He towelled himself with the discarded garment as he walked back to Sedric. There was silvery scaling on his arms now, and sparkling drops of water clung to the black hairs on his forearms and chest. The hunter was grinning. ‘Oh, I think I’ve seen a thing or two as pretty as she is, copper man.’ He tossed his shirt to the ground and then sat down on the sand beside Sedric. He ran a finger up the line of scaling on Sedric’s bare back. Sedric gave a delighted shiver and in response, Carson put his arm around him and pulled him over to lean against him. The hunter rested his chin on Sedric’s head and said quietly, ‘Let’s nap while they do. And when we wake up, I’ll take you hunting.’

‘I don’t know how to hunt,’ Sedric admitted.

‘That’s why I’ll be teaching you,’ Carson explained. When he spoke, Sedric felt the words thrum through his chest.

‘Sounds like work,’ Sedric complained. ‘Messy, bloody work. What if I don’t want to learn it?’

‘Oh, these lazy Bingtown boys,’ Carson complained. He lay back on the sun-warmed sand, pulling Sedric over with him. The hunter put one arm over his face to shade his eyes.

His free hand found the hair on the back on Sedric’s head and his fingers twined gently through it. He sighed. ‘I guess I’ll just have to think of something else to teach you, then.’

Sedric sighed. He caught the hunter’s hand, brought it to his mouth and kissed the palm of it. ‘I might be open to that,’ he agreed.

Thymara sat on the edge of the grassy sward, right where it met the riverbank. It was a peculiar sort of place. Behind her was gently sloping, open, dry meadow, carpeted in tall green grass. And then the meadow stopped suddenly, and there was a sudden drop in the land, and then the sandy, rocky edge of the river. She had never even imagined such a place before. It pleased her to be sitting on the edge of that meadow world, dangling her legs. The sun was warm on her skin and it eased the deep ache in her back. She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sunlight. Warmth. Light and warmth felt so good to her now. She knew that the light and warmth were accelerating her changes. She could feel it now, the way she had once felt her teeth growing in. A pleasant, achy pain. She rolled her shoulders and felt her folded wings rub against the shirt that confined them. Sylve had helped her cut and hem slits in her shirt back, but it still felt odd to have them exposed. For most part of the time, she kept them covered. Everyone, she told herself, knew she had them. Sometimes it felt silly to cover them.

On the other hand, she thought to herself, everyone knew she had breasts. She covered those, too. She smiled slightly at the comparison. The boys seemed as intrigued by either.

She heard the swish of the grasses against his legs a moment before he sat down beside her.

‘So. What are you smiling about?’

‘Nothing, really.’ She opened her eyes and turned toward Tats. ‘What have you been up to?’

‘Helping Davvie learn how to care for Kalo. That is one big dragon.’

‘Does Fente mind your grooming Kalo?’

He smiled ruefully. ‘Not as much as Lecter does. Finally, I took him aside and told him plainly there was nothing to be jealous about. I was just helping Davvie with his dragon. I’m not interested in Davvie that way at all.’

She found herself smiling back at him. Things had become a bit easier between them of late. It felt almost to her as if they had gone back to being the friends they had been back in Trehaug. She studied him now, unabashedly considering how his scaling was progressing. ‘Fente is changing you fast,’ she observed. The dragon had not echoed her green in him, but had chosen instead bronzes and blacks. His scaling was fine, almost undetectable. Fente had outlined Tats’ eyes in black and bronzed his skin. She was keeping his hair and brows as they were. Thymara found herself nodding in approval of her choice. It seemed to her that most of the other dragons were changing their keepers in their own images. Fente had chosen to keep Tats as he was, right down to giving colour to the fading slave tattoos on his face.

‘She says it’s the warmth of the sun here, and the light. How about you? Has Sintara continued to change you?’

‘I continue to change,’ she said simply. Despite their confrontation in the river that day, nothing had been resolved. Sometimes that seemed the most surprising thing of all. The other keepers never quarrelled with their dragons. Their dragons seldom spoke harshly to them; they didn’t have to. The keepers knew they were harnessed with glamour, and didn’t care. But she and Sintara were not like that. They spoke their minds to one another, and she found that didn’t displease her. After their last crisis, their relationship had resumed as it had been before. Thymara tended the dragon and brought her food when her hunting went well. She enjoyed Sintara’s beauty, just as she would have enjoyed living in a fine house, just as she had once enjoyed the art and music of her neighbours in the Cricket Cages. She didn’t confuse that beauty with Sintara herself.

‘You’re quiet,’ Tats spoke carefully.

‘I’m thinking. That’s all.’

‘You think a lot lately.’

‘That’s true. I don’t think it’s a bad thing.’

‘I didn’t mean that it was.’

‘I know.’

He shifted unhappily and then sighed. ‘Thymara. Did I ruin everything between us?’

She turned to look at him and gave him a genuine smile. ‘No. Of course you didn’t. You just, well, actually, we just pushed it to a point where we had to talk about what would happen next. It wasn’t bad that we reached that point.’

‘But nothing happened next,’ Tats grumbled softly and looked away from her.

It made her smile. ‘Oh, something happened. It just wasn’t what you expected. I said “no” and I meant it. I still mean it, Tats. But it’s not about you. It’s about me dealing with what I’m becoming, and dealing with it one change at a time.’

He glanced over at her. His lashes were long and thick as they had always been. ‘Then it isn’t… forever. It’s just a decision for now.’

‘Tats,’ she began, but was interrupted when Rapskal flung himself down beside her. She jumped; she still wasn’t accustomed to him being back. A smile spread across her face of her own accord. It was incredibly good to have him back. Tats made a small sound in the back of his throat, but the smile he gave their friend was genuine.

‘So let’s see them!’ Rapskal greeted her.

‘See what?’

‘Your wings, of course! Everyone else has seen them but me. Take them out, I want to see them.’

‘Rapskal, they’re not, well, they’re not finished yet.’ She couldn’t think of what else to say. She wasn’t sure how to express what she meant to say, and then it came to her. ‘I’m not ready for people to see them yet.’

He turned his head to one side. Sunlight ran along the scaling along his jaw and she had to suppress the impulse to trace the same line with her fingers. He gave a confused shrug. ‘But people already saw them, in the river that day. Even I saw them, if only for a minute as we flew over. So it’s only fair if I get to see them now, because everyone else got a chance to see them then.’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Please.’

She tried to think if he’d ever said please to her before. If he had, it hadn’t sounded like that. She didn’t answer, but only reached over her shoulder to where the openings were cut in the back of her shirt. She began to grope for the tips of her wings.

‘Oh, I’ll help,’ he offered, and before she could refuse, she felt his fingers on her wingtips as he gently guided first one and then the other out of her shirt. His gentle touch put a shiver up her back and when she shook, she felt her wings suddenly quiver in response.

‘Ohhh,’ he said. ‘Open them. Let me see the pattern.’

She glanced at him. The expression on his face was rapt. She looked shyly at Tats. He was staring at her wings as if trying to grasp the concept that they were part of her now. ‘I’m still learning how to move them,’ she said quietly. Suddenly she wanted both of them to see her wings. She closed her eyes and focused on feeling the sunlight touching her wings. Sylve had been right, she suddenly decided. They were like fingers coming out of her back. Fingers, long fingers on hands she opened her eyes and looked down at her hands. She closed her fingers together and then, very slowly, aware of every muscle, every movement, she opened them.