Prologue: Hvitur the IceWing has successfully managed to steal a dragonet egg from the Sky Kingdom for the prophecy, and is now flying towards the cave where the five eggs will be raised. His victory is very short lived, as the malevolent Queen Burn knows of his theft and captures both him and the egg. As Burn muses on his motives, she notes that Hvitur must be a member of "The Talons of Peace", a group of dragons dedicated to ending the war between all the tribes. Hvitur pleads with Burn, but ultimately both he and the egg are killed. Much later in the night, two other members of the Talons of Peace, Kestrel and Webs, happen upon his corpse and worry about what happens next. Webs decides to steal a RainWing egg from the rainforest in order to fufill the prophecy.
Part one: We flash-forward to six years later, where our point-of-view character Clay, is fighting his temperamental "teacher" Kestrel as a training excercise. He notes that Kestrel desires him to return to a feral state he was apparently born in. Being the All-Loving Hero he is, he simply cannot do it, even when he tries to imagine his friends in trouble. As he's about to defeated and choked unconscious (as usual), he is granted a reprieve is distracted by his friend (and adoptive sibling) Tsunami, biting a scale off of Kestrel's tail.
Kestrel is disapponted and leaves, leaving Tsunami and Clay alone. They talk for a while, discussing about their families. Tsunami theorizes that she's a long-lost heir to the SeaWing throne, while Clay talks about how much he misses his parents and hopes to meet them one day. Tsunami suggests that the dragonets escape the cave they've been trapped in for their whole lives, despite it being two years until the propchecy is fated to happen.
As Clay exits, literally licking his wounds, he is jumpscared by Sunny the SandWing, who quickly establishes herself as an overenthusiastic little-sister type dragonet. As Sunny talks, Clay takes a moment to reflect on Sunny's odd and tiny appearance, noting that it doesn't matter to him.
Later that evening, the dragonets meet with their other friends; Glory the RainWing, and Starflight the NightWing. Glory was originally not supposed to be the prophecy, causing her to recieve a lot of abuse from Kestrel. Due to this, she is snarky and grumpy most of the time. Starflight is a geeky, shy bookworm who often annoys the others with his passion for anything intellectually-inclined.
The five dragonets do a dramatic, So Bad, It's Good re-enactment of how the war started. Afterwards, they find out that Morrowseer, the nightwing that wrote the prophecy, will come visit the cave the next day.
Tsunami and Clay are able to overhear this in the underwater lake. When Morrowseer arrived he yelled at Glory for being a replacement and not truly worthy. Tsunami complained about their harsh treatment and got attacked by Morrowseer, being saved by Clay and Sunny, who he deems 'acceptable'. He calls Starflight in for a private meeting, after leaving, the guardians scolded Tsunami for her behavior, chaining her. Tsunami tells Clay to spy on the guardians. Clay overhears them planning to kill Glory, after telling the other dragonets, the group decides to send him down the underground river to get to the entrance and allow everyone to escape.
Clay tries to follow the stream, but gets knocked unconscious, Tsunami wakes him up, revealing she had managed to escape. They go over a waterfall, and Clay saves her from a deadly fall. They encounter a scavenger with treasure, who gets killed by Queen Scarlet. Tsunami attacks her tail and both of the dragonets manage to escape. They go back to free the others, but Scarlet follows them and uses her army to take them hostage, killing Dune in the process. Webs is the only one who manages to escape.
Part two: The dragonets are chained over an arena. A skywing called Peril flies over to Clay and gives him food, he vomits because it reminds him of Dune's death. She said she was excited to finally fight a mudwing and especially a nightwing.
The next day, Peril faces off against a sandwing. Scarlet reveals Glory, treating her as art and not a living being. A single touch from Peril burns the sandwing who decides to quickly die rather than suffer, disappointing Peril.
Peril tells Clay about her past, how she was born with too much fire and killed her brother and got abandoned by her mother. She told him that Starflight was next in line to fight, so he asks her to convince Scarlet to put him in his place, she reluctantly agrees.
Clay, Tsunami and Starflight are taken to Scarlet's throne room, she asks who can take on an icewing. Clay ends up facing the icewing and tries to convince him to spare him, but fails. The icewing pins him to the ground and Tsunami distracts everyone. A strange substance hits the ice wing's eye, killing him. Causing Clay to be declared the winner.
Peril visits Clay again and agrees to tell him where Sunny is if he does something for her, he agrees, so she tells him that Scarlet won't let her attend the trial tomorrow and tells him to hide her. Clay realizes that the trial was Kestrel's and that she could be Peril's mother. It's revealed at the trial that Kestrel was ordered to join the breeding program, birthing an egg with two dragonets, she was ordered to kill both, but refused and tried to escape. Scarlet said she would be spared if she killed one of them, Kestrel 'killed' the male one, but Scarlst changed her mind, Kestrel tried to escape with Peril but couldn't due to her firescales. Peril angrily flings herself into the arena, using the champion's shield to take Kestrel's place in the arena.
That night, Clay tries to communicate with Peril by playing the dragonets' song. Every prisoner joins in. Scarlet takes him, Starlight and Tsunami to Peril's room and kicks her out. She creates a barrier of fire to prevent them from leaving. They see Peril and escape with her help. They notice Sunny across the main hall, but Peril betrays them by leading Scarlet to them. Clay finds out he's immune to Peril's fire due to the blood egg.
The day after, Tsunami was taken into the arena and faced an insane seawing, Gill, and wins. Starflight was next, but they refused to fight, so they have to kill a group of scavengers. They killed them, but Scarlet tried to make them kill a group of icewings, but Morrowseer brought his nightwings and killed them and took Starflight. Scarlet, angered by this, makes Clay fight Peril in the arena. Clay manages to pin Peril down thanks to his immunity. Glory spits vemon at Scarlet's face, disfiguring her and scaring everyone away.
Clay, Tsunami, Glory and Peril manage to escape into the main hall. There, they free Sunny and argue about whether or not they should save Kestrel. They decide to save her and Kestrel tells them where their eggs were taken from. After Kestrel leaves, they decide to try and find Clay's parents in the Mud kingdom.
Part three: Clay, Tsunami, Glory and Sunny use their skills to glide down a river. They come across a field with dead icewings and mudwings. Clay and Glory continue, while Tsunami and Sunny stay back.
They encounter mudwings training and Clay finds his mother, Cattail. She tells him she didn't care about him and sold him to the guardians for two cows.
Clay and Glory encounter the former's siblings, who explain that he is their bigwings and that the feral state he was supposedly born in was actually him trying to help his siblings out of their eggs. They leave, and encounter Starflight, who says that Queen Coral would be excited to meet her daughter Tsunami at the Sea kingdom.
Epilogue: Morrowseer, Blister and Kestrel meet up. Morrowseer informs Blister that he plans to use Starflight to persuade the other dragonets to choose Blister as queen. Kestrel is confused and asks them what they're talking about. Blister insults her, claiming she isn't very useful to them, Morrowseer doubles down. Kestrel tries to retaliate, but is killed by Blister.
Tropes in this book
- Broken Pedestal: Clay is pretty disheartened to realize his mother, his (allegedly) only familial tie, actively sold him to the Talons of Peace and didn't want him.
- Peril is nothing short of furious when she learns Queen Scarlet lied to her about her mother trying to kill her and being dead all this time. Also, she's not happy at learning her mother Kestrel is Maternally Challenged and hasn't exactly been kindly to her surrogate "children" either.
- Establishing Character Moment: Both book and graphic novel show Scarlet's true colors in but the first few moments. The book has her bite off the head of the scavenger Clay and Tsunami find, despite that these little creatures are endangered. The graphic novel has her sad*stically grab Clay's claw very roughly when he tries to peacefully return her stolen treasure.
- Everybody Has Standards: Kestrel is a callous jerk towards the dragonets at best and an abusive guardian at worst. But when she hears Scarlet accuse her before Peril she probably wished she killed her, Kestrel is livid and is steaming mad at such a twisted lie.
- Ironic Hatchday: Scarlet intended her hatchday to be the best (and bloodiest) she had ever had. Well, she got one right, as her hatchday is one Humiliation Conga. First Tsunami ends up being favored in the arena (much to Scarlet's chagrin), then Tsunami and Starflight defy fighting in the arena, and then Morrowseer and the other Nightwings thwart her using Icewings to liven up the fight. It all comes to a head when her "artwork" (Glory) spits venom in her eyes, potentially killing her. Happy Hatchday, Scarlet.
- Laser-Guided Karma: For her overall cruelty to every dragon she touches, her "artwork" Glory sprays venom into Queen Scarlet's eyes, courtesy of Burn using her as a Dragon Shield. Whether she dies or not is up for debate at this point, but no doubt the experience was as unpleasant and nasty as her sad*stic personality.
- Maternally Challenged: According to Reed, Mudwing mothers are supposed to be like this. Their only purpose is to lay eggs and leave them be, leaving the eldest in the nest to raise their siblings. Justified, as their nests are highly protected anyway.
- Kestrel also has shades of this towards the Dragonets, as (according to Tsunami's dialogue) they aren't strangers to her being mean towards them. At best, she's only successful at keeping them alive and nothing else.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Played with. In order to stay in Scarlet's good graces, Glory pretends she's but a "lazy and stupid rainwing" so the Skywing Queen would use her for living "art" and leave her be. When the right moment comes up, Glory drops the act and spits venom into Scarlet's eyes.
- Stranger in a Familiar Land: Downplayed. On one hand, the Mud Kingdom's swampy environment delights Clay, who finds he's suited for wallowing in mud. On the other hand, Clay only entertains the idea of being his estranged siblings' long lost "big wings" before he contemplates the downsides. Although he'd be among his own kind and his long-lost kin, it would mean never seeing the dragonets again, having to fight in the war alongside them, and even take up the accountability of losing any (if not all) of his siblings to battle.
