Clearsight was in the palace library when Queen Vigilance hunted her down shortly after sunrise, five days after losing Foeslayer.

“What are you doing?” the queen asked, eyeing the piles of scrolls on the table beside Clearsight.

“I’m looking for clues about how animus power works,” Clearsight said wearily. “There’s so much we don’t know. Can one animus spell override another? Is there anything animus magic can’t do? Do different spells affect their souls in different ways, or are they always the same? But all the scrolls are about IceWings, and it sounds like they’ve always restricted their magic so much that no one’s had a chance to find out anything. I mean, of course no one wants to run experiments on animus dragons, even if you had more than one at a time for comparison, to see who goes evil first. So it’s all anecdotal, and …” She trailed off, realizing that there was a strange glint in the queen’s eyes.

“We have more than one,” the queen said. “We have three.”

Arctic, Darkstalker, Fathom: an IceWing, a NightWing, and a SeaWing. Was the power any different in different tribes? Clearsight wondered.

“But Fathom won’t use his power,” she pointed out, “and Arctic shouldn’t.”

The queen paced slowly over to the window, narrowing her eyes at the pale pink sky and the rising sun. A twittering sparrow hopped from vine to vine outside, coming to rest for a moment, unwisely, on the windowsill. Queen Vigilance snatched it up and crunched it between her jaws in one bite.

“With three animus dragons,” she said, turning to Clearsight, “why haven’t I won this war yet?” She picked a small brown feather out of her teeth, glowering.

“Oh,” Clearsight stammered. “It’s — well, it’s complicated — there are so many consequences — and spells can go wrong, especially with a war scenario where it’s all so chaotic. It’s kind of an unspoken rule that tribes don’t use animus magic in war, isn’t it? Because if we use animus magic, then they might retaliate with animus magic, and then it gets … well, really bad …” So bad her brain was already starting to hurt, tracing the possibilities.

Queen Vigilance picked up a scroll and hurled it at the door with a loud thump. Immediately one of her guards poked his head inside.

“Yes, Your Majesty?” he said.

“Bring me Darkstalker,” she ordered.

Clearsight twisted her front talons together. “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” she said. “I haven’t — I didn’t calculate animus magic into my predictions for the next year — it’ll throw everything off.”

The queen selected one of the blank scrolls from the rack behind the librarian’s desk. She swept all the history scrolls off the table in front of Clearsight and slapped the blank scroll in front of her.

“Start calculating,” she hissed.

“Y-yes, all right,” Clearsight said, sitting down. Visions were already crowding in, trying to fill the space of these new ripples, new timelines unrolling. There were too many new futures all of a sudden, ones she’d never even glimpsed before. Some of them wrapped back around to link up with previous visions — Darkstalker in the crown, or them with their dragonets — but some of them spilled out into awful new directions.

Never let the queen find out about Darkstalker’s scroll — that was the first, most obvious lesson of her visions. If Vigilance ever discovered it, she’d have Darkstalker killed (if she could … it wouldn’t be easy, Clearsight could see hints of that) and then she’d use it herself, and like Snowfox, Queen Vigilance also had no problem with wiping out entire tribes. A continent ruled entirely by NightWings would be fine with her.

Wingbeats sounded outside, and Clearsight looked up to see Darkstalker swoop by the window. Her heart jumped — happy to see him, terrified about what might happen next.

A few moments later, he came in through the giant double doors of the library, already smiling at the queen.

That smile — it was new, and Clearsight didn’t like it. It was an “everything’s fine” smile. It was a “bad things can’t happen to me, and so I won’t let them happen” smile. And Queen Vigilance might not realize it, but it was a “better not stand in my way while I arrange the world the way I want it” smile.

Clearsight knew that there were only three dragons Darkstalker loved: herself, Whiteout, and his mother, Foeslayer. She thought Fathom might be on the list, too, either now or one day, but she wasn’t entirely sure. Sometimes she worried that Darkstalker was friends with him only because Clearsight thought they should be.

But he truly loved Foeslayer, and losing her … she knew he must be furious, and devastated, and broken into a thousand pieces on the inside. It scared her that he could hide it so well.

“Darkstalker,” said the queen. “Unfortunate about your mother.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Very unfortunate.”

“That was always Diamond’s first demand,” Queen Vigilance said, studying him. “She wanted Foeslayer, and Arctic, and you and your sister.”

He bowed his head slightly. “Thank you for not giving us to her.”

“Well,” she said. “I had my reasons.” She left a significant pause.

“You were hoping to use our animus magic yourself,” Darkstalker filled in pleasantly. “And you feel that you’ve been very patient. And you think now would be a good time for some return on your investment. What did you have in mind?”

Queen Vigilance held herself very still, as if she had just discovered Darkstalker could read her mind and was trying not to show how surprised she was. She thought she was better at shielding her thoughts, Clearsight guessed. She didn’t realize Darkstalker’s powers were so strong.

“Hmm,” the queen said slowly. “I’d like to hear your ideas.”

“Oh, I have a few,” Darkstalker said with a jaunty smile. “Clearsight, darling, may I?” He crossed to her table, slid the blank scroll over to his side, and started sketching. “Let’s see. Clearsight warned me that killing Queen Diamond at this point could lead to the destruction of the entire NightWing tribe. But what if we get them first? Imagine if I could take a stick, any ordinary stick, and say ‘I enchant this stick so that the moment I break it, every IceWing in Pyrrhia will keel over, dead.’” He tapped the scroll, where he’d drawn a thin line snapped in half, a dozen bleeding corpses all around it.

Clearsight stared at him in horror. Vigilance’s eyes were shining. “You can do that?” the queen whispered greedily. “It’s that simple?”

“I’m not sure,” Darkstalker said with a shrug. “No one’s ever tried to wipe out an entire tribe with one spell before, as far as we know.” He shot one of his new unsettling smiles at Clearsight.

“But that spell would kill you,” Clearsight said. “You’re part IceWing. And your father, and your sister.”

“We could include exceptions, I’m sure,” he said.

“You can’t wipe out an entire tribe,” she said, more firmly. “There are hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent IceWings. Think of all the little dragonets who aren’t part of this war. You’re not a dragonet-killer, Darkstalker.” I didn’t think you were an anyone-killer, actually. Not now, not the version of you I thought I knew and could safely love. But maybe I’m wrong … “Not to mention what it would do to your soul.”

He gave her an ironic look — a “you know perfectly well it won’t affect my soul” look. She felt a twist of fear in her stomach. She’d thought putting his magic in the scroll would protect him — but if he wasn’t worried about his soul, did that mean there was nothing to hold him back?

“Those little dragonets will grow up to be part of this war,” he pointed out, “unless we stop them. And isn’t tribal genocide exactly what you foresee them doing to us?”

“No!” she said. “Only if things go very, very wrong, and we won’t let that happen!” She turned to the queen. “Killing all the IceWings would turn the other tribes against you. It makes things worse, I know it does.” Worse by Clearsight’s definitions anyway. She didn’t have to tell Vigilance about the futures where an IceWing genocide led to the NightWings ruling the whole continent.

“Well,” Darkstalker said with a shrug, “if this is too effective for Clearsight’s delicate sensibilities, perhaps we could do something more targeted. I could enchant a pile of rocks — let’s say at least a hundred — which, when dropped on an IceWing encampment, or hidden in the sand where they’ll pass by, would explode and kill every IceWing in sight. Then we’d only hit soldiers … probably. Would that make you feel better, Clearsight?”

She turned away from him. She couldn’t bear the look on his face, or the queen’s, so pleased with their own wicked ideas.

“I need to study the consequences,” she said. “Give me some time to trace the futures before you do anything. Please?”

“You’re a seer, too,” the queen said to Darkstalker. “Can’t you see these ‘consequences’?”

“Some of them,” he said, studying Clearsight sideways. She lifted her chin. Was he going to take her job? It wouldn’t be hard to manipulate Vigilance if he became top seer, if he decided to do that. He’d be able to make the queen do almost anything he wanted.

Darkstalker shifted his wings as if he were shrugging off a blanket. “But Clearsight’s visions are clearer than mine,” he said. He spread one wing around her, giving her a reassuring hug. “She spends a lot more time studying them than I do. Thinking about the future is basically what she does all the time. If she wants to check all the timelines first, I suppose that’s probably a good idea.”

He’s still in there, behind the fake smile and the angry ideas. He’ll calm down and come back to me, she thought … she hoped.

“What about defense?” the queen asked. “The IceWings have their cliff that kills anyone who’s not an IceWing. Can we have one of those?”

“We don’t want to keep out all the other tribes,” Clearsight interjected quickly. “The NightWings are famous for our intertribal relations and open trade partnerships. Our scrolls and artwork are sold across the continent. Dragons bring us new ideas and inventions and discoveries from all over. If we close our border, especially with violence, we lose all of that. We lose everything that makes us who we are.”

“Pffft,” the queen spat.

“So maybe it just kills IceWings,” Darkstalker said. He took his wing away from around Clearsight and leaned over the table, sketching again. “An invisible shield around the whole kingdom, perhaps. That would free up your air defense teams to join the attack.” His dark eyes met Clearsight’s. “Seems reasonably harmless. Even you can’t object to defending our kingdom from our enemies, right, Clearsight?”

It was one of the least terrible of all the bad options, and it would appease the queen for a while. Clearsight nodded reluctantly. “As long as there’s a way to disable it in the future, when we’re at peace with the IceWings again.”

“That’s never going to happen as long as they have my mother,” Darkstalker said coldly.

“Get started,” Queen Vigilance said, rapping the table once with her claw. She pointed at Darkstalker. “You, the shield.” Her sharp eyes shifted to Clearsight. “You, the futures where we crush our enemies with magic.” She smiled a thin, sinister smile. “We’re going to make an excellent team.”

The queen turned and swept out of the library, leaving scrolls fluttering in her wake.

“Better not tell Fathom about the shield,” Darkstalker said to Clearsight. “Or any of these ideas. He’s already driving me crazy with his high-anxiety brain, wondering how soon I’m going to snap.” He rolled his eyes.

“What is happening to you?” Clearsight demanded. She poked Darkstalker in the chest. “You’re not a mass murderer. You don’t want to spend your magic on making war and killing easier for the queen.”

“It’s not for the queen,” Darkstalker said, catching her talon before she could poke him again. “I want to teach the IceWings a lesson. I want to scare them into giving Mother back.”

Clearsight wavered. “Oh, Darkstalker …”

“You don’t see a future where she comes back,” he said grimly.

She shook her head. She didn’t know what to say. She’d been searching for days, trying every possible timeline, and she couldn’t find Foeslayer anywhere. It was as though Diamond had erased her from the map — and from the future.

“Neither do I,” he said. His wings slumped slowly down behind him. “I’ve done three spells that should have brought her home, but none of them worked. And I tried to reach her with the dreamvisitor. I’ve been trying around the clock since she left, but nothing. It would only work if she was asleep … but she must sleep sometime. Unless …”

Unless she’s already dead.

“What does your map tell you?” Clearsight asked.

“The dot has moved to the Ice Kingdom, far on the other side of their wall,” Darkstalker said. “It’s been in the same place for the last two days.”

“That doesn’t — that doesn’t mean —” Clearsight started.

“That she’s alive? I know. It could be showing me where they buried her. I suppose I could enchant something to find out for sure.” His voice suddenly cracked, and he dropped to all fours, leaning into Clearsight’s shoulder. “But I don’t want to know that, Clearsight. I don’t want anything to tell me that she’s dead.” He buried his face.

“I’m sorry, my love,” Clearsight said. “I know it’s the worst thing,” she said through her tears. “I know it hurts and you’re not all right and you’re angry and you want to punish the IceWings, but you have to fight the anger and the darkness. Darkstalker, I’m so, so scared. The things I’ve seen in the future because of this — the things that happen to you, the things that you do and what you become — it’s all so dark, I almost can’t see the light anymore. I’m afraid we’re losing our bright paths …”

“Stop,” Darkstalker said. He sat back, brushing tears out of his eyes. “Don’t give up on me, Clearsight.”

“I’m not,” she said faintly.

He put his talons on either side of her face, looking into her eyes. “Believe in me. Keep looking at our happy futures and I will, too. If we can just stay focused on those, we’ll get there. I promise.”

She nodded, because she didn’t want to make him feel worse right now.

But with Darkstalker’s sketch of dead IceWings on the table right beside them … it was hard to believe in any kind of bright future at all.