Heart of Winter by Lauren Gilley

15

When Oliver woke, he knew that the fever had broken, finally.

He felt like he’d been dragged behind a horse for five miles.

He cracked crusty eyes open and winced against the sunlight streaming in through the window. Even shifting his head fractionally on the pillow had pain firing through every muscle. He ached…everywhere, and his skin felt raw, like he’d baked in the sunlight. But his head was clear, save the lingering fatigue, and he knew that he wasn’t hallucinating when his gaze landed on the large figure slumped down in a chair by his bedside, eyes closed, chin resting on his broad chest.

The king of Aeretoll snored softly, wearing nothing but trousers and an unlaced tunic that clung to the heavy muscles in his arms. For all their size, his bare feet looked strangely vulnerable on the rug.

Oliver rolled his head the other way, and found Tessa standing in the open doorway, one hand on the doorknob, her shocked gaze fixed on the king.

His throat was dry, and his voice hoarse, but he managed to whisper, “What’s he doing in here?”

“I don’t know. I just walked in.” Then she gasped, and turned toward him. “Ollie! You’re awake!”

Her exclamation sent Erik awake with a snort.

She winced. “I’m sorry, your majesty.” She perched on the edge of Oliver’s bed, and he struggled to sit upright; she deftly stacked pillows behind him, so he could lean back against them. “But Oliver’s fever broke!” she said, excitedly. “Look.”

In the moment that his eyes opened, Erik’s gaze flitted back and forth across the room, searching, his body instantly tense and ready for an attack. Then Oliver watched him take in his surroundings, watched the tension ease as Erik realized he wasn’t in the field somewhere under assault. He let out a deep breath, features relaxing – until his gaze landed on the bed, and Oliver in it, and then the strangest thing happened.

Relief bloomed, as quick and bright and surprising as the sun peeking from behind a cloud, his smile wide, and unguarded, eyes crinkling at their corners with it.

Just as quickly, the smile retracted, Erik’s eyes widened, like a child caught in a bit of mischief, and his features smoothed to an expression of only mild interest. “Has it?” he asked, tone bore, and stood.

But Oliver found that he couldn’t be irritated by that indifferent façade, because he’d seen…something. Something true, and joyful, and very much invested.

It didn’t give him hope, exactly – never that, it was too impossible for that – but he felt a little less wretched.

“Yes,” Tessa said, and pressed a hand to his forehead, laughing after. “See? No fever at all.”

Erik stepped up to the bed – and then placed his hand carefully against Oliver’s forehead.

Oliver’s breath caught. He knew those calluses, the texture of those fingertips. Whatever his delirium last night, he hadn’t imagined Erik’s hands on him. On his face, on his neck, on his chest. Raking through his hair, fingertips massaging his scalp. He remembered a low, reassuring voice, and blue eyes, and blue light, and being colder than he’d ever been.

Erik’s hand withdrew, slowly, and when Oliver sought his gaze, he found that the indifference had melted into something else entirely. Oliver couldn’t look away.

Neither could Erik, apparently. “Lady Tessa,” he said, without addressing her directly. “Why don’t you go and see about finding Oliver a breakfast tray? Something light, I think.”

“Oh, yes, of course. And shall I send for Olaf?”

“Please.”

“I’ll do it right away. Ollie, I’m so happy.” She leaned in to kiss his cheek, and then hurried away, steps light, humming under her breath.

When she was gone, Erik sank down slowly to sit on the edge of the bed. His gaze never wavered.

Oliver wet his lips, grimacing at the acrid aftertaste he found there. “I had…the strangest dream. Not like an ordinary fever dream.”

“What of?” Erik’s voice was still rough from sleep, and Oliver decided that, if asked, he would pass off his little shiver in response as a lingering chill.

“I dreamed that I was very cold – that I was in cold water. But you were there, and you were talking to me, telling me it would be all right. You were – you were touching me.” His voice grew faint, and Erik kept staring at him. “Your hands were very warm. But.” His throat was dry, and it hurt to swallow. “That wasn’t a dream at all, was it?”

Erik swallowed, too; Oliver watched the movement of his strong throat. “Olaf had me put you in a cold bath. Half-water and half-snow to bring your fever down.”

“Had you put me…why not a manservant?”

“I – volunteered.”

That was…that was too much to think about, at the moment, as tired and dizzy as he was. “But there were parts that must not have been real. There was…” Explanation slipped through his fingers, and he frowned; shook his head.

Erik’s head tilted, and he winced slightly. “That was probably the ice rose.”

“The…?” A page from his reading returned to him, an ink sketch of a plant with small rosettes for leaves. “Isn’t that a hallucinogen?”

Erik nodded. “It’s medicinal, too. The clansmen of the Waste swear by it, and, in this case” – a small smile – “it appears to have worked.”

“Or maybe my fever simply ran its course, like it always does.”

Erik grew serious again; he leaned forward, a hand on the blankets beside Oliver’s hand, his hair sliding forward over his shoulders so that the sunlight caught the silver strands in it, and they gleamed bright as the beads in his rumpled braids. “You looked dead, by the time I put you in the tub. We are lucky that…” He trailed off, his gaze tracking back and forth across Oliver’s face. Then he sat back with a deep exhale. Gathered himself, all kingly dignity again, formal and stiff. “I apologize for taking you out into the night after your cousin. If the stress caused your relapse, then–”

“Do you honestly think I would have let you go without me?” Oliver interrupted. “Tessa possibly lying dead or eaten by wolves, and you thought I’d sit by the fire and worry like an old woman?”

Erik frowned. “There was no need to risk your health.”

“I’m not as delicate as all that.”

A single brow arched.

“All right, fine, I wasn’t dressed warmly enough. And I’m not used to the bloody cold up here. But worrying about Tessa is only the last bit of stress heaped on top of all the stress that’s been building since the duke died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What for? You didn’t go off and get yourself killed in some idiot war. That was my family. Yours is just–” He motioned toward Erik. “Stressful in general.”

Erik’s smile returned, small, but his eyes danced, the warm blue of spring cornflowers in the sunlight. “In what way?”

It was Oliver’s turn to arch his brows – both, because he couldn’t manage Erik’s one-at-a-time trick. “So asks the king who volunteered to bathe me.” He could see it, then, the image of what it must have looked like filling his mind. Heat flooded his face, and he pressed his hands over his eyes. “Gods, why did you do that?” he mumbled.

He heard what might have been a chuckle, and then Erik said, “It wasn’t as if it was the first time I saw you in the bath.”

Realization crashed over him. “The hot springs,” he said against his palms.

“Yes.”

“That really happened?”

“If you mean, did I find you unconscious and on the verge of drowning in them, then yes, that happened.”

Oliver groaned. His memories were blurred and indistinct, but he could remember that he’d said – some things. Some too blunt, embarrassing, depending upon the societal view of such things up here potentially dangerous things that he definitely shouldn’t have been saying to the warrior king of a warrior nation. “Whatever I said – whatever I did – please, just, please pretend it never happened. I was delirious, and out of my mind, and I never meant–”

Two strong hands closed around his wrists, and his mouth snapped shut so hard his teeth clacked.

Slowly, Erik pulled his hands down from in front of his face, and Erik’s face was much closer than it had been, and much softer than Oliver would have dreamed in this situation. He didn’t release Oliver’s wrists, but held them, thumbs pressed over his pulse points, so he had to feel the way that Oliver’s heart lurched and leaped.

“Oliver.” Serious, but kind, his voice a gentle rumble. “You have nothing – nothing – to be ashamed of, or worried about.”

His sincerity, and the warmth of his touch, his earnest gaze, put a lump in Oliver’s throat. His eyes stung, and he blinked hard. “If anyone heard–”

“It was only ever you, and me, and the people I trust most in the world. Not a soul who would take offense was anywhere near you.”

“I – that–” He was light-headed from breathing too quickly. “That’s good, then. That’s…” He winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

Erik laid one large, warm hand on the top of his head – then slid it sideways, across his rumpled curls, so he cradled the side if his face, his thumb warm as a brand on Oliver’s cheek.

His pulse went wild.

“The important thing,” Erik said, smiling at him, still so softly, “is that you’re on the mend.”

Those eyes were blue and wide enough to drown in.

Footsteps hurried across the flags in the hall, and Erik released him and stood all in one smooth movement just before the door opened. It was Tessa, returned with a breakfast tray.

“Olaf is just behind me, bringing his bag full of bottles. And I saw the princes in the great hall, they want to come up and see you for themselves, and of course Revna…”

She laid a tray on the desk and poured tea from a small pot, but Oliver wasn’t listening to her. He stared instead at Erik, who stood now at the window, hands braced on the ledge, staring out through the glass at the snowy field beyond. A faint smile graced his lips, and maybe it was a trick of the light, but Oliver thought he saw a faint dusting of pink along his sharp cheekbone.

~*~

When Olaf arrived, Erik excused himself, and though Oliver hated to see him leave, it was easier on his poor heart not to spend any more time examining smiles and eyebrow lifts and face touches and trying to interpret their meaning.

Olaf announced that he was fever-free, and, with enough rest, fluids, and nutrient-rich food, he could expect to be back to normal within a few weeks.

“A few weeks?”

“Don’t push yourself too hard too fast, lad,” he cautioned. “Maybe a little walking around your chamber tomorrow. To the library by Friday. But if you overtire yourself, you’ll be right back where you were.”

Oliver grumbled, but he knew all of this. Fevers, and the slow, annoying recoveries from them, were a large part of the landscape of his youth.

He managed to eat a little, and Leif and Rune came to visit.

“We thought you were dead for sure,” Rune said with his usual tact. But then glanced worriedly at Tessa and said, “I mean, not really. It was only that you looked dead.” He winced.

Leif rolled his eyes, but Oliver snorted a laugh.

By the time Tessa finally shooed them out, and then left him with a smile and a promise to be back later, his eyelids were flagging. He lied back and let sleep take him – a thankfully dreamless sleep, the sort of deeply restful nap he so badly needed.

When he woke, the sunlight was slanted and amber, a rich sunset light, and Lady Revna sat in the chair beside his bed, mending a tunic.

“There he is,” she said brightly, sparing him a quick grin before returning her attention to her task. “Back among the living.”

Oliver hitched up higher against his pillows, and neatened the covers in his lap. Exhaustion lay like a quilt over him, but he didn’t ache as badly, now. “Thanks to a snow bath and psychedelic roses, apparently,” he joked.

She chuckled. “Don’t be too quick to dismiss the psychedelic roses.”

“I definitely won’t.”

“Or the stubborn sod who insisted you be given them in the first place.”

Oliver had a feeling, based on her tone, that the stubborn sod in question wasn’t Olaf. “Where’s Tessa?” he asked.

“Sleeping, poor dear. She’s worn out and I’ve finally gotten her to put on a nightgown and go to bed properly.”

He shook his head. “She shouldn’t have run herself ragged looking after me.”

“She had help. Astrid, and Thyra, and me, and Olaf’s boys, and my boys. I never could get her to sleep for very long, though. Stubborn like her cousin,” she said, lifting up a quick grin.

He smiled ruefully back. “I’d always hoped she would be smarter than me.”

“Nothing wrong with stubbornness. Gods knows it runs in my family, too. Speaking of which.” Her gaze lifted, sharp, suddenly, pinning him back against the pillows, and her hands never wavered on the needle and cloth. “I wanted to reassure you that you were very carefully watched over during your illness, so if you’re worried about the wrong person overhearing anything you might have been murmuring in your sleep, you needn’t be.”

He felt the blood rush to his face, and it was an effort to maintain eye contact with her. “My apologies, my lady, if I was in any way untoward.”

She rolled her eyes, and was smirking when she returned her gaze to his. “Oh, don’t worry about me. Even in the throes of fever, your affections were singularly fixed. And not on me.”

He fought not to look away, but he did grimace. “I hope I didn’t – that is, I certainly never meant–”

Her grin widened, and she winked. “Don’t worry. They were very well-received by their intended.”

His face was on fire. He finally let his gaze skip away from hers – blue and too much like a merry version of her brother’s – and stared instead at the lumps his feet made beneath the covers. The light-headed sensation returned, but this time it had nothing to do with illness. “I’ve already apologized to his majesty, but I want to apologize to you as well. It was never my intention to – to reveal such things about myself. I hope that you won’t hold anything I’ve said against Tessa. I am, after all, only a bastard, and not well thought of by the inhabitants of Drakewell, and so if I have given offense–”

“Oliver,” she said, firmly. After a moment, he dragged his gaze back to her, and found that she’d set her sewing in her lap, and stared at him with an unlooked-for sympathy. “You’ve got to stop apologizing, lamb. You’re safe here. You’re among friends. We’ve all become quite fond of you and Tessa.”

Friends. The only people he’d ever been able to call friends in his life had been his cousins, and he’d always known they loved him, but they were his blood, no matter how illegitimate his own was on his mother’s side. They’d been brought up together, they’d known one another. To think that he could come here to this wild place, full of strangers, that they would see him, and grow fond of him…it wasn’t only unexpected, but impossible.

“I don’t know if you believe me, but I wish you would,” she said, sadly, and stood, mending gathered together in her arms. “And I wish you would believe me on this, too – when I tell you that my brother doesn’t bestow his affections lightly or easily, or very often at all.”

He sucked in a breath. She could not – could not possibly – be intimating what it sounded like. Because that was too…that couldn’t be…

“I am a bastard,” he said with difficulty. “And not a pretty highborn maid.”

“I beg to differ on pretty,” she said with a smirk, and then grew serious. “And since you’re not a maid, what bloody difference does being a bastard make?” She turned, while he struggled to draw breath, his head spinning, and paused at the door, one hand on the knob. Looked back over her shoulder. “Be patient with him, Oliver.” Then she slipped out.

Oliver stared at the closed door for a long time after she was gone, pulse pounding so hard it hurt.

~*~

Despite his lingering fatigue and weakness, he was too jittery after Revna’s visit to sleep anymore. Evening came on quickly, and Thyra – who he finally got to meet properly – brought him a tray of broth and bread and explained that Tessa was still asleep, and would probably sleep straight through dinner if not awakened.

“I think it’s best to let her sleep,” he said.

“My thoughts exactly, my lord,” Thrya agreed.

“Just Mr. Meacham,” he said, biting back a sigh. He ate a little, and, after, set his tray aside and reached for the small pile of books that had accumulated on his bedside table during his illness, reading the titles by the light of the candles Thyra had lit.

Right away, he knew these to be Tessa’s library selections. Novels; Aquitainian love stories about knights, and fair maids, and feats of strength and daring. Stories about fairies, and evil queens, and even dragons. The Merry Maid of Kimberwick caught his eye, one he’d read years ago, as a boy, and before he knew it, he’d read the first page, and then the second, and was nearly-half done when a knock sounded at the door. He lifted his head to find that the candles had burned half-down, dripping wax down the black iron of their sticks, and that the fire needed another log. Relaxed and in good spirits, still mostly stuck in the story, he called, “Come in.”

Only to have his nerves come roaring back to the forefront when the door opened to reveal Erik.

The king was dressed in deep midnight blue, a silver-studded velvet tunic half-laced over a white shirt, his belt of brown leather hand-tooled and silver-etched. His hair had been washed and rebraided: two large braids at his temples that hugged his skull and curved behind each ear, lying down his chest in a series of intricate knots spaced with sapphires and silver beads. His rings winked in the candlelight as he held onto the half-open door and said, “May I come in?”

Yes, Oliver thought. Always. You can climb into bed with me, if you want. But there were guards in the hall, doubtless, and so he swallowed that down and, a bit unsteadily, said, “I already said you could.”

Erik smiled, and shut the door. “You’re feeling more like yourself, I see,” he said, crossing the room at a slow, deliberate pace, and coming to stand in front of the chair that Revna had used earlier.

“Yes. Sorry about that.” His pulse had gone from still and quiet to irregular, thumping loudly in his ears. He made an effort to hold very still, when what he wanted was to crawl beneath the covers and hide.

“Don’t be. If I ever get you into a bath again, I’d prefer you conscious.”

Oliver’s mind blanked with shock. Erik was teasing him. No, Erik was flirting with him. A simple line, one that conjured dozens of images involving shed clothes, and steaming water, and hands whose texture were already familiar to him, and he could not think about that. Not without blushing and stammering like a fool.

“I…what?”

Erik chuckled, and sat down. “How are you, though? You look brighter than this morning.”

Health. He could talk about his health – much safer than bathing. Oliver latched onto the topic desperately. “I feel much improved,” he said, stiffly, but unable to help it. Propriety was his only defense against a king’s flirtation – it was far easier when Erik glowered at him, when Oliver couldn’t even pretend that anything might happen. “Far past ready to get out of bed.”

Erik cocked a single brow. “I recall Olaf saying that it would be weeks before you returned to normal activity.”

“A week at most.  I tend to bounce back quickly.”

“Mmhm.”

“This is my illness,” Oliver said primly, lifting his chin in what he knew to be perfect imitation of the loftier nobles at Drakewell’s court. “I should think after more than twenty years living with it, I should understand its courses.”

“No doubt,” Erik said, fondly, still smiling. Then sobered. “Why did you never speak of it before? If we’d known…”

Oliver shook his head. “Because I don’t like to be judged for it – no,” he said, when Erik started to protest. “I know that you would have. I turned up on your doorstep small and weak and short-haired and nothing like you Northmen. I didn’t need to add ‘sickly’ to your list of reasons for despising me on sight.”

Erik looked unimpressed. “I did not despise you on sight.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Do you presume to read my thoughts?”

“Er, no,” Oliver had to admit.

Erik nodded toward the bed. “This is why you never became a soldier.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not suggesting there’s any shame in that.”

Oliver realized he’d frowned, and smoothed his features.

“The world has plenty of soldiers – more than it needs.”

“Said the solider.”

Erik shrugged, a negligent, one-shouldered movement, dismissive. “It’s how I was brought up. It’s what I was bred for. What I’m good at. You are good at other things.” His gaze dropped to the book in Oliver’s hands.

He shut it, and showed Erik the cover. “Reading silly books in bed, apparently.”

Erik smiled when he read the title. The man smiled all the bloody time now, damn it. It was too distracting by half. “That was always my sister’s favorite as a girl.”

“Tessa’s too.”

“She used to tell us that she liked The Battle of Evernight best, but Arne found that tucked beneath her pillow, and she turned scarlet when he asked her about it.” His grin widened, one of fond remembrance. “She always wanted to keep up with us, to spar and climb trees; she rejected all of Mother’s efforts at making her a proper princess – Mother was from Veniscall, you understand. Very Southern manners. Rev was embarrassed that we’d caught her reading, as she so eloquently put it, a ‘book for stupid girls.’” He shook his head. “Arne laughed, but I told her there was nothing stupid about the book, or girls. Or love. She was – and is – a great romantic at heart.”

Oliver couldn’t disagree, not after the prodding Revna had given him earlier, even if he refused to accept the idea that it was love she was prodding him toward, love with her brother. “The boys’ father,” he began, carefully. “He’s…?”

Erik sighed. “Dead. Fifteen years now. Rune was only two.”

“Gods, that’s terrible. I’m sorry.”

“Torstan,” Erik said, wistfully. “He grew up with me. Tor, and Bjorn, and me, thick as thieves. We terrorized Aeres together,” he said, chuckling. “I didn’t realize he was moony-eyed over my sister for years. It was Revna who told me he’d asked for her hand. Then I…might have punched him in the mouth.”

Oliver snorted. “Of course you did, you great brute.”

“She was my little sister!” Erik protested, laughing. “I had to defend her honor.”

“I’m guessing she didn’t want it defended.”

“Not as much. She rather…beat me about the head and shoulders with a riding crop.”

Oliver laughed.

“She was on horseback at the time. She had the advantage,” Erik conceded, cheeks pink, grin wry. “In any event, I hadn’t knocked any of Tor’s teeth out, and they were wed in the spring.” It was a sad thing to watch his smile fade, and his remembered humor and joy along with it.

“What happened to him?” Oliver asked quietly.

“Set upon by Beserkirs. Father managed to broker a peace, afterward. But the perpetrators – them I slew myself.”

“I’m sorry,” Oliver said again.

Erik nodded. “Thank you.”

A silence descended, one full of old, remembered sadness, and, on Oliver’s part, sympathy, but it wasn’t an awkward one.

Finally, Erik drew in a deep breath, and resettled his shoulders with an air of moving on. “I came because I wanted to say, formally, that, when you’re well enough, I think it’s time we started discussing our alliance in earnest.”

Oliver felt his brows go up. “How forward-thinking of you.”

“Hm.” The glare he got was mostly smile, a playful sort of warning that sent a thrill through Oliver’s belly. “Yes, well. It’s been pointed out to me that I might have been a little–”

“Ridiculous?”

“Less than even-handed about the idea so far. If Tessa is to marry my nephew, then it’s time we sorted out the particulars of such an arrangement, you and me.”

“It just so happens that’s the reason I’m in your bloody cold country in the first place,” Oliver said dryly, and earned a wider, truer grin for his efforts. His reaction to which couldn’t be good for his poor overtaxed heart.

“Good.” Erik stood. “Rest up, then, and we’ll talk soon.”

When he turned to go, Oliver felt suddenly bereft. As bad as it was to be smiled at and flirted with and confided in, it hurt much worse to think of all of that getting up and walking out of his room. Oliver hated himself for such weakness. What they had, this rapport they’d developed, was so unexpected, and so wonderful – it was priceless all on its own, and could shatter like dropped glass if he pushed things too far. Even if Erik had, as his sister had said, affections, they weren’t the sort that could be acted upon. Not given their social standing; their fortunes; their responsibilities. Not given who they were in all ways. It didn’t matter if Revna was encouraging – there was a whole world out there that wasn’t, and Oliver could not ruin his family’s chances for sustainability over a flutter of butterflies in his stomach.

Knowing all that, his traitorous mouth still said, “Your majesty,” when Erik was at the door.

Erik paused, glancing back over his shoulder as Revna had done earlier, though his expression was entirely different.

“Thank you,” Oliver said, and that was all he said, his throat closing on him, suddenly.

A long beat passed, before Erik’s own throat bobbed. His voice was a little rough when he said, “My subjects call me ‘your majesty.’ I’d like you to call me Erik.”

Oliver took an unsteady breath. “Thank you. Erik.”

“Sleep well, Oliver.” Then he was gone.