I hadn’t thought of it. I hadn’t considered it once, to be honest.
But the history of Europe had always included dragons. And knights. And lances. And lots and lots of stabbings through hearts.
I remembered what Rue had written about a drákon council and their rules about secrecy. Despite her obvious disdain for them, perhaps those rules had worked somewhere. Perhaps somewhere what was left of her tribe still existed, huddled and human-looking, like me.
But in a bottomless-pit-fearful part of me, I knew it wasn’t true.
Don’t worry about it. You’re not really even a dragon, are you? All you are is a girl who’s sometimes smoke. No one’s going to stab that.
I sat up. I dragged the pillow to my lap and bit my lip and stared hard into the darkness of my room. I hadn’t lit my lamp or candles.
Rain pelted the diamond window.
Just a girl. Just smoke.
It pelted my hands, then my arms as I opened the hinge.
Just an orphan. Just a guttersnipe. A nobody.
“No,” I said out loud. “I’m a dragon.”
For the second time ever, I Turned in the tower and flowed out the window, but I wasn’t headed for the stars or even Jesse’s cottage. I was going to the far woods, the ones that ended at the cliffs overlooking the sea, where no one lived, and no one worked, and no one would be.
Raindrops shot through me, but they didn’t hurt. I might well have been part of the mist that curled up from the ferns and grass, that reached wraithlike arms up through the boughs. I skimmed lower and lower until I was the same, except that the mist was wet and I was not. Smoke is always dry.
I didn’t really choose a place to Turn back. I was simply going until I wasn’t any longer, vapor until I wasn’t, and then I was standing in a small clearing. I was skin now. Definitely getting wet.
I looked up, blinking at the sting of the shower. I took in the clouds and the black crowns of trees encircling me, so much taller than I was. Branches shivered; water plopped to peat. Drenched bark gave off the scent of pungent wet wood. Mud and grass squelched soft between my toes.
I stretched my arms above my head. I tipped back my face to the elements and opened my mouth to drink in the storm.
Now, I thought, washed clean and cold. I’m ready now.
Since it was true, it happened.
Smoke came first, but only for a wink of a second, too quick for me to register anything like disappointment. Then smoke transformed into solid shape, and it was not my human one.
I was still standing in the clearing in the grass-threaded mud. Yet I was on four legs, not two. I blinked again at the rain beginning to bead upon my lashes, which had gone thick and were faintly shining. Looking around the clearing, I could tell that I stood higher up than before. Much higher. My neck was slender and long and I could bend it nearly all the way about to take in my body: also slender, also shining.
I was a dragon of gold, as if Jesse had touched me and transmuted me but not taken my life. I was sinuous and covered in lustrous golden scales, all the way almost to the tip of my tail, until they faded into purple.
I had a mane, too, mapping a line down my back. It looked like a ruff of silk or cut velvet. I folded my neck around almost double so that I could rub my chin on it. Silken, yes, but also jagged. Combing my chin through it sent quivers of pleasure down my spine.
Then I saw my wings. They were folded against my back, metallic. Without knowing how I did it, I opened them, using muscles I didn’t even have as a person. The ache of moving them for the first time felt delicious; I did it again to fully bask in it.
I had wings.
I don’t know how to describe what I felt then. I was amazed and afraid and boiling feral inside. I slashed my tail through the rain and realized that it was barbed when it hit an oak tree and I got stuck.
No problem. I pulled it out and danced around, delighted at the fresh, gaping hole in the trunk.
My new body came with a weapon. That pleased me.
I recalled my worry about my tongue splitting—which seemed