AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He sounded resigned, and Oliver knew that it would take some time for him to accept all that he could not control, all things fantastical and magical swirling around him, completely out of his hands. A tough challenge for a king, but one Oliver was determined to help him through.
Tomorrow, though, and all the days after, because the heat of Erik’s skin, and the deep, even beat of his heart, the rise and fall of his chest, like the slow lifting of steady tides, was lulling him to sleep.
He closed his eyes, breathed in the smell of his lover, and let the dark close over him.
This time, when he opened his eyes to pale sky, and paler clouds, the rush of cold wind in his face and Percy’s wings beating beneath him, he knew that he wasn’t dreaming. That, in his dreams, he had crossed over to that other plane – the Between, Náli had called it. A realm for the dead who hadn’t yet sought the Halls of the Ancestors, nor been claimed by Hel’s dark fields. Spirits who couldn’t, or wouldn’t move on.
Why, then, was he here? Why had he been coming here for months, thinking the visits only dreams the whole time? He understood why Náli walked here – he was the Corpse Lord, after all – but how was Oliver able to reach this place? Again and again, in the company of his drake.
He’d asked Náli, while they sat in the snowy garden, icicles dripping all around them, the first buds forming tight and hard on the apple trees. But Náli had only shrugged; he didn’t know why Oliver was here. Didn’t know, he admitted, fear coloring his voice, much at all about this place, and regretted the loss of the one person, one spirit, one ancestor, who’d been able to share information. He was gone, dispelled in his efforts to protect Náli. And Romanus Tyrsbane walked this realm as well, hunting them.
HuntingOliver.
Flying through the washed-out haze of this spiritual sky had lost most of its appeal since he was here last.
He leaned low over Percy’s neck, tightening his grip on the reins. “Can we go back?” he asked, and Percy pushed a sense of responsibility through the bond.You can do that, not me.
“That’s not fair,” Oliver muttered, voice snatched by the wind. “Valgrind can cross over at will, can take Náli in and bring him back out.”
Percy sent sulky thoughts his way, accompanied by an unhappy, vocal growl.
“Yes, well, perhaps you ought to apply yourself to learning how to do that, hm?”
He should apply himself as well, but since he hadn’t intentionally entered a meditative state, nor sought a light, gone through a portal – nothing of the sort – he didn’t know how to go about doing so on this side, to get back out again. He supposed he could leave if someone woke him up in the real world, but he was alone with Erik, who was probably sleeping like the dead now.
Which meant he and Percy were alone, here, and would have to figure out a way on their own.
He sat up, tweaked the right rein, and spiraled Percy into a slow, gradual descent. The clouds shredded around them, and below he glimpsed the gleaming snake of a river, the distant shadows of mountains. The ground came on by increments, until they landed, safe and secure, in a sea of waving gray grass. Oliver stayed atop Percy a moment, once his wings had folded, shading his eyes from the hazy sun and searching for a sign of life – any kind of life. But there were none, not even the droning of insects nor the trilling of birds.
“Bit spooky,” he muttered, and slid down off Percy’s back. The grass crunched and folded beneath his boots, dry and dead. Huh. Perhaps everything – even the vegetation – was dead here. Everything but the two of them.
And whatever let out a high, whistling shriek in the distance.
Oliver swore and gripped the strap of Percy’s breastplate, all his muscles tensing at once.
Percy lifted his head, inhaled with a sound like a windstorm, and shrieked back.
The sounds were different in pitch and tone, but there was no mistaking the first as belonging to anything but a drake.
Oliver cursed again, and swung up onto Percy’s back, took up his reins. Percy spread his wings, flexed them, body coiling big and strong beneath him.
But Oliver didn’t heel him forward, didn’t urge him to take flight.
He marched for war tomorrow, to face horrors that would put the siege at the palace to shame. He and his drake were going to do battle in open fields, against whole waves of enemies, physical and real, with weapons glinting sharp and deadly in the spring sunshine.
If he could face that – and he would – he could face this, whatever it was, in the realm between worlds.
Percy made an inquiring noise, and Oliver straightened his spine, stilled his hands, forced his breathing even. “We stay,” he said. “Whoever it is, we’ll meet them head-on.”
Percy shook his head, frills flapping, but he fixed his gaze on a point overhead, and he growled, low and threatening.
Oliver squinted against the light, and as the shriek sounded again, closer this time, he saw the first, indistinct speck of a silhouette above them. One that dropped quickly, gaining mass and dimension, until it resolved itself into a drake, bat wings and long neck and whipping, fork-tipped tail.
That was different from Percy, and now that he could see better, the wings weren’t quite the same either, longer and sharper at the tips, with barbs at the ends like claws. Also…where were its front legs? Percy was a quadruped, an wyvern. But this drake looked like…
A wyrm. He could see it, now, clearly. Its front legs were attached to the thin skin of its wings, which made its torso a dramatic, triangular shape, rather than the horse-looking silhouette of the cold-drakes. Not a fire-drake, either, then. This was–
Going to land on top of them.
