#TeaserTuesday: AOTE Ch. 1

 

"What are you doing?"

"Showing you your inheritance."

I'm working away on edits for Avarice of the Empire so it can be in your hands ASAP! For today's chapter, I'm sharing all of Chapter One.

Copyright © 2025 by Lauren Gilley 

1

 

On the Road

Aquitainia

 

“Oh, her eyes were blue, and her smile was red,

“She always baked the softest bread…

Oliver gritted his teeth, and belatedly realized that he’d tightened his hands on the reins when his horse tossed his head. “Sorry, boy,” he murmured, loosening his fingers and stroking the gelding’s neck.

Some half-hour ago – though it felt like more – they’d emerged from the cover of forest into a sea of wavering grassland: pastures gone unthreshed after the loss of life during the war, its farmers and their sons having marched to the capital, and been killed or captured. Out in the open, with the drakes circling lazily overhead of the Phalanx, Magnus had started singing, a few others had picked it up, and no one had told them to hush or risk drawing the attention of enemies hiding in the brush.

Ordinarily, Oliver found the Northern songs – which always started rather benign, and grew bawdier and bawdier as they went – charming, and, at worst, amusing. Today, though, it was an effort to unclench his jaw. He turned toward Erik, riding beside him, and whispered just loud enough to be heard over the plodding of horse hooves and jangling of bit chains, “Do you really think it’s wise for them to be alerting the whole countryside to our whereabouts like that?”

Erik smiled, though absently, his gaze fixed on the road between his mount’s ears. “There’s little chance of being ambushed here now, and it keeps their spirits up.”

Oliver failed to withhold a sigh. “Yes, but it makes me want to stab my eardrums out with my cloak pin.” He realized halfway through the sentence that it was a terribly fussy, overdramatic thing to say, and though that was the brand of humor he wielded most often, in these instances, he sounded waspish and overtired, rather than slyly humorous.

Erik’s half-turned head and cocked eyebrow echoed said realization.

“Er,” Oliver said, clumsily, and thought the smile he offered must be pathetic. “Perhaps with some voice lessons…” He trailed off, face warm with embarrassment.

And from the weather, as well. As he faced forward between his horse’s ears once more, he realized there was sweat trickling down his back, plastering his undershirt to his chest. They’d all left off their heavier furs, stowing them in the trunks onboard the sleds they’d converted to wagons one night, but their clothes were still Northern clothes, and they were most definitely in the midst of a Southern spring at the moment.

A shadow passed over them, blotting out the sun, spanning the road twice over. Oliver tipped his head back to watch Percy pass overhead, hair stirring in the breeze of his wings as he flapped them and began to climb again. It would be cooler up there, on his back. Tessa and Náli were both currently aboard their drakes. Tessa had looked at him curiously when he’d said he would ride in the caravan on horseback, alongside Erik.

Náli hadn’t looked at him at all, narrow shoulders rigid.

The simple truth was: Oliver felt guilty. So guilty, in fact, that when he woke this morning, and the coin-set amethyst in his pocket that the Emperor Unchallenged, Romanus Tyrsbane, had gifted him on the night of the campsite attack shifted in his pocket, he’d nearly blurted out the whole sordid truth to Erik. The dreamwalking, the secret meetings in the dreamscape Aquitainian solarium, Romanus, all of it.

But at this point, the secret had become so tremendous, and so thorned, that Oliver didn’t know how to reveal it in a way that wouldn’t get everyone in its radius seriously hurt, Erik most of all.

Leaving aside the fact that Romanus was currently occupying his nation’s capital, had killed half the men of Aquitainia, and had launched an assault that had razed half the palace of Aeretoll—and, gods, weren’t those reasons enough for a kingly explosion of temper?—Erik was a loyal man. A loyal man who prized loyalty in all of his people, and in his family. In his lover – in the lover who he’d draped in jewels, and furs, and acknowledged as his official consort in front of his lords, his heirs, and his gods. Oliver was consorting with the enemy. There was no other word for it. And, perhaps worse, he felt almost certain, now, that Romanus had carnal designs on him. Oliver of course didn’t feel the same, and would never allow things to go so far…but he’d learned, in the past weeks, that he wasn’t above exploiting the emperor’s interest. As a means of gathering intelligence, of course. Nothing else. Nothing personal.

But Erik would never understand. He was a man who met threats head-on, sword in-hand, and he would view Oliver’s actions as a betrayal: royal, political, and romantically personal.

Oliver was fucked.

“…ler?”

Oh. Erik was speaking to him.

Oliver blinked, found that he’d receded so deep into his worry that he hadn’t blinked in some time, and that his eyes had gone dry and gritty with road dust.

“Sorry.” He turned to Erik, and found him frowning, concern writ heavy in the lines on his brow. “What were you saying?”

Erik had been dour the moment Oliver met him…and then he’d melted, slowly, the harsh lines of worry shifting instead toward grooves of laughter and affection. Then the war had come to Aeres. Oliver didn’t know if travel and battle had carved fresh marks between Erik’s brows, and twined fresh white streaks at his temples, or if Oliver himself was to blame. Erik gazed upon him now with the kind of concern that could do permanent damage to one’s face.

“I wondered,” Erik began, and then a horn sounded.

Percy tugged at Oliver’s mind, a sharp pricking of blue.

It jolted him upright in the saddle, and he stood in his stirrups with a gasp, Percy’s surge of adrenaline pulsing through him.

Wings clapped hard together overhead, loud as bursts of thunder, as the three drakes raced ahead and then fell into a tripart circle, low over the grass. Percy offered Oliver a glimpse, even as the outriders streamed down the line toward them, words snatched back by the wind.

“A Selesee encampment,” Oliver said, vision split dizzyingly between his own view and Percy’s, an overlap of ghostly images. “Abandoned, apparently.”

“Your Majesty!” the first outrider puffed as he drew rein beside them, horse’s chest lathered in the heat. The man—boy, really—was red-faced and panting beneath his helm. “The drakes have spotted a campsite.”

“Anyone there?” Erik asked.

I just told you, Oliver thought, sourly, and then reprimanded himself.

“There’s no smoke, and no noise,” the outrider said. “Do you want us to launch a search?”

Erik turned to Oliver. “No,” he told the boy. “We’ll land the drakes and have them look.” His brows lifted expectantly.

Oh, now you want my input? Again, Oliver banished the nasty thought, and instead leaned into his bond with Percy.

His immediate surroundings faded out completely, and he saw only through Percy’s eyes.

From above, the encampment looked like a scene set up by a child, without the dolls. Crushed grass in overlapping paths, black, rock-ringed circles that marked fires, spits made of trimmed sticks and branches still in place. There were signs of horses—many of them—but no horses themselves, and no picket lines. Tracks—from wheels and from horses and from foot soldiers—beat west in long, unending lines that disappeared at the far-distant tree line. All signs present pointed to a retreat toward the capital.

But the tents were an oddity.

There were dozens of them, thick cream canvas anchored with wooden stakes, arranged in tidy squares around the snuffed cookfires. At the center of camp, the commander’s tent held pride of place, bedecked with purple banners and gold tassel fringe.

Percy saw movement—but it was only the wind ruffling the canvas.

Closer, Oliver thought, and Percy landed.

The force of his wings, the final great flap as he settled, blew over at least four tents; the canvas snapped free and went sailing and tumbling like so many handkerchiefs caught in a gust of wind. In their wake, Oliver could see only empty, sun-starved patches of grass between a framework of wooden tent poles. No chests, no collapsible camp chairs, no rugs, and no bedrolls.

No Sels, either.

At Oliver’s silent urging, Percy folded his wings and prowled through the camp, sniffing at dead fires and shoving his snout into tent flaps. The place was utterly deserted. Even more reassuring: the scents of men, and steel, and horses were old. It had been several days since anything larger than a field mouse had crossed this patch of land.

Oliver sent Percy a wave of gratitude, and then retreated to his own mind, a far smaller, and less sensory place, the adjustment to which left him listing in the saddle.

A strong hand gripped his shoulder—Erik’s—and righted him.

Oliver blinked, and took a deep breath, and straightened his spine. “The camp’s abandoned. By several days, at least. No sign of them in the distance.”

Erik nodded, but his gaze lingered on Oliver a long moment, concern etched with—something else. Something Oliver didn’t want to examine too closely. Doubt of Percy? No. Oliver didn’t think so; Erik had stopped resisting the advantage the drakes gave him. In fact, he seemed to have embraced it, quick to suggest dragon intervention or assistance, especially since the Sel raid in the forest.

He’s doubting me, Oliver thought.

Erik turned to the outrider and said, “Tell the head of the column to proceed. We’ll search it for anything of value.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The boy wheeled his mount and cantered back the way he’d come.

 

~*~

 

Oliver tensed all over as they neared the campsite, so much so that his mount jigged and tossed his head. He slid out of the saddle and approached the rest of the way on foot. Erik huffed behind him, but didn’t protest, and soon joined him.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, I think.”

And that was what was setting his teeth on edge: all of the nothing he sensed as they closed in on the nearest tent with each step. Grass crunched underfoot, and insects croaked and sang, a usually-joyous sound that heralded spring’s official arrival. The sun beat down on the back of his neck, and sweat slicked his skin beneath his clothes. He realized he wasn’t breathing, and inhaled, slow and shaky.

He waited for the hum of magic. The prickle of supernatural awareness at the base of his skull. That ugly, exhilarating hot sensation in his blood he’d felt the night their own camp was raided.

But there was nothing. Not so much as a whiff of magic, not even on Percy’s end of their bond.

“What?” Erik pressed, tone firmer.

Oliver didn’t glance toward him; kept walking, until he stepped over a picket, and paused to peer into the folded-back flaps of a tent. It was empty.

“Like I said: nothing. If this is a trap”—he did turn to Erik, then, though his neck felt heavy and creaky, and found that his concerned expression was verging toward a glare—“then it isn’t a magical one.”

Erik’s expression smoothed, his brows lifted, and then he nodded, turned away, and drew his sword. “Be watchful, men!” he called, voice echoing through the campsite. “Touch nothing suspicious! There might be traps!”

Ill-equipped to handle those, Oliver forged ahead, sword still sheathed, and made his way toward the center of camp, where Percy had been joined by his mate and son.

Tessa slid down from Alfie’s back and stood with a gloved hand resting on the female’s shoulder. With her other hand, she doffed her helmet, red hair sweat-plastered to her temples and neck, and surveyed their surroundings with a frown. “If they left, why didn’t they take their tents?”

Valgrind had his whole head, neck, and forequarters inside a tent, horns moving in sharp points beneath the canvas as he investigated, tail lashing back and forth like a curious cat’s. Náli stood at his flank, arms crossed, expression one of fond exasperation.

“They wanted to frighten us,” the Corpse Lord said, and when he turned his head toward them, he wiped his expression clean of everything save cold indifference. He caught and held Oliver’s gaze for a pointed second, and then his gaze wandered across the rest of the site. “Or at least confuse us. The more time we spend wondering what they’re doing, the more time they’re actually doing it.”

“Or,” Rune said, joining them, sword a naked, gleaming white bar that threatened to blind them all in the sunlight, “they caught wind of our approach and fled.” He propped his free hand on his hip and looked around with an air of satisfaction. The heat had sheened his face with sweat, but he was glowing, rather than melting. As a Northerner, he should have been puddling like candle wax, which was how Oliver felt.

There was much to be said of youth. Optimism case in point.

“Or they’re the ones who sent the drakes through the portal,” Náli countered, “and they’ve executed a tactical retreat.”

“Well, they’re gone, aren’t they? They didn’t want to face us.” Rune grinned and brandished his sword at an imaginary enemy.

Náli scoffed, and swatted at Valgrind’s flank. “Come out of there, you stupid beast.”

Valgrind backed clumsily out of the tent, kicking up a thick cloud of dust, and when his head was free, whirled, and licked a stripe up Náli’s neck and cheek. “Oh—gods, no, disgusting.”

Valgrind chirped happily.

Oliver turned slowly in place. He saw the felled tents, crumpled heaps of dirty canvas; saw Erik directing Magnus and Lars and the men who’d gathered to conduct a search, the sunlight painting the gray at Erik’s temples in unforgiving white rivers; saw the rest of the Phalanx coming to an uncertain halt, half the men still mounted, wondering if this was to be a proper, feed bag and horse-watering stop, or only a brief pause.

When he next blinked, he failed to open his eyes, and felt a now-familiar urge to go toppling backward into the hallways of his mind—not merely hallways, he’d learned, but palaces; vistas; places whose farthest reaches he’d not begun to probe—and seek out answers at the source. He thought of the solarium. Thought of approaching Romanus and demanding an answer. Why is this camp abandoned? Why leave the tents? Are there traps ready to spring?

But what he longed most to ask was What is this? He wanted to fish the necklace from his pocket and wave it in the emperor’s too-pale face and demand an answer. Why me? What do you want?

He wouldn’t do that. Not here, not now…

Or so he told himself. But he was halfway to gone, the gray fog of the Between rising up behind his closed eyelids, when a soft touch landed on his elbow, and Tessa said, “Ollie?”

He started as though burned, and Tessa withdrew with a small, surprised gasp. She recovered quickly, though, fluttering hands reaching to smooth her hair, brows lowering and lips pressing together in a frown.

“Sorry,” he said. His heart was racing. “What did you say?”

Her frown deepened. “Ollie, are you well? You look–”

“You should scout ahead.”

 

By some miracle, Oliver refrained from leaping out of his skin a second time, but he thought that was only because he was already in a rabbit-pulsed lather. He affected nonchalance as he turned to Erik and said, “Hm?”

Sword held low along his thigh, Erik’s gaze tracked back and forth across the camp, taut now with kingly concern, rather than loverly worry. He spoke to Oliver without making eye contact. “The three of you should fly ahead and scout for enemy movement. This”—he gestured to the abandoned tents around them—“could be meant to lull us into a false sense of confidence. There’s hours of daylight left in which to make progress, but I don’t want us to ride into an ambush.”

“Agreed,” Oliver said, forcing a note of brightness into his voice. “We’ll lead the way. You’ll mind my horse?”

“Yes, of course. Be safe.” Erik spared him the briefest glance, and a nod, as though Oliver was no more than one of his soldiers, before he turned and strode back to the knot of men awaiting him.

 

~*~

 

By Oliver’s estimation, they flew some fifteen miles ahead of the Phalanx, and saw nothing save fields, fields, and more fields, quartered by low stone walls and narrow thickets of forest. Rather than the impenetrable canopy of the Inglewood, this forest was mostly comprised of low-growing hardwoods, the newly-budded branches offering glimpses of creeks, and hollows, and dreamy little glens, perfect for napping shepherds, playing children, or frolicking, lovestruck young people, but not dense enough to disguise a Selesee regimen.

Flying itself held none of its usual charm. The cold air was biting instead of bracing; the wind left his eyes streaming and sore; already tired from riding a horse, tense with a mounting anxiety he could neither will away nor justify to anyone else, and which only Náli, with his petulant, scornful side-eye glances knew about, Oliver found that he was aching all over by the time the light dimmed to pink-and-peach striations.

Wordlessly, Oliver turned Percy back the way they’d come, and trusted the others to follow, which they did.

Percy’s vibrations through the bond were an inquiry, a demanding ruffling at the back of Oliver’s mind, that he pushed down with pat platitudes. Are you well? Yes, I’m fine. Clever though he was, Oliver wasn’t sure how to present the idea of subterfuge for the sake of reconnaissance to a dragon.

When they caught back up with the Phalanx, the tidy, marching lines had pooled together into one mass, busy as ants when viewed from the sky. They were making camp.

Oliver landed Percy well away from the action, unsaddled him, and told him to go off and hunt for dinner; there were deer aplenty in this region. Percy agreed with a toss of his head, but waited for his mate and son to venture off once more.

“Wait and we’ll walk back with you,” Tessa urged, when he gathered up his saddle, and harness, and bridle, and started toward camp.

Oliver pretended not to hear her.

Náli, of course, said nothing.

Erik’s campaign tent was always the first erected each night, and Oliver found it easily: the high tent poles tipped with banners, the rippling sigils of stag and wolf.

Two guards stood beside the main flaps, which were tied back with strips of leather. Oliver nodded in response to their murmured “Your Lordship” greetings, and went around to the rear flap, also guarded, where he was also greeted. The tack weighed heavy on him by this point, so he grunted a hello, ducked inside, and quickly shed his equipment on a scrap of rug beside the sleeping pallet. Then he began the tedious process of doffing his helmet and armor. The chime of buckles was once a sound that had sent a hot thrill up his spine, because it hadn’t been a sound he associated with himself, only with the sorts of strong men he liked to bed. Now, that thrill was replaced by a slow unclenching of tensed core muscles, a flood of relief to be rid of the heavy, stiff vestments of war.

When his helm, pauldrons, breastplate, gauntlets, and grieves were all stowed in their shallow wooden chest, he straightened, and came face-to-face with his reflection in the looking glass atop the washstand.

Who is that? was the first thought that sprang to mind. He still wasn’t used to the way the North—the way Erik’s affection, and then his love, and Oliver’s new title, his claim to royalty—had altered the shape of him. His face sharper, harsher, dark across the bridge of his nose and both cheekbones from time spent outdoors. His shoulders were broader, sheathed in a tight, firm swell of new muscle that had never been there before, and his waist was narrower. He’d always been slender, but hadn’t realized, until now, that a life spent reading and attending musicales had left a gentle padding of softness around his middle. It was gone, now, as was his Southern mop of cropped curls. His hair fell past his shoulders now, still faintly curled at the ends, pulled back from his face in a series of narrow, intricate braids that ran back from his temples, the beads at the ends clinking faintly each time he shifted. Like the jangle of buckles, the sounds of the beads he wore had become a constant backdrop to his daily routines.

Amelia had long since stopped startling at the sight of him when they met in the Between, but he wondered what those who’d known him as Oliver Meacham would think of him now. His Lordship, King’s Consort.

The liar who visited with the enemy.

Disgusted, he frowned at his reflection, and bent to scrub the day’s grime from his face.

Through the canvas screen strung up to bisect the tent, he could hear the low rumble of familiar, masculine voices. He knew Erik’s, intimately and straight off. The others, he thought, belonged to Birger, Askr, and, at a guess, young Lord Sigr, a duke at fourteen, thanks to his father’s death at the battle for Aeres.

“…only a novice,” someone, Askr, he thought, was saying, as Oliver patted his face dry with a cloth. “He can’t be expected to be sure of things.”

A pause.

Birger said, “You’re magical yourself, then, are you? You’re an expert? You know what the lad can and can’t sense?”

Magic.

They were talking about him.

Askr scoffed. “Of course not. I’m only saying—”

“Something you shouldn’t,” Erik said, a hard-edged slice of a command, like a sword strike.

But no one had ever accused Askr of brilliance. “Erik, you know I like the boy.”

“Then you’ll hold your tongue,” Birger said.

“But,” Askr continued, “he’s not been wielding his magic his whole life, like the young Corpse Lord. There’s no way to be sure that—”

“I’m sure.” Erik’s voice was cold. Oliver shuddered at sound of it.

“Erik,” Askr started.

Birger said, “That’s enough, my lord.”

Askr harrumphed, but said nothing further.

“What say you, Lord Sigr?” Birger asked.

The boy stammered a moment. “Well, I—Your Majesty—I think that—that is, His Lordship is quite skilled with the drakes, Your Majesty, and I think—”

Oliver didn’t want to hear anymore. He tossed the cloth down and stalked toward the tent flap… Only to pull up short when he realized that if he ducked back outside, he’d have to contend with more of Tessa’s concern, and Náli’s derision, or the unwanted attention of any number of lords or soldiers.

He stood in the center of the rug, hands balled into fists, and felt a tightness in his lungs he hadn’t known since his last relapse of marsh fever.

In truth, he’d known it was too good to be true: the trust and faith of the Northern people. Of course some of them still had doubts. Of course they’d question his magic. No one alive in the North now had ever seen a drake, much less relied upon them for valuable tactical information. Askr’s questions were neither unwarranted, nor unexpected; he had a big mouth and he flapped it often, along with a complete lack of tact. Askr’s—everyone’s—doubt was understandable. Gods knew Oliver had learned to handle the doubts of others as a child.

And yet here he stood, breathless and trembling with anger.

It would have been easier to remain a bastard, unthought of and discounted, than to have spiraled up to the peak of authoritative consort, and then plunge back down to bitter reality. Wasn’t there a saying about how loving and losing was better than nothing? The same didn’t apply to power.

He closed his eyes and could see the solarium. Swore he could smell the sweetness of the wine, and hear Romanus’s contemplative hum. The fog and vertigo of the Between beckoned, and he wanted to fall into it. Its pull had never been so tempting… and that frightened him.

He opened his eyes, and fished the amulet from his pocket. It was warm, and smooth, save the jagged chunk of amethyst set in its center. He only looked at it in stolen moments, when he could be sure that no one would see him. There were words stamped around the perimeter of the coin, Selesee, he supposed. The amethyst had been pressed into what he thought was a face; a tip of a nose and the silhouette of hair remained, around the edges of the stone.

Romaus had staged a drake-filled campsite raid to give him this. And why? Given Erik was the only other person to ever gift him jewels, Oliver thought the answer was obvious.

Absorbed in the candlelight refractions off the purple gem, he didn’t realize conversation had ceased in the neighboring room until the canvas flap lifted with a rustle and footsteps crossed the rug toward him.