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.