. “Let’s GO!”

  Swordtail leaped away from the guard and into the sky. The others spread their wings and joined him, and Cricket swerved around a plume of smoke as it erupted from the greenhouse roof.

  They soared away, toward a looming bank of dark clouds in the north. Cricket beat her wings as hard as she could and glanced down at Bumblebee, who had somehow managed to fall asleep again despite all the commotion.

  They flew and flew, following Sundew, until Wasp Hive was far behind them. There was no sign of any pursuers. Cricket hoped that all of Queen Wasp’s attention was on Bloodworm Hive, and that she wouldn’t even discover the fire in her greenhouse until she returned home.

  Home — there’s a thing I don’t have anymore.

  “Sundew!” she called. “Where are we going? Shouldn’t we go back to the cave to find your parents?”

  Sundew glanced over her shoulder, her green and gold scales somehow still shining even in the grayest sky. “I’m not waiting around for them,” she called back. “They’ll expect to meet me back home.”

  “Where’s that?” Cricket asked, catching up to her. “Are we going to where the other LeafWings are?” Her pulse sped up despite her worries and her sadness over Bloodworm Hive. At last, she was going to find out how the LeafWings had survived the Tree Wars and where they’d been hiding all this time.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you ask a lot of questions?” Sundew said wryly.

  “All the time,” Cricket said, smiling back.

  “Well, I’m surprised you haven’t guessed this answer by now.” Sundew pointed her snout north, closing her eyes as a gust of wind and rain rippled over their scales.

  “That way?” Cricket said. “You mean — all the way that way? Are you saying the LeafWings are in …” She trailed off, remembering the stories she’d read about carnivorous plants ten times the size of a dragon, of toxins and snakes and quicksand and deadly vines and venomous wasps and all the many, many ways a dragon could die up there.

  “Yes,” said Sundew, smiling a real smile now. “We’re going home to the Poison Jungle.”

  “I’m not sure this was a good idea,” Tsunami said to Turtle. She wasn’t sure why she was whispering; they appeared to be alone in the jungle, and yet it also felt as if there were hundreds of eyes watching their every move.

  The tangled trees seemed to be reaching for them with long trailing roots, and branches like skeletal fingers slid into the water. The sand under them had become oozing mud and she couldn’t see anything through the silt and foggy green haze in the river.

  At least, she’d thought it was a river … a river they could follow into the interior of the continent. But as the banks closed in and the jutting rocks got sharper, she was getting the distinct sensation of swimming into a very large, sharklike mouth.

  She paused, treading water for a moment and turning in a circle. Something enormously long and scaly broke the surface of the river for a moment, and Tsunami readied her claws — but the snake only lifted its head to study them with cold eyes, then rippled away.

  Turtle, luckily, had not seen it. He had found a boulder to clutch, panting. She kept forgetting to set her pace slower for him, although she’d been doing it for days.

  Somewhere in the middle of the vast ocean, they’d both had a small panic attack, wondering if there was really anything out there, or whether they’d missed it, or whether they were going in the wrong direction and would end up swimming for a thousand years without ever seeing land again. That was when Tsunami had realized why SeaWings had never made this journey before. They might be creatures of the sea, but they needed land, too. They would not swim for days with no end in sight, with no certainty that they would ever find anything.

  “Let’s go back,” Tsunami said to her brother. “Let’s find another place to land, more like what Luna described.”

  “Yeah,” he gasped. “I thought she said there weren’t any trees.”

  “Maybe she meant ‘only terrifying trees,’” Tsunami said, looking up at the vines oozing off the branches overhead.

  “Don’t. Move.”

  The voice that suddenly spoke from the bank had an odd accent and a note of authority that made Tsunami freeze obediently before her ears had even caught up to the instructions.

  “Um,” Turtle started.

  “Don’t speak, either,” said the voice. “One … two …”

  A dark green shape hurtled past Tsunami’s head and smashed into the snake as it lunged out of the water at them. All Tsunami could see for a moment was a blur of claws and fangs and scales thrashing; she had to close her eyes against the waves kicked violently into her face.

  Finally the river went still, and she dared to open her eyes again.

  A green dragon with brown eyes hovered overhead, clutching the dead snake in her talons. Her wings were paler green than her body and shaped like leaves, and her underscales were dappled with dark green leaf shapes like shadows.

  “Three moons,” Turtle said. “Thank you.”

  “Really, really, really thank you,” Tsunami echoed, almost too bewildered to speak.

  “What kind of dragons are you?” the stranger asked, flinging the snake back into the river.

  “We’re SeaWings,” Tsunami answered, trying to recover her equilibrium. “I’m Tsunami, and this is Turtle. We’re from the other side of the ocean.”

  “I’m Willow,” said the green dragon, “and if you want to live, you should turn around and go back there right now.”

  * * *

  Moon found Luna sitting on the farthest edge of the beach again, staring out toward Pantala with the ocean whispering over her claws. Luna twisted toward the little black dragon as she approached and was startled by the grim look on Moon’s face. She’d started to think Moon only ever looked either perfectly serene or mildly concerned.

  “What is it?” Luna asked. “A vision?”

  “Yes,” Moon said, her gaze shifting toward the horizon. “A vision. Cities burning, dragons hurting one another, more dragons being terrible
just because other dragons are different from them, just like all my visions.” She stopped for a moment and rubbed her forehead.

  “Does that mean we’re going there? You’ve thought of a way to get to Pantala?”

  Moon shook her head. “No.” She looked out at Luna’s distant home again, and Luna imagined she could almost see the flames and screaming dragons reflected in Moon’s dark green eyes.

  “We don’t need to,” Moon said. “They’re coming to us.”

  TUI T. SUTHERLAND is the author of the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling Wings of Fire series, the Menagerie trilogy, and the Pet Trouble series, as well as a contributing author to the bestselling Spirit Animals and Seekers series (as part of the Erin Hunter team). In 2009, she was a two-day champion on Jeopardy! She lives in Massachusetts with her wonderful husband, two awesome sons, and two very patient dogs. To learn more about Tui’s books, visit her online at tuibooks.com.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Tui T. Sutherland

  Map and border design © 2019 by Mike Schley

  Dragon illustrations © 2019 by Joy Ang

  Cover art © 2019 by Joy Ang

  Cover design by Phil Falco

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  First printing, January 2019

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-21450-5

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