The sun in their sky indeed.
“Now, on to serious matters.” Ian did up his seatbelt. “Are you really bringing Killian with us, darling?”
“Yes,” Geoffrey replied.
Killian squinted at Matthieu. The fancy feathers atop his head drooped lopsidedly, and he wheezed a quiet note of mild annoyance.
“Will I be safe?” Matthieu asked. “He won’t bite any part of me that is toointime,will he?”
“No, kitten,” Ian promised.
“We’ve raised the boys since they were eggs,” Geoffrey continued. “They may mouth off from time to time, but you’re at no risk of being bitten. They’re gentle. Killian will behave.”
“Foryou.Those wild peacocks we started with, though…” Ian laughed. He shifted into drive and continued on his way. “You wouldn’t have been so lucky with them, Matthieu. Not even with our Geoffrey here to charm them..”
Killian snapped his beak several times at Matthieu. Geoffrey pushed his feathers in front of his eyes, and Killian shook his head all over, his long neck wiggling like a snake.
“You’ll be fine,” Geoffrey assured him in a soft voice as Killian settled. The bird laid his head on Geoffrey’s shoulder, then unleashed a long, ungainly avian sigh. “None of them would ever dare to bite you.”
Matthieu considered the bird on Geoffrey’s lap. What reason would Killian have not to bite him? There was no connection between them—Matthieu hadn’t been there to raise him from an egg like Ian and Geoffrey had. In almost all ways, he was an outsider. “Why not?”
Geoffrey’s hand crept across the Hellcat’s custom leather seats and found Matthieu’s thigh. Fireworks exploded in the recesses of Matthieu’s brain, and his heart started to race all over again. Ian boasted charisma, but Geoffrey? Geoffrey’s love was subtle and delicate, and it manifested in small but heartfelt ways that made Matthieu believe that they could make this work.
“Why not?” Geoffrey echoed. He smiled, and the expression softened his typically stern face. When he didn’t hide behind a mask of aloof superiority, Geoffrey was beautiful. “It’s simple.” Geoffrey gently squeezed Matthieu’s thigh. “No hatchling of ours would ever bite a member of our family. I would never allow it.”
* * *
The Opal consulate was located an hour and a half to the north of Aurora, tucked away off a quiet state highway in the heart of a deciduous forest. Matthieu observed the lush foliage as they drove by, imagining what it would look like in fall when the leaves would set the forest ablaze with their autumnal colors. Unlike in California, which had felt infinitely vast and sparse, the forest encroached on them, drawing closer and closer to the road until, at last, they were immersed in it.
Matthieu supposed, all things considered, that it felt vaguely Scandinavian. It was considerate of the Amethysts to have offered nostalgic accommodations to their foreign emissaries.
“Is this really where it is?” Ian asked. He’d locked his phone into a mount on the windshield and had been navigating with the help of his GPS. “I haven’t entered the wrong address?”
Geoffrey craned his neck to see the screen. “The address is correct, as are the proposed directions.”
Over the last half hour, Killian had settled into Geoffrey’s arms and started to nap. When Geoffrey had been sitting still, Killian had slept undisturbed, but now that Geoffrey was active, the bird opened an eye lazily and angled his head to look at Geoffrey. Displeased with what he saw, Killian squirmed out from Geoffrey’s arms and plopped down on Matthieu’s lap. Matthieu, who had never touched a bird, much less been sat on by one, stared at him and held very still.
Did birds vomit? Perhaps Killian was carsick.
Or maybe Geoffrey was right.
To test the truth, Matthieu laid a hand on Killian’s back then petted him. Killian didn’t stir, so Matthieu continued to show him affection, gradually growing bolder the longer he did.
“Here it is,” Geoffrey said. He pointed at an unmarked road approaching on the right. “Take the turn here.”
Ian obeyed, and for a short while, they traveled down the road Geoffrey had indicated. “The GPS is going haywire. How much longer until our next turn?”
“There is no next turn,” Geoffrey replied. “This is the driveway. We’re here.”
Matthieu stilled his hand and looked out the window. Killian made a honk-like snore and nestled his head on Matthieu’s thigh. The trees were the same here as they had been along the highway—tall and full, their species as varied as the fauna that called them home. Then, on the horizon, a structure appeared, and Matthieu spotted his first sign of human life. A young woman with long, pale blonde hair sat beneath one of the nearby trees, a toddler on her lap, and a picture book shared between them. As the Hellcat made its way by, she looked up from its pages. Her icy-blue eyes bore through Matthieu, curious and mildly concerned. Then, after a brief word whispered into the child’s ear, she collected him in her arms and disappeared among the trees.
“Did you see the woman,mes dragons?” Matthieu inquired. He looked at the spot where she’d last been, trying to figure out what he’d seen. The woman had clearly had a human child on her lap, not a young dragon.
“Woman? No.” Geoffrey settled back in his seat to look out Matthieu’s window. “And I don’t see any now.”
“She disappeared into the trees.” Matthieu frowned.
“Perhaps she’s Snorre’s mate,” Ian reasoned. “What did you say her name was?”
