Heart of Winter by Lauren Gilley

17

Preparations for the Yuletide Feast began in earnest. More and more pine boughs were threaded along the gallery bannister, and within the iron spokes of the chandeliers in the great hall. The servants bustled about, and seemed to have roped off-duty guardsmen into toting decorations back and forth. The halls smelled of fresh-cut fir; pine cones nearly as long as her arm hung from doorways, ranged in clusters tied with velvet ribbon and set with harness bells. Candles studded with dried berries and rosemary sprigs were being stockpiled in corners. In the kitchen one day, when Leif took her in to show her where the biscuits were stashed, she saw extra sacks of flower and grain; saw kitchen boys toting long rails loaded down with sausages up from storage. It was going to be, appropriately, a kingly feast.

She and Leif spent time together every day. They went hawking again, and riding – though they went in the morning, on bright days, and stayed within sight of the palace the whole time. He didn’t kiss her again, though she rather wished he would – but he slanted her looks, sometimes, when she could sense that he wanted to. He touched her more: found reasons to steady her by an elbow, to take her hand and help her up a step or over a bit of ice on the garden path. When they left the palace, he draped her cloak around her shoulders, the rough tips of his fingers gentle and warm when he fastened the clasp at her throat.

She liked the way the sunlight turned his blue eyes translucent. The way the snow spangled his golden hair. She liked that he was gentle with animals, but strong and sure in the sparring ring. He was dedicated to his studies, and when he talked about someday leading Aeretoll, it was with a proper dignity: he understood the weight of the responsibility that awaited him. When they took a sleigh into the city, a group of children ran alongside, shouting and waving, smiling and calling him your majesty. He reined up, and offered the small paper wrapped peppermints from his own pocket – his breath, incidentally, always smelled of peppermint – and listened to their excited stories with genuine interest.

He was no spoiled lordling; he was good, and kind, and serious, and intelligent, and it would be easy to fall in love with him.

Only…

“I like the blue,” Rune offered. He was lounged negligently in a chair in the royal family solar, booted feet propped up on the edge of a table, head tilted in consideration so that his wild, unbraided hair caught the sunlight and flared all in a rich brown and red spill across his shoulders.

Tessa stood on a low stool in the center of the rug while Astrid measured the length of her hem for the tenth time and Revna held up swatches of crimson and midnight velvet to her face for comparison. The Yuletide Feast was in two days, and Revna had insisted she needed a special gown for the occasion. Tessa had protested, not wanting to put anyone to any inconvenience, but as had become usual, Revna had swept her along with gentle insistence. Tessa hoped that she had a place at all Aeretollean negotiation tables, because there was no refusing her.

She rolled her eyes, now. “My son the fashion expert.” Over her shoulder to Rune: “Aren’t you supposed to be studying? But, yes, the blue, I think.”

Rune grinned, and winked at Tessa.

That was her problem. Leif was wonderful, but Rune left her biting back giggles at every turn.

Revna turned and flapped a hand at him. “Out with you. Go learn something.”

He heaved a theatrical sigh and got to his feet. Headed for the door – but leaned in close, when his mother’s back was turned, to whisper to Tessa: “Blink twice if you need rescuing.”

She gave a very unladylike snort of laugher, and then clapped a hand over her mouth. Rune grinned – the quicksilver, beautiful, grin that reached all the way up to his eyes and pressed lines at the corners that would deepen as he aged; his was a face printed with joy, and made all the lovelier for it.

“Rune,” Revna said, in warning.

“I’m going.” He left with one more wink that left her stomach somersaulting.

“That child,” Revna said, shaking her head, when he was gone. She selected a bolt of velvet and set it aside with the silver threat and tiny seed pearls and sapphires. “Ah, here it is.” She lifted a bundle and turned to Tessa with it held out in offering.

It was fur, she saw, a heavy, black-flecked gray; she reached for it automatically, and felt its cool, slick hair slide through her fingers. She knew where it had come from before Revna said, “The wolves that Leif felled.” She glanced up, gaze gone serious. “He wanted you to have one.”

“Oh,” Tessa breathed.

“You can wear it as a stole,” Revna said, unfurling the length of fur and wrapping it around her own shoulders and throat in demonstration. “That’s how we do it here at festivals.” She struck a regal pose, and then transferred the fur to Tessa’s shoulders. “Or as a cape. A topper for your cloak, on really cold days.” She smoothed her hands over its plush surface, across Tessa’s shoulders until she gripped them lightly through it. Her gaze was searching.

Revna meant raven, and Tessa found that wholly appropriate, the way the woman could stare at you and know things.

She swallowed and said, “It’s beautiful.” Stroked the ends of it. “I’ll have to thank him when I see him next.”

Revna smiled, wistfully, and cocked her head. It was a look that reminded Tessa much of her own mother, in one of Katherine’s rare soft moments. Revna said, “You know, my husband grew up here in the palace. Torstan was Lord Trostann’s second son, my father’s ward, and here to be made a knight. He, and Bjorn, and my brother were fast friends.” She smiled, gaze turned inward, remembering. “My mother used to always talk about finding me a ‘smart match.’ Said it was my duty to marry a powerful lord who could serve as an ally to my brother, and a defender of the realm. It was all very dramatic.

“I was, of course, completely against the idea. Tor was a lord’s son, and he was Erik’s best friend – but I never saw him as an important lord’s son. It wasn’t a duty, marrying him. In fact, we surprised everyone when we announced we wanted to be wed.

“I married for love.” Grief touched her face, old but no less fierce. And then her expression turned probing. She slid her hands down Tessa’s arms until she could take both her hands into her own. Squeezed. “My hope is that you will be able to do the same.”

Tessa blinked in surprise. “My lady?”

Revna smiled, and squeezed her hands again. “I know that you are a sweet and dutiful girl, but I hope that you’ll be able to follow your heart. To be bold and honest when it comes to what you want for yourself. I love both my sons very much.”

“My lady, what are–”

Revna let go and stood back, winking just as Rune had. “I think you know what I mean.”

~*~

For all that he loved research, Oliver thought he might scream if he had to look at one more Drakewell tax document.

“But…why are there so many parties?” Leif asked, braids swinging side-to-side as he shook his head over the parchment Birger had just passed him.

Oliver tipped his head against the back of his chair and studied the ceiling, vision faintly blurred from squinting so long at cramped handwriting. “Because Drakewellians are extremely shallow.”

Erik snorted from behind his desk. “It’s because Drakewell lies in a warm valley, with good roads, and plenty to eat, and so rarely goes to war that its citizenry – minor lords especially – don’t look to their duke as a source of protection, but of entertainment.”

Oliver pointed toward him without looking. “That, too. But I’m feeling rather uncharitable after poring over three years of expenditure figures.”

There was a rustling of pages. “Gods.” Leif had found the sketches, then. The fashion plates from last year’s galas. “I wouldn’t have to dress like this, would I?”

Oliver pictured Leif’s broad shoulders squeezed into a fitted, brocade jacket, skintight breeches and polished boots, and couldn’t hold back a laugh. “You might even have to cut your hair.”

The prince hissed in dismay.

“Now, now, lad,” Birger soothed. “You wouldn’t have to live there on a permanent basis.”

Erik hummed thoughtfully.

Oliver lifted his head to glance at the king and found him stroking his beard in an absent way, gaze thoughtful. “No, but it would require a very trusted regent to act in your stead while you were away.”

Leif sighed.

“You’re being too reasonable,” Oliver told the king. “It’s lowering the mood of the entire room.”

Birger and Leif chuckled.

Erik shot him a slanted, quietly amused look.

The Yuletide Festival was the day after tomorrow, and Oliver had spent most of this day, and the ones before it, in this study, educating Leif about Drakewell and explaining all the duchy’s governmental workings to king, prince, and advisor alike. His back was sore from occupying this chair for so long, but he was feeling stronger and more energetic, and planned to take a walk later, wrapped up in yet more hemmed hand-me-down clothes that still smelled entirely too much like the spiced oil that Erik brushed into his hair.

There had been no more loaded moments between them; no caught-in-the-balance, precipice moments brimming with the potential for more.

But Oliver wished there had been, and that was a problem.

A light tap sounded at the door, and Revna poked her head in and surveyed them all. “This is some party, boys.”

Erik chucked a crumpled piece of parchment at her in a charming display of childishness. It missed by a wide margin, bouncing harmlessly across the ground toward her feet.

She grinned at her brother and then turned her gaze on Oliver. She crooked a finger. “I need to borrow our Southerner for a bit.”

Oliver was already halfway to his feet when Erik said, “What for?” His tone, low and authoritative, was a surprise.

To Revna as well, if the way her brows shot up was any indication.

Leif glanced between his mother and uncle in question.

Birger pressed his lips together into a very thin line, a spark of amusement glinting in his gaze.

Revna sniffed and said, “That’s for me to know, and you to find out. Oliver, will you come?”

“Um…sure.” He followed her out with a shrug of confusion for the boys.

“Is everything all right?” Oliver asked as they started down the hall together.

“Aside from you being stuck in that stuffy study all day with my dictatorial brother, everything’s quite all right.”

“Oh, well, I don’t mind. The room, that is. Or, um, your brother.”

She chuckled. “That’s good to hear.”

“Is it?”

“Mmhm.” She linked her arm through his as they turned the corner to the stairwell.

“Where are we going, if I may ask?”

“To see about getting you properly outfitted for the feast.”

“Oh, that’s – really not necessary.”

She patted his arm. “Oh, but it is.”

Oliver bit back a sigh. “I suppose I don’t have a choice?”

“None at all, lamb.”

She led him past his own chamber to what he knew, based on Tessa’s vivid descriptions of it, was the heart of the royal apartments. He marveled, just as Tessa had, that he’d been brought into such a personal space.

A low stool stood in the center of a rug, and a pushed-aside table held bolts of cloth, and lengths of braided cord and twinkling accessories. Astrid stood at the ready with shears and measuring tape.

Revna led him up to the stool and he stepped on it obediently. Lifted his arm when Astrid stepped forward and prompted him to, measuring the length of it with her tape.

But he turned to Revna, desperate anxiety beginning to swell in his gut, and said, “You really don’t have to go to any trouble. The clothes you’ve given me already are fine.”

“Fine for meetings and walks,” she said. “But not for the Yuletide Feast.”

“No, really–”

Astrid’s fingers brushed his spine through his tunic as she measured down the length of it, and he fought not to shrink forward away from her.

“We’ve already got a dress all sorted for Tessa,” Revna said, “and we musn’t leave you out.” She turned her back on his protesting expression and fingered the trinkets laid out on the table. Turned back to him holding a long, slender silver bead between thumb and forefinger. She stepped close and held it up beside his face. “The silver, for sure, and the blue. Tessa’s wearing blue. It goes best with this fiery hair of yours.” She smiled, and reached, quickly, to finger one of his curls with her free hand – not with the careful, quiet softness with which Erik had petted him before, but in a brisk and evaluating way.

“It’s grown out since you arrived,” she observed. “Not long enough to truly braid, I don’t think. But I think we can thread some beads, don’t you, Astrid?”

“Yes, my lady? And the sapphires?”

“Oh, of course.”

“S-sapphires?” Oliver spluttered. “Revna, I can’t–”

“Tessa’s going to wear them,” Revna said, matter-of-fact.

His pulse leaped and pounded. “Tessa’s a highborn lady. While I’m a bastard.”

She folded her arms and sent him a stern look. “And no less our honored guest because of it. I will have you dressed well.”

“In blue?”

“Yes.”

“In your family’s colors? With sapphires in my hair?” He could hear the desperate edge to his voice. How often had he noted the glint of blue gems in Erik’s braided hair? Set into his heavy silver rings?

Revna said, “Yes.”

“But I’m–”

“Let’s stop using the B-word, shall we? And why should Tessa be grandly dressed and you not?”

Panic blurred his vision at the edges; squeezed at his lungs and throat. “You can drape Tessa in all the finery you want,” he snapped. “She’s marrying your son!”

Revna’s expression remained sternly placid. She lifted her brows a fraction in quiet challenge. And what of you? her gaze asked.

Oliver fought to catch his breath a moment. It was unbearable, being caught like this: between his own feelings, and Erik’s looks, and everyone else’s increasingly less subtle nudges toward something he knew to be impossible. This was ridiculous, this couldn’t happen, and resentment swelled, because why was Revna so cruel as to even suggest that it could?

Or, perhaps he was so stupid and sensitive and reading those nudges where there were none; where there was only friendship and kindness and generosity, and nothing like illicit desire at play.

He blew out a deep breath as Astrid lifted his other arm to measure it. “I don’t want to make a fool of myself,” he murmured.

Her face softened, and she touched his cheek, an entirely sisterly gesture, with nothing of the tender hesitance of her brother’s touch. “Oh, lamb. Never worry on that account.”

~*~

By the time he’d been measured, evaluated, and draped in enough fabric for Revna’s liking, the sun was beginning to set beyond the windows. Oliver bid her ladyship a hasty goodbye – her smirk knowing in return – and fled.

He passed a pair of maids hauling linens in the hallway, and both of them shot him quick, questioning glances. A bastard foreigner coming out of the royal apartments; even the brief touch of their eyes felt like a judgement. Did everyone in Aeres know what was happening? That Lady Revna was draping him in blue velvet and wanting to put sapphires in his hair? Talking to him of her brother?

After the feast, everyone in the palace would know.

He needed air.

Head ducked against any other awkward moments of eye contact, he made his way through the halls to the door that led out onto the third-story balcony that overlooked the gardens.

Oliver paused, one step out the door, struck by the pink-streaked portrait of the sky, the sun’s rays gold and distinct along the distant horizon, like the spokes of a wagon wheel. The mountains, and foothills, and the trees lay in folds of mantled gray, far across a gleaming pink expanse of snow. The last, honeyed light of the day caught the points of guard spears on the wall walk, and the icicles that dripped from the battlements, and the snow-heaped trees and shrubs and arbors and benches below, in the garden.

Oliver walked up to lean against the stone balustrade, pressing his face forward into the breeze. It was westerly, tonight, as if the sun’s last glow was tugging at him, wanting to pull him across the great, candied distance.

“I see we had the same idea,” a low voice rumbled.

He turned his head, and there, four columns down, framed beneath one of the gallery’s high, rune-carved arches, stood Erik.

His forearms rested on the balustrade, same as Oliver’s, though he’d had to stoop much lower to accomplish that, his fur-clad shoulders hunched, his hair trailing over the edge, lifting like streamers in the breeze. His profile, limned in pink and gold sunset light, belonged on a statue. The sort of proud, regal construction that stood in a town square, or atop a palace wall.

Oliver wanted to kick himself: in his hurry to get out here, he hadn’t taken note of the guards who must be stationed just on the other side of the door. He couldn’t retreat, not after he’d been spotted, but this was the first time they’d been alone together since what Oliver was referring to in his head as the Petting Incident.

Erik turned toward him, and Oliver was struck by the ordinary, commonplace gesture of him tucking his hair away from his face and behind his ear. Oliver’s fingers itched to do it for him.

He swallowed against a dry throat and said, “I was just with your sister. Being fitted for feast clothes.”

“Ah.” The statue resemblance melted into smile; it lit up Erik’s face in the same soft, sweet way the sunset lit the snow. “My advice is to do whatever she says.”

“I did try to refuse.”

“And how did that go?”

“Apparently, there are going to be sapphires in my hair.”

He didn’t think he imagined the way Erik’s eyes widened, fractionally. And he definitely didn’t imagine the way his gaze shifted to Oliver’s hair, and he then cleared his throat. “Oh. Well. I’m sure she knows best.” He straightened and came to stand beside Oliver, close enough that, when he rested his arms along the rail again, their elbows were touching. He smelled like he’d been riding, Oliver noted: snow, and horse, and sweat.

Erik’s gaze was fixed on the sunset again, and so Oliver joined him in gazing toward it. The pink had deepened to a deep rose, and the shadows across the snow had grown long, like reaching fingers.

“I’ve seen plenty of sunsets,” Oliver said, “but never one quite like this.”

“I imagine they’re impressive in Drakewell, shining on all that water.”

“Oh, yes. It shines like glass.” Oliver nodded toward the expanse of snowy field beyond the wall, purpling, now, as night raced on, studded with bright star flares where the last light caught the ice crust just so. “But this…this is like diamonds. And the sky – the sky is much closer, here. Like I could reach up and touch it.” He started to demonstrate, but then tightened his hand on the balustrade, face heating. “Apologies. I don’t – er – normally get so fanciful.”

Erik chuckled. “Well, you are Southern, after all.”

Oliver chuckled, too, and it eased the tension in his chest. “It is lovely here. Too cold by half, and more dangerous than I’m used to. But. Lovely.”

“Hm. I’ve always thought so. There’s something beautiful about the simplicity of it.”

Oliver skated a glance toward him, and saw the last flare of sunlight catching on the silver and gems braided into his hair; the gleam of silver stitching on his tunic; the glint of his rings, where his bare hands rested on the stone, heedless of the cold. He thought he was beginning to understand it, all the ornamentation. Aeres – at least in winter – was a sparse and cold landscape, the green of the trees, and the gray of the mountains, and the sugared colors of sunrise and sunset all that broke up the many, many layers of snowy white. Long winters of bitter cold were spent indoors, around the fire, drinking, and talking. There were no flowers, no leaves, no fresh fruits. Amidst that stark backdrop, the Aeretollean people had taken to ornamenting themselves with all the glitter and gleam of the precious metals and stones they’d spent generations mining.

And the beads and gems woven into their hair, Erik had told him, held significance. Were gifts from loved ones.

“The sapphires,” Oliver started, before he could think better of it. Erik glanced toward him right away, curious. “For my hair, I mean. The beads. Is it – are they–” He couldn’t ask outright. They had been Revna’s idea, he reminded himself. “You said, before, about the beads, about what they mean – I’m not Aeretollean, nor even an Aeretollean’s intended, like Tessa is.” He gulped down a breath. “I shouldn’t wear them.”

Erik let one hand slide off the rail so he could turn to him more fully, brows knitting. “Anything you are given to wear is a gift. Given freely, and yours to keep.”

“But I’m…” Revna’s voice popped into his head: Let’s stop using the B-word, shall we? “They wouldn’t mean anything, like yours do. Won’t – won’t everyone think it’s ridiculous? That I’m playing dress-up. Or even insulting you and your people? I would be making a mockery of a long-standing tradition.”

Erik stared at him a long, long moment, brow slowly smoothing. “No.” His voice had gone deeper. “You wouldn’t.”

Oliver shook his head, frustrated with himself for expressing his doubts – and for not even expressing them clearly, at that. “But I–”

Erik’s heavy hand landed on his shoulder, and squeezed – gently, but Oliver could feel the latent strength in that grip, held back on his account. “You’re not in Drakewell anymore, Oliver. Our feasts and festivals are not full of gossip and petty slights.” He lowered his head a fraction, bringing them in closer – close enough for Oliver to feel the heat of his breath on his face, his own breath catching in his throat. “If you come braided and finely dressed to my hall” – Erik’s voice was a rumbling whisper, now, his eyes deep, blue, unfathomable – “then my people will know you’ve earned the honor of sitting at the high table.”

“The – the high table?” Oliver asked, weakly.

The hand on his shoulder squeezed. “Yes.”

Sound of the door opening.

“Your majesty?” one of the guards asked.

Erik held his gaze a moment longer, then stepped back, and turned away, sighing. “What?” he asked his guard.

Oliver shifted so he faced the horizon, the sunlight only a hot line of red etching the mountains, the sky above gray fading to indigo. His pulse pounded in his ears, drowning out the conversation happening behind him.

Earned the honor. He flat-out refused to analyze that. To imagine. It was too dangerous. But he could do nothing about his body’s frenzied tumble into nervous anticipation, want, longing. It hurt, wanting something he couldn’t have like this, an ache that gripped and burned like his marsh fever.

He’d finally managed to collect himself when Erik said, right behind him, “Oliver, are you coming in?”

Gods. “No. No, I think I’ll stay a moment longer. The stars are coming out.”

“Hm. So they are.” He heard a rustling, felt a rush of air – and then something heavy fell across his shoulders. It was warm, and smelled of horses and forest, and fur tickled his jaw. It was Erik’s cloak. Erik had draped his cloak over him. “Don’t stay too long. It gets cold up here.”

Oliver squeezed his eyes shut and listened to the king depart with his guards. He stayed like that a long moment, clutching the cloak tighter around his throat, breathing in the smell of it – of Erik – and the only stars he saw were the ones blooming behind his screwed-shut eyelids.