“Then bed Rapskal and be done with it,” the dragon suggested. Thymara was boring her. How could humans seriously believe that a dragon could be interested in the details of their lives? As well worry about a moth or a fish.

The keeper took the dragon’s comment as an excuse to keep talking. “Rapskal? I can’t. If I take him as a mate, I know that would ruin my friendship with Tats. Rapskal is handsome and funny . . . and a bit strange. But it’s a sort of strange that I like. And I think he truly cares about me, that when he pushes me to sleep with him, it’s not just for the pleasure.” She shook her head. “But I don’t want it, with either of them. Well, I do. If I could just have the physical part of it and not have it make everything else complicated. But I don’t want to take the chance of catching a child, and I don’t really want to have to make some momentous decision. If I choose one, have I lost the other? I don’t know what—”

“You’re boring me,” Sintara warned her. “And there are more important things you should be doing right now. Have you hunted for me today? Do you have meat to bring me?”

Thymara bridled at the sudden change of topic. She replied grudgingly, “Not yet. When the rain lets up, I’ll go. There’s no game moving right now.” A pause, and then she broached another dangerous subject. “Mercor said you would fly. Were you trying? Have you exercised your wings today, Sintara? Working on the muscles is the only way that you will ever—”

“I have no desire to flap around on the beach like a gull with a broken wing. No desire to make myself an object of mockery.” Even less desire to fail and fall into the icy, swift-flowing river and drown. Or overestimate her skills and plummet into the trees as Baliper had done. His wings were so swollen that he could not close them, and he’d torn a claw from his left front foot.

“No one mocks you! Exercising your wings is a necessity, Sintara. You must learn to fly; all of the dragons must. You all have grown since we left Cassarick, and it is becoming impossible for me to kill enough game to keep you well fed, even with the larger game that we’ve found here. You will have to hunt for your own food, and to do that, you must be able to fly. Would not you rather be one of the first dragons to leave the ground than one of the last ones?”

That thought stung. The idea that the smaller females such as Veras or Fente might gain the air before she did was intolerable. It might actually be easier for such stunted and scrawny creatures to fly. Anger warmed her blood, and she knew the liquid copper of her eyes would be swirling with emotion. She’d have to kill them, that was all. Kill them before either one could humiliate her.