Chapter 11

Waiters gonna wait. Alligators gonna alligate. Haters gonna hate. Potatoes gonna potate. Sorry, I forgot where I was going with this.

-Text from Brooklyn to Nikolai

Brooklyn

We rode most of the way to the compound in silence.

Keifer and Blythe were riding directly beside us, and there was a third dragon I’d never seen before on the opposite side of Keifer.

Nikolai explained that Declan’s dragon was mated to another dragon. Her name was Story; she was absolutely beautiful.

I could quite clearly see the love between the two dragons, and it made me smile.

All the way up until the point where a field of cows came into view.

It didn’t happen all at once.

We were just riding smoothly along until suddenly we dipped.

I gasped and grasped Nikolai’s hands, leaning back to keep from falling forward and tumbling to my death.

Nikolai grasped me around the waist and pulled me more firmly into his hold, sighing in exasperation.

“What’s going on?” I asked worriedly.

My question was answered in the next moment when Perdita took one final plunge before her massive clawed feet reached out and grasped one of the cows in the field below us, then lifted right back up in the air.

I gasped in surprise, watching as the two other dragons at my side followed suit.

Each of them picked up a cow in their clawed feet and raised back up in the air.

“What are they doing?” I asked worriedly.

Before Nikolai could respond, Perdita did some sort of throw.

The cow went airborne, quite a way above our heads, and seemed to stay suspended for long moments of time before Perdita launched herself forward, and ate the cow all in one single gulp.

I gasped.

I vaguely heard the sound of Blythe crying out in alarm, and turned my head in time to see Declan and Story follow suit with their own cows.

“Holy crap,” I said in awe.

I’d never really put much thought into how the dragons ate…or what they ate for that matter.

I’d never seen Perdita eat before…and to be honest, never really had a desire to do it again, either.

“Well…” I said as we passed through the barrier to the Vassago lands. “That was…interesting.”

The barrier started to tingle on my skin, ticking down the nerve endings of my arm, legs, and spine.

Nikolai felt the shiver and pulled me into his arms, mistaking my movements for being cold rather than the discomfort of passing through the barrier.

I patted his hand.

“I’m not cold,” I explained. “It’s the barrier.”

“The shield?” he asked, an odd tone in his voice.

I nodded.

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

“It sends shivers down my spine,” I said.

I could feel his apprehensiveness.

“You felt it?” he asked in confusion. “We haven’t gotten to it yet.”

I was frowning now, too.

“Well, what was the thing we just passed, then?” I inquired.

Perdita was listening, and she added her input now, too.

Maybe it was the Heart she felt, Perdita offered.

“The Heart?” I asked.

“Perdita, can you take us by the heart again?” he asked.

Perdita banked hard right as I felt the familiar buzz of something over my skin, letting me know that Nikolai was letting Keifer know telepathically where we were going.

Except when I felt the ‘barrier’ again, it wasn’t the heart we were at.

“This,” I said.

Perdita landed by a fallen down oak tree and gently lifted her tail so Nikolai and I could get off without having to jump the whole way to the ground.

Nikolai helped me down, and I shivered again once my feet hit the forest floor.

“Here,” I said. “Whatever’s right here is making my heart shiver.”

I looked up to Nikolai’s beautiful face and frowned in response to his frown.

“What?” I asked.

“The heart is over two hundred yards away,” he said. “There’s no way you’d feel it until you got within its own protection shield.”

His explanation made me nervous.

“Then what’s right here?” I asked.

He looked around, then let me go to explore.

“Where do you feel it most?” he asked.

I started walking first in one direction, and then in the other when I felt the feeling growing fainter.

“This way,” I pointed.

Nikolai stayed at my side, Perdita stayed at our backs, and we walked another fifty yards when the feeling of utter wrongness started to wash over me.

“I can’t go any farther,” I said.

“Hmmm,” he said, taking his own step forward.

He didn’t seem to have the same problem as me as he moved forward as if whatever was weighing me down like a wet blanket didn’t affect him in the slightest.

He kicked rocks over, shoved bushes to the side, and genuinely made a mess of everything in his way, but instinctively stayed away from the one thing that I could feel the cause of my shivers emanating from.

“The stump,” I said, pointing. “Check the stump.”

He frowned and looked around.

“Where?” he asked.

I pointed to the stump.

He looked down and scowled.

“What do you see?” he asked.

It was my turn to be confused.

“You can’t see it?” I asked. “It’s right between your feet.”

He shook his head.

Concentrating, I focused on what it looked like to me, and projected that image out to him.

It was like me showing him what it looked like by playing a video of the scene straight from my eyes into his brain.

He inhaled deeply, then dropped to his feet.

“Weird,” he said. “Is what you’re feeling bad shivers, or good shivers?”

Perdita stepped up to where Nikolai was crouched down.

He kept his eyes on the stump, though.

With one hand, he started to peel the bark away.

Something broke off.

“Not good or bad, I guess. It’s just making me feel like cold liquid; something is pouring through my veins,” I explained.

“Hmmm,” he said.

Perdita was the one who started acting weird.

Drunk, even.

She swayed first one way, then caught herself.

She overcorrected, then swayed back the other way before rolling completely over.

She started to writhe on the ground.

“What in the world…” I said.

Then an explosion of light poured through the dimly lit forest, and I was thrown ten feet backwards until my back slammed hard against the tree.

It felt like it was cushioned, though.

Almost as if I slammed against a mattress rather than a tree.

Nikolai was still in his same spot, staring at me like I was a demon coming up from the pits of hell.

The picture I’d been projecting at him cut off abruptly, and he was left staring at his hands which were around something that he couldn’t see.

I, on the other hand, could see perfectly.

“Whattttt the fuuuuck,” I drawled, looking in awe at what Nikolai had exposed.

“What?” he asked worriedly, freezing.

It was good he did, too, because suddenly the tiny little things, the size of a hamster, started pouring out of the hollowed out shell of the tree stump.

Nikolai froze when they started to climb up his hands.

“Don’t!” I cried, stilling his instinctive reaction to brush them off.

“What…what the fuck is it?” he asked.

“I…” I hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“Show me,” he demanded.

I frowned and sat up, crawling on my knees until I was directly across the log from him.

Once settled, I stared in awe at the tiny little pixie…things.

Then I projected the image to him.

He froze, his hands falling limply onto his knees, palms up.

“Holy…holy shit.” He breathed shakily. “Oh, holy shit.”

“What is it?” I asked. “Tell me what it is.”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he did, and croaked as he tried to speak.

He cleared his throat, licked his lips, and then tried again.

“They’re Fairy dragons,” he said. “Fairy dragons are the smallest of all types of dragons. More like pets than actual dragons. Fierce and loyal. They’ve never been on this side of the ‘pond’ before.”

Perdita rolled onto her back and started to scoot across the forest floor like a large dog.

“What’s she doing?” I asked.

Nikolai breathed out shakily.

“Fairy dragons are so rare…so blasted rare and true, that they bring out the good in almost everyone,” he explained. “I don’t really know what she’s doing, but I’ll be sure to ask her once she’s back to normal.”

Perdita looked like she’d imbibed on enough alcohol that she was punch drunk. It was actually kind of…cute.

“What’s their story?” I asked, giggling when one of the pink dragons—and they were pink, bright pink— jumped up from Nikolai’s arm to his shoulder.

“Fairy dragons grow up to be the size of a housecat,” he said, shivering when one of the dragons started to curl herself into a lock of his hair just behind his ear. “But they’re so rare, that no one really knows anything about them. There are a few articles about them in the archives, but they just cover the basics on them. What I’ve gathered is that, mostly, they’re social creatures that show up when someone worthy is brought forth. Those that can see them are worthy.”

“So I’m worthy…of what?” I asked.

“Their loyalty,” he said with a shrug.

“But they’re not on me, they’re on you.”

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

My head started to ache from holding the picture in my head for too long, and I sighed.

“I have to let the picture go,” I admitted. “My head hurts, and I think I need to lie down.”

Then I let the illusion go and sighed with relief when my head stopped throbbing almost instantly.

Nikolai stood, and the tiny dragons stayed on his shoulders, clinging to him like little spider monkeys.

“Do you still have that shivery feeling?” he asked.

I pursed my lips and thought about it.

“No…and yes. They’ve turned more to tingles of awareness now,” I said. “It’s almost as if they were trying to make me find them, but now that they’ve been found, they’re content to just let me feel that they’re there.”

One dragon broke off and launched itself from Nikolai’s shoulder to mine, and I gasped in surprise at the warm, gooey feelings that shot through me.

“Is this what you’re feeling?” I asked.

He scrunched his eyes up and focused on my mind, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m feeling. It’s kind of emasculating, if I’m being honest.”

I laughed.

The dragon on my shoulder rubbed my chin like a cat would.

“I think we should take them back with us,” I said.

Thirty minutes later, we finally arrive back at the manor.

The fairy dragons had climbed into the front pocket of my zip up jacket, as well as made themselves at home in my hood.

There were ten of them in total, but only one really seemed to be truly ‘mine.’

The same had happened with another. The thing had stayed curled up in the hollow of Nikolai’s arm, in between my body and his.

And the moment we touched down on the lawn of the manor, two other dragons broke off from my pocket. One from the left, and one from the right.

It wasn’t until we were in the kitchen that I realized where the two had gone.

One was on Blythe’s hand, crawling up the sleeve of her arm, and the other was perched on top of Keifer’s head.

Both of them were frozen.

“What…what is it?” Blythe asked.

“None of you can see them?” I asked.

They shook their heads.

Fighting back the headache I knew would come, I pushed my mind at them once again and gave them a real time picture of what was surrounding them.

“Fairy dragons,” Keifer breathed.

I smiled, looking down at the cute little pixies.

“What else do y’all know about them?” I asked the group in front of me.

Blythe reached out and ran the tips of her fingers down over the cute little winged creature on her shoulder.

“I just read about these little guys in the archives,” she said. “Aren’t they supposed to show when ‘all three sons come into their power?’” she asked. “I could’ve sworn that was what I read.”

Silence filled the room, and it wasn’t lost on me that it wasn’t an easy silence. It was heavy.

Then both men started talking rapidly back and forth about prophecies and what was to come.

“It also said something about the ‘dragon keeper’,” Blythe continued. “The one that holds the heart in her heart, or something like that.”

I saw Nikolai’s head whip around.

He was staring at me, or at least his eyes were pointed in my direction…but Nikolai wasn’t home. He was in his head, thinking furiously.

When I tried to concentrate on his thoughts, to ascertain what he was thinking, he shuffled through so much information that I couldn’t make out a single thing he was thinking.

“So you’re the dragon keeper?” Keifer asked. “I always thought that was a man.”

“We haven’t had a dragon keeper in well over a hundred years,” stated a man I’d never seen before in my life that came in through the living room, startling me so badly that I gasped.

And suddenly, every single fairy dragon was in attack mode, making a dragon wall in front of me and the newcomer.

“I can see that y’all need to be introduced,” Nikolai said. “Jean Luc, this is my mate, Brooklyn. Brooklyn, this is one of our fellow dragon riders, and a brother of the Dragons Warriors.”

Jean Luc stopped in front of me, not seeing the dragon wall, and tried to offer me his hand.

His advance, however, was stalled before he could make it within a couple of feet of me.

“What the…” he said, pulling his hand back.

Blood welled on one knuckle as he stared in confusion at the air in front of him.

“And I guess I should also tell you that you’re looking at the dragon keeper,” Nikolai said humorously.

Jean Luc brought his bloodied knuckle to his mouth, and only then did I extend the illusion to envelop him as well.

By this time, my head was absolutely pounding, and I was only able to hold it long enough for Jean Luc to fall back into a defensive position after seeing the dragon wall of flesh in front of him before it all faded away.

I could tell the moment everyone in the room could no longer see them because they all slumped slightly where they were standing.

“I guess I walked in on a part of the conversation that obviously needed more explanation,” Jean Luc croaked, looking around the room in awe.

“I’ve been telling you not to butt your fat head in for years,” another man said as he came into the room. “Now, what’d I miss?”