Oliver would have laughed at another time. As it was, his own panic thumping wildly in his chest, he rubbed at his eyes and said, “All is well. It was only me.”
Erik scanned the tent, and then his gaze landed and remained on Oliver, and his fearsome, battle-ready scowl became one of concern. He charged across the tent and took Oliver’s chin in his free hand. Bewildered, Oliver let his neck go lax and turned his head side-to-side at Erik’s urging while he peered down into his face.
His frown deepened. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
Oliver blinked, panic climbing. It was a physical presence in his throat, bound to choke him. “What do you mean?” Half his thoughts were back in the Between, where Romanus was now alone with Amelia. Amelia, who’d never met a man she couldn’t infuriate. Amelia, who he was convinced had only lived this long because she’d had first a band of loyal men, and now a band of loyal drakes to guard her back.
“They’reglowing,” Erik said.
“I’m fine, I…what?”
Still holding his sword, Erik bent down and picked up a wedge of broken mirror. He held it up in front of Oliver’s face, and it didn’t matter that the light inside the tent was poor; he didn’t need light to see what Erik meant, because his eyes were generating a light of their own.
Theywereglowing, their blue backlit as though by an inner fire.
Oliver gasped and stepped back from the mirror. He blinked, long and slow, but when he looked again, his eyes still flared bright as the blue heart of the hottest flame.
Like the drakes’ eyes.
Oliver reached, and watched his reflection reach, to his right eye. Touched the skin just beneath; pulled down the lower lid, then lifted the upper.
“Does it hurt?” Erik asked, voice oddly hesitant.
“No.” And it didn’t. “I don’t feel any different.”
“Is this Percy’s doing?”
“No,” Oliver said, without thinking about it. But when he considered, he knew it was true. He could have reached out and sought Percy’s mind, but it wasn’t connected to his at the moment. “I have no idea why this was happening.”
Though he suspected it had something to do with Romanus. With being shoved forcefully out of the Between. He’d been trying to return to the solarium since he woke, but it wasimpossible; every attempt was met with an impregnable defense. His mind and his magic bounced off of it every time.
Erik lowered the mirror, and Oliver almost protested; never before had he been hypnotized by the sight of his own face. Thus distracted, it took Oliver a moment to classify the look that had come overErik’sface.
Wariness.
Logically, it made sense: Oliver’s eyes wereglowing. Whowouldn’tbe wary of such a thing?
Still, it stung. “Are you frightened of me?”
Erik looked down at his hands, the jagged wedge of glass in one and the sword in the other. He dropped the shard of mirror as though burned, but turned to walk the sword back to its scabbard, and sheathed it with the care he showed all his weapons. With the sleeping pallet between them, he folded his arms over his bare chest and said, “No. I’m frightenedforyou.”
Oliver was too muddled, too distracted, pulled too hard in two different directions, to properly appreciate what his folded arms did for the muscles in Erik’s arms and chest. To admire the way his hair lay in silver-shot black waves over his shoulders, awaiting the braids that Oliver would give him when it was time to properly rise for the morning.
“I can talk with dragons,” Oliver said. “Why should this,” he gestured to his face, “be the thing that frightens you?”
“It isn’t. At least not that alone. The closer we get to the capital, the more distant you grow. You are…pale, and waxen, and listless in your saddle.”
“Because I’m clothed in Northern garments too warm for a Southern spring. As for pale, I’m sorry, but I was born that way.” The last he snapped, scowling.
Erik shook his head. “No. This is different. You’re—you keep to yourself. Some disagreement has fractured your relationship with Náli,thatI can tell even from a distance.”
Bollocks.
“And with me, you’d rather go to bed than talk of anything serious.”
With an effort, Oliver lifted his brows. “Congratulations on becoming the first man in recorded history to be concerned about getting his cock sucked.”
“Oliver.” It was a kingly voice, a command for silence.
