No one must ever know his secret, Nina! His terribly important secret that exactly zero people on the island cared about!

But Nina looked relaxed and incurious - which one day, would probably be a dead giveaway - and hey, there was a book nearby, and Julius felt his shoulders unclenching, even as he heard his mother's voice complaining about what a terrible dragon he was for letting a human sneak up on him. He pushed that away and offered her a smile. "Yeah," he admitted. "I had to come up and look at the sky for a bit. In New Mexico, sometimes it feels like all there is is sky."