Chapter 11 #3
“Would, can, and did.” Náli exhaled forcefully again, nostrils flaring.
“And I warned him. I told him not 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’s clever. 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 is not a whore. What if someone had overheard you and suspected the worst?”
“And what’s the worst?” he asked. “That Oliver is drawn again and again to our enemy? That he meets with him? Alone? That they sit and talk for hours? What do you think they’re discussing, Tessa? The weather?”
“I don’t know.” Her heart was still pounding. “But he would never betray Erik—or any of us.”
He started to respond, and then fell silent, lips compressed.
His gaze searched her face, and when he sighed, his shoulders slumped.
In a gentler voice, he said, “I don’t want to think that he would either.
But I’m telling you the truth: he’s meeting with the Selesee emperor, and he won’t stop.
If the emperor can injure someone in the Between, and the blood show up in the waking world, how can we draw any conclusion save that the emperor has sickened Oliver? ”
Tessa wanted to slap him again.
She wanted to cry.
She shook her head, and said, “He’s been sick his whole life. I can’t believe that this is because of the emperor.”
He arched a single brow. “You don’t think our sworn enemy, bent on conquering both our nations, would use a king’s consort to sabotage our forces?”
Put like that, the evidence was damning.
But she couldn’t rectify the boy who’d carried her on his shoulders, who’d kissed her skinned knee and made silly faces until she was laughing again, with someone who would turn traitor on his lover, his family, his country. She just couldn’t.
Tessa shook her head. “Oliver is sick,” she said, firmly. “We should pray for his returned health, not condemn him for imagined crimes.”
Náli tipped his head away from her, and took a step back, expression closing off, going cold. “Believe what you want.”
“I’ll believe what I know to be true about my cousin,” she snapped back.
They stared at one another, at an impasse.
Tessa said, “I intend for us to take flight once the entire Phalanx has gone through the gates.” She gestured to the entrance to the tunnel system. “Be ready.”
Before he could respond, she whirled and stalked off in search of Rune, proud of the way she carried herself, frightened and heartbroken inside.
The Great Northern Phalanx, true to legend, was organized not only in battle, but in preparation and march as well. Teams of men were breaking down the wagons and stacking them neatly beneath the cover of gorse bushes, so well hidden they blended with the scrub forest unseen.
The portable goods the wagons had been carrying were divvied up among the pack saddles of the reindeer, who appeared to be faring remarkably well in the Southern climate. Their leads would be secured to horse saddles, Rune had said earlier, so the horses would be free to carry men.
Said men worked briskly, laughing, calling to one another, reorganizing their packs and saddle bags and checking their weapons were clean and sharpened.
The din had become commonplace over the past weeks, as she traveled with the army, but it seemed too loud now, so close to the capital, where the emperor awaited them.
An emperor Náli insisted was wooing Oliver.
Gods. It beggared belief.
But she didn’t think illness was the only thing wrong with Oliver. Especially not an illness he’d been rid of ever since bonding with Percy.
Tessa lifted her split skirts up out of the dirt and hastened her steps.
She found Rune adjusting his horse’s tack, securing breastplate buckles and checking the tightness of the cinch.
He glanced quickly over his shoulder at the sound of her footsteps crunching closer, but caught himself as he started to turn back to the horse.
A smile bloomed, warm and welcoming, and he faced her fully.
“Hell…” His expression froze and then fell when he caught sight of her. “…lo. What’s wrong?”
She didn’t slow; opened her arms and kept walking until she could wrap them tight around his middle and press her face to his chest.
Rune held his own arms out at awkward angles a moment, and then settled them around her shoulders. “Tessa?”
“It’s Oliver,” she said, voice muffled against the front of his tunic. “He’s sick.” Then she tipped her head back, chin resting on his collar, and told him everything Náli had just said.
Rune’s brows climbed higher and higher throughout the telling, until she had a glimpse of what he’d look like when he was his uncle’s age, forehead creased with lines. It was only after, when Rune murmured a low, shocked, “Gods,” that she second-guessed sharing so much.
“You musn’t tell Erik. Or anyone,” she said.
Rune stroked her upper arms in an absent way, looking dazed. “You don’t really think…Oliver is…and Erik…and Náli does like to cause trouble.” He frowned after he said the last, and shook his head. “I can’t believe that’s true. You don’t believe it, do you?”
“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 you musn’t tell 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 we both decide 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?”