Talon. Julie Kagawa

almost a challenge. “What do you do every morning, anyway?”

      Dante shrugged. “I told you,” he answered, his voice way too casual. “Boring stuff. Politics and Human Sciences. Learning the names of world leaders and their laws and what they had for breakfast. Nothing nearly as exciting as your mornings.”

      He ruffled my hair, knowing how much I hated that, and I swatted his arm away. It ended in a short scuffle on the mattress, with his arm wrapped around my head, mussing my hair, while I snarled and yelled at him to get off.

      “Ember. Dante.” There was a short tap on the door, and Uncle Liam peered in, eyes narrowed. “We’re going to bed,” he stated, which meant it was now 11:30 p.m., on the dot. “Keep it down if you’re going to be awake much longer.”

      “Yes, Uncle,” we answered together, and Liam looked at me.

      “Also, Ember. Your instructor called. She wants you at your session earlier than normal tomorrow, so set your alarm back an hour.”

      “What? That means I’ll have to get up at five!”

      “Then you’d best go to bed soon,” Liam replied briskly, and shut the door.

      I shoved Dante off, stood and ran my fingers through my hair, fuming but still afraid he would hear my sudden, rapid heartbeat.

      “Guess I’ll turn in, too,” I muttered, frowning at my twin to hide my unease. “Since I have to get up at the butt crack of dawn. And don’t give me that look. I don’t see your trainer dragging you out of bed at ungodly o’clock.” He just grinned unsympathetically and watched me from the nest of rumpled blankets. I sighed. “What about you? When are you going to bed?”

      Dante snorted. “I don’t know, Aunt Sarah. But I’ll be sure to tell you when I’m getting sleepy so you can read me a story.”

      “Oh, shut up.” I turned and opened the door. “Smart-ass. Good night, Tweedledum.” A stupid nickname I’d latched on to when we’d first watched Alice in Wonderland as kids. I remembered being fascinated by the fat, bumbling cartoon twins, and started calling my brother by that name, just to annoy him. It had stuck ever since.

      “Wait.” Dante looked up with a fake pleading expression. “Before you go, could you turn on my night-light and bring me a glass of water?”

      I shut the door.

      The house was quiet, cloaked in shadow. Normally, a pale, silvery light shone through the large bay windows from the moon outside, but tonight, the rooms seemed darker, more foreboding. I tiptoed across the hall to my room, making sure the light to Aunt Sarah and Uncle Liam’s bedroom was turned off. Dante’s light remained on, of course, but Dante wouldn’t barge into my room in the middle of the night.

      Shutting my door, I flipped off the light and leaned against the wall for a second, my heart still pounding wildly. Up until this moment, I hadn’t really known if I was going to do this. Sneak out, break curfew, meet with a dangerous rogue dragon on a lonely bluff. Now, it wasn’t a question. Riley said there were things about Talon that I didn’t know, and I was suddenly very curious what those things were, but that wasn’t the only reason I was doing this. I was tired of Talon, my instructor, my training and their endless rules. I needed to fly, to feel the wind under my wings, or I was going to snap.

      Climbing over the sill, I dangled for a moment, then dropped, landing with a soft thump in the cool sand. Straightening, I hugged the side of the house, making my way around to where my bike lay slumped against the corner of the fence. I couldn’t take the car, of course, and the spot I was headed was only about five miles away. Not too far. I just had to get home before sunrise.

      As I pushed my bike to the brightly lit sidewalk, I paused to look back at the house. Dante’s light was still on, but if I knew him, he would be glued to the computer screen. The guardians were both in bed, lights off, curtains drawn. No one would see me creep down the road and disappear into the night, to go flying with a complete stranger after midnight.

       You know you’re breaking about a dozen sacred rules here, Ember.

      I shook off my fear. No, no second guesses. I’d followed their rules long enough. Tonight, I was going to fly.

      Taking a deep breath, I swung my leg over the bike and pushed off down the street, feeling my doubts get smaller and smaller with every cycle. By the time I’d reached the corner, and my house had been swallowed up by the darkness, they were gone entirely.

      Garret

      “Come on,” Tristan muttered from the edge of the roof. “Put some clothes on, man.”

      I paused in the doorway that led to the roof of our apartment complex, wondering if I shouldn’t turn around and go back inside. Every night from the time we arrived, we’d take turns on the roof of this building, scanning the sky, watching for glimpses of scales or wings. A long shot, to be certain, but better than sitting around doing nothing.

      Sighing, I closed the door and walked up behind him. He stood at the corner, peering through a pair of binoculars, gazing at the darkening horizon. “Anything?”

      “Other than a guy grilling on the balcony in his birthday suit, no.” Tristan didn’t lower the binoculars, didn’t even move as he said this. “Did you get a chance to read the report that came back?”

      “Yes,” I answered, having just come from the kitchen and the open email file on the laptop. Re: Requesting subject analysis, the subject line read. The body of the email contained the names of the subjects I’d designated and a little information about each of them: age, parents, addresses, where they were born. Everything looked pretty ordinary...except for one thing.

      Ember Hill: Age 16. Mother: Kate Hill, deceased. Father: Joseph Hill, deceased.

      Both parents, dead. In a fatal car accident, apparently. Everything below that was fairly normal. Ember and her brother, Dante, were born at St. Mary’s Hospital in Pierre, South Dakota. Their birth certificates listed them as twins, with Dante being born three minutes ahead of his sister, making him the eldest. They appeared to have had a normal childhood, though there was little information beyond where and when they were born and how their parents had died. Though that might mean any number of things, most Talon sleepers had one thing in common. They were all “orphans,” living with relatives or guardians, or adopted into another family. Their human records meant nothing; all Talon operatives had birth certificates, records of where they were born, social security numbers, everything. Talon was nothing if not thorough, but the orphan thing always stood out.

      “So,” Tristan went on as I picked up the second pair of binoculars and joined him at the edge. “I’ve been thinking. Of those three girls we met yesterday, did any of them scream ‘dragon’ to you?”

      “No,” I replied, raising the binoculars. “They all seemed perfectly normal.”

      “Yes,” Tristan agreed. “And Talon has taught them to blend in. But of those three, who would be the one you would pick for the sleeper?”

      “Ember,” I said immediately. There was no doubt in my mind. She was pretty, she was intelligent and she had a fierceness that the other two lacked. “But she has a sibling,” I went on, glancing over at him. “And dragons only lay one egg at a time. So it can’t be her.”

      “That’s true,” Tristan said slowly. “But here’s the thing, Garret. There are exceptions to the rules. Just because it’s highly improbable for a tiger to have a white cub doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. Just because whales only have one calf at a time doesn’t mean they’ve never had twins. There are anomalies in every species, so who’s to say that a dragon can’t lay a pair of eggs at once? We know that dragons are loners, and that they plant only one sleeper at a time. But our own understanding could be holding us back.” Tristan lowered the binoculars and finally looked at me dead-on. “What if we accepted the idea that there could be more than one dragon in Crescent Beach? Now how does that girl look to you?”

      A chill ran