Wings of Fire: The Kingdom of the Sea | ✔️

~ The Kingdom of the Sea: Chapter 1 ~

"Sand. Quite a pleasant change from rocks, don't you think?"

Glory stretched as the others landed on the beach beside her. The sun was high in the sky, warming Hare's scales.

Tsunami took in a deep breath.

"Do you guys smell that?"

"What, fish?" Starflight said, crinkling his nose.

"Freedom," Tsunami corrected.

Hare walked to the edge of the beach and allowed the water to lap up over her claws. It was nice. It was a lot better to have something soft under her talons after living with rocks scraping against her claws.

As long as that something soft wasn't once living.

Hare shuddered. She didn't want to think about that right now. She couldn't think about that right now. Her friends were free, that was what mattered.

"We should stay under the cover of the trees," Starflight said.

"Go back into hiding now that we're finally free?" Glory stretched her wings. "No, thank you."

Kestrel, their guardian, stretched and shook out her wings. "There's no harm in being careful," she said.

"We're not hiding in the trees," Tsunami snapped. She leaned her head over to stare into the water. A moment later, she plunged her head in. Through the ripples, Hare could see her clamp her jaws around something. She pulled her head up, a fish flopping between her teeth. Tsunami bit down hard, making the fish go limp.

"Nothing here is anywhere near big enough to eat," Clay huffed, flopping down on the sand. "All the fish are just little wriggle-scraps. What good are those?"

"You'll last a little bit," Sunny teased, nudging him with her wing.

"Seriously," Starflight said. "We need to hide. The SkyWings and MudWings are searching for us. All of Burn's armies will be searching for Hare. We need to get into the trees."

Nobody paid him any mind. Even Kestrel now seemed uninterested in following through with his plan, even though she occasionally looked up anxiously at the sky.

"Scarlet's probably dead," Tsunami pointed out, taking a bite from the fish. "There's no one for them to bring us back to."

"Sure there is," Starflight said. "The SkyWings have to have a queen. Remember Ruby? If Scarlet really is dead, which we can't be certain about because Clay survived a venom attack, Ruby will have taken her place as queen. I doubt she'd be too happy about us killing her mother. And what about Burn?"

"I don't want to be thrown back into the arena," Clay said, shuddering. "That place was awful."

Hare remembered the horrors of the arena. She'd never been put in, she was treated like a guest because her mother was Burn, who was allied with the SkyWings, but the things that went down in the ring chilled her down to her bones, Even Prince Copper, Queen Scarlet's youngest son and someone who'd watched the arena fights all his life, had been horrified by it.

Her father had been murdered in that ring.

Clay had nearly died in that ring.

Tsunami had become a murderer in that ring.

Hare had become a murderer in that ring.

She remembered the feeling of that IceWing's neck cracking between her teeth all too well. She'd done it to save Starflight's life, but it still felt wrong,

Too many dragons had been lost in the Sky Kingdom. Her father, Snow Goose, Horizon, Gill. Peril, Copper, and Rose had left. Asha had left to stay in the Mud Kingdom.