Silas grinned, delighted to be asked, and let the change take him.
It happened fast. The human form blurred and stretched and went on stretching, the two horns drawing out into something that could gore a house, scales spilling across him in a dark tide, until what stood on the lawn where a boy had been a heartbeat before was a dragon.
Ten metres of one, give or take, from the grass to the crest of his lowered head, and he wasn't even trying to loom.
Trafalgar tipped his head back to take the whole of him in.
'Holy hell, he's big.' The thought came flat and honest. 'And he's not done. He's going to be enormous. Caelvyrn's weight, maybe, if he keeps eating the way he eats.'
Beside him, Barth had gone very quiet, his neck craned all the way back, his mouth slightly open. Whatever a teaching post and a face like a poster had done for the boy's nerve, none of it held up against a dragon the size of a guard tower standing ten paces off.
