“I tried to make you all see how it could be. I tried to make you see we could change all of it. But some of you didn’t want any changes.” He glared at Thymara. “And some of you just wanted someone to think for you and tell you what to do!” His accusing eyes came back to Boxter. Kase had stepped up behind his cousin. He’d put a hand on Boxter’s shoulder, but Swarge still hadn’t released him from his hug.

“Sa, how I tried!” Greft shouted the words up into the night. Then he glared at everyone again. “But none of you really listened to me. And then Jess told me why. Told me what a web of lies this whole thing was. Well, now he’s dead and gone, and I don’t think that was an accident. And I heard that some of the dragons were changing their keepers on purpose, had given them blood to make them change. But not Kalo, no. Not for Greft. Nothing ever for Greft. I took care of that monster. I hunted for him, I fed him, I groomed him, I scraped the filth off him. But would he give me one drop of blood, one scale? No. Not one drop to change me, not to put my body right, not to give me something I could sell to make a new life for myself.” He looked around at them, self-righteous and angry. Blood was seeping from his scored flesh. Thymara guessed now that Kalo had seized him in his jaws and flung him, tearing his skin as he did so. It was only surprising that the dragon had not sheared him in two and eaten him.

Greft’s voice was suddenly calm and level. “I’ve known all my life that I wouldn’t get as much as anyone else did. Not respect. Not even time. People like me, like us, we die young. Unless a dragon takes us on and makes sure we don’t. I know that now. I heard Sylve and Harrikin talking about it in the night, talking about waiting now because they’d have maybe hundreds of years together, after their dragons changed them. But not Greft. Not for me. So I went tonight to take what should have been given to me. All the times I groomed him, fed him, you think he’d give me just one scale, just a few drops of blood. But no. No.”

He sighed out through his nose and looked all around at every one of them. He shook his head slowly as he did so, as if he could not believe his bad luck or the harshness of fate that had doomed him to be here.