Page 104 of Spark of Sorcery

“With his sharp little mouth!”

“He likes you!” I clap my hands. “Seriously, Blaze, give him some space.”

“Yes,” Fly says, “give me some space, please.”

Blaze goes for one last dive bomb, dragging his rough little tongue right down Fly’s cheek and making him shriekagain, then zooms off, landing on my bed, gaze flitting between me and my friend, tongue hanging from the side of his mouth and panting. He reminds me of a dog and in the few weeks I’ve had him he’s grown to the size of a small one.

Fly rubs at his eyes and mumbles to himself, “I must be seeing things, hallucinating. Or maybe I’m dreaming. Dragons don’t exist, do they? They died out like hundreds of years ago.”

I shrug and sit down on the bed beside Blaze, letting him climb into my lap and tickling under his chin. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

From the other side of the room, Fly examines both of us, eyes narrowed. “He seems surprisingly tame. In fact, he looks like he likes you.”

“He does,” I say, then make a kissy face at Blaze. “You love me, don’t you?” The dragon raises his head and licks my chin.

“What does he eat?”

“Woodland animals … and … erm … rats and mice.”

“Ew, gross.” Fly places his fist over his mouth, then wipes at his face with the sleeve of his blazer. “Are you sure he’s not dangerous?”

“No, he’s lovely,” I say beaming. If truth be told, maybe I’ve been a little bit desperate, waiting for an opportunity to show Blaze off. He’s a hard secret to keep. A lot harder than a stone. “Come on, he won’t bite.” I pat the mattress beside me and cautiously Fly approaches, lowering himself down carefully onto the bed.

Blaze watches him but he’s enjoying the chin tickles too much to attempt another love-bombing.

“I’m so confused,” Fly says, “when the hell did you get a dragon?”

“He hatched about three and a half weeks ago.”

“Hatched?” Fly says.

I tell him about finding the stone and keeping it hidden all this time. I explain about how the stone started to crack the day of the maze trial and how placing the stone by the fire caused it to hatch open completely.

“This is so weird,” Fly says, shaking his head in bewilderment. “How did a dragon survive in that stone all that time? And why didn’t he hatch sooner?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Thorne thinks that–”

“Thorne? Thorne Cadieux?”

“Do we know any other Thornes?”

“You told Thorne about your secret dragon but not me. Do all the Princes know?”

“No, only Thorne, and now you, know. You’re the only two people I’ve told.”

“But you told Thorne before me,” he points out. “What happened to hoes before bros, bestie?”

“He hatched the night I was meant to be at the Princes,” I say, then quickly change the subject because I don’t want to explain why I now trust Thorne Cadieux more than anyone else in this academy. “Fox may also suspect. He keeps complaining that I smell like lizard.”

“Fox?” Fly lifts an eyebrow.

“Oh, Professor Tudor.”

“On a first-name basis are we now?”

I chew on the inside of my cheek.

“Err, yeah, I guess.” That weird interaction with the professor a few weeks ago is another thing I haven’t told my friend about. Mainly because I’m still trying to unscramble the whole thing myself – half convinced I imagined most of it. Why would the professor want to touch me? Why does the idea of it have strange sensations stirring in my belly?