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1
Aeres
“From the masons,” Oliver said, adding a sheet of parchment to the growing stack on Erik’s wide desk. “They’ve run out of stones, and don’t think they’ll be able to harvest and cut more until the spring thaw.”
Erik left aside the parchment he’d been reading and dragged the new one closer, sighing heavily. “How far along are they on the renovations?”
Oliver waited a beat, until Erik lifted his head in question, because Erik himself had taken a tour of said renovations just yesterday.
He blinked, and made a face. “Damn.” He scrubbed absently at his beard. “Great hall and front façade finished. Guest rooms restored. It’s only Olaf’s surgery and the royal apartments that are in want of repairs, yes?”
“Quite.” Oliver nudged a gone-cold cup of tea closer to him. “Darling, maybe it would be best if–”
“Don’t say I should lie down for a while.”
Oliver folded his arms and sent him his best unimpressed look. “I can say it, or I can go fetch Birger and have him say it.”
Erik’s face scrunched up like a child’s caught pilfering sweets. “You fight dirty, your lordship.”
“Why, thank you.” Oliver dropped into the chair across from him, his own back and legs sore from his many, many trips back and forth through the palace halls. He couldn’t remember when he’d sat down last; breakfast had been a ham roll eaten on the go while he and Revna toured the grounds in search of the perfect ceremony site.
“…Ollie.”
Oh. Erik was talking to him. He blinked the haze from his eyes and hitched up straighter in his chair, unable to hide a wince. “Yes?”
Erik smirked, soft and fond. “It seems you’re the one who needs a lie-down.”
“How about this? I lie down, and you come with me.”
Erik’s regard was pleased, warm with heated promise. “I don’t think we’ll do much resting that way, love.”
“Rest is overrated,” Oliver said, and his returning smirk was ruined by a massive yawn. “Gods,” he muttered afterward. “Being a bastard was far less work.”
Once the words left his mouth, he felt a mental jolt. How long had it been since he’d actively thought of himself as a bastard? Since he’d thought that he was lesser, undeserving? He moved through the palace to calls of “your lordship,” consulting, instructing: a voice of authority as respected as Erik or Revna.
“What?” Erik asked.
“Nothing. Life is full of unlikely turns, that’s all.”
A chorus of shouts drew their attention to the window. Erik seemed relieved for an excuse to push his chair back and get away from the desk. Oliver followed, and Erik lifted an arm straight away for him to duck beneath, the heavy, warm weight of it across his shoulders familiar now, and always welcome.
Through the fogged diamond panes, they had a view of the bailey, which had, over the past month and a half, become a training yard for the Úlfheðnar. This afternoon, it was spear work. Bare chests steaming, runic tattoos rippling over layers of muscle, they worked through a sequence of thrusts, parries, and dodges against imagined opponents, all of them perfectly in sync – more so than any purely human company Oliver had ever witnessed. Leif led them, his braids messy and tied back in a knot; something pale along his crown caught the sunlight, and, with a shock, Oliver realized it was a bead made of bone.
Just like Ragnar and the others wore.
Erik’s ribs swelled against Oliver’s through layers of velvet and wool. He exhaled slow, and deep, and exhausted. “I don’t know what to do for him,” he murmured, a confession. “I keep telling Revna that all he needs is time, and when I speak to him myself, I try to brace him as well as I can – remind him that he’s loved and wanted and needed here. But he’s changed.”
His voice hardened. “He goes down every day to speak to Ragnar.”
“Can you blame him?” Oliver asked. “Who better to ask about shifters than the one who turned you?”
“Hm. I know.”
Down in the muddied snow, Leif executed a forward thrust with his spear, his jaw tight, his gaze fixed unwavering on a pretend enemy. Everything from the flexing line of his shoulders, to the tightness of his posture, to the huffs of steam from his nostrils spoke of ferocity. It was hard now to remember how gentle he’d seemed before. The boy who’d traveled with them to Dreki Hörgr was a man now, one that Oliver was ashamed to admit he found more than a little intimidating now.
Erik said, “Do you wish you had another dragon rider?” Oliver didn’t like the doubt that laced his words; that now ever-present worry that perhaps he wasn’t enough anymore. “Someone else who understood what it was like?”
Oliver leaned more firmly against him, bumping his thigh with his hip. “I’m perfectly content with the people I already have, you silly king. Besides. I’m not, in fact, the only dragon rider anymore.”
