But the history of Europe had always included dragons. And knights. And lances. And lots and lots of stabbings through hearts.

I remembered what Rue had written about a drákon council and their rules about secrecy. Despite her obvious disdain for them, perhaps those rules had worked somewhere. Perhaps somewhere what was left of her tribe still existed, huddled and human-looking, like me.

But in a bottomless-pit-fearful part of me, I knew it wasn’t true.

Don’t worry about it. You’re not really even a dragon, are you? All you are is a girl who’s sometimes smoke. No one’s going to stab that.

I sat up. I dragged the pillow to my lap and bit my lip and stared hard into the darkness of my room. I hadn’t lit my lamp or candles.

Rain pelted the diamond window.

Just a girl. Just smoke.

It pelted my hands, then my arms as I opened the hinge.

Just an orphan. Just a guttersnipe. A nobody.

“No,” I said out loud. “I’m a dragon.”

For the second time ever, I Turned in the tower and flowed out the window, but I wasn’t headed for the stars or even Jesse’s cottage. I was going to the far woods, the ones that ended at the cliffs overlooking the sea, where no one lived, and no one worked, and no one would be.

Raindrops shot through me, but they didn’t hurt. I might well have been part of the mist that curled up from the ferns and grass, that reached wraithlike arms up through the boughs. I skimmed lower and lower until I was the same, except that the mist was wet and I was not. Smoke is always dry.

I didn’t really choose a place to Turn back. I was simply going until I wasn’t any longer, vapor until I wasn’t, and then I was standing in a small clearing. I was skin now. Definitely getting wet.

I looked up, blinking at the sting of the shower. I took in the clouds and the black crowns of trees encircling me, so much taller than I was. Branches shivered; water plopped to peat. Drenched bark gave off the scent of pungent wet wood. Mud and grass squelched soft between my toes.

I stretched my arms above my head. I tipped back my face to the elements and opened my mouth to drink in the storm.

Now, I thought, washed clean and cold. I’m ready now.

Since it was true, it happened.

Smoke came first, but only for a wink of a second, too quick for me to register anything like disappointment. Then smoke transformed into solid shape, and it was not my human one.

I was still standing in the clearing in the grass-threaded mud. Yet I was on four legs, not two. I blinked again at the rain beginning to bead upon my lashes, which had gone thick and were faintly shining. Looking around the clearing, I could tell that I stood higher up than before. Much higher. My neck was slender and long and I could bend it nearly all the way about to take in my body: also slender, also shining.

I was a dragon of gold, as if Jesse had touched me and transmuted me but not taken my life. I was sinuous and covered in lustrous golden scales, all the way almost to the tip of my tail, until they faded into purple.

I had a mane, too, mapping a line down my back. It looked like a ruff of silk or cut velvet. I folded my neck around almost double so that I could rub my chin on it. Silken, yes, but also jagged. Combing my chin through it sent quivers of pleasure down my spine.

Then I saw my wings. They were folded against my back, metallic. Without knowing how I did it, I opened them, using muscles I didn’t even have as a person. The ache of moving them for the first time felt delicious; I did it again to fully bask in it.

I had wings.

I don’t know how to describe what I felt then. I was amazed and afraid and boiling feral inside. I slashed my tail through the rain and realized that it was barbed only when I hit an oak tree and got stuck.

No problem. I pulled it out and danced around, delighted at the fresh, gaping hole in the trunk.

My new body came with a weapon. That pleased me.

I recalled my worry about my tongue splitting—which seemed beyond funny now; I mean, my tongue was the least visible part of me—and flicked it out to see if that had happened, but I couldn’t tell. I could taste the air, though. I could taste everything in it, minerals and salt and fat, fresh rain. Houses miles out. Horses and sheep, dogs and cows and foxes. People.

It was then that I realized that Rue had been wrong about this Turn, too. There was no suffering. There was only wonder.

If I was a monster, then by the stars, I was a glorious one. Jesse had told me once that I was a beast better than any other, and now I knew it to be true. If the shark-hunters or lance-bearers came for me, I’d chew them to chum. Maybe I’d do it, anyway.

I slitted my eyes at the clouds. Just looking at them made me hungry in a way I’d never felt before. Ravenous, but not for food.

For flight.

I crouched down, got ready to spring, and beat my wings.

I made it as far as the treetops before losing control and crashing back to the ground, taking out another oak and a grove of ferns.

I tried it again.

Again.

All right. Flying was turning out to be stickier than the Turn, but that was fine, too, because I had the rest of my life to practice.

I settled into the mud and examined my talons. Shiny gold, sharp as razors, and I could dig them as deep as I wanted into the flesh of the earth.

I smiled, or tried to. I laughed, but no sound came out.

I flipped around and rolled in the mess of the clearing, ripping out what was left of the grass, getting filthy, feeling as gleeful as I’d ever been. When I decided to stop, I was panting, sated somehow, so I stretched out my neck and rested my chin in the mire and let my eyelids sink not-quite closed.

Only then did they emerge. Two boys, their faces sketched ashen in the dark, both of them in slickers. They approached me from opposite sides of the clearing with oddly identical gaits: halting, cautious, moving sort of crablike sideways with a palm held out in front of them—as if to ward off my temper, which to my mind was a very good thing.

The blond one reached me first. He touched me carefully on the neck. His hand felt like cool fire.

I opened my eyes all the way again, studying him.

Then the brown-haired one, still mimicking the other. Another hand on me, higher up, though, and his palm felt like pure heat.

“Lora.” Jesse smiled. “Lora-of-the-moon.”

“Good God,” whispered Armand.

And with that, I Turned back into the schoolgirl they both knew, only one standing nude in the mud.

...

I thought I’d at least have the filth of my roll left covering me, but apparently when I Turned, I went stark clean.

Jesse got his slicker off first. The sleeves flopped past my hands and the hood obscured half my face.

“How did you know?” I asked, pushing back the hood.

Jesse only smiled again.

Armand said, “You—you called me.”

He sounded bewildered. Even wearing his raincoat, he looked like he’d gone for a swim in a sea of debris. I brushed a soggy clump of leaves from his shoulder.

“No, I didn’t.”

“I heard you. I heard you clear as anything.”

“Yes,” agreed Jesse, as the rain flattened his hair and turned his shirt translucent. “I heard you, too.”

“I didn’t call either of you,” I insisted. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Armand scowled. “I was in bed, and I heard you say my name. Like you were right there in the room with me. And then I …”

“What?”

“He was pulled,” Jesse finished when Armand didn’t. “Just as I was. Pulled out here by instinct to this place to be with you. To witness what you had become.”

What I had become. I was a what now. I pressed both my hands over my heart, feeling its reassuring beat. Humanlike.

Jesse touched his lips to my cheek. “I told you I would be with you when it happened,” he said softly. “Well done.”

“Yes,” said Armand, hollow. “Congratulations.”

I went to my knees. I didn’t want to, and as soon as I started to buckle, they each had me by an arm, but I still went down. Slowly, irrevocably, into the squishy suck of mud that didn’t seem nearly as wonderful now as it had a few minutes past.

“Did you eat?” Jesse asked, just as Armand said, “Are you going to faint?”

“No, and no.” I pulled until both my arms were released, then lay back on the ground. Rain on my face, pooling in the corners of my eyes. If there were a few hot tears mingled in there, the pair of shadows leaning over me wouldn’t be able to tell.

“Jesse,” I said. “Are there any more dragons left on the planet besides me?”

“There’s bloody me,” Armand interjected. But he knew that wasn’t what I meant and shot a look at Jesse, as well, expectant.

Jesse came down into a squat at my side. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. Sorry to both of you. But I honestly don’t. If there are … I don’t feel them. Not like I did you.”

I swiped at my eyes and asked the question I’d never allowed past my lips before. “What about my parents?”

“No,” he answered, a single word with oceans of meaning.

No. Of course not. Because if they’d been alive, they would have found me by now, wouldn’t they? If Jesse could summon me, if Armand could awaken to his powers through me, then certainly the two beings who had given me life would have figured out how to claim me before now. They would not have left me in Blisshaven, abandoned me to Moor Gate, on purpose.

The logical side of me realized I wasn’t truly alone. But, oh, right then in the storm and the sludge, logic was useless. Lodged in my heart was a splinter, one that I knew was the death of my parents. The death of my hope for them. So alone wasn’t even the best word for how I felt.