by Megan Crane
“Let me guess,” Gunnar drawled. “You want to help me talk through my feelings.”
“I want to take your feelings and shove them up your ass,” Wulf replied, tight and furious. “But that sounds messy.”
“Maud is none of your business.”
“And if she was an inland farm girl, loyal to the clan by default and geography, I’d agree with you. But you, with your unprecedented aversion to comfort pussy, didn’t pick yourself some unassuming little thing who would spend her life too cowed to question you. You picked a nun.”
Maud cleared her throat from the side, though neither Gunnar nor Wulf glanced over.
“Novice, actually,” she said, the way she always did. There was no reason it should make Gunnar feel as if she’d cracked him wide open and torn him apart. “Not a full nun.”
“Not a full nun,” Wulf repeated, that light of mayhem in his gaze again. “My mistake. Meanwhile, that mercenary piece of shit washes up here and says he’s been sent by a bishop. The same bishop, your new woman tells me, that she knew as a novice. And guess what else? She saw Krajic in the church with her own eyes.”
“That’s a coincidence.”
“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. Either way, Krajic’s dead and the bishop is shit out of luck. Yet what interests me is why you claimed your nun at all, when everyone knows you’re still hung up on Audra.”
Gunnar hated that. Intensely. He hated that Wulf said it like that, so bald and matter-of-fact, and he hated that Maud stood there and took it, as if she already knew. When he didn’t even know if it was true anymore. He didn’t know what he felt about anything. He didn’t feel hung up on anyone but Maud—but he’d made vows.
Wulf was still talking, because this wasn’t ruining his life. “You either did it so no one could question her, or you did it because you have other plans for her. Maybe both. Riordan had a tale or two to tell from his visit to your cabin.”
Gunnar shook his head. “Riordan is a little punk bitch who should take care of his own shit for once.”
“I’m sure he will,” Wulf agreed, in that deadly way of his. “But in the meantime, he heard you talk about black magic. And something about how you running into Maud was only delaying her inevitable death, not saving her from it. Is that about right?”
“How the hell do I know what he told you?” The truth was, Gunnar barely remembered when Riordan had come to get him. Everything was a dark gray blur, everywhere, all bruises and a split lip, except Maud.
“Here’s my problem.” And Wulf’s voice went low. Pointed. “That black magic shit sounds a lot like Audra. Her spells and her bones and her drum circles right there in the middle of the goddamned hall.”
“Attention whore,” Tyr said again from the side. And didn’t appear to notice when Gunnar glared at him.
“And when I start thinking about Audra and spells, I start wondering what you might be up to,” Wulf continued, sounding conversational again, which was worse. “You must have a solo ship. There’s no other way you could make it to the mainland and back otherwise. If you’d had help I’d know.”
Gunnar bared his teeth at his blood brother. His king. “If you know everything, why am I here? You could have this conversation in your mirror. I’m sure you’d find that far more to your liking.”
“Are you taking up some black magic witchery in your spare time, Gunnar?” Wulf asked softly, back to the tone of voice he used when he was playing cat-and-mouse games with prey. His pale eyes gleamed with force and power. “Do you need a nun to do it? What spell is that, exactly?”
“Go to hell.”
Wulf let out a mean sort of laugh. “That’s what I thought.”
He nodded at Tyr then, and then turned away from Gunnar in obvious dismissal.
“Is that it?” Gunnar demanded, his pulse rocketing again in pure agitation. “I thought this was a fight.”
Wulf shook his head, swiping his shirt off the floor and using it to mop his face.
“I don’t want to fight you, asshole,” he said, sounding the closest to weary Gunnar had ever heard him. “Do what you want. Though I should warn you, your popularity around here drops by the hour the more shit you pull. If the brotherhood comes to me with a vote to cut you, I won’t have any choice but to allow it.”
“Brotherly love at its finest,” Gunnar managed to say. Darkly. “I’m touched.”
Wulf tossed his shirt aside and pinned him with a frigid glare.
“Then you’ll really get off on this. You can’t have the nun.”
For a moment, Gunnar didn’t think he’d heard that right. But Wulf’s gaze was steady and cool.
“You must have hit me harder than I thought,” Gunnar said after a moment, when he thought he could speak instead of launching himself across the room at his blood brother and going for his throat for such an insult. “Because I thought you just said something I know is impossible. She’s my mate. Mine.”
“You want to fuck around with your own life? Go ahead. But leave her out of it.”
“It’s not up to you.”
“I’m the king,” Wulf belted out, in that voice of his that made the stone shake. “Or did you forget that again? Who do you think it’s up to if not me?”
“Well.” Maud again. That calm, sweet voice of hers that wound around Gunnar the way she did when she was in his arms. Almost apologetic, and yet there was that undercurrent of something a whole lot more like steel. “I think it might me up to me.”
* * *
Two pairs of astonished blue eyes turned to her then, cold and arrogant and impossibly ferocious, and Maud thought her knees might crumble out from beneath her. She wanted to sit back down and shut her mouth and pretend she’d never thrust herself into the middle of a raider fight.
But she couldn’t be separated from Gunnar. That couldn’t happen. She’d experienced what that would be like already today, being marched up here by Riordan and questioned—politely enough, if extensively—by two huge raider warriors and one terrifying raider king.
She’d had a fleeting notion that she’d refuse to answer their questions or stand up to them all somehow—but that tiny, imaginary rebellion died the first time Wulf smiled at her, her swift and painful death in the curve of his very hard mouth.
The truth, she’d understood, was that she wasn’t built to be strong. Not like that. Not harsh words and broad shoulders, fists and blood and battles. They’d fired questions at her, one after the next, and she’d felt as if she was back in the convent. Called into the bishop’s confessional and made to kneel while her behavior was torn apart and carefully parsed for inevitable wrongdoing. Just like then, she’d been deeply ashamed at her own weakness. She couldn’t seem to do anything but kneel, no matter how little she wanted it. No matter that in her mind, she fantasized about fighting back somehow. Coolly ordering them to leave her alone or telling them to fuck off the way Gunnar would have. Something spectacularly violent, the way she suspected Eiryn could have. Anything but bending, always bending, always contorting herself to fit even when she didn’t want to fit—
But then Gunnar had burst in, and everything had shifted. Clarified. Made perfect sense.
Everyone bowed to men like these raiders and Bishop Seph, too, because they weren’t simply commanding, dominating every room they entered—they backed that up with power and physical strength. There was no scenario in which a soft creature like Maud was going to fight off one of them. Much less three of them. The bishop had been bigger than her, taller and heavier and very strong. Failing that, he’d had the entire church on the other side of the door, prepared to carry out his every order to the letter. The only way to fight a man like that was to give him what he wanted—except that little bit of her soul that was hers alone. She’d kept it in reserve. She’d refused to yield it over to him, no matter what he did.
He’d called it her defiance. He’d tried to beat it out of her. He’d threatened her with the desert, though Maud had finally understood in a flash of insight i
n a raider king’s tower that Bishop Seph never would have carried through with it. She was the one creature under his control that he hadn’t been able to break. He would have kept trying forever.
And the fact she’d stood up to him for five long years? That wasn’t weakness. That was strength.
It was the same thing here. What point was there in trying to fight a group of raiders? They hadn’t been hurting her, and they could have. Easily. They hadn’t even really threatened her—because they didn’t have to bother with threats. It would be like stamping on ants for them. That was how much resistance she could offer them, and how seriously they would take it.
That, too, was strength. It was called picking her battles. Better to live to fight another day, when it might matter, than to commit suicide for no good reason in a battle she knew she’d never come close to winning. She didn’t even want to win it. She didn’t care what the raiders knew about the bishop or the church—and she knew that Gunnar was no traitor. Half the time she didn’t think he wanted to go through with his ritual. Especially when he was touching her and she was absolutely certain he was thinking of nobody but her.
After all, she didn’t believe in ghosts. She believed in here. Now.
So why fight the inevitable if it was only to make a point?
Because when Gunnar walked in, she understood. It was him. Only him.
He was the only man in all the world who made her want to kneel. To bend. To tie herself into any knot he wanted, because he was the only person she’d ever met who didn’t need her to contort on command to fit the box of his choosing. She didn’t have to pretend, because he knew the truth.
He knew she liked the pain. He knew what made her come. He could read her body better than she could.
He’d kept her safe. In the bandit city. In the raider hall. On his ship and in his bed.
She wore his collar because she wanted the weight of it, like his hands on her when he wasn’t there, tethering her to him without any chain. It only grew stronger inside of her, that connection between them. All the ways they were linked together.
There were a thousand ways to describe it, but only one word encompassed them all. She’d been taught it was a sin. Even before the church, her mother and her uncle had scoffed at the idea of it.
That’s for rich people in warm places, her mother had said once, mockingly. Out in the real world, who has time for such pointless fantasies?
But Gunnar stormed into the room, the harsh words started flying, and she wanted to physically put herself between him and the people who attacked him the way she’d been taught in the convent to never, ever do—and she knew.
She loved him.
She loved him.
And that made her feel strong enough to do anything. Stand there and watch Gunnar and his terrifying royal blood brother try to kill each other, for example. Then open her mouth and defy the same king who’d so intimidated her before.
Because that was different. That was about the past, the bishop and the church and frightening mercenary she was just as happy was dead. But her future was Gunnar. She knew that down to her bones. Even if that future only lasted a few weeks.
There were so many ways to die. Too many. But dying for love sounded a lot better to her than any of the alternatives.
Wasn’t that what surrender was?
She could do that for him. If he needed her to do it, if he told her she could, she could do anything.
Maud found Gunnar’s gaze and held it. Smoky blue. Perfect.
“Maud,” the king was saying in that soft, menacing voice that she doubted fooled anyone. It certainly didn’t fool her. But it didn’t scare her the way it had earlier. “You can’t go with him. It’s not safe.”
“It’s safe,” she said. She didn’t look away from Gunnar.
I love you, she thought, but maybe he already knew that, too. She was wearing his collar. She was standing here in bare feet, defying his king. Maybe the words were overkill.
“You don’t get it.” That was Tyr, the huge and alarming war chief, in his gruff way. “He probably wants to use you in one of his spells.”
“I’m perfectly safe,” she assured them softly.
And she thought if she looked into Gunnar’s eyes long enough, if she trusted him enough, he might believe it, too.
“Little nun.” His voice was barely above a whisper, rough and low, as if she’d been the one to pummel him. To leave him bloody and bruised.
Maud straightened then. She forced herself to turn away from Gunnar. To look the king in those eyes that were so familiar, and yet totally alien.
“I’m not in any danger from him.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Wulf replied. All king. Arrogant and sure. “I don’t think even he knows how dangerous he is.”
“Thank you,” Maud said softly. Politely. “But I don’t need to be saved.”
Wulf tilted his head slightly to one side, as if he found her fascinating. She heard Gunnar make a low sound of warning.
“I think you do,” the king said. “And unfortunately for you and my blood brother’s new interest in the dark arts, I get to decide.”
Maud almost stopped herself. She almost chickened out, but she thought Gunnar needs me, and that was enough.
She held Wulf’s hard stare, as if he wasn’t a king. As if he was just another man.
“With all due respect,” she said quietly, “I’m not your mother. And you couldn’t have saved her either.”
15.
Maud couldn’t believe that Wulf let them go. That Maud had dared say that to his face at all, but more, that it had worked.
Wulf had let out a low laugh, as if he didn’t know whether to be astonished or offended. Maybe he was both.
You fucking deserve each other, he’d growled.
But he’d let them go. Together.
Gunnar hadn’t waited around for Wulf to change his mind. He’d left his shirt and grabbed his blade. Then he’d led Maud out of the king’s tower, his fingers wrapped tight around her wrist as if he thought Wulf might change his mind and snatch her back. He only slowed down when he pushed through the outer door on the other end of the narrow, stone hallway, bringing them both out under the glass that encased the roof.
It smelled like the forest here, earthy and deep. The pale summer sun had finally burned away the fog, and the sky was a deep, clear blue. Maud could see the whole raider city from this high, the colorful houses like a fanciful jumble before her, all the way down to the edge of the island-packed bay. A fishing boat was coming slowly into the pier, bringing in its wake an entourage of wheeling, calling seabirds. There were young men stripped to the waist and training with heavy iron bars out on the green, the clash of their practice weapons a kind of percussion against the cool breeze sweeping down from the mountains. There was a rainbow hovering over one of the waterfalls in the distance, and farther still, the hungry, watchful sea.
She thought this cold island might be the most beautiful place she’d ever seen.
And all of that faded next to the battered man before her, who frowned down at her as the door to Wulf’s fortress slammed shut. There was blood on his lip. Cuts and scrapes on his face. It did nothing to detract from that same, shocking male beauty that had captured her from the start, no matter the stern line to his hard mouth.
“Why did you do that?” She hardly recognized his voice, it was so rough. “You could have been free.”
Maud shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“It works exactly like that. My blood brother will grant you asylum. He’ll protect you. Even—especially—from me.”
She reached up then and fit her hand to his jaw, carefully. Very carefully, so as not to hurt him or rub too hard against any of the bruises she could already see forming.
“He hurt you,” she murmured.
Gunnar was still scowling at her, and when he lifted his hand she thought he’d peel hers off him, but he didn’t. He only covered her
hand with his.
“Barely,” he muttered.
“Well,” she said, very distinctly. “I won’t.”
She felt him jerk slightly against her hand, and she could have sworn the look that moved over his face was … shaken. As if she’d rocked him as wholly as one of his blood brother’s punches had, throwing him clear across the room.
He didn’t speak again. He took her by the wrist and he led her down from the roof, past two guards who tried to look as if they weren’t openly speculating about the two of them as they passed, then into a long corridor overflowing with brothers. Any other time she might have been intrigued by the glimpses she got into their rooms, the athletic positions she saw them in with the camp girls, the unabashed moaning and the sheer, exultant joy they all seemed to take in sex.
The camp girls ordinarily fascinated Maud. They served the brotherhood and, Maud had been informed, any member of the clan they felt like serving during the big festivals. Unlike the nuns, they had no rules that she could see. They didn’t wear uniforms and they didn’t talk about praying.
What they did was have sex.
Lots and lots of sex. With any of the brothers they liked, or who liked them. Anywhere, anytime. As they walked down the hall, Maud saw one of the camp girls spread out over one of the couches in a large, communal space out there in the open while a huge brother with bright red hair plowed into her from behind, so hard that every thrust made the couch rock and slide. None of the brothers nearby, some lifting weights, some discussing different grips on a long blade, paid them the slightest bit of attention.
Sex was matter-of-fact here, in a very different way than it had been in the convent. There was no talk of compliance or duty. No chanting, no prayers. No stern senior nuns checking in to make sure the camp girls were obeying the priests.
Maud was tempted to call it a revelation. But not today.
Gunnar led her down the main stairs and into the lobby, and Maud let herself bask in the kiss of the sun through the high windows before they walked on into the great hall. She tipped her head back to look at the great, round clan sigil that hung on the wall, a perfect match for the one on Gunnar’s chest. The long tables were in their usual places, ready for the next meal, and she felt so far removed from the woman who had walked in here naked. She knew it hadn’t been long ago. Still, it felt like a lifetime.
