The Lost Heir Read Online Free Page A

tried to push himself up, but the tree kept him pinned to the sand.
    “What if he’s stuck here forever?” Sunny worried. She reached over and brushed some sand off the SkyWing’s snout. He snorted a puff of smoke, and Clay pulled her back. “Maybe we should just let him go.”
    “We can’t do that,” Tsunami said.
    “I wish you hadn’t attacked him,” Sunny said, ducking her head.
    “Me too,” said Glory.
    “It wasn’t the smartest move,” Starflight agreed.
    Tsunami’s gills flared, and she spread her wings. “You don’t know that!” she said. “Maybe I saved us! Again!” She looked at Clay, but he only shrugged as if he wasn’t sure.
Thanks for the support, guys,
Tsunami thought angrily.
When all I’m trying to do is keep everyone safe.
    “Don’t worry, Sunny,” Clay said, patting the little SandWing’s head. “His friends will come looking for him eventually.”
    “Eventually or soon,” Glory said. “So like I said, let’s seriously get out of here.”
    “Wait,” the SkyWing rasped. His voice was hoarse and deep. He wriggled, lashing his tail across the sand. “Don’t leave me like this.”
    Starflight stepped into his line of sight and gazed down at him. “Remember we could have killed you,” he said. “Remember that the dragonets of destiny were merciful. We want peace, not more death. We have come to save Pyrrhia.”
    “Oh, good grief,” Tsunami said as Glory rolled her eyes. “No more hanging out with NightWings for you.”
    “I thought it sounded nice,” Sunny said. Starflight shot her a grateful look.
    “Sunny, don’t encourage him,” said Glory.
    Carefully Starflight draped a few large leaves over the dragon’s head, so he couldn’t see where they went. He pointed toward the forest and mouthed, “Just to be safe.”
    Tsunami sighed. More flying in the wrong direction. She wanted to go
home
already. Home to the ocean and the SeaWings and her royal parents.
    But she couldn’t argue about it with the SkyWing listening, and the others were already nodding. All of them were ready to follow anxious, overly cautious Starflight yet again. And none of them thought she’d done the right thing by attacking this SkyWing, even though it was to save their stupid scales.
    As they lifted into the sky, she cast a longing look over her shoulder at the ocean.
    Soon,
she thought.
Soon I’ll be with my own dragons.

The Bay of a Thousand Scales was farther away than Tsunami had realized. She’d been studying the map of Pyrrhia since she was tiny, but it was hard to fit that picture over the enormous world below her. She kept expecting to find neat little spirals of islands that would fit in the palm of her talons. Instead, she found herself flying over vast expanses of empty ocean, dotted here and there with a solitary outcropping of rock.
    After they took a long detour inland to convince the SkyWing they’d gone in the opposite direction, they circled around south and flew out to sea. They managed to make it to a small rocky island shortly after night fell, but according to Starflight they were still a long way from the Bay of a Thousand Scales. He’d calculated the distance and their speed and had a long boring lecture ready to explain it all. The rest of them fell asleep halfway into it, and he spent the next day sulking about that.
    Still, Tsunami had to admit — if only to herself — that it was useful having someone with all the geography and flight plans in his head. For a few days they stopped whenever they saw an island, ate a seagull or fish if they could catch any, and then flew on. Tsunami tried diving into the ocean several times and was disappointed to discover she couldn’t swim as fast as she flew. The only good news was that the ocean water helped to heal the burn on her neck.
    It was four mornings later when Tsunami finally woke up on an island that was officially part of the Thousand Scales.
    She started awake from a dream in which their cave had collapsed