Because the conversation wasn’t going the way he wanted it to. Because Oliver wasn’t behaving the way he wanted him to.
Meanwhile, Amelia was trapped with the emperor.
“Erik,” Oliver spit back. “If your aim in bringing me on this march was to be your mild-mannered, supportive bed warmer without opinions or feelings of my own—”
“You know that isn’t true.”
“I don’t know anything! Including what’s happening to me. But itishappening.” In more ways that Erik could imagine.
Erik looked ready to shout and bluster. Instead, he took a measured breath and said, “I love you.”
Oliver’s stomach sank. He wasn’t sure he’d ever enjoyed hearing that phrase less.
“Which,” he continued, “is how I know that something is badly wrong. You won’t tell me what it is. I want to demand that you do, but I know you well enough to know that will accomplish nothing.”
“Don’t you want to bludgeon me anyway? Isn’t that your style of leadership?”
Erik’s gaze narrowed, but he didn’t take the bait. “I don’t think you should fly over the mountains.”
“What?”
“Percy can follow orders, yes? He can manage without you. Send him through the air while you travel through the tunnels with me.”
“Are—are you mad?”
“I’m quite serious.”
Oliver scoffed, but knew the sound was halfhearted at best. His worry for Amelia was swelling by the moment, threatening to swallow him. He lacked the energy for this argument. In fact, he wanted badly to admit to everything. To tell Erik all about his visits with Romanus; wanted to pull the pendant from his pocket and reveal that the ambush on the camp had been a distraction so that Romanus could gift it to him. Erik would be furious, might even snatch his ring from Oliver’s finger and boot him from the tent, but he was too tired, too anxious to care for the consequences at the moment.
Before he could form the words, Erik rounded the end of the sleeping pallet and moved to stand before him. “Ollie,” he said, tone pleading, and captured both of Oliver’s hands in his own. “Come with me. Let the drakes go alone.”
The way Erik’s voice trembled with true fear, the way he was begging, disarmed the last of Oliver’s fight. “But…but what if there’s an ambush waiting for us? What if we step out of the tunnels and straight into a trap?”
“Percy will tell you.” Erik pulled one hand from his, and reached as if to touch his face. Hesitated. When Oliver sighed, he reached again, and cupped Oliver’s cheek, firm and sure. “Won’t he tell you? Won’t he reach out through your bond if he sees any danger?”
“I—yes, of course—but I—what if he can’t? What if the tunnels are too deep? What if…?”
Erik’s thumb swept across his cheek, cool, and rough from sword work. “What if what?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know.” Oliver realized that he’d begun to shiver. If Romanus meant to kill or harm Amelia, surely he’d already done so. There was no way for Oliver to come to her rescue. “Erik, I’m afraid.”
“I know. Which is why I want you with me.” His smile was small, and more than a little heartbroken.
Oliver closed his eyes, nodded, and when he opened them again, Erik said, “Oh.”
“What?”
“Your eyes stopped glowing.”
But beneath his skin, he felt the first stirrings of a fever.
~*~
Amelia came awake flailing, an angry scream caught in her throat. Something hard impacted all down her left side; knocked the breath from her lungs. She opened her eyes and saw the hard ground, the rugs she’d laid over it inside her tent, the wooden feet of her sleeping cot—which she’d obviously just rolled out of.
“Gods,” a female voice said above her. “Is this a nightmare, or some sort of fit? Shall I fetch Callum and his box of potions?”
Amelia reached gingerly to touch the side of her head, relieved to see that her fingers didn’t come away bloody. “Leda?”
