Let’s take a trip to the penultimate book of arc three: The Dangerous Gift. Spoilers ahead!
Queen Snowfall does not want the strange dragons to stay in the Ice Kingdom, so she intimidates them with an army she hid using one of the animus gifts: the Gift of Stealth. Along with another IceWing named Lynx, Snowfall escorts the refugees from her kingdom. First, they stop on the west beach of the Kingdom of Sand; then, they make their way to a town called Sanctuary, located in the Sky Kingdom. There, Snowfall finds and confronts her sister, who is sneaking around.
In part two of the Dangerous Gift, Sanctuary and Scavengers, Snowfall learns that Crystal left the Ice Kingdom because she was in love with a MudWing. The queens of the other six Pyrrhian tribes will arrive in Sanctuary to hold a council, but first, Winter asks her to keep an eye on his scavenger, Pumpkin, who seems to be trying to escape. While she’s at Winter’s scavenger enclosure, a SkyWing named Sky distracts Snowfall, and when he leaves, Snowfall realizes that Pumpkin has escaped. The IceWing Queen chases Sky, and when she catches up with him, she meets Wren, a scavenger who can talk to dragons. She also learns that Pumpkin’s actual name is Daffodil. The queens hold their council and decide to send one dragon from each tribe to Pantala in an attempt to stop the Breath of Evil.
Snowfall then returns home to the Ice Kingdom and destroys the Great Ice Cliff on the way. When she enters the palace, she finds her little sister on the throne; everyone thinks Snowfall isn’t coming back. She takes her sister with her and destroys the Wall, shattering centuries of IceWing tradition.
Throughout the Dangerous Gift, the Gift of Vision gives Queen Snowfall magic visions of other dragons. The first one is of a SilkWing named Atala, flying across the ocean to Pyrrhia. At first, she assumes it is just a weird dream, but after some asking around, she begins to believe that the Gift of Vision gave her a vision. She sees into the minds of multiple dragons, including Blue, Bryony, and a human named Raven.
As she has these visions, Snowfall begins to feel empathetic about the dragons trapped on Pantala and wants to help them. She also learns that most dragons aren’t evil. Using literal magic, Tui Sutherland was able to give Queen Snowfall a solid character arc..
The Dangerous Gift emphasizes the fact that scavengers (humans) are sentient and have thoughts and feelings. One way this is shown is the character of Wren. Wren is a scavenger who grew up with Sky and has learned to speak the dragons’ language fluently. She helps to convince the queens that scavengers should not be eaten. Queen Snowfall also becomes a scavenger in one of her visions, allowing her to feel what it’s like to be one.