Heart of Winter by Lauren Gilley

9

“I’m sorry,” Oliver said, for probably the eighth time, his voice muffled by his hands, into which he’d buried his face.

“I really don’t think it’s that bad, Ollie,” Tessa said, ever the peacemaker.

Lunch was just being laid out when they’d entered the great hall, but by that point, Oliver had been shaking badly. They’d grabbed bread, cheese, and a few ham slices, rolled it up in a napkin, and stolen upstairs. Oliver had only managed a few bites before he’d pushed the food away and fallen into a rapid spiral of ever-deepening anxiety. What had felt so good to say in the moment had more than likely just cost them any chance for an alliance with Aeretoll.

Hilda was bustling about the chamber, tidying. She clucked her tongue in a motherly way. “He’ll come around, you’ll see. It’s good for him to get his proud hind end handed to him every now and then. Keeps him humble.”

Oliver groaned.

A knock sounded at the door, and Hilda went to answer it. Oliver heard the rustle of skirts, and then a laugh. Lady Revna said, “Oh, Oliver, it can’t be as bad as all that.”

“Good afternoon, Lady Revna,” Tessa said, then, a moment later, more shyly: “Revna.”

“You learn fast,” Revna said.

Oliver lifted his head and found the king’s sister standing just inside the room, dressed in warm gray wool buttoned to her throat, a beaded leather shawl draped fashionably over one shoulder, her hair tied up in a neat bun that dripped beaded braids. She folded her arms, and tilted her head, and looked very like her brother, save for the merriment in her eyes, a much warmer blue, like Leif’s.

Looking at her didn’t make him feel better, but it didn’t make him feel worse, either. “I have a tendency to let my mouth get ahead of my mind at times, my lady,” he said.

“Lamb, a mountain could let its mouth get ahead of its mind when it comes to my brother. He has a talent for bringing it out in people. From what I hear, you were more than justified.”

He winced. “Who told you?”

“My boys. Only tripping over each other to come give me the gossip.” When she grinned, it was all teeth, a wolfish smile, for all her friendliness. “They’re both suitably impressed.”

He groaned again.

Revna came deeper into the room, and patted his shoulder. “You’re fine, no worries. Erik’ll get over it.” Then she turned to Tessa. “I’m off to do a bit of shopping. Any chance you’d care to join me?”

Tessa lit up at the idea, and, after assuring Oliver that they would take Hilda and a handful of guards as escort, he left to allow Tessa some privacy to change clothes and prepare. He wandered next door to his own chamber, but quickly tired of it after he’d paced its width a dozen times.

The idea of going down to the great hall, or walking the grounds, potentially bumping into Erik, or even the princes, left him nauseous, but he needed a distraction. Eventually, he stole down to the library.

It wasn’t empty. The gaggle of children he’d seen twice now were camped out at a table, ignoring the books spread before them in favor of slapping the ends of quills at one another.

They were noisy, but far less intimidating than an insulted king. Oliver turned his back to them and began to peruse the shelves. The books seemed to be sorted via subject, and he searched until he found the collection of texts on history. He found the sorts of titles he would expect: books about the Northern Waste, the clans, the kingdom of Aeretoll, biographies of its kings, and their battles with Aquitainia, Seles, and the Waste clans. Texts about the gods, translations of the great foundational myths.

But there were books about the history of Aquitainia, too, none of them titles he’d ever encountered in the libraries of Drakewell. Frowning, he fingered the embossed spine of a book that proclaimed itself The Ancient Histories of the Drake Lords, and the Eventual Duchy of Drakewell. A symbol was embossed there, too, and after a moment, he realized it wasn’t the drake of his homeland’s banner, but a small, tightly-coiled dragon.

“Hey. Hey, you,” a small voice said behind him.

He turned to find the redheaded boy standing in his chair. The blond boy was trying to tug him back down, but he shrugged him off, and the other boys were all twisted around in their chairs to stare at Oliver.

“Hello,” Oliver said.

The boy wiped his nose absently with the back of one small hand and said, “Are you the bastard?”

“Bo!” the blond boy hissed, to no avail.

Something about this place, about the way people just asked the sorts of things only spoken about in glances and hushed asides back home, was taking the sting out of the word. “I’m Oliver Meacham,” he said, “and I’m a bastard, yes.”

The boy – Bo’s – mouth fell open, and he gaped a moment. Then he pulled in a deep breath and said, “My friend Ivar’s a bastard. He doesn’t seem to mind it.”

“No, I suppose not,” Oliver said. “Pudding tastes the same, bastard or not. And honeycakes.”

The boy blinked at him – and then grinned, revealing gapped teeth.

The blond boy finally succeeded in tugging Bo back down into his chair with a muttered reprimand. “Don’t mind him, sir, he’s soft in the head.”

“Hey! Am not!”

“Why else would you ask that?”

A tussle broke out, and Oliver found himself grinning. Even if he’d never been one for that sort of roughhousing, he appreciated the honest show of temper, an insult said to someone’s face, rather than the den of vipers at Drakewell’s court.

A stoop-shouldered, scholarly-looking man with a white beard thumped into the room, and promptly whacked the edge of the table with his walking stick. The boys all jumped, startled, and faced forward, heads down meekly.

Oliver chuckled to himself, selected a few books, and went to climb up into one of the cushioned window seats, content to be hidden away and in the company of the best of friends: words.

The first volume he opened, squat, thick, and well-handled, was a biography of Erik’s grandfather, King Halfdan the Half-Blood. From the first page, Oliver realized he was dealing with a biographer with a clever tongue, and a heart for the dramatic, and he sunk down deeper against his fur pillow and went walking back through Erik’s lineage.

Halfdan’s grandfather, Rolf, had been born of an Aquitainian mother, and a father said to be a hulking brute of a man nearly seven-feet-tall, the heir to the Northern Úlfheðnar clan – the “wolf-shirts.” A fierce warrior, but one with a clear head for negotiations, and a tendency toward mercy, Rolf had been sent to Aquitainia to be educated, and, upon his return to Aeretoll, only then just beginning to design itself a true kingdom apart from the constantly-feuding clans of the North, one with a foot in each region, he’d begun the construction of the palace at Aeres, placing the ceremonial foundation stones himself, the mortar mixed with the blood of a new-killed reindeer for luck.

By the time Halfdan became king, Aeretoll had been firmly established as a sovereign kingdom, one which dealt with the heathens farther north, and the lords and scholars of the Southern continent with tough, but fair even-handedness. Aeretoll became a bridge between two disparate worlds, a place that gave evidence to the fact that the barbarians had at one point been the learned conquerors, and that they had now become a blending of two peoples, belonging to neither region.

Thinking them up-jumped and too proud, the Northern clans had warred with Halfdan for all of his life and beyond. It was Erik’s father, Frode, who’d finally brokered an uneasy peace, one still fostered by the annual Midwinter Festival journey north, where the King of Aeretoll shed his cloak of dignity and returned to his wolf-shirt roots for a span of seven days. Apparently, there was much axe-throwing, shirtless wrestling, ale-drinking, and feat-performing.

Oliver could admit that he’d never thought of it that way: the King of Aeretoll caught between two very different worlds, a part of both, comfortable in neither.

The biographer went on to extoll Halfdan’s many – no doubt well-padded – virtues, and ended with an image of the great king’s funeral pyre, his heir looking on as the flames licked up toward the stars, Prince – now King Frode’s heir, Herleif, at his side, father and son holding hands as the boy rested his little, golden head against his father’s hip.

Herleif must have died shortly after, Oliver thought, recalling what Birger had told him at breakfast.

Frowning to himself, Oliver set the book aside, stretched, and shifted his weight from one hip to the other, his legs all full of tingles from sitting too long. Beyond his enclave, he could hear the low murmur of voices, and wondered if the children were still at work, or if these were adult scholars turning pages with soft sounds, now.

He paged absently through a book of myths for a few minutes, but set it aside in favor of the red-leather cover that had been calling to him silently for some time: The Ancient Histories of the Drake Lords, and the Eventual Duchy of Drakewell.

When he opened the cover, he found an inked sketch of the same symbol that was embossed on the spine: a coiled, serpentine dragon, its jaws open, tongue protruding, its wings spread as if in flight.

“But why?” he murmured to himself. His whole life, the flying drake – a mallard, to be exact – had been the sigil of his house; had adorned their banners and flags and the knights’ spangled tourney tunics. He’d read all the history books that the library at Drake Hold possessed, and each one had made mention of the duchy’s many lakes, and ponds, and streams, gleaming like glass on hot summer evenings, the duchy itself named for the many, many ducks that resided there. He’d always found it charming, even if a duck hadn’t been the most awe-inspiring of animal mascots.

He turned the pages, and slowly felt his brows climb higher, and higher, and higher, until his forehead began to ache from it and he had to rub the tension from the skin there, eyes closed a moment.

He went back to the title page, just to check, because surely this was a work of fiction, and not a historical accounting of anything. It couldn’t be.

After a moment, he realized that he was squinting to see, and that what little light touched the page in front of him came not from the window – now dark and velvet with the press of nightfall – but from candles in the library, soft and flickering. A library that had gone silent, and still. He heard the pop and creak of the logs in the fire and nothing else save his own breathing.

He’d been sitting here for hours. All afternoon and into evening. What time was it? Had he missed supper? Was Tessa all right? Had she come back from her trip to the village with Revna?

Oh, gods…

Wincing at the stiffness and soreness in his limbs, all of the morning’s overexertion in the yard made worse from sitting so long, he staggered to his feet and out of the alcove.

Only to find that the library was not, in fact, empty.

King Erik sat at the table where the children had been studying before, his back to the fire, elbows braced on the tabletop and temple resting against a fist as he read from the open book before him. Candlelight glinted off the beads in his hair, and the silver embroidery of his tunic.

Oliver stood still for a long moment, heart pounding, debating.

Should he apologize for his behavior today? No, he couldn’t bear to, even if it would have been the smart thing to do.

But he couldn’t just stand here. He would have to walk past the man at some point. So he squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and tried to walk as softly as he could toward the door.

He got halfway there before Erik’s head lifted, and his gaze pinned Oliver in place.

They stared at one another.

One of us has to say something, Oliver thought, wildly. I guess it ought to be me, since he’s a king, and a royal prick besides.

But Erik wet his lips and said, “I didn’t know anyone else was in here.” He didn’t sound angry, exactly, but Oliver wasn’t feeling charitable enough to label him as surprised, and his expression was all of stone, so it was hard to tell, anyway.

Oliver held up his books. “Got carried away reading. I was just leaving.”

The king’s gaze shifted to the stack, and one brow lifted in question. “You found the one about the dragons, I see.”

Oliver glanced down at the red leather cover, with its gold embossing. His stomach twisted, and it had nothing to do with his present company. “Nice bit of fiction, this,” he said, hearing the sharp edge in his voice. “You had it filed in the wrong place. I’ll put it back with the children’s stories, shall I?”

When he glanced up, Erik had his head cocked at a curious angle. “Fiction?”

“Well, there aren’t dragons in Drakewell, are there?”

“Not anymore.”

“What do you mean anymore?” he snapped. It was happening again: he was being stroppy with the king. He’d left his self-control back home in Drakewell, apparently.

Erik didn’t react to his tone, though. His gaze narrowed, and he kept staring at him – staring right through him, a penetrating gaze that wasn’t…altogether unpleasant. “Do you really think the Drakes of Drakewell are named for ducks?”

“It’s on our banner,” Oliver said, stupidly, more than a little helpless. He felt as if the flags were tilting beneath his feet.

One corner of Erik’s mouth flicked upward. He held out a hand. “Let me see the book.”

Oliver handed it over readily, telling himself it was only his imagination that the cover burned his fingers.

Erik paged through it a moment, nodding to himself. When he reached one of the more spectacular illustrations, one of an armored warrior astride a harnessed dragon, he lifted his head and said, “Right, so, the Drakes were dragon riders, originally.”

“No, they weren’t.”

“Yes,” Erik said, patiently. He tapped the page. “The Drakes were the only ones brave enough to settle Drakewell – it was crawling with fire-drakes. They learned to live with them – they tamed them. Rode them into battle. Most were lost in the First Great War with the Sels. The others, for whatever reason, failed to reproduce. There’s legends that a few slunk down into deep, hidden caves, and live still, waiting to be awakened by Drake descendants – but you’re from Drakewell. Surely you’ve read about this before?”

Oliver’s throat was so dry it was hard to swallow. “You’re pulling my chain,” he gritted out. “This is a joke.”

Erik spread his hands. “It’s not.” When Oliver continued to glare at him, he said, “Do you think I’m the sort who’d use children’s books if I wanted to make a fool of someone?”

He had a point. “No, I suppose you’d bludgeon them to death with a blunt sword and have done with it.”

That earned a tweak of the smile, before Erik grew serious again. “Sit down, Mr. Meacham.”

Oliver dropped down onto the bench across from him, and he was not sulky about it.

“Let me guess,” Erik said, “the preferred text in Drakewell is that overlong bloody chunk of tree stump from Moates?”

“Not fond of long books?”

“When they’re accurate.” He waited, head tilted, brows lifted, silently asking.

This was perhaps the most absurd interaction of Oliver’s life, he reflected.

He nodded.

“Thought so.” Erik stood, went to the shelves, and returned with a familiar fat volume that sent a shudder through the table when he set it down. Erik resumed his seat, and flipped to the first chapter, skimming the lines with a finger that bore a ring set with small, glittering rubies. “Here: ‘The Duchy of Drakewell, certainly the most beautiful and temperate of the Aquitainian territories, was named thus for the profusion of drakes discovered there by the region’s founder, Sir Martin Oswell, later called “Drake” as a nod to the territory’s first, winged inhabitants who would grace his household banners and shields.’”

“I’m familiar with Moates,” Oliver said.

“This,” Erik said, tapping the page, “is the only mention of your banners and shields, and if you’ll notice, at no point does it say duck. The rest of this” – he made a face and riffled the pages, releasing a cloud of dust that spoke of the book’s lack of favor – “is nothing but rot about manners and social customs, and how ladies ought to wear their hair.”

“Hair is – important.”

Erik snorted, smirking in obvious amusement.

“Says the man with jewelry in his.”

Erik fingered one of the long braids that hung over his shoulder, pinching the silver bead at its end between thumb and forefinger. “The beads in our hair are given to us by our loved ones. Beads from parents to children, from brothers to brothers, from a husband or a wife.” He dropped it, and it thumped faintly against his chest. He didn’t look offended, though, Oliver noted. Still amused and faintly contemplative. “Hair does have meaning, in every culture, I’d imagine. But how does any historian worth his salt go on for two chapters about it without mentioning the bloody dragons?”

The thought of it – of actual, live dragons – was so baffling, so world-upending, that Oliver felt faintly sick every time either of them said the word aloud.

Whatever sort of face he was making, it prompted Erik back to his feet. He went to the shelf, rummaged a bit, and came back with a small stack of books that he opened, flipped through, and then laid out in front of Oliver.

Books about dragons. Scholarly books about dragons, with talk of fossils, and measurements, temperaments, even. There were detailed diagrams, sketches of bones, and claws, and snouts, and of harnesses. Pages and pages of handed-down accounts of the practice of keeping, feeding, and riding dragons.

“How…how do I not know of this?” Overwhelmed, he tipped a pleading look up to the king. “How did no one I grew up with know of this?”

“According to what I learned, the records were scrubbed clean across Aquitainia,” Erik said, almost kindly, his expression softened. “Dragons are – or were – very particular. Not just any fool with a death wish can climb on their backs and fly them at will. There was a prince, once, who attempted to claim one for his own. He was killed for his efforts. The king needed the dragon riders to help him win the First Great War, but after that, once the dragons were gone – no king wants to think that a duke has a weapon so great that he could unseat him if he wished.”

Oliver swallowed. “They changed the banners and shields.”

“And the history texts. Everything you ever read was crown-approved.”

“But…” He dragged a fingertip around the edges of an illustration, a harnessed, saddled dragon with its head butted affectionately against its rider’s shoulder.

“Everyone in the world knows the stories of the Drakewell dragons,” Erik said, gently, “everyone except all of Aquitainia.”

“I don’t…” It was a silly thing, an old and irrelevant thing, the existence of dragons. But the lie, the deception…Oliver felt unmoored. He swallowed again, with difficulty. “I don’t know if I believe you, entirely.”

Erik shrugged. “Why would you? I’ve been terrible. But, here, look.” He turned to a new page. “The young ones here like the old stories, so we’re well-stocked on dragon lore. There’s two major classifications: fire-drakes, and cold-drakes…”

For ten ridiculous minutes, the King of Aeretoll lectured him on drakes in a low, rumbling voice that Oliver found entirely too soothing.

Oliver slowly found himself migrating from denial to curiosity. “And there are none left living?” he asked, when Erik quieted.

“There might be. Most aren’t much bigger than a horse, leaving off the wingspan, so they would be able to keep to forests and caves and avoid humans, if they wished. At last year’s Midwinter Festival, some of the clansmen claimed to have seen cold-drakes stalking deer on the other side of the mountains.”

“Do you think they did?”

Erik shrugged. “They might have.”

“Huh.” Oliver slumped down to prop his chin on his fist, gaze trailing over the profusion of illustrations before him. “Nothing like having everything you know about the world change in half an hour.”

Erik snorted. “Hopefully not everything.”

“I like to exaggerate, if you hadn’t noticed,” Oliver quipped, and was then struck, suddenly, by the situation.

Here they sat, king and bastard, bent over a slew of books, chatting about dragons, of all things. Erik’s face was more open than Oliver had ever seen it, his brow smooth and his mouth soft, and he was unbearably lovely, backlit by the firelight, candle glow catching on silver and gemstones, none of which were as arresting as the blue of his eyes, gentle and without hostility, now.

Erik grinned, slow and true, and chuckled. “I had noticed, actually.”

Oh, Oliver thought. He was in danger.

His stomach chose that moment to growl. Loudly.

He jerked, and Erik’s gaze dropped to his midsection.

Oliver could feel his face heating. “I suppose I missed supper.”

“By about an hour,” Erik said, apologetically.

“Ah. Well. Maybe if I go down to the…” He trailed off when Erik shook his head.

“I’ll have something sent up to you.”

“Oh. Well, you don’t have to–”

“I insist.”

“Well.” In the absence of wild tales of mythical creatures, or righteous anger, Oliver slipped back into doubt, and awkwardness. His face was hot, at this point, and it had nothing to do with the fire, and he needed to get away from Erik, now, for his own self-preservation. “Thank you.” He stood.

Erik, still grinning, cocked his head and said, “I might bludgeon my guests to death, but I won’t have it said that I starved them.” There was a teasing glint in his eyes, and Oliver needed to run away.

He managed to twitch a returning smile, and turned for the door, his stomach doing somersaults.

“Mr. Meacham.”

He had to wait, gather a breath, school his features, and pray the way every single muscle had clenched delightfully didn’t show on his face when he turned back.

Erik was serious again, hands clasped together on the tabletop, head inclined to an earnest angle. “I want to apologize,” he said, formally, voice deep as ever. It was if he’d dragged an invisible kingly mantle around his shoulders, and Oliver was struck by the idea that two people were apologizing to him: the King of Aeretoll, and the Erik who’d taught him about dragons with patience and attractive smirks. “I did poorly by you today. I should not have challenged you as I did. It was small of me, and I shamed you. I’m sorry for that.” His chin tucked in obvious, honest contrition.

Oliver’s heart throbbed three hard beats before he could draw a breath. He had to wet his lips before he could speak. “I – thank you. For saying that. I have been – impertinent.”

Erik’s lips curved, faintly.

“I promise I do in fact have good Drakewell manners. I’ll try to employ them more going forward.”

The curve became a true smile. “Don’t on my account.” A teasing note in that deep voice that sent a shiver through Oliver. “My sister’s always saying it’s good for me to be challenged now and then.”

Gods.

“Well, then. Goodnight.”

Erik’s expression softened into one that Oliver couldn’t read at all, but which thrilled him all the same. “Sleep well, Mr. Meacham.”

Oliver felt the weight of his gaze as he turned and left the library, passing between the two guards stationed out in the hall. He was breathless as if he’d run the whole way by the time he reached his room. Hilda was coming out of Tessa’s chamber, and, after glancing at his flustered state in alarm, assured him that the outing had gone well, and that Tessa was fine, though sleepy. Oliver thanked her, went next door to his own room, and thrust his face into the basin of cold water to cool his cheeks.

“You’re being ridiculous,” he scolded himself as he toweled off. “Absolutely ludicrous. He’s a king. And he’s a prick.” He hadn’t been a prick tonight; he’d been nearly charming. “He certainly prefers women,” he whispered, harshly, gut clenching, “and even if he didn’t, you wouldn’t be his first choice, Meacham. You stupid bastard.”

A knock at the door interrupted his diatribe, and when he opened it, he found a kitchen boy standing in the hall with a laden tray: a cold dinner of sliced roast, bread, and sugared berries for dessert.

“Thank you,” he told the boy, taking it from him, and as he turned back into the room, he noted the book tucked half-under the plate. The Ancient Histories of the Drake Lords, and the Eventual Duchy of Drakewell.

He heeled the door softly shut, and carried the tray to his desk. When he picked up the book, a scrap of parchment fell out, and fluttered to the floor. When he picked it up, he found two handwritten words, the press of the quill strong, the letters bold and slanted, just like the man who’d penned them: keep it. It was signed with an E.

Alone in his room, Oliver didn’t think he could be blamed for passing a fingertip across the letters and smiling to himself.