Page 57 of Blood of Wolves

A beat passed before Erik nodded. “Right.” He backed away, Snorri alongside him.

Oliver wanted to offer the words that would ease his worry…but didn’t think any existed. He could only show him that he was capable.

He took a deep breath, and threw open the half-cracked door between his mind and Percy’s.Let’s go.

Wide, white wings spready with a snap. Percy settled low in his haunches, coiling like a spring.

“The harness, your lordship!” Snorri reminded.

Shit. Right. Oliver snapped the twin hooks onto the rings on the pommel, as Percy gathered a huge breath, raised his wings, and thenleaped.

At first, it felt like a horse rearing beneath him.

But then it felt like nothing he’d ever known, as Percy sprang up into the air, dropped his wings, and began climbing effortlessly up and up. Snow swirled all around them. Snorri and Erik shielded their faces – faces that grew smaller and smaller as Percy continued his climb.

Oliver leaned low over his sinuous neck, tipped his head back, and looked up into the morning’s fading stars through the twin arches of his helmet. The steady, strong beat of Percy’s wings left the drake’s back dropping out from under him on each stroke, and Oliver was grateful for the harness and its clips. Erik had been right: this wasnothinglike riding a horse.

But all the strange new sensations were overridden by Percy’s calm reassurance. The promise that he would care for Oliver, and never drop him on purpose.

It seemed to take hours, but was only seconds, and then Percy’s wings spread wide, and they leveled out. Oliver sat up straight, peered over Percy’s shoulder at the ground below, and gasped.

He’d glimpsed this view in his dreams; in those strange, wakeful moments when the world had turned blue and his and Percy’s minds had melded to one. But then, the scene had always been fuzzy and indistinct. Now, he had a crisp, perfect look down at the now-tiny fortress of Long Reach, the pinpricks of torches rippling on walls and down in the yard. If he squinted, he could just make out the black specks that were Erik, and Snorri, and the guards at their posts.

A laugh bubbled up in his throat, and the wind of their passing snatched it off his lips. He was flying – he wasflying.

He used the reins, but lightly. Most of their communication was mental – or perhapspsychicwas the better word. Oliver only had to look in a direction, and Percy turned, large body elegant as a dancer’s in the air like this.

They circled above the fortress until Oliver’s face was numb from the cold, and until he felt secure in the saddle, leaning with Percy rather than bracing against him. When the time came to land, Oliver leaned low, laughing again, and urged Percy into a fast dive. His wings spread at the last moment, beat a few times, and he landed light as thistledown in the yard.

Erik’s eyes, when Oliver found and met them, were very, very wide.

“What do you think?” Oliver called.

It was Snorri who answered: “I think it’s official lad: you’re a dragon rider.”

~*~

Náli woke shaking, sick to his stomach, with a throbbing headache…and only the blurriest memories of the night before. A recollection of blond hair – wrong, all wrong, because Mattias’s hair was brown – and strong hands on his waist…holding him at bay, rather than pulling him in. He grimaced against the gentle glow of candle flame, and rolled toward the source of the hand that had jostled him gently awake.

His stomach lurched when he saw that it was Klemens, and not Mattias perched on the side of his bed.

“Time to get up, my lord,” he said, softly, but not sweetly, the way that Mattias so often said it. Klemens was being respectful of his head, of the no-doubt ugly face he was making and the early hour, but there was notendernessthere. Only the proper amount of respect.

Náli was going to be sick.

“His Majesty and Lord Oliver are waiting,” Klemens prodded.

“Fine, fine, I’m getting up.”

He felt even worse once he was on his feet, but there was nothing to be done for it. He splashed his face with cold water from the ewer, drank down a cup of the same, and dressed in his warmest wools – and his armor. Chainmail and tough, boiled leather; gauntlets and greaves and his helm that was fashioned after a skull, its top set with long, beaded, horsehair braids that clinked against the steel cheek plates. When he left his room, Klemens leading the way, with the others, sans Mattias, falling into step behind him, it was as the Corpse Lord of the Fault Lands, rather than the confused, desperate boy he’d been last night in his cups.

By the time they reached the arched doorway that led out into the yard, his heart was in his throat, and it had nothing to do with an excess of wine. He glimpsed the orange dance of torchlight on snow, and the hulking shadows cast by the drakes.

At the open threshold, the master of Long Reach, Snorri, and an apprentice smith met him, the boy carrying a mess of leather straps and new silver buckles. “Good morning, my lord,” Snorri greeted, far too brightly for the early hour. “We’ve your harness here.”

Ah, yes, a harness, because he was about to strap himself to a flying beast and go harrying off across the kingdom. But saying that would make him look weak, and he’d looked weak enough as it was last night. He wondered who besides Leif had seen him like that. Someone had carried him back to his room, undressed him, tucked him into bed. Mattias? Or had his captain become so disgusted with him that he’d left the task to Klemens?

The thought left his eyes burning, but he blinked, and, in his coldest tone, said, “Yes, of course.”

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