“I don’t want to.” But the problem, she found, the longer Náli’s words sat around her neck like an oxcart yoke, the more Oliver’s spiraling mood, his drawn expression, his bruised-looking eyebags and the new, jittery way he held himself began to make sense. Oliver had been sickly her whole life, true, but he’d never been jumpy. Furtive.Guilty. “But youmusn’ttell Erik.” If she shattered his relationship with Oliver, she’d never forgive herself.
“Oh, Rune, I shouldn’t have said anything.” Eyes stinging, she stepped back from him, and thumped her fist fruitlessly into her empty palm. Náli had told her the sort of thing that got men killed or banished, and she’d blurted it out the moment she saw Rune.
“Hey, hey.” He caught her by the shoulders and reeled her back in. When she met his gaze, she found him unusually serious. “You were right to tell me. After all, we’re husband and wife.” His smile flickered with uncertainty, and he looked terribly young again. From what she could see of her own reflection in his big, dark, glossy eyes, so did she. “What we say to one another stays between us, unless webothdecide to tell someone else.”
It was perhaps the sweetest, most reassuring thing anyone had ever said to her; that it had been said by her husband, who lived her in mind, and spirit, and body added an extra layer of sweetness.
She stood up on her tiptoes, laid her hands on his chest, and kissed him. “Thank you, my darling.”
His hands found her waist, and squeezed. His face flushed, pleased with himself. And then he said, “Since Oliver can’t fly with you, we’ll have the blacksmith modify your saddle, and I’ll ride double with you.”
“What?”
12
The tunnels had been a mistake.
Oliver hadn’t had a choice in the matter. His fever had progressed: he’d gone from roasting inside his clothes, sweat pouring down his face to sting his eyes, to shivering so violently he’d given up on steering his horse some two hours ago. The cold that wracked him came from within, the kind he’d known all his life; a shard of ice at the core of him, leaching its cold out, and out, so that no cloak, or robe, or blanket could ease its chill.
He sat slumped in the saddle, gripping its swells, the reins slack. The carved stone walls, smooth from years of dripping water and the brush of overloaded wagons, kept his horse from straying. Torches snapped and crackled, their light dancing in a way that turned his already-woozy head into a ship on rough seas. He kept his eyes closed, concentrating on staying upright, aware that, at some point, he would lose consciousness and fall. He felt so terrible that the idea of cracking his head on the stone floor sounded like a blessing.
The clop of hooves echoed strangely, and the men were silent save the clank of gear and shuffle of footfalls. Oliver’s temples pounded along with the uneven lurching of his heart, and so he was thankful for the lack of laughter, shouting, or singing, too exhausted to be unnerved by the silence.
He drifted. In and out, in and out. It was black behind his eyelids, but a soothing gray when his addled mind sought again and again to propel him to the Between.
“Oliver.”That voice wasn’t coming from the tunnel. It was inside his head, and he wanted to crawl toward the comfort it promised, wrap himself up warm and tight and sleep for a week. “Oliver.Come.”
Yes, he thought.I’ll come. He just wanted to rest. He wanted to no longer be a prisoner inside his traitorous body.
“Oliver.” He started when he felt a touch on his knee. Though it was a sluggish start: an inner leap that manifested in the laborious lifting of his eyelids, a blurry glimpse of the torchlit cave.
It felt as though it took whole minutes to realize that his horse had halted, and that Erik stood below him; that it was Erik’s worried voice that had called his name, and Erik’s large, beringed hand resting on his knee, squeezing gently.
“What?” he croaked.
Leather and armor creaked as the men riding ahead of them twisted in their saddles to see what was causing the hold up. Oliver’s vision was too blurry to distinguish their faces.
Erik’s voice was hushed, and gentle, when he said, “You’re swaying in your saddle, love. Why don’t you come and ride with me?”
Somewhere beneath the fever, he knew that being seen like that, seated before the king and bracketed by his arms, would be a show of weakness. There was nothing dignified, lordly, or inspiring about nodding off, flush-faced and head-bobbing, weak as a kitten.
But he was too tired to argue. Too tired to nod. Too tired, it turned out, to climb down out of the saddle. “All right,” he murmured, and let his toes slide out of the stirrups. That was as far as he got.
Erik took a quiet, sharp breath full of worry. Still low and gentle, he said, “Come here,” and reached up to grip Oliver by the waist and haul him bodily down out of the saddle and into his arms.
He drifted again.
When next he was able to open his eyes, he felt Erik’s solid chest at his back, the sturdy bars of his arms holding him upright in the saddle.
“Oliver. You can’t fight this. You aren’t strong enough.”
That voice again. Romanus’s voice.
Oliver reached for Percy, and found only gray mist. He could hear and feel nothing of his drake.
He tipped his head back against Erik’s shoulder, and Erik murmured something soothing he couldn’t decipher. All that was clear was Romanus calling him:“Oliver, it’s time for you to join me.”
He wanted to scream. Wanted to cry. But he was so very tired.
