Heart of Winter by Lauren Gilley

10

“Dragons?” Tessa asked the next morning over breakfast, goggle-eyed.

Oliver pushed aside his plate, flipped open the book, and turned it toward her on the table. “Dragons. Drakes. Fire-drakes, apparently.”

She wiped her hands clean on a napkin and pulled the book toward her, mouth falling open as she read. “Gods! And they lied to us?”

“I’d wager no one in Drakewell alive today did, because they have no idea of the real history.”

She glanced up with a stunned expression. “Ollie, do you know what this means?”

“Our kingdom is even more corrupt than we thought.”

“No, the war! Ollie.” She leaned forward, eyes bright. “What if there are still dragons in Drakewell? Hibernating, or hiding, or – they could win us the war!”

“Oh.” The idea hit him like a slap. He hadn’t even thought of that – though, to be fair, he hadn’t thought of much besides, well, the low, rumbling timbre of a certain king’s voice.

“Fire-drakes,” Rune observed, peeking at the book over Tessa’s shoulder before he settled in beside her on the bench. His plate was heaped with sausages and pastries, and he carried a bowl of porridge in his other hand. “Why’d they take them off the banner and replace it with a duck?” he asked, making a face. “Who wants to charge into battle with a duck?”

Tessa turned to him, still animated from the whole revelation. “We had no idea about the dragons!”

Rune’s brows shot up. “You didn’t?”

“None at all!”

Leif appeared, and shot a grim look at his brother’s back. Not angry, Oliver noted. He didn’t seem wildly jealous, more like glumly resigned.

Hilda noted him, and slid deftly down the bench, giving the prince room to settle in on Tessa’s other side. She shot Oliver a wink that had him hiding a smile in his tea.

“Leif,” Rune said, “the Drakes don’t know about the drakes.” He waved to indicate Tessa and Oliver, and even if Oliver wasn’t actually a Drake, it felt rather nice to be thought of as legitimate.

“What?” Leif asked.

Tessa turned around to face him – Rune looked momentarily bereft at the loss of her full attention – and launched into an explanation that soon had Leif mirroring his brother’s initial shocked expression.

“They erased them from history?” he asked, scandalized.

“That’s what your uncle says,” Oliver said. “He said the Aquitainian king didn’t want the Drakewell lords to know they had the power to unseat him – or his heirs, in future generations.”

Leif frowned to show what he thought of that. “The dragons are all dead, though, aren’t they?”

“Maybe not,” Rune said. “There’s cold-drakes in the caves of the Wolf Mountains.”

“So the Úlfheðnar say,” Leif said, skeptically.

Tessa whirled back to face Rune. “Cold-drakes?”

Glowing under Tessa’s attentions, he launched into an explanation.

Oliver caught Leif’s gaze and said, “Does anyone ride them up here? Or, rather, did they?”

He shrugged. “Knowing the clans, I can’t think they wouldn’t have tried. But most of them probably got killed for it. The Drakes had a knack, back then. Some sort of magic, maybe. A sixth sense.”

“Hm.” Oliver didn’t believe in magic, but he hadn’t believed in dragons before yesterday, either, so…

“You talked to Uncle?” Leif asked, half curious and half worried.

“Last night, yes. We ran into one another in the library.”

“And he didn’t…I mean, he wasn’t…?”

Oliver found himself smiling, perhaps too fondly, but so be it. “No. It was fine.”

Leif exhaled, shoulder slumping with relief. “I don’t know what got into him yesterday. He spars with us all the time, but he doesn’t – I mean, he really isn’t a bully.” His earnest, imploring gaze mirrored Erik’s from last night, the resemblance between them strong in that moment. “Not normally, anyway,” he added with an apologetic wince.

“Your uncle and I got crossways,” Oliver said. “And, to be fair, I’ve not been at my best. Not been as respectful as I could have been. But I think we’ll get things sorted.”

Leif smiled.

Birger strode up to the table, and both boys winced when he said, “Good morning, my princes. Knowledge awaits.”

~*~

Tessa wanted to do more research, so Oliver went with her up to the library and pointed out the books that Erik had showed him last night. She accepted them eagerly, and settled down at a table with a quill and parchment, her expression eager and studious.

“I can’t believe it,” Hilda said at Oliver’s elbow. “They really hid the dragons? All this time? It’s unconscionable, is what it is. Just awful.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“I’ll help her,” Hilda said, nodding once, determined. “I’m good with putting things together.” She went to sit opposite Tessa, and the two soon had their heads bent together, talking in low, excited voices.

Were there still living dragons? Oliver wondered. He struggled to conceive of such a thing. But if there were…if they could be tamed, and taught to cooperate…Tessa wasn’t wrong about the war effort.

If nothing else, marriage or not, coming here had been worth the effort to have learned this. Even if he wasn’t sure how to think about the duchy of his birthplace anymore.

With nothing else to do, a wealth of deeper curiosity, Oliver settled down to do his own research.

When he lifted a stiff neck, and rubbed at eyes going sore from reading, he saw that Tessa had taken a break and stood at one of the windows, looking down into the yard. He joined her and looked down to see that the children were having weapons’ practice down below, red-nosed and trampling in the snow beneath the eye of their white-bearded tutor, and a thickset, stern-faced man who must have been the weapons master. Oliver spotted the redheaded boy, Bo, swinging a wooden practice sword far too big for him; he overcompensated and went face-planting in the snow, much to the amusement of the others, all save his blond friend who helped him back up and dusted snow off his sleeves while Bo gamely tried not to cry from embarrassment.

“Do you know who they are?” Oliver asked her. “All the little ones.”

“Leif says they’re lords – the heirs of lords, at any rate. All from border territories.”

“Erik’s taken them as wards?”

“Not exactly, no. From what Leif says, there’s been skirmishing with the clans on the borders. A keep was fired – it didn’t catch, because it’s stone, like the palace, but they lost a door, and some grain stores. It frightened the lord – that was Bo’s father.” She pointed; little Bo was wiping at his nose, but getting his sword sorted again. “The border heirs have all been sent to the capital. There’s good tutors here, but mostly it’s for their own protection.” She turned to him. “It was King Erik’s idea, apparently. He offered to protect them here where the defenses are strongest.”

“That was – kind of him.”

She smiled a small, pleased smile that he didn’t understand and glanced back through the window. “Yes, I think it was.”

The thunder of running footsteps in the hallway drew their attention around to the door, and a moment later Rune appeared in the threshold, pink-cheeked and out of breath from hurrying. “Lady Tessa! Would you – oof!”

His brother shouldered into him, so both princes were all but wedged in the doorway side-by-side. Leif shot his brother a glare before schooling his features, and in a much calmer tone said, “Good afternoon, Lady Tessa.”

Tessa kept admirably poised. “Good afternoon, your graces.”

“I wondered–” Leif began.

“Do you want to go riding?” Rune interrupted.

Leif sighed.

Oliver turned away to hide his grin, and caught Hilda laughing to herself.

“Ah, to be young,” she murmured.

~*~

The snow gleamed in the sunlight, so bright it hurt her eyes, but Tessa didn’t dare close them, for fear of missing any of the beauty that was an Aeretollean pine forest.

Unlike Hannah back home, Hilda had professed to being quiet the avid horsewoman. “I know I look too old for it” – “No, not at all!” – “but I do love a good gallop every now and then.” Properly cloaked, booted, and hooded, she and Hilda had set off with the princes just after lunch, mounted on tall, big-boned horses with hooves the size of dinner plates. Tessa spotted a few lean, swift coursers in the stable, but Leif said, “They don’t handle the deep snow so well. Great for summer – that one’s my mum’s – but we best take the big ones out today.” He’d then sighed when he saw which horse his brother was saddling.

“Rune. Leave him here.”

“And let you best me in a race?” Rune had grinned, and patted the dappled neck of his own leggy gelding, much lighter in build than their three. “Not a chance.”

They’d started out at a walk, the snow crunching beneath the horses’ hooves, its smooth crust glittering beneath the winter sun.

Rune took the lead, and his horse strode eagerly, seeming to know the way. They cut across a broad, flat field, then found a trickling, mostly-frozen stream, and followed the dark ribbon of it to this enchanting stretch of forest.

The pines grew far taller than those of home, their trunks fatter, branches stouter, and their needles thicker and more plentiful. The boughs drooped beneath the weight of accumulated snow, ice crystals glinting like diamonds on the ends of the needles, so that the shafts of sunlight filtering through the branches blazed on all their many facets. Occasionally, snow slid off a branch and fell with a muffled thump that echoed hollowly off the trunks, the sound threaded with the call and twitter of the birds that flitted between the branches. When the breeze rustled through the needles, they chimed together, ice on ice, with a sound like the soft tinkling of sleigh bells.

Leif dropped back to ride beside her. “Do you like it?” he asked, quietly, and she understood why. With the pines towering overhead, the forest path had the air of a cathedral about it; someplace holy and untrammeled by humans.

“It’s wonderful,” she breathed, turning to smile at him – and, oh, he was lovely, the refracted light glinting in his golden hair, breath steaming in the cold, large hands light and deft on the reins.

She glanced away just as he did, but not before she saw the pink on his cheekbones deepen.

“The trees back home are much smaller,” she said, because trees were a much safter topic of conversation than the way her chest felt all fluttery inside. “They don’t hold as much snow.”

“Do you get snow down there?” he asked, and sounded genuinely curious.

“Not like here. Some. One time even a foot, when I was very small. I remember…” It came back to her, in the soft, muted colors of early childhood memories, when it was the way something made you feel rather than all the particulars of it that left you smiling. “There was this snow bank along the outside of the stables, where the wind had piled it up, and my brother, John, would lift us up and throw us into it. Amelia hit her head on a barrel we hadn’t known was buried there, and her face bled everywhere, all over the snow, all over her clothes.” She giggled. “I’ve never seen my mother so cross with anyone. She smacked him with her embroidery hoop.”

Leif chuckled. “Sounds like she would get along famously with my mother.”

“John kept saying he was sorry, over and over, but he couldn’t stop laughing, and that just made her angrier. Poor Ollie tried to take the blame, but Mother knew that wasn’t true. John was the sort of brother who would wrestle in the dirt with you, and Oliver was the sort of brother who would help you clean up your hurts and mend your dress afterward.”

She’d not spoken about John yet, not since his passing. Remembering him young, and laughing, and whole sent a dark shaft of hurt through her. She felt her smile slipping.

But then Leif said, “He was raised as your brother, then? Oliver.”

“Oh, yes.” She leapt onto the new subject, relieved to leave John behind. She didn’t want to start crying. “Mother liked to remind us that he was actually our cousin.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think she ever truly disliked him, but she wanted us to know what was what; that Oliver was different. “Uncle Alfred was worse. He was always ashamed of him. Embarrassed.” She heard the angry, sour note in her voice.

“Because he’s a bastard?”

“No, not at all. Because he thought he was weak.” A sideways glance proved that Leif was watching her, listening intently. She didn’t like the thought of talking about Oliver behind his back, but maybe this was a chance to sow some goodwill – maybe even some that would make its way back to the king.

“Oliver looks a lot like his father, actually,” she continued. “Slender. They have the same face and eyes. But Alfred was a splendid warrior – if he wasn’t drinking or carousing, he was throwing himself at some fight or other. And he had a mean streak – he wasn’t a famous villain or anything, don’t get me wrong. But he wasn’t kind, not like Oliver. He didn’t care about people. Uncle William said it was because his wife died in childbirth – his son was lost, too – and that he was never the same after. But I don’t know. I think…” It was a terrible thing to say about the dead, about her own family.

“What?” Leif prompted, quietly.

“He lost a son, and his wife, but Oliver was his son, too. He should have loved him.”

“Well. Um,” he hedged. “Some people show love differently, don’t they? My uncle is…well, you’ve met him.”

She bit her lip, then turned to gauge his expression. “Have you ever doubted, though? Have you ever looked at your uncle and thought him loveless toward you?”

He made a face. “No.”

“He liked John, but he saw John as useful. John was a good soldier. John was legitimate – he could carry on the family name and legacy.” She drew in a breath, surprised by the way it shook. She was making herself far more upset than she’d expected. “I’m sorry,” he said, toying with a lock of her horse’s mane. It slid like silk through her gloved fingers. “I don’t ever talk about this and it’s…it’s difficult.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that your family…” He trailed off.

And she shot him a rueful smile, one he returned, if uncertainly.

“Thank you. It’s fine.” She faced forward again, between the horse’s relaxed ears, the view of fluffy snow, and Rune’s horse plunging through it ahead, leaving tracks deep as Yule Festival puddings.

After a moment, Leif said, “You can tell me to step off – it’s none of my business. But when you say that Oliver couldn’t become a warrior because of his health…” He left it open-ended.

Tessa frowned to herself for a moment, weighing Oliver’s privacy against her previously-hoped-for goodwill fostering. She decided to do what she never normally did, and run her mouth.

“When Oliver was little, during the Second Great War with the Sels, Uncle Alfred took him to meet my father at the coast. That was when my father and your uncle agreed to their alliance. Oliver was only little, but Uncle Alfred wanted him to see war – nevermind that it wasn’t war at all, but only a war camp, and a campaign tent. They had to pass through the Neven Marshes to get there, and by the time they got back home, Oliver had come down with a fever. We thought it was only the flu, at first, but then, next year, the fever came back.”

“Marsh fever,” Leif said, as understanding dawned. “Shit – oh, I mean–”

She chuckled, and found him blushing when she glanced over.

He cleared his throat. “He still has it?”

“Far less frequently. If he wraps up in the cold, and doesn’t overtax himself too harshly – he can ride, and go for long walks, and swim in the lakes in summer. But it does still return, from time to time. Especially under great stress.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“And entirely not his fault.”

He smiled. “I didn’t say it was.”

“Sorry.” She felt her face heat. “I’m protective of him, I suppose.”

“And he of you.” He nodded, approving, and faced ahead, reaching to push back a branch and duck beneath it, snow raining down into his hair and onto his horse’s neck. “I think Uncle likes him.”

“You do?”

Leif chuckled. “I do. No one ever talks back to him. He – whoa.” He pulled his horse up sharply, and Tessa did the same.

Ahead of them, Rune had reined his horse up sideways, and unslung his bow. Slowly, silently, he drew an arrow from the quiver he wore on his back and nocked it. It was only then that Tessa noted the stag fifty yards upwind, picking its way through the snow, pausing now and then to snuffle and dig for a bit of vegetation. It hadn’t scented them, or sighted them either, apparently.

Rune’s horse was agitated, tossing its head, tugging at the reins he’d pinned beneath his thigh while he took aim.

Leif hissed a quiet sound between his teeth, whether reproach or encouragement, Tessa couldn’t tell, not until she glanced toward his face and saw the grin slowly spreading there. He mouthed something silent, some bit of advice that he couldn’t voice without risk of spooking the deer.

Disaster unfolded, then, in quick sequence.

The wind shifted, a sharp gust funneling down through the tree trunks, dumping snow and tinkling ice crystals together.

The horses all lifted their heads, and pricked their ears, listening. Behind them, Hilda’s horse let out a great loud snort of alarm.

The deer echoed it, flinging up his own head, swiveling it. He snorted once, twice, white flag tail lifting.

He smells us, Tessa thought.

But, no, he smelled something else, the same thing their horses smelled, on the new breeze, and it made itself known a moment later when a low, rippling growl pulsed from the tree just beside her.

Her breath caught. She turned her head, and met a yellow-eyed stare.

“Wolves,” Leif said, like a curse.

Then it was chaos.

~*~

“Mr. Meacham.”

The sound of the king’s voice launched him upright on his bench, where he’d slumped lower and lower over the densely-packed text laid before him. He lifted his head to find that he was alone in the library, and the candles had all but burned down, and dusk was falling beyond the windows, and, well, drat, he’d done what he so often did: gotten lost in books.

Well, he was almost alone.

Erik stood at one of the tall, iron candelabrum, lighting fresh candles with a spill from the hearth. He wore brown today – this evening, whatever time it was – and his hair was gathered loosely at the back of his neck, braids left loose down his shoulders.

Oliver wondered if his hair was as soft as it looked. He swallowed against a suddenly-dry throat and said, “Hello.”

“You seem to be on the verge of missing supper again.”

“Just lunch this time.” He was hungry, now that he thought about it, his stomach empty and clenching.

Erik’s smirk was not cruel. He flicked the spill onto the dying fire and said, “We should go down, then. You’re welcome to dine privately with us again. Perhaps we can start talking about contracts and alliances.” He tipped his head. “If your cousin thinks herself closer to a decision?”

Oliver winced, because even if he hadn’t asked her yet, he was beginning to have suspicions. He said, “You’re free to ask her; she can be shy, but she’s always…” With a lurch, he realized he hadn’t seen her since she set off around midday with the princes. “I should go and see if she’s ready to go down. I haven’t seen her since her return.”

Erik frowned. “Return?”

Oliver stood, his pulse bumping just a little too hard. He’d been called a pessimist, but he preferred to think of it as having a sense for the edge of disaster. “She went riding with the princes.”

“She did?” Erik asked, sharply.

“Should…she not have?”

“No, it’s only–” He gave a sharp, long-suffering sigh. “Those boys,” he muttered.

“They’re young and eager – about everything,” Oliver said. “But I’ve not seen them behave in any sort of unseemly way toward Tessa.”

“No, but.” Erik’s jaw flexed with obvious frustration. “I’ve spoken with them – Leif is twenty-two, he’s well past the age for boyish games, and Rune knows better than to turn this into some sort of competition.”

Oliver thought of the conversation he’d overhead between Erik and Birger, Erik’s relenting, his assertion that he would let Tessa have her pick of the boys. He couldn’t admit to having witnessed that exchange, but it gave him hope that most of what he was seeing now was a kind of show.

Oliver said, “What if Tessa and Leif don’t suit? What if her heart leads her in a different direction?”

Erik’s gaze narrowed. “You want Rune to be the Duke of Drakewell?”

“All I want is for Tessa to be as happy as she possibly can be.”

The king studied him a moment, before his brow cleared, a quiet disbelief breaking across his face. “You’re serious.”

“I tend to be, yes.”

“Whatever her choice,” Erik said, “your family will be displaced either way. The next duke will not be a Drake.”

“Lucky for me, I’m not a Drake either, so I don’t care about that.”

Erik’s head tipped. Come on, his look said. You don’t believe that.

“I’m only plain Oliver Meacham. Titles and legacies have nothing to do with me.”

Erik didn’t look convinced.

“I’ll just go up and see if she’s changed and ready for supper.”

Someone slapped him on the back with a glad cry as he left the library – and then had to grab his elbow to keep him from staggering forward and smashing his nose against the opposite wall.

“Whoa, whoa!” It was Magnus’s laughing voice. And when Oliver recovered, and turned, found him and his brother, Lars, kitted out and serving as Erik’s guard retinue this evening. “Sorry, lad, I don’t know my own strength sometimes.”

Or my lack of strength, Oliver thought, sourly, but scraped together a smile. “Hello, Magnus. Lars.”

“At the books, eh? It’s quite the collection, though I’m not one for reading myself.”

Oliver didn’t think a king’s personal guards should be so talkative on the job – or, rather, he’d never seen such a thing before, and thought it might have said something complimentary about Erik that he didn’t put a stop to that sort of thing.

He finally managed to extricate himself from the conversation, went upstairs – and found that Tessa was not in her room.

“Back again so soon?” Magnus asked when Oliver returned to the library.

“Yeah,” he said, distracted, and stepped back through the door. Erik was at a table with a book, but looked up sharply at the hurried sound of Oliver’s footfalls, a rhythm that matched the staccato beating of his heart. “Tessa’s not in her room.”

“She’s not?”

“No, and I don’t think–”

Erik lifted a hand in a soothing gesture, and stood. “She probably just stopped for a mug of cider in the kitchens. We’ll go and see.”

~*~

Tessa was not, in fact, stopping for a mug of cider in the kitchens. The space was composed of three levels, with stairs leading down from one platform, to the next, to, finally a domed-ceilinged chamber where round balls of bread dough sat rising beneath towels on a staggering series of racks. Oliver stood beside the king on the second platform, where staff chopped vegetables at long wooden tables and kitchen boys and girls toted them up to the top tier, where three cooking hearths roared.

“No one’s seen them return,” Bjorn said, striding toward them.

Revna groaned.

Oliver closed his eyes and concentrated very hard on regulating his breathing.

“I love my sons, but sometimes they’re idiots,” Revna said.

“Where would they have gone?” Oliver asked, not proud of the way his voice shook, but not caring in the moment.

“Nobody panic,” Erik snapped. And then, with a slight softening of his expression, “We’ll find them.”

Oliver stepped in front of him when he turned to leave the room. “I don’t mean to disparage your nephews…”

Erik’s brows lifted. “Then don’t.”

Oliver held up a hand, when he started to step forward, keenly aware of the fact that Erik could pick him up like a toy and set him aside. He didn’t, though. “I’m only saying: they’ve been off together for hours, now. There will be talk.” He didn’t say: someone has to marry her at this point.

“Not here, there won’t be,” Erik growled. “We don’t deal in gossip and backstabbing in the North.” He stepped around Oliver, and marched for the door.

Oliver stood with his pulse throbbing painfully, anger and panic warring for supremacy, both leaving him shaky.

“Mr. Meacham, are you coming?” Erik called over his shoulder.

He stuffed it all down and hurried to follow.