This was Aquitaine. The palace.
Here, he knew with a sick lurch, he would meet Romanus in the flesh. For the second time.
He craned his neck and found that he was naked, and lying in a copper bathtub packed with melting snow. Just as it had at Aeres, the cold had broken his fever, and driven his body’s killing heat back to something manageable. Despite the shivering and the numbness, his head felt clearer, his vision sharper. He was hungry for the first time in days.
He also needed to get out of this bloody place as quickly as possible.
It was a laborious effort to sit upright, and then grip the sides of the tub and haul himself up out of the slushy snow. He couldn’t feel his feet, nor much of his legs, and he floundered when he tried to step out of the tub, and flopped down hard onto a rug that did little to cushion the stone floor beneath.
“Shit,” he hissed, and pushed up onto his hands and knees, dripping and shaking.
“You’re awake,” a low, familiar voice said from across the room, and Oliver yelped.
He sat back on his haunches and clapped a hand over his mouth to quash the tail end of the embarrassing sound he’d made. His damp hair lay in cold snarls across his shoulders and down his back, dripping icy pearls of water that made him shudder. He wanted a towel, or a robe, or one of the purple drapes from the nearby window, even, with which to cover himself, but he didn’t trust his strength just yet. He knelt, pale, naked, trembling, and lifted his head to find Romanus seated in a chair across from him, a handful of paces away.
Oliver tried to rub some feeling back into his arms and wracked his brain for the question most likely to be answered. His memory was addled from the fever, but he recalled the tunnel, and its nightmare shadows leaping along the walls; the steady clop of horse hooves ringing out against stone. He recalled Erik’s strong arms around him—and then the world tilting, and Erik shouting for him.
There had been a portal: that much was evident by his current circumstances. The night the camp was raided, men and drakes had poured through, but he’d not stopped to consider fallingintoa portal. It had opened directly beneath Erik’s horse. How had Romanus…
Oh.
Oh, of course.
Oliver rubbed a hand over his trembling lips, and his voice came out stuttery from the cold. “The pendant. The amethyst. That was how you knew where I’d be.”
Romanus tucked his regal chin in the barest of nods. “Very good.”
Kneeling as he was, Oliver felt like a dog being patted on the head.Good boy.
Oliver folded his hands in his lap, trying to cover himself. A spill of purple off to his right looked like a plush robe draped over a chair, but he didn’t like the idea of standing up, wobbly as a new colt and naked as the day he was born, to fetch it. “Why bother with the pendant at all? Why not take me the night you gave it to me?”
“It wasn’t time,” Romanus said, his tone suggesting that was obvious.
“I wasn’t sick yet, you mean.” Though he swayed on his knees, in danger of blacking out again, Oliver managed a scowl. A thought occurred, one he wanted to kick himself for not having sooner. “It was the necklace, wasn’t it? I haven’t had a fever since I bonded with Percy, and then you gave me that bloody amethyst, and I started feeling unwell.”
Romanus tipped his head, the slightest angle of concession. “It didn’tcauseyour illness, if that’s what you’re thinking. Your illness lived inside you, still, sleeping. That sapphire you carry, the cold-drake essence trapped inside it, kept your fever at bay. The amethyst overrides it.”
Anger swelled in his belly, hotter, brighter, and more painful than the fever had been. Oliver had never wanted to strike a person so badly before. He clenched his hands into fists in his lap, and took a series of slow, deep breaths. But there was pride building, too, tightening his chest; the bittersweet silver lining to his current storm cloud situation.
“I was too strong,” he said, and though Romanus’s expression didn’t change, he knew that he was correct. “You couldn’t pull me through the portal until I was sick.”
Romanus let out a slow, bored-sounding breath, and examined his spotless, trimmed-short nails. “I grew tired of waiting for you to come of your own volition.”
“Why would I come to you?” Oliver scoffed. “Why would think that would ever happen?”
Pale brows lifted a fraction. “Why wouldn’t I?” he countered, in that infuriating way that had become familiar after weeks and weeks of meetings in the Between. It was twice as infuriating, now, because Oliver was cold, and naked, and shivering, and all too aware that at any moment, Romanus could grow tired of bantering and reach out to touch him. “You don’t belong with the Aeretolleans. That much is plain to both of us.”
“It’s not plain tome. I don’t care what titles you hold: it’s not for you to say where I do or don’t belong.”
Romanus’s broad shoulders lifted dramatically on his next breath. “You’re a stubborn little whore,” he said, almost fondly. “But it’s time to stop acting so childish.”
Oliver bristled—and then curled down into himself when Romanus stood. It was a helpless, kneejerk reaction, because though he was keenly aware of the size, and breadth, and sheer strength of the man, being physically in the same room with those qualities was an entirely different, entirely frightening scenario.
A protest formed in his throat, but got stuck at the back of his tongue when his jaw tightened, and his shivering body tensed. He would resist as much as he was able, should Romanus grab for him, but he knew he’d be no match for him. That whatever Romanus wanted to do to him, there was no way to stop it.
“Stop cowering like a whipped dog,” Romanus chided as he approached, boot heels ringing across the flags. “If I wanted you that way, I’d have had you by now.” He snatched the bundle of purple off the chair, shook it out, and draped it across Oliver’s shoulders.
It was indeed a robe, thick and plush, the inside softer than any such garment he’d ever worn. Oliver stuck his arms through the sleeves, pulled it tight, and cinched the golden, tasseled belt. He shivered again, but it was from relief this time. A man didn’t normally offer you a robe before he forced himself on you.
