Page 8

Chapter Seven

Oskar

His house was one of fifty carved into a singular massive slab of the Silberquel, grouped in vertical layers that were connected, tenement style, by a crude staircase that had also been chiseled out of the rock.

It was very near the mines. Oskar hadn’t realized just how near until he set out on the Amber Road and found sleep almost impossible in the silence of the forest, with no constant hammering of pickaxes or churning of stone in the background.

The one-room affair that he called home was located on the ground floor of the tenement.

He fit a key he hadn’t expected to use again anytime soon into the lock on the creaky wooden door, and then he was leading Guinevere inside, setting matches to the tallow candles in the tin holders on the lone table.

As the stale air filled with the sour smell of burning animal fat and the interior was cast in a sickly yellow glow, Oskar tried not to think about how it would appear through Guinevere’s eyes.

He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. It had suited him and his mother well enough.

There were two pallet beds, each one partitioned off with makeshift curtains for the sake of privacy.

The stone floor had seen better days, but it had always been meticulously swept clean of the soot from the forges that tended to drift in through the window.

He’d emptied out the cupboards before he left, but, prior to that, there had always been at least a wedge of cheese and some onions, and even as a boy he’d gladly helped his mother out by warming these over the bakestone in the shabby but well-maintained hearth.

It wasn’t a palace, but neither was it total squalor. He could be proud of the life his mother had eked out for him. And if Miss Guinevere said anything about it—

Her stomach grumbled. She clapped her hands over the offending body part and stared up at him with a stricken expression on her face, her eyes so wide that a flicker of reluctant mirth tugged at him.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he told her. “I’ll go find us something to eat.”

Oskar went to the house directly above his, calling in the favor the inhabitants owed him for fixing their rickety wooden shutters a week ago, and he came back down with a warmed loaf of bread made from black ale and rye seed, as well as a jug of sour wine.

His little guest had set the table while he was gone, using some of the much-vaunted merchandise from her satchel.

The tallow candles and the house’s grand collection of two chipped earthenware plates and a plethora of mismatched utensils had been carefully arranged on top of a red silk cloth trimmed in gold brocade, joined by two engraved silver cups.

There were linen napkins on top of the plates, emerald green and folded into the shape of four-leaf clovers.

Guinevere beamed at him from across her handiwork, her violet eyes sparkling.

Her hair was spun starlight even in the dull glow of the cheap candles.

Her smile shone, and not just because her teeth were small and straight and perfectly white against her copper skin; there was an incandescent happiness to it. The simple pride in a job well done.

Oskar was severely unamused by the way his breath caught in his chest. He stomped forward and plunked their meager repast on the table. The irony of all the accoutrements costing more than the meal thousands of times over was not lost on him.

“Let me serve you!” Guinevere chirped after they’d sat down.

He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, and watched as she poured the vinegary swill into the silver cups. Then she took a knife and valiantly sawed at the hard loaf, her brow wrinkled in concentration. Crumbs spattered all over the silk tablecloth, and he waited for her to complain.

But she didn’t. “I was ever so surprised that I still remember how to fold the napkins like this,” she said gaily. “Mother prefers the royal drape, but I think the clover pleat is much more charming.”

Oskar had no idea what in all the hells she was talking about. “It’s very nice,” he mumbled.

He hadn’t thought it possible for her smile to grow even more radiant, but now it fair outshone Catha when the brighter of Exandria’s two moons was hanging full. She really was too pretty for her own good. He scowled at her, and it felt like self-defense.

Guinevere plunked generous wedges of bread onto both their plates. Then she broke a piece off her crudely chopped portion, popped it into her mouth, and chewed.

And chewed, and chewed.

Oskar took pity on her. “You have to dip it into the wine,” he explained. “To soften it.”

She blinked but didn’t say anything. Of course she wouldn’t. In her world, it wasn’t proper to talk when one’s mouth was full.

“You can spit it out and try again,” Oskar said gallantly, pushing her cup of wine closer to her elbow. “It’s poor manners, but you won’t hear a peep from me.”

Guinevere shook her head frantically, cheeks bulging, jaw working in overtime. It was so… adorable. Damn it.

“Cat got your tongue?” He couldn’t resist teasing her. “Or is the bread really that good?” She shot him a pleading look that lightened his heart. “Must be the pinch of sawdust. It’s my neighbor’s ancient family recipe.”

Guinevere squeaked. Chewed with more vigor. And, at last, managed to choke down the bread. “Oskar!” She fought back a mortified laugh. “You’re—you’re the worst!”

“I try.” He felt it then, the crinkling at the corners of his eyes that indicated he was in danger of flashing her a smile of his own.

Oskar of Clan Stormfang did not smile. He hurried through the rest of his meal, then excused himself to draw water for a bath that Guinevere would probably appreciate.

In all honesty, though, it was more an excuse to do something but stay at that cozy table, enjoying himself for the first time since his mother died.

With a girl who would be out of his life forever by tomorrow afternoon.

For Oskar, the odd feeling started when Guinevere emerged from the tiny washroom smelling like tangerines and sugar cubes, spiked with a hint of magnolia.

He recognized the scent instantly: a perfumed oil that his mother had brought over from Boroftkrah in her girlhood and had used only once or twice since.

Distilled from a flower called the Snow Queen’s Tears, which bloomed only on the Rime Plains and only during the short-lived months of the northern summer, it was the most luxurious item in the house, and Idun had wanted to make it last. Oskar had lifted the flask to his nose several times over the years, savoring the delicate fragrance, and he could just imagine Guinevere dribbling it into the bathwater he’d heated for her, blissfully ignorant of its sentimental value, taking it as her due because of course a bath had to have perfumed oil mixed in.

But it wasn’t that she’d used it—he didn’t begrudge her that. It was that his mother would never use it again.

The familiar ache behind his eyes twitched to life while he performed his own ablutions.

When he left the washroom, it was with a clogged throat at the sight of Guinevere drying her hair by the fireplace.

He’d lent her another tunic, and she was on her knees on the floor, running a comb through snarls of liquid silver.

She flashed him a gentle smile, lit softly by golden flames, and a different kind of ache gathered in his chest.

“Oskar,” she said, and it was strange how such a low, sweet voice could ask a question that sent the world crashing down all around him, “there’s two of everything in the house…Your mother must have lived with you until recently. Didn’t she?”

“Until recently. Not anymore,” he replied, his tone laced with terse, dark warning.

Guinevere unfortunately didn’t pick up on it. “Where is she now, then?” she asked brightly.

Oskar hung his wet towel over the rack beside the hearth with a viciousness that sent water droplets flying. There was no running from it anymore. He had to say it. Say it again.

“She’s in the paupers’ cemetery west of the Dustbellows.

It was a mining accident. A tunnel collapsed.

” He’d hoped he could get through it calmly, but it wasn’t long before his every word quivered with anger and resentment.

It wasn’t Guinevere’s fault, but he resented her anyway, in that aimless manner of fire with nowhere to spread but everywhere.

“The other miners dug her out and brought her to the healing house. She hung on until I got there. Long enough to make her last request—that I visit her clan in Boroftkrah.”

I always wanted to take you, Idun had labored to whisper, her face graying against the pillow, the light leaving her eyes.

But there was never any time. There was always too much work to do.

Promise me you’ll go, even just once. Let them see you, this good thing that came out of my life.

Let them know that I was happy—that someone loved me, so far from home.

Oskar thought that Guinevere might have dropped the comb at some point, but he couldn’t be sure because her petite form was suddenly blurry in his vision.

Hells. This was the absolute last thing he needed right now, to be weeping like a child in front of this hoity-toity stranger from the capital.

He retreated to the corner of the house that held his bed, tugging the curtains shut around it and sitting heavily on the edge of the mattress.

He took one deep, heaving breath after another, willing the tears not to come.

He lost this battle quite dramatically. There was a rustling of cheap fabric as the bed curtains were drawn aside, and then Guinevere was sitting next to him.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I shouldn’t have pried. Oh, Oskar, I can’t even imagine…I’m so sorry.”

And she wrapped her slim arms around his neck in the most gentle embrace he had ever known, and he was doomed.

A sound caught halfway between a groan and a sob rattled out of his throat, and tears were pouring down his cheeks, clumsy and bitter, yet oddly freeing.

How could he not have cried— truly cried—for Idun until now?

It was exactly as terrible as he feared it would be, this ransacking of his defenses, but somehow it also wasn’t.

Guinevere dulled the sting with her warmth and her softness, with the surprisingly fierce way she held him, as though she were keeping the pieces of him together, tiny thing that she was.

They sank down until she was flat on her back and his face was hidden in the crook of her neck.

She was all fragrant locks and soft skin scrubbed clean, smelling like flowers and citrus, like a fleeting dream of summer on the tundra.

He fucking inhaled her. She was a lifeline in the sea of his grief, her burnished fingers tentatively carding through his hair in soothing strokes.

And what was grief, but a memory of love? He’d run from that horrible last day for so long that he’d forgotten all the good ones that came before.

Oskar wept into Guinevere’s neck until exhaustion finally claimed him. And when the darkness fell, it fell like the funeral shroud over his mother’s form, and it felt like goodbye, and also like grace.