Heart of Winter (The Drake Chronicles Book 1)

by Lauren Gilley

  For all of its soaring ceilings and formidable stone walls, it was a cozy space, full of Southern sofas and armchairs, a fire crackling in a massive fireplace carved with wolves and reindeer. The tapestries on the walls were ornate and richly-detailed, scenes full of many people, all of which would require a closer inspection to understand, though the one above the fireplace clearly showed a coronation of some sort, a dark-headed man kneeling as a crown was placed on his head. There were bookshelves, and a table full of cups and decanters, pegs that held cloaks. She spotted a pair of boots by the hearth, and an open book on a tufted footstool. An abandoned mug on a side table; a small knife and a piece of half-finished whittling on another.

  The branching hallways led doubtless to private chambers, bedrooms and wash rooms, but this was the place where the royal family spent cold evenings, reading together, sharing a drink, talking freely, out from under the scrutiny of court. Here they could truly be a family, and not a king, and a lady, and two princes.

  Tessa felt suddenly that she was intruding.

  But then Revna appeared at the mouth of one hallway, and smiled in welcome. “There you are. Right as rain this morning. Feeling better?”

  “Much, thank you. Astrid’s been wonderful.”

  “Glad to hear it. Are you here to see the patient?” Her smile took on a mischievous glint that reminded Tessa of Rune. “He’s past ready to be gallant and beg your forgiveness.”

  “Oh, that won’t be–”

  “Hush now. It’s high time my son learned to beg properly.” She held out a hand. “Come on, he’s just had breakfast.”

  Revna’s hand was warm, but surprisingly callused. The smooth, hard, established calluses of someone who’d done the same sort of work over and over again, until the habit was a part of their skin. Not the tough fingertips of someone with a deft hand at needlepoint. Calluses from riding, perhaps – the boys had pointed out their mother’s horse yesterday.

  The hallway was short, and ended in a glorious stained-glass window that depicted a howling white wolf atop a mountain peak, a crescent moon overhead.

  “That’s lovely,” Tessa said, nodding toward it.

  “A nod to the old Úlfheðnar blood,” Revna explained. “Father never wanted us to forget that, no matter how Southern we became, we originated up in the wild mountains.”

  A door stood to the left, and one to the right. “That’s Leif,” Revna said of the one on the left. “And here’s our invalid,” she said, fondly, and opened the other door into a large, well-lit chamber heaped with the particular clutter of a boy fast becoming a man, caught a bit between both worlds. A desk held an untidy pile of books, a map pinned down with heavy silver candlesticks, and a parchment marked with writing, the quill left stuck in the inkwell. A wooden knight on horseback perched on the corner, a child’s toy, the sight of which charmed her.

  Rune’s bed was a grander affair than the one in her own guest chamber, as to be expected: a heavy four-poster carved with bold lines, and stylized wolves. Rune sat propped against a stack of pillows, a fur across his lap, dressed in a soft-looking cream nightshirt with the laces open. Tessa stole a glimpse of sharp collarbones and the defined line between strong, dark-furred chest muscles before focusing her gaze on his face. His hair was loose, and rumpled from the pillow. He had a black eye, and a nasty bruise at his temple, a gash shiny with ointment. But his gaze, thankfully, was his own today, if tired, and not the glassy, distant one of last night. A gaze that landed on her – and then shifted to panic.

  He bolted upright and scrambled to fling the covers back. “Lady Tess–”

  Bjorn was seated at a chair on the far side of his bed, and put a giant hand on his shoulder to pin him back against the pillows with minimal effort. “Stay down, you fool,” he said, with stern fondness. “You’ll only pass out in front of the lady, and then where will you be?”

  Color infused Rune’s pale face, but he subsided with a glare for Bjorn. One that melted into a pleading expression when he looked back to Tessa. “Tessa, I’m so sorry. Are you well? You look well – er, that is, you don’t look injured, or sick, not that you don’t look pretty, also, you do, but – er–” His blush deepened.

  Bjorn chuckled under his breath.

  Rune’s brow furrowed. He took a deep breath, and let it out with a determined air. “I’m sorry to have led you into danger, my lady. And I’m sorry that I wasn’t myself last night.” He nodded, afterward – so there – and he resembled his uncle in that moment, save the quiet desperation in his gaze. His guilt was palpable – and endearing.

  There was a chair on the near side of the bed, right up close, and Tessa took a seat there. Rune’s hand lay on top of the covers in front of her, and she didn’t resist the sudden impulse to cover it with one of hers. She heard his quick, indrawn breath, and felt the way he stiffened, suddenly, through the throb of tension in the back of his hand.

  “Rune, there’s no need to apologize,” she said, smiling at him, watching the shock on his face slowly melt to something so sincere it left her a little breathless. “You couldn’t have predicted the wolves.”

  His lips pressed together; his gaze dropped, and his hand curled to a fist beneath hers. “I knew there were wolves in the forest – I heard them singing last week. It was a risk taking you there.” He looked despondent, and Tessa didn’t know enough about the habits of wolves to dispute him with any confidence.

  It was Bjorn who offered solace. “The wolves haven’t set upon a party on horseback in twenty years. They’ve been meek as mice for longer than you’ve been alive, lad. What happened yesterday wasn’t to be expected.”

  Tessa sent the huge warrior a grateful look, and focused on Rune again, tightening her hand over his. “The important thing is that we’re all back here safe, and on the mend.” Too late, she remembered the crumpled shape of his horse at the bottom of the cliff, blood staining the snow in a corona around him. “Rune, I’m very sorry about Ris.”

  He stared at his free hand a long moment, fingers curled tight in the covers. His lashes flickered rapidly against his cheeks, dark screens that concealed his eyes. “Leif was right: I shouldn’t have taken him.”

  “I’m sorry.” It was all she could say, and she felt helpless for it.

  Then his hand turned beneath hers, so they rested palm-to-palm, and his head lifted, his eyes shiny and wet, but the tears held in check. His voice was thick with them, but didn’t waver. “Uncle’s always telling me that it’s time to grow up and employ some good judgement. He’s right – he’s always been right. It’s time for me to start listening.” He attempted a smile, brave for all that it trembled.

  His palm, where it was pressed to hers, bore the same pattern of calluses as his mother’s.

  Calluses from the bow, from the sword.

  His mother had a warrior’s hands, and so did he.

  It was easy, in that moment, with the sun streaming in through the window, unkind to the bruises on his face, to see the sort of man he would grow into – a sight that left her chest warm, and bright, and her lungs struggling to draw breath.

  ~*~

  Oliver jerked upright with a start. For a moment, he was aware only of the throbbing of his head, the sharp pain in his eyes, and his empty, churning stomach. His head was nearly too heavy to lift.

  But he blinked, and recalled that he’d been in the library – that he still was; he’d fallen asleep face-down in the book he’d been reading, a dry tome about Northern botany. His vision was blurred, but he was soon able to identify what had awakened him.

  Little Bo, his hair blazing in the slanted sunlight, sat perched opposite, all buy lying on the tabletop, propped up on his elbows, staring with rapt fascination at him.

  Oliver rubbed the grit from his eyes. “May I help you?” His voice was hoarse and croaky.

  “You were snoring,” Bo said, matter-of-factly. “You sounded like a bear.”

  “Doubtful.” Oliver scrubbed at his eyes again, but they refused to clear complete
ly. His neck tweaked as he sat back from the table, and he winced at the soreness there.

  “Why were you sleeping?”

  Normally, Oliver found precocious, undeterrable children amusing – he envied their boldness, to be honest – but he was exhausted, and achy, and not in the mood today. “Because I spent half the night on horseback in the bitter cold.”

  “Why?”

  Oliver sighed. “I was looking for someone.”

  “Who?”

  “My cousin.”

  His already-big eyes widened further. “Oh! Is she the girl with the red hair like me?”

  “Not quite as red as yours. More like mine.”

  “Is she gonna marry Leif, then? Is that the one?”

  He sighed again. His head felt awful. “I don’t know who she’ll marry.”

  “But Ivar said–”

  The blond boy, presumably Ivar, appeared behind his younger friend and gripped his sleeve. “Bo,” he hissed. “Olaf is going to–”

  “Bo Borson!” a deep voice boomed from the doorway. “Leave the poor man alone and return to your studies!”

  “Told you,” Ivar said with a huff.

  The boys scrambled back to their own table, toward Olaf – the white-bearded gentleman Oliver had seen before. The physician, he realized, remembering what Birger had said that morning.

  Their physician back home had often brewed feverfew tea for Oliver when he fell ill, during one of his flare-ups. But this wasn’t a flare-up, he told himself sternly. Only a little cold. A little lingering ache from last night’s adventures. He hadn’t had a flare-up in a long time, and he wouldn’t have one here, so far from home, a guest of foreign royalty.

  Please, gods, no, he prayed.

  Olaf began a lecture for the boys, and Oliver abandoned his day’s reading – if it was putting him to sleep, it wasn’t that worthwhile anyway – and made his slow, worryingly-unsteady way down to the great hall to see about lunch.

  He’d missed it, a fact that dismayed him more than it should have. The trestles were being wiped down, and mugs and plates toted in baskets back toward the kitchen.

  Cold fair remained on the sideboard, though. Oliver fixed himself a ham roll without any relish, but knowing he had to eat at this point, and turned to find Magnus sitting alone at the end of one trestle, applying himself to a whole, heaped plate of ham rolls.

  Oliver supposed men this large had to eat more than they did in the South. Too tired to worry about his usual nerves, he dropped down opposite the guard, and was greeted warmly.

  “Don’t take this as an insult, now,” he said, and Oliver paused with his roll halfway to his mouth. “But you’re looking a bit peaky, there. You didn’t catch cold out there in all that snow last night, now, did you?”

  “No.” A hard chill chose that moment to ripple through him, and he couldn’t help but to shudder. “Maybe,” he conceded, and put down his food as his stomach clenched tight. “I’m not – I’m not sick. Just…” He hated the way he felt shamed by the admission, angry, but too tired to even fume properly. “Been a bit off all day.”

  Magnus nodded sagely. “Happens to the best of us. I spent four days laid up last winter. Felt like I’d taken an axe to the head.” He polished off his last roll and licked his fingers. “I know just what you need.”

  Which was how Oliver found himself following Magnus down the wide, spiral stone staircase that led down into the caves upon which the palace had been built.

  He’d always thought of caves as dark and dank, with low ceilings, and unidentifiable slime underfoot. These caves, though…The stairs deposited them in a warm, high-ceilinged space of smooth stone, with cressets mounted to the walls, their soft, flickering glow picking out pale veins in the stone, seams of what looked like silver and gold, warm and gleaming. The air was shockingly fresh, snow-scented. There were vents, Magnus explained, shafts that led to the outdoors, tall enough to walk through, for a whole company of soldiers to march through, and sealed with heavy iron grates locked shut against invaders. There were ways to seal them off, he said, should the need ever arise, but in peace times, the airflow made it rather pleasant down here.

  Oliver didn’t disagree.

  Tunnels branched off, leading to storerooms, Magnus explained. But the main tunnel, which widened as they traversed floors worn even from the passage of many feet, led to the baths. The scent of water reached them; moisture clung to the walls in droplets that welled and broke, tracking like tears down the stone. The air grew warm, and humid.

  They reached a fork. “That’s for the ladies.” He pointed to the right. “And for the lads.” To the left. Then he glanced back over his shoulder and waggled his brows. “But that’s more a generally-accepted suggestion and not a rule, per se.”

  Oliver found himself chuckling, despite the weight of fatigue. He followed Magnus down the left fork, where they passed first through what was obviously a dressing room, with pegs and shelves along the wall, and benches for sitting, and cubbies full of clean white towels, and cakes of soap, and an assortment of sponges, bristled brushes, and oils. Beyond lay a vast chamber full of sunken pools, all of them steaming like soup kettles. The water was a clear, mineral blue, and he could see where stone benches had been set down in the water, along the edges of each pool. Footpaths wound between them, broken by the occasional stalagmite. The low murmur of voices echoed from deeper in, too distant to make out the words.

  Oliver said, “How many pools are there?”

  “I’ve never counted,” Magnus said. “Plenty. Some are nice and big – you can conduct meetings in them. But there’s smaller ones, too; nice and cozy, fit for a little privacy.”

  Oliver chose not to respond to the look that accompanied that tidbit of information.

  “This is – incredible, really.”

  “And it’ll do you a world of good, too. Have a nice soak, and see if you don’t feel better after.”

  Magnus had evening guard shift tonight, so he headed off with a soap recommendation, and left Oliver to it.

  He stood a long moment in the dressing room, once he was alone, thinking that he ought to go and find Tessa, that he ought to inquire after Rune’s health. That soaking in a hot spring wasn’t furthering his cause at all: he was here to broker a marriage and an alliance, not to steep in lavender oil for his own enjoyment.

  But he felt wretched at this point, and one whiff of the un-stoppered lavender decided him. He would take five minutes. Ten, maybe, to let the hot water ease the ache from his joints, and chase the chill from his skin.

  He undressed in a hurry, fingers fumbling, keenly aware of the sleek, slender, pale lines of his body, and how they were nothing like those of the hardened warriors that filled this place. He gathered towel, soap, oil, and went to find a pool. He chose a small one, tucked around a stalagmite, one that offered a bit of shelter and privacy. Then he climbed in.

  The water was heavenly. The first touch enveloped him like silk, and he slid right down, until his head rested against the rock edge of the pool, with a deep groan. “Oh, gods.” The heat of it pressed the cold back; he could feel all of his muscles unclench, and only realized then how very tense they’d been all day, since waking. Steam rose up all around him, kissing his face, obscuring his vision.

  “Ten minutes,” he told himself, and let his eyes slip shut.

  ~*~

  He drifted. The heat dragged him under, and though he would rouse himself, eyes cracking open now and then, he fell into a sort of trance in which he could no longer tell if he was asleep or awake, only that he was comfortable, so, so comfortable.

  He dreamed. Dreams in which fantasy intruded – the sorts of fantasies that he wouldn’t allow himself when he was awake. The dangerous sort that set aside propriety, and cultural expectation. The sort that ignored a person’s bad qualities, the impossibility of such things, and left him a purely physical being, with purely physical desires.

  He dreamed of winding dark, silver-shot hair round his fingers; of the
rough scrape of a beard at his throat. The press of a solid, warm chest against his own, and big holds squeezing at his waist. Blue eyes – he’d never seen such eyes. They haunted him.

  “Mr. Meacham.”

  He frowned, because he didn’t want to be Mr. Meacham in this dream, the dream of skin-on-skin and warm furs underneath and hot breath in his ear. Ollie. He wanted the king of Aeretoll to call him Ollie in his low, rich voice when he was–

  “Oliver.”

  That was better.

  “Oliver.” A hand touched his face; cupped his cheek. A large hand, one rough with calluses across the palm, but the touch itself gentle. He felt something cool and smooth – metal, the bands of heavy rings. “Can you hear me? How long have you been here?”

  He knew that voice – only now it was sharp with worry, rather than warm and rumbly with desire.

  Oliver realized that his eyes were shut, and he cracked them open, slowly, painfully, to find a hazy face floating above his: sharp-featured, and bearded, and framed by the dark, silver-shot hair that he’d dreamed of tanging his hands in. He could see the vivid blue of the king’s eyes, but his vision was too blurred to make out the expression in them.

  It’s not fair how beautiful you are, he thought.

  But when he opened his mouth, he croaked, “Hot.” Because he was – he was boiling.

  Erik’s broad hand shifted to his forehead, then his throat. “Yes, you are,” he muttered. “You’re blazing with fever. Hey – hey, don’t fall asleep. Stay awake, stay with me.”

  But Oliver’s eyes were too heavy to keep open. “I would.” He was aware of his mouth moving, but had no control over it. “I would stay with you…if you asked me to…If you wanted me. I have…I have nothing. And you make me ache.”