The boat traveled on. They passed a backwater spattered with huge flat leaves and floating orange flowers. The fragrance, rich to the point of rottenness, reached Sedric.

Sylve spoke. “Have you ever asked your dragon about that?” Her voice was hesitant and yet determined.

“About what?” Thymara replied, equally determined.

“Your back. And the way your scaling is getting heavier.”

Silence like a block of stone fell on the boat and filled it perfectly. Sedric felt as if he was unable to breathe for the heaviness of it.

When Thymara spoke, she could not hide the lie in her words. “I don’t think my back has anything to do with my scaling.”

Sylve kept on paddling. She didn’t turn back to look at the other girl. She might have been speaking to the river when she said, “You forget. I saw it. I know what it is now.”

“Because you are changing in the same way.” Thymara flung the words back at her.

Sedric felt trapped between them. Why on earth would Sylve bring up such a topic, so private and specific to the keepers, while he was in the boat?

Then dread dropped the bottom out of his stomach.

Thymara wasn’t the target of her words. He was. His hand shot up to the back of his neck and covered the line of scales that had started down his spine. Carson had assured him that they were barely noticeable yet. He’d said they didn’t even seem to have a color yet, unlike the pink of Sylve’s and the silvery glints on Carson’s own scaling. Sedric didn’t say a word.

“I am changing,” Sylve admitted. “But I was given the choice, and I chose this. And I trust Mercor.”

“But he left you today,” Thymara pointed out. Sedric wondered if she were relentless or just tactless.

“I’ve thought it over, and what Sedric said, too. If, tonight, I were not there when we gathered, then Mercor would go back for me. I know that. But I will be there, and I will have got myself there. It is what he expects of me. I am neither a pet nor a child. He believes I am not only capable of taking care of myself, but that I am worthy of the attention of a dragon, and that I can survive without him.”

When Thymara asked her question, she sounded half strangled. “Why does he believe that of you? How did you convince him?”

Sylve glanced back at them, and an otherworldly smile flitted across her face. “I am not sure. But he offered me a chance and I took it. I am not an Elderling yet. But I will be.”

“What?” Thymara and Sedric chorused the word together.

Then Thymara added another one. “How?”