The Lost Heir Read Online Free PDF Page B

coming to kill her.

Tsunami shot toward the island where her friends were. The SeaWing was close on her tail. He roared something, but the wind whipped it away so she couldn’t hear it.
    She saw Clay wriggle out of the cliff and take to the air. That’s what she needed — backup. With a quick twist of her wings, she aimed for the strip of white sandy beach where she’d wanted to sleep the night before. The other three could stay safely in the cave. She and Clay together could handle this SeaWing.
    She hoped.
    “Wait!” her pursuer yelled. “Where are you going? What’s wrong?”
    Tsunami’s wings missed a beat, and she nearly dropped into the ocean. She swung around, hovering over the sea between the cliff and the beach. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Clay veer into a circle in the air, waiting to see what she would do.
    The other SeaWing paused as well. He kept the length of two dragons between him and her. The scratches on his snout were bleeding.
    “What’s wrong?” Tsunami cried indignantly. “Didn’t you just attack me?”
    “I certainly did not!” he protested. Glowing lines flickered along his snout. “I thought you — that’s the normal —” He seemed to be getting more and more embarrassed. “
You
said you liked me!” he finally burst out.
    “I didn’t say anything of the sort,” Tsunami said, astonished.
    The SeaWing’s brow furrowed. “You very clearly said you liked me, and you’d followed me all the way out here to tell me that.”
    Tsunami just about fell out of the sky. “You are a delusional squid-brain,” she cried.
    “Well, maybe not in those exact words!” he said. “All right, it was a little confusing. Maybe a lot confusing. But the message was in there. And why else would you be chasing me?”
    “When, exactly, do you imagine I said all this?” Tsunami demanded. “Shortly after you attacked me, perhaps?”
    The other dragon touched his snout gently and winced. “You were the only one doing any attacking,” he said. “
I
was being friendly after what
you
said.”
    “Stop,” Tsunami said. Maybe she’d misunderstood his actions. Maybe his approach had been a SeaWing greeting ritual she didn’t know. In which case . . . his poor snout. She winced guiltily. Perhaps she shouldn’t have gotten defensive so quickly. “Tell me exactly what you think I said.”
    He sighed. “I said, ‘What are you doing all the way out here?’ and you said —” He paused, rubbing his front talons against his head. “You said, ‘Hey, sparkling teeth, I totally love three of your claws but not the others, and I wish your nose was a herring so I could eat it, and also your wings sound like sharks snoring.’ ”
    Tsunami burst out laughing.
    “All right, I get it,” she said, although she didn’t really. Did all SeaWings have a strange sense of humor? Would she have to develop one, too? “You’re making this up.”
    He stared at her. “Are you seriously going to pretend you didn’t say any of that?”
    “Of course I didn’t,” Tsunami said. Maybe he wasn’t kidding. Maybe he was mentally unbalanced. “I didn’t say anything at all — we were underwater, remember?”
    The strange dragon hovered for several wingbeats, glowing stripes lighting up along his blue scales. His face slowly went from confused to angry as he frowned at her.
    “Who are you?” he demanded.
    “I’m a SeaWing,” she said hotly. “Just like you, so no need to get hostile.”
    “A SeaWing who doesn’t speak Aquatic?” he growled. “Not likely. What are you really? How did you make yourself look like a SeaWing?”
    Tsunami’s heart sank.
Aquatic?
    SeaWings have their own language?
    Of course they do,
she realized. It felt like the tide was going out inside her, leaving nothing but stretches of bare sand.
And of course nobody ever bothered to teach it to me. Just one more creative way the Talons found to ruin my life.
    Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Three moons, she was as