Page 71 of Heart of Winter
~*~
By the time he’d been measured, evaluated, and draped in enough fabric for Revna’s liking, the sun was beginning to set beyond the windows. Oliver bid her ladyship a hasty goodbye – her smirk knowing in return – and fled.
He passed a pair of maids hauling linens in the hallway, and both of them shot him quick, questioning glances. A bastard foreigner coming out of the royal apartments; even the brief touch of their eyes felt like a judgement. Did everyone in Aeres know what was happening? That Lady Revna was draping him in blue velvet and wanting to put sapphires in his hair? Talking to him of her brother?
After the feast, everyone in the palace would know.
He needed air.
Head ducked against any other awkward moments of eye contact, he made his way through the halls to the door that led out onto the third-story balcony that overlooked the gardens.
Oliver paused, one step out the door, struck by the pink-streaked portrait of the sky, the sun’s rays gold and distinct along the distant horizon, like the spokes of a wagon wheel. The mountains, and foothills, and the trees lay in folds of mantled gray, far across a gleaming pink expanse of snow. The last, honeyed light of the day caught the points of guard spears on the wall walk, and the icicles that dripped from the battlements, and the snow-heaped trees and shrubs and arbors and benches below, in the garden.
Oliver walked up to lean against the stone balustrade, pressing his face forward into the breeze. It was westerly, tonight, as if the sun’s last glow was tugging at him, wanting to pull him across the great, candied distance.
“I see we had the same idea,” a low voice rumbled.
He turned his head, and there, four columns down, framed beneath one of the gallery’s high, rune-carved arches, stood Erik.
His forearms rested on the balustrade, same as Oliver’s, though he’d had to stoop much lower to accomplish that, his fur-clad shoulders hunched, his hair trailing over the edge, lifting like streamers in the breeze. His profile, limned in pink and gold sunset light, belonged on a statue. The sort of proud, regal construction that stood in a town square, or atop a palace wall.
Oliver wanted to kick himself: in his hurry to get out here, he hadn’t taken note of the guards who must be stationed just on the other side of the door. He couldn’t retreat, not after he’d been spotted, but this was the first time they’d been alone together since what Oliver was referring to in his head as the Petting Incident.
Erik turned toward him, and Oliver was struck by the ordinary, commonplace gesture of him tucking his hair away from his face and behind his ear. Oliver’s fingers itched to do it for him.
He swallowed against a dry throat and said, “I was just with your sister. Being fitted for feast clothes.”
“Ah.” The statue resemblance melted into smile; it lit up Erik’s face in the same soft, sweet way the sunset lit the snow. “My advice is to do whatever she says.”
“I did try to refuse.”
“And how did that go?”
“Apparently, there are going to be sapphires in my hair.”
He didn’t think he imagined the way Erik’s eyes widened, fractionally. And he definitely didn’t imagine the way his gaze shifted to Oliver’s hair, and he then cleared his throat. “Oh. Well. I’m sure she knows best.” He straightened and came to stand beside Oliver, close enough that, when he rested his arms along the rail again, their elbows were touching. He smelled like he’d been riding, Oliver noted: snow, and horse, and sweat.
Erik’s gaze was fixed on the sunset again, and so Oliver joined him in gazing toward it. The pink had deepened to a deep rose, and the shadows across the snow had grown long, like reaching fingers.
“I’ve seen plenty of sunsets,” Oliver said, “but never one quite like this.”
“I imagine they’re impressive in Drakewell, shining on all that water.”
“Oh, yes. It shines like glass.” Oliver nodded toward the expanse of snowy field beyond the wall, purpling, now, as night raced on, studded with bright star flares where the last light caught the ice crust just so. “But this…this is like diamonds. And the sky – the sky is much closer, here. Like I could reach up and touch it.” He started to demonstrate, but then tightened his hand on the balustrade, face heating. “Apologies. I don’t – er – normally get so fanciful.”
Erik chuckled. “Well, youareSouthern, after all.”
Oliver chuckled, too, and it eased the tension in his chest. “Itislovely here. Too cold by half, and more dangerous than I’m used to. But. Lovely.”
“Hm. I’ve always thought so. There’s something beautiful about the simplicity of it.”
Oliver skated a glance toward him, and saw the last flare of sunlight catching on the silver and gems braided into his hair; the gleam of silver stitching on his tunic; the glint of his rings, where his bare hands rested on the stone, heedless of the cold. He thought he was beginning to understand it, all the ornamentation. Aeres – at least in winter – was a sparse and cold landscape, the green of the trees, and the gray of the mountains, and the sugared colors of sunrise and sunset all that broke up the many, many layers of snowy white. Long winters of bitter cold were spent indoors, around the fire, drinking, and talking. There were no flowers, no leaves, no fresh fruits. Amidst that stark backdrop, the Aeretollean people had taken to ornamenting themselves with all the glitter and gleam of the precious metals and stones they’d spent generations mining.
And the beads and gems woven into their hair, Erik had told him, held significance. Were gifts from loved ones.
“The sapphires,” Oliver started, before he could think better of it. Erik glanced toward him right away, curious. “For my hair, I mean. The beads. Is it – are they–” He couldn’t ask outright. They had been Revna’s idea, he reminded himself. “You said, before, about the beads, about what they mean – I’m not Aeretollean, nor even an Aeretollean’s intended, like Tessa is.” He gulped down a breath. “I shouldn’t wear them.”
Erik let one hand slide off the rail so he could turn to him more fully, brows knitting. “Anything you are given to wear is a gift. Given freely, and yours to keep.”
