Tanin sighed, head lowered. "We weren't meant to fight like this—with fists, with kicks." He lowered his voice to a whisper and held her shoulder. "We were meant to fight as dragons." His face lit up. "To fly. To blow fire. To bite with fangs and lash with claws."

Maev glanced around again, but if anyone heard, they gave no notice. "Well, last I checked, dragons are hunted with arrows, rocs, and poison." She shrugged. "Maybe I can't fly. Not if I want to live." She pounded the table. "But my fists are still strong. Now let me be. I'm eating. Go find some pretty shepherd's daughter to try to charm."

She turned her back on Tanin and tried to concentrate on her food. Yet her thoughts kept returning to the fight—to all her fights. Whenever she lay bloodied, fists raining down upon her, she wanted to shift into a dragon. Whenever she paced her canyon hideout, her brother and father and grandfather always nearby, she wanted to shift into a dragon. When she slept, she dreamed of flying. It was the magic of her family—some said the curse. All bore the dragon blood, the blood the world thought diseased.

Weredragons, they call us, Maev thought. Monsters to hunt.

She bit deep into a leg of lamb stewed in mint leaves, then chewed vigorously as if she could eat away the pain. Years ago, dragon hunters had killed her sister; they had poisoned sweet little Requiem in the fields. Everyone in the family dealt with that pain privately, desperately. Her father, Jeid Blacksmith, that huge grizzly bear of a man, had named their canyon home Requiem. He called it a new tribe, a safe haven for their kind, as if others existed in the world. Her grandfather, kindly old Eranor, dedicated himself to his gardens of herbs. Her brother cracked jokes, mocked her, mocked everyone; she knew it masked his pain.

And I, well . . . I fight. Maev looked at her torn knuckles. I hurt myself to drown the pain inside me. She sighed, looking around at the drinking villagers. If anyone here knew my true nature, they wouldn't just fight me with fists. They'd try to kill me.

A snippet of conversation tore through her thoughts. She tensed, narrowed her eyes, and cocked her head.

". . . a real weredragon!" somebody was saying—a villager with red cheeks and a bulbous nose. "Shapeshifter. Cursed with the reptilian disease."

Maev growled and made ready to leap to her feet. At her side, she saw Tanin grimace and reach toward his boot where he kept a hidden dagger.

They know, Maev thought, heart pounding. They heard us talk. She rose to her feet, expecting the poisoned arrows to fly, and sucked in her magic.

"Ah, Old Wag, you're drunk!" said another villager, an elderly man with bristly white muttonchops.

"I ain't!" replied the bulbous-nosed man. "I heard the tales, all the way from Eteer across the sea. They say the prince of Eteer himself, a lad named Sena, is a weredragon. His father, the king, locked him up in a tower, he did." Old Wag roared out laughter, spraying crumbs. "Like a princess from a story."