The Lost Heir (book)

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The Lost Heir is the second book in the New York Times bestselling series Wings of Fire, and was published on January 1st, 2013. It features Tsunami as its main protagonist, who turns out to be the lost SeaWing Princess. It follows The Dragonet Prophecy and precedes The Hidden Kingdom.

This entire book takes place in the Kingdom of the Sea.

The title refers to Princess Tsunami, the lost heir to the SeaWing throne. In an early draft of the book it was called The Last Heir, and Tui also debated on calling the book The Princess Murders, but ultimately decided on the final title.

Summary
The lost heir to the SeaWing throne is coming home at last …

She couldn't believe it was finally happening. Tsunami and her fellow dragonets of destiny began their journey under the water to the great SeaWing Kingdom. Stolen as an egg from the Royal Hatchery, Tsunami felt eager to meet her future subjects and reunite with her mother, Coral.

But Tsunami's triumphant return didn't go quite the way she imagined. Queen Coral welcomed her with open wings, but a mysterious assassin had been killing the queen's heirs for years, and Coral was worried that Tsunami might be the next target. The dragonets came to the SeaWings for protection, but this ocean hides secrets, betrayal, and perhaps even death.

Dedication
For Jonathan and his magnificent SeaWing costume.

Quote on the back
Tsunami burst into the air and kept beating her wings to rise into the sky. In the distance, she could see the cliff-side cave and the worried faces of her friends poking out.

An enormous splash sounded behind her. The other SeaWing surged out of the ocean. His massive tail whacked the water twice as he lifted off into the air, sending giant waves rushing in all directions.

He looked even bigger out here in the air. His hooked claws gleamed sharply in the sunlight. His dark blue eyes were fixed on her wings.

The first true citizen of her kingdom she'd ever met, and he was coming to kill her.

Prologue
The prologue began with Webs, the day after the dragonets escaped the SkyWings, emerging from a river. He became aware that he was surrounded by seven members of the Talons of Peace. Three of the dragons were Nautilus, a male SeaWing and the leader of the Talons; Cirrus, a male IceWing; and Crocodile, a female MudWing. After Webs informed them of what befell the dragonets, they conversed amongst themselves with Webs still there, and he heard about The Backup Plan (although they never clarified what that plan was). Then, on Nautilus' orders, Cirrus claimed that he was going to rip Webs' heart out and feed it to the fish (which Webs found ironic since he had just eaten a fish himself). However, Crocodile knocked the two unconscious and as Webs flew away she described Queen Coral as a good queen and had then encouraged him to return to the Kingdom of the Sea.

Part 1: The Edge of the Ocean
The story started with Tsunami standing on a beach, with her friends behind her. Starflight attempted to order the others back under the trees, as he was worried they would be spotted by passing dragons, but no one listened to him. He reminded them of the dragons that were searching for them after Glory possibly killed Scarlet and they escaped from the SkyWing Palace. Clay began to complain about the tiny fish in the shallow water instead of big ones while Tsunami and Starflight started arguing. Sunny reacted by asking Clay to intervene. Glory then teases Clay about him being a "bigwings." Clay explained that they should get to the SeaWings as fast as possible, to be safe. Starflight then heard wingbeats and started to panic. Tsunami was doubtful of the sounds of wingbeats, not being able to hear them herself, and thought Starflight was overreacting. Then Sunny chimed in and said that she heard them, too, and smelled smoke.

Tsunami dove into the water upon seeing a patrol of SkyWings approaching. Sunny chased after Starflight, while Clay encountered a mud shelf while Glory camouflaged in with the sand. The SkyWings bolted past, but the last one stopped and looked around. Tsunami, thinking she saw Sunny, attacked the dragon. Clay flew to Tsunami's aid soon after she attacked, and helped drag the SkyWing into the ocean. After the soldier passed out, Tsunami and Clay hauled him onto the beach. There, Clay attempted to revive him, much to Glory's displeasure. The others soon arrived and lectured Tsunami for attacking the soldier without needing to. Starflight then requested for Tsunami and Clay to go get a fallen tree, which they placed on the soldier's shoulders. They covered his eyes with leaves, and began to fly inland, "just in case." As they left, Tsunami glanced over her shoulder for a long moment at the sea. She felt regret because of the dragonet's annoyance with her and then that they started listening to Starflight.

Four days later, Tsunami woke up on an island in the Bay of a Thousand Scales. She contemplated the recent events concerning Starflight. Then she jumped into the ocean. She fought the currents to the next island, where she spotted a SeaWing. She watched him as he interacted with another SeaWing. The second SeaWing then left and Tsunami caught up with the first one. He first seemed startled to see her. She pointed to the surface and the SeaWing swam away. Tsunami chased him and pinned him after he head-slammed into a whale. The dragon flashed his stripes at Tsunami. Tsunami responded in kind, causing the dragon to look confused. She reached the surface, and the other SeaWing followed momentarily and flashed his stripes again. Tsunami imitated him and he lunged for her. Tsunami then attacked him and flew back to her friends. The SeaWing followed her and asked what was wrong. Tsunami then told him that he attacked her, but he denied the accusation. He then informed Tsunami that she said she liked him. He claimed that Tsunami said, quote, "Hey, sparkling teeth, I 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 in response. The SeaWing told her to leave because he thought that a SeaWing that does not know Aquatic is not a SeaWing. Then he attacked Clay, whom he had mistaken for an enemy. Tsunami then set him straight a few points (after Sunny attempted to stop the SeaWing) by telling them that the five of them were the dragonets of destiny.

The SeaWing then revealed his name to be Riptide. He asked about Webs, and Tsunami told him a few things. He then offered to go inform Queen Coral because he didn't want to bring Tsunami's friends to the hidden Summer Palace. Tsunami refused, saying, "How would she feel if you told her you met her missing daughter and did not bring her to the palace?" In response, Riptide started to protest, but again, Tsunami insisted on ongoing and bringing her friends. Riptide then placed seaweed on Clay and Sunny, serving as a blindfold. The six dragons then flew over the sea and towards the Summer Palace. They met Commander Shark, Tsunami's uncle, Queen Coral's brother, and Chief of Defense. Tsunami acted defensively towards him, not believing he was very trustworthy. Shark ordered the soldiers to kill the dragonets and bring Tsunami to the Palace. Tsunami knocked one soldier out of the air and told Shark to bring all five of them to the palace. They swam underwater for a long time, surfacing occasionally to breathe in a semi-aquatic tunnel entrance, modified for Blister's rare visits.

Part 2: Into the Deep
As Tsunami emerges from the water, she notices all the blue and green SeaWings staring at her. She remembers the stripes on her wings that Riptide mentioned earlier and lights them up. She then tries an "I'm home!" speech but ends up embarrassing herself. Riptide leads the dragonets to the top of the pavilion, a stone structure twelve stories tall. Riptide explains that each level has a different purpose. After they reached the top level, Riptide informs the dragonets that an animus SeaWing designed it by animating the stone to grow into its shape. Minutes later, Queen Coral arrives. Tsunami is thrilled to see her mother but is shocked to see another dragonet with royal stripes on her wings with the queen. Riptide tells Tsunami that the dragonet is her sister, Anemone.

Tsunami growls at Starflight and asks why he didn't know about Anemone. He claims that the scroll, The Royal Lineage of the SeaWings: From the Scorching to the Present, was old and outdated. Glory notices this and comments on the situation. Before Tsunami can even react, Queen Coral lands and embraces her, quoting the homecoming scene of The Missing Princess. Anemone complains that her claws hurt. Coral then explains to Anemone that Tsunami is the dragonet that she lost six years ago. Tsunami introduces herself, and Coral asks about Webs. Coral notices and proceeds to shout at Clay saying, "WHY IS THERE A MUDWING IN MY SUMMER PALACE?" Tsunami explains by saying that Clay is her friend, as a Dragonet of Destiny. Coral then orders the guards to place the dragonets in Blister's cave with a guard. Coral tells Tsunami that the other dragonets will be fine. Tsunami tells Coral about how Webs never let her near the ocean or taught her Aquatic. Outraged, Coral states that she will execute him.

Coral gives Tsunami a strand of smooth white pearls, claiming that "I have to start making up for all the gifts I missed giving you." Tsunami notices dark stains on Coral's claws. Coral calls them "the perils of my job! Well, my hobby, anyway. My art, you might call it." Coral then takes Tsunami to the 8th level of the pavilion, the library. Coral then introduces Tsunami to Whirlpool, claiming that he will make a fine king someday. Tsunami then notices Anemone quickly hide a hopeful expression, and wonders how much the little dragonet could clear up. Coral explains that she loves to write and gives Tsunami four scrolls 'for her to read tonight.' One of them is The Missing Princess. Tsunami then informs Coral how that scroll is her favorite. "Really?" Coral asks. "I wrote it for you!"

Just then, a SeaWing bearing a resemblance to Shark appears. Coral identifies her as Moray, Tsunami's cousin. Moray kisses up to the queen for a moment before explaining that there is a dead SkyWing a few islands from the Summer Palace. Coral immediately goes to see the body, with Shark, Moray, Tsunami, Anemone, and another dragon, Piranha, close behind. When they reach the island, Tsunami is exhausted from swimming. She then looks down at the dead dragon. Shock quickly subsides to disbelief. The dead SkyWing is Kestrel, one of their old guardians. Someone has murdered her.

Tsunami is met with conflicting thoughts back to the Summer Palace. She eventually decides to go see her friends tomorrow and tell them everything then. Coral returns from a war meeting with Anemone. The three SeaWings fly to a waterfall and swim under it. There, is an underwater bedroom. Tsunami collapses into her bed and falls asleep. She wakes up the next morning to find Anemone watching her. Startled, Tsunami fears that Anemone was trying to kill her. Anemone signals for her to be quiet then tries to say something in Aquatic, forgetting that Tsunami never learned to speak the language. Anemone tries again and remembers, frustrated. Tsunami inspects the harness, which she guesses grew with her. Anemone signals Tsunami to follow her to the surface, which Anemone in barely able to reach. She expresses her relief that Tsunami is home, claiming that, "Maybe you can make her less crazy, or maybe she'll set me free now that she has you." Anemone claims that she is happy she no longer has to marry Whirlpool, but Tsunami says no to the prospect of marrying that dragon. She also states that she does not have the time to get married.

Tsunami asks a few more questions, which Anemone hurriedly answers so that the two sisters can return to their beds before Coral wakes up. When the Queen does awaken, she gives another strand of pearls to Tsunami, these purple and oddly shaped. The three of them then go to the Council meeting on the 6th floor of the pavilion. Tsunami is given the pool marked "Dragonet Care" to sit in, as its occupant, Tortoise, is absent.

After embarrassing herself by eating before Coral's permission, Coral begins to discuss rescuing Gill, the SeaWing king. Unknown by the Council or the queen, he was killed by Tsunami in the SkyWing arena. Tsunami soon learns after a confession from Coral that Gill was Tsunami's father. She feels incredibly guilty after the meeting is dismissed, wanting to be alone. But Whirlpool insists on giving her an Aquatic lesson. After learning nothing from it, she goes out to the island that looks like a dragon skeleton and meets Riptide there. He gives her a proper lesson in which she learned basic Aquatic and she returns to the palace.

While swimming through the tunnel, a dragon attacks her. She manages to fight off her attacker but didn't see who it was. Riptide shows up and asks if she is okay. In Aquatic, she says 'alright' and heads in to alert her mother. Queen Coral is reading to a bored Anemone of how she chose Gill to be her husband. Tsunami informs her that someone attacked her and Coral becomes concerned about her eggs. She gathers her council and they head to the Deep Palace.

They head inside to the hatchery. Tsunami sees the statue of Orca, which she knows is her dead sister. She hears Coral's roar of fury and sees the limp body of the blue hatchling. Coral exits the hatchery and Tsunami picks up the last egg, believing and swearing to protect it. Queen Coral is attacking the failed dragonet care council member Tortoise. She kills her and spots Tsunami with the egg. She beckons her to hand it over but Tsunami refuses and flashes her stripes saying I will protect and pointing to the egg. Coral heads to the surface with Anemone and Tsunami and they argue about the egg. Coral eventually gives in and Tsunami gets a harness for the egg, but it doesn't fit. Anemone touches it and it shrinks to the egg and her size.

Tsunami swims back to the Summer Palace in a storm, worried about her friends. She gets lost, but eventually finds Riptide, who shows her the way. She meets up with her friends in the caves and finds that someone has chained up Clay. She convinces some guards to hand over the key to unlocking him and they fly into a dry cave. Tsunami gives Sunny the egg, to keep it warm with Sunny's warm body heat that all SandWings possess.

The dragonets awoke to find a SandWing watching them sleep. The SandWing is Princess Blister, one of the rival sisters. Tsunami and the dragonets come to breakfast after Blister convinces Coral they should come. Tsunami loudly announces that Lagoon and Shark disobeyed Coral, getting them locked in the underwater dungeon. They then talk about Kestrel, who Tsunami had forgotten to mention to her friends about. In the commotion, Blister backs Tsunami up by saying it could be shocking seeing the dead body of someone you knew. Then she says "especially when you've wanted to slash her throat yourself once or twice in your lifetime — right, Tsunami?". Tsunami wonders how Blister knew Kestrel's throat was slashed when only a stabbing was mentioned. Starflight also catches Blister's mistake.

Blister then wants to see their "secret weapon" and Tsunami follows them. Whirlpool takes a strand of pearls and tells Anemone to make it crawl across the room. On her second try, she obeys and Tsunami realizes she is an animus. Blister and Coral go off to talk privately and Anemone makes the pearls go off the edge, causing Whirlpool to follow. Anemone explains that every time an animus uses their powers, they lose a bit of themselves, and she's scared for that to happen. Blister and Coral finish conversing but they then hear a noise from the canopy.

Blister flies up to see what the noise is and grabs a dragon, Webs, out of the canopy, leaving a hole. Coral is still angry at Webs and she attacks him, throwing him off the edge. Tsunami found herself trying to save him, and Clay helps. They land on the library level and the other dragonets follow. Coral questioned why she would save him and she lies saying they could use him for information about the Talons of Peace. Webs wakes and Coral forces him to explain how he got into the hatchery. He said he drugged the guards with help from his wife. Queen Coral says she put his wife in battle, and "too bad that first battle was such a bloodbath." Coral then wanted information about the Talons of Peace. Tsunami is upset that Coral didn't seem to care that a dragonet's life was ruined. Starflight then says that Webs saved her life by stealing her egg because she would have been murdered as well. Urchin then comes and announces that they found a dragon outside of the palace. They bring him in, and it's Riptide.

Tsunami admits she has been taking Aquatic lessons from Riptide, and not Whirlpool. Coral suspects he is working for the Talons of Peace and Tsunami claims it's a lie. Blister cuts in and say that Riptide and Webs were working together to kill the heirs to the throne to use Tsunami as a bargaining chip. Coral is excited by this idea and believes it. Starflight then explains that it wouldn't work, because the murders started two years before they stole Tsunami's egg, and Webs couldn't have flown there and back whenever he wanted to kill a dragonet. Coral and Tsunami make a deal; she would let Riptide go if she caught the murderer. Tsunami realizes Blister wants Webs dead, but for unknown reasons.

Part 3: Out of the Egg
Tsunami is in the pitch-black hatchery. She hears a scraping noise and notices Orca's statue moving. The statue attacks her and cuts one of her gills. It then steps on her and breaks some of her ribs. Tsunami fights back and yanks out its eyes, which does not affect it. She grabs the narwhal spear while it looks for its eyes. The statue attempts to walk over her to the egg as Tsunami realizes that an animus enchanted the statue. While she is thinking, the statue leaps at her and she stabs the spear into its chest. She notices that it crumbles a bit, and gets the idea to trap it. She lodges the spear into the statue's mouth and jammed the other end into a crevice. The statue attempts to escape but Tsunami grabs the egg just as it breaks open. A little green head with dark green eyes blinks at Tsunami, and she says hello in Aquatic. She swims over to the door and opens it. The statue freezes. Tsunami has a theory of who enchanted it; she believes it was Orca.

Later, Tsunami names the newly hatched dragonet Auklet. Tsunami questions Starflight of why he's favoring Blister all of the sudden, and he doesn't answer. Coral, Anemone, and Blister arrive and say Orca's statue was destroyed. Tsunami still believes that Shark attacked her in the tunnel. Clay says that they are leaving, but Blister claims that she wants the dragonets to choose her as the SandWing queen. She nearly says the NightWings want her, but she corrects herself. Blister almost says to Coral that Tsunami killed Gill, but Starflight says that Blister killed Kestrel, and doesn't care about her daughters at all. Coral, unsure of who to believe, scoops up Auklet and Anemone and flies away after she orders the guards to take the dragonets. The dragonets are thrown in prison.

The prisons are islands with water flowing from the ceiling around them. In the water are electric eels that the prisoners are afraid of getting shocked by. Starflight, aware of this, pulls Tsunami back from the waterfall and explains the eels to the group. Sunny says that she hears wingbeats and Glory spots someone. It turns out to be an unharnessed Anemone, and for Tsunami, Anemone enchants a spear to find her attacker. It turns out to be Whirlpool. He is impressed and admits that he wanted Tsunami dead so he could marry Anemone. Then he muses that he could marry Auklet, and inform Blister of this "development" of Anemone's powers. Anemone swings the spear across Whirlpool's head and he falls into the moat. Anemone didn't mean to do it, but she was just angry. The eels give out a full shock that killed him. Tsunami takes a chance and jumps through the waterfall. Then, she opens the cage and frees them. She then asks Anemone to come with them, but she refuses. Sunny hear the wingbeats again, and a firebomb is dropped through the canopy. Tsunami then frees Riptide and Webs.

Crocodile, a MudWing, claims that she followed Webs to the palace. She has brought an attack with her from Burn's alliance. Glory shoots venom into her eyes, and Crocodile is presumed dead. Tsunami spots her mother and Anemone, who are throwing the scrolls into the water to keep them from burning. Riptide joins in the defense of the palace. The dragonets escape the palace, but as they do, Blister stabs Webs with her tail. It misses his heart but still poisons him. Tsunami has an idea to go to the RainWings. The chapter ends with her thought, "So the Kingdom of the Sea wasn't my home after all. I wonder if anywhere ever will be."

Epilogue
Morrowseer and Blister are discussing the future of the dragonets. Nautilus is called to them, and he tells them of his Backup Plan. He has a group of false dragonets of destiny made up the offspring of his fellow Talons. When discussing this plan, Morrowseer suggests that they can combine the best options from each group. Blister demands that Tsunami and Starflight be deposed for the new Dragonets. Morrowseer agrees and says that they may be able to keep Clay. He also states that he has already hired an assassin, which is revealed to be Deathbringer in The Hidden Kingdom. It is most likely that he also planned to kill off Glory since he planned to have her killed previously. It is unknown whether he wanted to replace Sunny as well. The false group of Dragonets included: Ochre the MudWing, Squid the SeaWing, Flame the SkyWing, Fatespeaker the NightWing, and Viper the SandWing.

Trivia

 * Even though The Dragonet Prophecy says that Tsunami has translucent green eyes, The cover has them as pale blue.
 * Tui T. Sutherland had debated on calling this book The Princess Murders and on the Pre-Final Cover it was called The Last Heir.
 * Tsunami's royal patterns do not appear on her wings on the cover.