He was embarrassed by the adoration in her eyes and he turned away. He wished she wouldn’t look at him that way, when he didn’t know how he felt about her.

“We should get started.”

“We’re going into that cave,” said Evelina, and her voice was tight.

“It’s going to be all right.” Marcus drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’m going to cast a magical spell on the boat, Evelina. I’m going to make it invisible. And I’m going to make us invisible. Not to each other,” he added hastily. “You’ll still be able to see me and to see the boat. But no one else will be able to see us.”

He was making a mess of this, but he’d never had to explain his magic to anyone before.

“I know you don’t understand—” he began.

“Understand what? That you are going to make us invisible? Of course, I understand.” Evelina settled herself in the stern, pulled the blanket more closely around her shoulders, and regarded him calmly. “Just tell me what I need to do.”

He found himself almost loving her at that moment. “You must keep perfectly still. And not make a sound. Not a sniffle, not a gasp, not a whisper. For though they cannot see us, they can still hear us.”

“They can’t see us, but they can hear us. I understand, Marcus,” she said.

In order to cast the magic, he would have to enter his little room, a room in his mind similar to the room where he had been locked up as a child. The danger was that whenever he entered the room, the dragons were aware of him. They would try to catch him, haul him out. And so he opened the door swiftly and ran inside and slammed the door shut behind him. Almost immediately, he could hear claws scraping and scratching outside, searching for weakness, searching for a chink, a crack.

Marcus sat on the small stool in the middle of the room, shut out the clawing, and considered what he had to do. He’d never cast a spell of such magnitude before, not in cold blood. He knew how to do it; Draconas had taught him, long ago, on the bank of a river.

There are two types of dragon-magic, Marcus. Like two types of strategy in a battle: offensive and defensive. From what I have observed watching the monks, humans can use either one or the other. The determining factor as to which they can use appears to be sex. Females can use defensive magic, males offensive. You are unique, in that you can use both.