Page 22 of His Greatest Treasure

I was actually just thinking of something else to say, but Morgan asked, “Has Lord Somerville said anything about hiring you a tutor? To teach you to shift?”

My mood sank, and not just because I recognised Morgan’s classic tactic of changing the conversation. There was something my brother was keeping from me.

I allowed it, since I wanted to talk about this anyway, and since I didn’t want to make Morgan uncomfortable by prying. “No. No, he hasn’t said anything. And you had your tutor for ages by the time you were my age. Do you think he’s forgotten about me?”

“I doubt it, Alfie. Has anyone else tried to teach you?”

“No. They haven’t mentioned it at all. Morgan? Do you think Icanshift?”

“What? Of course you can shift. Why wouldn’t you be able to?”

“Um,” I said, and squirmed a bit. It was embarrassing to admit.

“Alfie?”

I heard the note of panic in Morgan’s voice and felt guilty for putting it there. He was out there, alone, and he worried about all of us. He couldn’t see our bonds the way I could, so he had no way of knowing that we were all alive and well just by bringing up the bonds to check them.

“I tried to shift,” I admitted in a rush. “I remembered you saying that you reached down inside and felt your dragon there so I tried to do that. But there wasn’t anything there. I couldn’t feel it. I just felt… normal.”

“Oh. What does your dragon say about that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does it seem like itwantsto come out?”

“I don’t know. I can’t feel it at all.”

“Not at all? You can’t feel it there now?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

Unsurprisingly, this little revelation did not help settle my nerves. Even Morgan –who would do anything to make me feel better – couldn’t think of a way of spinning that so it was a positive. He’d assumed I could feel my dragon, and I couldn’t even do that.

“How do you feel yours?” I asked.

“Well, it sort of… snorts inside me if it doesn’t agree. Or it flexes and preens when it likes something. When I rode Lew—”

“What?” I screeched, and then slammed my hand over my mouth. I glanced around, listening, hoping nobody had heard that. I lowered my voice. “Do you mean you ride thecuraidh’s dragons?”

“No! That would be weird. I only rode Lew’s dragon. Which was… not weird.”

“What was it like?”

“I… liked it.”

“That’s how you know he felt all solid.”

“Yes,” mumbled Morgan.

I grinned. I’d known there was something there that Morgan was trying to hide. He was a master at deflecting, and if he didn’t want to talk about something, he asked questions and distracted everyone. But this? I needed to know more about this.

I let my grin into my voice as I asked, “What did it feel like?”

“He’s very big.”

“And grey,” I reminded him.

---