“But you have to promise you won’t tell anyone I told you.”

“Ooh!” Jyx bounced on her bed, causing her pillow to tumble off and hit Chauda. Chauda snorted. “We can all tell secrets! Ferro, you go first.”

Ferro scrambled away, his back against the headboard. “Wait, what?”

“Fine. Me first,” Jyx said with an eye roll. “I used to be scared of skunks.”

“Good to know,” Ferro said. “Filing that away for future use.”

Leaning over, Jyx plucked the pillow off Chauda and used it to whack Ferro. “No using secrets against anyone. That’s the point. We’re trusting each other.” She looked at Mina, suddenly serious. “Right, Mina? You have something important to tell us, but you don’t want to until you’re sure you can trust us.”

Mina nodded, surprised that Jyx understood so clearly. «Well, it’s not like you call them all together to talk very often. Or ever.»

True, she thought. It was just that Jyx was usually so loud, Mina sometimes forgot Jyx could be quiet and listen too. She remembered when they’d first met, both of them side by side up the mast, looking silently out at the city. It was so easy to see someone as just one thing, like loud or quiet. But that wasn’t fair to either of them.

Jyx took a breath. “Okay, real secret. My parents don’t believe in me. Never said that to anyone before, but it’s true. They think I’ll never be as good a guardian as they each were, and they’re jealous I have Chauda when their beasts lost their power years and years ago.” Chauda laid her head against Jyx’s leg—​Mina had never seen the beast act comforting before. “The closer Chauda got to hatching, the meaner they got. So before we left, Chauda and I ‘accidentally’ burned a few of their papers, including tickets they were planning to use to come visit us here.”

Ferro nodded, solemn. “I lost Brindle’s and my river-ship tickets, before we came. Dropped them somewhere. Don’t know where. But I didn’t want to tell my parents—​they’re always yelling at me about how I have to be more responsible, and I knew if I told them . . .”

“So what did you do?” Zek asked. “You got here.”

Studying his shoes, Ferro mumbled, “Stole two tickets.”

“Okay, I’ll go next,” Zek said. “My secret is: I don’t have any secrets.”

Jyx bumped him with her shoulder. “Come on, Zek. You have to have done something wrong at some point. Thought something you’re ashamed of.”

“For example, you could have used the beast bathroom instead of the human one in the capitol,” Ferro said, “because there was a really long line for the human one.”

“You did that?” Zek asked.

“Totally. You know the beast bathroom in the capitol is decorated with jewels? What if the beasts miss?”