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The hand stroked back and forth across the width of his midsection. Mattias dropped his face, so he could speak against his ear. “Náli.” Quiet. Fondly chiding. “You named him.”
It was difficult to swallow, suddenly. “I know.”
“He adores you.”
It wasn’t possible to answer that one.
“I think he’s rather good for you.”
“Oh, hush.” But he laid his hand over Mattias’s, stilling it, keeping it pressed tight to the place where his heartbeat had settled low in his stomach. “What will Mother say?”
Mattias snorted. “I shall instruct Klemens to be ready to catch her when she swoons.”
Náli smiled, and saw the ghost of his reflection in the window glass, Mattias large and looming behind him – holding him. The shield at his back, always.
He blinked, and let his gaze shift through the window, out toward the sky, where three drakes flew, glittering white clouds against a backdrop of candied blue.
~*~
After a day spent cooped up indoors dealing with a dozen tiny disasters on paper, it was a tremendous relief to put on his new warm coat and escape out into the yard – and then up into the air. Oliver took what felt like his first full breath of the day as Percy leaped aloft and flapped his wings, swirling snow and propelling them up, up, up. The air rushed cold against his face, tangled his hair, and left him grinning broadly.
He flew most days – but that entailed searching the iced-in Sel ships they were dismantling piece by piece, and sorting the wheat from the chaff in what remained of the mostly-demolished Sel camp. It had been work: transportation and aerial surveillance; the drakes had even helped to carry some of the massive stones that had gone into repairing the front façade of the palace.
But this was flight for the sake of flight. For fun.
It had become second nature: shifting his weight, leaning low over Percy’s spine, reading the flex of muscle beneath him to anticipate swoops, and turns, and dives. Flying, Oliver opened up the bond between them, let it roar and flow, a continuous loop of feedback until his thoughts felt blue, and it was hard to tell whether they were his thoughts at all, or Percy’s.
He tweaked the left rein, and Percy curved into a wide, easy turn. High above the stables, red hair streaming behind in a banner, flew Tessa astride Kat.
Well, everyone said Kat was a terrible name, but Oliver was going to call her that until Tessa arrived upon something more suitable.
Oliver grinned to himself, as Percy undulated through the air toward his mate. He’d spotted the pair out the window, when he lifted his gaze from Leif’s seemingly-tireless exercises down below. At first he’d thought it was a drake alone – they flew off to hunt, and visit the coastline, ready should he call out for them, but left to their own devices most of the time – but then he’d spotted a flash of crimson, and the gleam of saddle buckles.
Little Tessa, brave enough to go up on her own, without even asking for company.
Kat spotted them, pivoting in the air to face them; she trumpeted out a call that Percy echoed, half hawk-scream and half brass horn.
Oliver let Percy have his head, and he circled around his mate, until both hovered side-by-side, the buffeting from both their wings tossing Oliver’s too-long hair in his face. He reached to push it back and shot a smile across to Tessa – whose face was pink from more than cold.
“I’m sorry!” she called.
“What for? That’s your drake!”
They were close enough for him to watch her eyes widen, and her lips slacken in surprise – before she smiled so wide it had to hurt. The smile of a little girl on her first successful pony ride. A smile of pure joy.
He laughed, and she echoed the sound.
Percy radiated happiness, and eagerness, emotions he could feel echoed faintly by Kat.
“I borrowed your tack!” Tessa shouted.
“Mine was ready this afternoon!” He lifted his new, gleaming reins in demonstration.
“Come on, then,” he called, “and we’ll show you the coast.”
They swung a wide about-face, and headed for the glitter of iced-over water through the trees.
~*~
