“What in the gods’ names—” Tessa started, watching him go, and Oliver shushed her.
“Leave him. He’s right. No one’s more useless than me.”
When she faced him, she swore he’d grown two shades paler in a matter of seconds. She knew that the marsh fever progressed rapidly, but notthisrapidly.
“Oliver—”
He took a step back from her, stumbled, and nearly fell. She lifted her hands in a fruitless attempt at steadying him. He was too far to touch; suddenly, she couldn’t recall the last time they’d had anything like a meaningful conversation.
He met her gaze, and despite all the obvious signs of sickness, she didn’t think the fever was to blame for the hard glimmer of his eyes. Resolute, hopeless, almost as though he was grieving.
“You can do this, Tessa,” he said. “Get the drakes over the mountains. Meet us there. Stay safe.”
Then he turned, without an embrace, or a cousinly kiss, or so much as a smile, and trudged back toward Erik.
Ice-cold fear gripped Tessa by the throat. There was illness, with all its attendant misery, and then there was Oliver’s morose display, bereft of all his usual love and affection. Even sick, even woozy and battling a fever, the cousin she’d grown up with in Drakewell would have told her that he loved her. Would have offered a reassurance, said something to make her laugh, and ease her nerves.
Something was badly wrong, something besides the marsh fever.
“You know what’s caused this, don’t you?”
Absorbed in her worry, she hadn’t heard Náli approach, and jumped when his voice sounded in her ear. She pressed a hand to her leaping heart and said, “What? The marsh fever? He’s had it since he was a boy. Since his father dragged him through the swamp during the last war.”
Náli’s mouth tugged to the side, a wry expression several shades shy of a smile. His voice was grim and disappointed. “He hasn’t told you, then? About how stupid he’s been?”
“What are you talking about?”
He stood watching Oliver’s uneven, shuffling retreat, and turned to her after a long beat, his eyes huge and silver-blue inhis pale face. The heat of spring had posted pink flags high on his regal cheekbones.
Weeks ago, he and Oliver had been fast friends. She couldn’t believe the animosity in his expression now.
“Your sweetOllie,” he said, mockingly, “has been visiting with the Immortal Emperor Unchallenged in the Between in secret.”
She heard the words, but wasn’t sure she’d heard them correctly.
“I’m sorry.What?”
“Oh yes. Romanus Tyrsbane asked after him when he tried to decapitate me on the other side. The ‘red whore,’ he called him. I didn’t realize at the time how true that moniker was.” On the last, he flashed a nasty, toothy smile, eyes tight with unhappiness.
Tessa might not have a clue what Náli was getting at—it sounded like a made-up story, the sort of ugly gossip that had plagued Oliver when he was growing up, the unwanted bastard of an unfaithful husband—but she understoodwhorewell enough. She drew herself upright, shoulders back, chin forward. “Oliver isnota whore. Don’t you dare call him that.”
He huffed and rolled his eyes, but not in his usual flippant way. That sharp edge of anger, of hurt, remained, his movements fast and imprecise. “I just told you: theemperorcalled him that, not me. And then Oliver, the great fool—he is that, and you can make that face at me all you like, but it’s the truth, he’s afool—met with the emperor. Countless times. Purposefully.”
“No,” she said, but weakly. She didn’t want to believe any part of this…but she’d only seen Náli this serious a handful of times, and despite his theatric tendencies, she could tell that the way he vibrated with stress now was no act. “Ollie wouldn’t. He couldn’t.”
“Would, can, and did.” Náli exhaled forcefully again, nostrils flaring. “And Iwarnedhim. Itold himnot to do it. He thinks he’s…” He punched the empty air and paced a single, tight circle, scuffing his boots over fallen pine needles. When he whipped back to face her, his tense shoulders and clenched fists brought to mind an insect in distress, like the walking sticks her brother used to put in glass vases and tote back to terrify Mother with. “He thinks he’sclever. And that he can learn valuable information from the emperor without tipping his hand. That’s the story he told me, at least. But that’s not what’s happening: he’s been seduced.”
Oliver might be the one with the fever, but Tessa’s head was spinning. “Oliver loves Erik.”
“Oliver was a friendless bastard, without power or influence. Erik raised him up from nothing. A life of clandestine trysts in dark gardens and wardrobes didn’t adequately prepare him for receiving amorous attention from royalty, and that’s what he’s getting from the emperor.”
Tessa had never slapped anyone in her whole life, and so she didn’t recognize the impulse in herself, was staggered by the strength of the urge, and it was only after, when the crack of her palm against his cheek was echoing around them, that she realized what she’d done.
“Oh!” She clapped her smarting hand over her mouth. “Náli, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to!”
She’d struck him so hard that his head whipped to the side, and he righted it now, reaching to touch the hectic red patch where her strike had landed, working his jaw side to side.
The initial horror of her actions passed quickly. Tessa dropped her hand and frowned at him. “I am sorry, but you shouldn’t have said that.” She lowered her voice. “Oliver isnota whore. What if someone had overheard you and suspected the worst?”
