Edge of Power

by Megan Crane

  She watched Wulf smirk as the guards made a point of taking him by the arms. It was a mystery to her that none of these men, supposedly trained for battle and military maneuvers, could see that he was allowing this. That he was letting them put their hands on him, and he could have stopped it at any time. That he was no prisoner here, no matter what they thought.

  It gave her the oddest feeling. Almost as if she wasn’t a prisoner, either. As if she could stop it just as easily, if she wanted.

  But that was nothing but wishful thinking. Madness. He was a raider king. She was nothing but a ruined girl.

  Kathlyn stood where she was, letting her head bow as the guards marched Wulf from her view. She heard the great doors creak open, then close at the other end of the hall behind her. She felt her heart kick at her, a sick shuddering that seem to move through her too fast, only to settle uneasily in her twisting stomach.

  Only when the doors shut behind Wulf did her father move. Kathlyn wasn’t looking at him directly, but she could see his feet move and the exact moment he stood up.

  Which was bad news for her. Very, very bad news.

  Her stomach threatened to rebel, but there was no point in indulging it. The king stood, which meant his subjects knelt, and Kathlyn was no exception. She sank to her knees, almost welcoming the kiss of the marble against her bare flesh, because it centered her. It reminded her where she was.

  She was still alive. For now.

  Her father wouldn’t kill her now. Today. Not when he wanted to shame her so completely by giving her to a raider and trumpeting her ruin far and wide. She could be certain that she’d survive today—but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t hurt her.

  And the fact he’d said the ceremony would happen in two weeks meant she had some time to heal. Kathlyn pressed her knees down harder into the floor and told herself she was lucky. Because she was. If she was any other woman in this palace she’d have been on her back down near the prisons, acquainting herself with the entire royal guard.

  What was a little beating that wouldn’t actually kill her next to that?

  She ordered her heart to stop kicking at her, panicked and afraid, but it kept right on going.

  Her father took the gleaming stairs down from his giant throne slowly. One step. Then the next step. And Kathlyn didn’t have to look up at him to know that he was enjoying himself. Immensely.

  He hit the floor and kept going, only stopping when his feet were directly in front of Kathlyn’s bent head. She didn’t have to look up to see him, she could feel him looming there above her. The air itself seemed thick with his brand of pointed, sadistic malice.

  She’d been breathing that air all her life.

  “Who is it?”

  There was so much noise in her head that Kathlyn almost didn’t hear him. She could feel a fine sweat break out all over her, so quick and intense and fearful that she was afraid it would drip straight off of her and pool on the floor—like her mother’s blood. But she tried to recover herself. She shoved the ghosts from her head and tried to gather her wits about her, somehow.

  She knew she would survive this encounter, in one form or another. Just like all the other times he’d made her cower before him, awaiting the back of his hand or the side of his boot, she knew she’d live through it.

  You can do it again, she assured herself. It’s only pain.

  “Who is who?” she asked, her voice sounding muffled with all that panic. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He reached out and grabbed the side of her face in his hand. Then gripped it. Hard. Very much as if he was trying to rip her cheek off her face.

  “I’ve been building the worth of your virginity for years, you rancid little slut.” He shook her then, that shake of his hand rattling her whole head. Making her eyes tear and her temples pound, to say nothing of that bright bloom of searing agony in the cheek itself. “Who did you give it to for free? Who dared touch what is mine?”

  “No one!” she managed to get out. She could feel the tears, hot and salty, as they started down her cheeks. Her lungs hurt from the sobs she was keeping inside. And her hands twitched—but she knew better than to lift them against him. She knew better than to interfere in any way. “I told you what happened.”

  “Do you expect me to believe you have a sudden interest in ministering to the underbelly of the palace?” he sneered at her. “What a saint you are, Kathlyn. A credit to the priests.” He twisted harder. “Maybe it escaped your notice that the church does my bidding. There are no saints unless I say there are. And you have proven yourself little better than the whores we leave outside the gates to scrape out a winter’s shelter however they can. After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me.”

  Kathlyn’s head spun and her stomach twisted to meet it, and the pain was everywhere. It radiated down from where he grabbed her and made the rest of her hurt, as if in sympathy. And it was hard to remember that this was temporary. That she would survive it. That all she had to do was hold on.

  “I told you a long time ago what would happen if you disappointed me,” her father continued, and what was scary was that he didn’t seem particularly incensed. He seemed . . . mild, all things considered. That cold sneer. The tempered violence when he could so easily have just started kicking. It was more worrying than a frenzied attack. It made her shudder, down deep. “I know that I was clear. Have you forgotten so quickly what happens when I am disappointed?”

  “I have never forgotten,” she managed to say, her voice slurred thanks to his grip on her. And she would have sworn that she didn’t mean to be defiant, that she would never dare such a thing and especially not now, but that was how it came out. She heard it as clearly as he must have, hanging there in the air between them. She hurried to try to fix it. “I’m not guilty of what you think I am.”

  But her father only laughed, sending another shower of cold fear washing over her. He gripped her cheek even harder, so much pressure she was sure she would bruise. That her cheekbone might crack beneath that harsh fist.

  Which would be getting off easy, she was well aware.

  “Your mother never shut her mouth,” he breathed down at her, his voice a dark lick of pure hate as it slid all over her and made her feel stained. Filthy. “She defied me at every turn and still thought the fact she gave me a son and daughter would protect her. But nothing protects anyone in my kingdom unless I choose it.”

  “Father—”

  He shook her, viciously—a searing burst of agony. Whatever she’d been about to say disappeared into the sharp flash of it.

  “I should have known that you would be exactly like her.” And he bent then, jerking her head back so she was forced to look up at him and all that emptiness in his gaze that had always horrified her. Deep inside, something flipped over, but whether it was panic or recognition, she couldn’t tell. “But I’ve learned a great deal since then. I killed her far too easily. No suffering, no dread. No anticipation of what was to come. What fun is that?”

  Kathlyn’s mouth was dry. Her eyes were wet. The cheek he still abused felt hot. Swollen. There was no hiding the way she shook, as if she would never stop.

  “But I promise you that I will not make the same mistake with you, daughter.” His smile was benevolent. If she pretended not to see that deep, dark creepiness in his eyes. “I will make you pay for this insult to my name. My kingdom. My rule. I will take out all the bids that I have lost on your skin, believe me. I will give you to monsters and watch them pollute you, starting with that raider scum. You will beg me for death before I’m done, but I will deny you. Again and again, I will deny you. Until the time and the place I choose.”

  He shook her again, harder this time, and her vision went dark. When it cleared, he was leaning down even closer. “I will make you earn your death. I will take years. I will rent you out to a hundred winter suitors and then cast you down into the stews, and I still won’t let you die. You will pay your debt on your back, on your knees, any way and every way
, until this offensive beauty of yours is worn away. Until you are unrecognizable. Only then will I give you to the wolves.”

  He yanked at her, harder than before, pulling her high on her knees as if he wanted her to feel that her head might pop right off her neck. She didn’t much care if he saw her cry, not now. She kept her hands at her sides. She shut her eyes, because that was easier.

  Better not to see it coming. Better not to tense up in the seconds before the blow.

  Pain exploded on her other cheek, hot—bright—

  But then he hit her a second time. Harder.

  The floor raced toward her, a dizzy marble shine. And the ghosts of her past were the last thing she knew. Copper and salt.

  Then everything went black.

  Kathlyn woke up stiff and sore. And deeply disoriented.

  For a moment, she couldn’t remember why. Or where she was. She struggled to sit upright, her head a big, thick ache stuffed full of confusion. It was only when she managed to get herself into a sitting position that everything came rushing back to her.

  She braced herself there and breathed for a moment. Until the dizziness subsided.

  The marble floor was cold on her hands. And it took her longer than it should have to realize that her father had left her on the floor of his throne room. Like trash.

  There were dim electric lights in the sconces near the hollowed-out places along the wall that housed her father’s statues of himself, but they only cast a little light. Most of the room was left in gloom, which at least muted the searing sparkle of all that gold. Kathlyn struggled to get to her feet, aware as she moved that she was collection of aches and pains all over her body. Her cheek was on fire. There was an acute stitch in her side that suggested a kick.

  But she wasn’t dead.

  After all this, she still wasn’t dead.

  She turned then, her gaze moving through all the shadows in the big room, but she was alone. He’d really done it. He’d beaten her and then he’d left her lying in a crumpled heap on the ground, exactly where he’d left her mother.

  Her father was no poet, but she was certain it was deliberate all the same.

  Usually he had her attendants transfer her to her rooms, where she could recover in private. That he’d left her here was a message.

  Kathlyn pulled the courtesan’s cloak up from where it lay in a heap on the floor near her feet. She pulled it on again and then took her time tying it closed, waiting for her hands to stop shaking.

  When she was done she crept across the floor, no longer even feeling the hard marble beneath her feet. She climbed the side stairs that led, not to the throne itself, but around the back. She winced as she went from one step to another, not able to tell which parts of her were bruised and which were just stiff from who knew how long on the cold floor. Then she let herself into yet another servants’ passage, this one dark and without lights.

  Kathlyn took a deep breath and walked into the thick blackness. She didn’t care where she ended up, as long as it wasn’t here. This horrible room of bright gold murder, copper and salt and her own dark fate.

  It only took a few turns to get her bearings, and soon Kathlyn was headed toward her rooms again. She warmed up as she walked, and that wasn’t good. It made her too aware of all the places she hurt. Her face, of course. She was sure she could feel her father’s handprints, like bright blooms of itchy pain. But her side as well, sharp and high. And she hated that she’d passed out when she’d hit the floor, because she didn’t know what he’d done. Had he simply let her fall? Or had he kicked her?

  You wanted this, she reminded herself. You crept up to that raider king’s rooms for exactly this. It just happened a little sooner than planned.

  She had no idea how long it took for her to make it to that same back hall where Lorna had discovered her earlier. This time she crept into her rooms without running into anyone, then closed and locked the door to the hall behind her.

  For a moment she simply stood there, surrounded by all the detritus of the life she thrown away tonight. She didn’t know where to look first, because she could hardly figure out what she felt. It was too much. It was all too much.

  She pulled in a breath that sounded like a sob, high and ragged in the stillness of her little living room. Then she pushed off her door and walked over to the fireplace her attendants kept burning around the clock. The flames danced and shimmied before her, but it was the heat that nearly undid her. She could feel it like a slap against her chilled skin. She could feel it begin to sink into her flesh.

  Kathlyn tugged off the cloak and very nearly threw it straight into the flames, but caught herself. She lived a different life now. However little of it was left, it had started tonight and it was completely different from all that had gone before. She couldn’t afford to give in to her emotions tonight when a little practicality might save her another time.

  So she didn’t burn her cloak. Nor did she burn the other two absurd items of not-quite-clothes that had ruined her tonight, much as she wanted to. She pulled on the long, soft length of wool she wore to sleep in, letting it surround her like a soft embrace, and then she sank down before her fireplace. Kathlyn pulled her knees up under her chin and she wrapped her arms around her legs.

  And she sat there for very long time, where there was no one to see her cry, and let it all pour out of her. Copper and salt and the blue of a raider’s eyes. Her lost mother and her terrible father and her own harsh fate.

  But when she lifted her head again, she was done with tears.

  She thought of that raider woman last summer, as pretty as she’d been dangerous. She thought of the raider king himself, so seemingly unconcerned that he stood alone in King Athenian’s palace. She’d thought that she had one choice only, and it was how to choose her death. So she’d done it.

  But what if there was far more to life—and choices—than the precious few things allowed her here?

  She wiped at her face, trying not to jostle her hurt cheek, and let the firelight dance over her like some kind of benediction.

  Kathlyn already knew how to take a beating. She’d always figured it was smarter to let her father do as he liked and remain as seemingly unbothered by it as possible, the way people were about the winter rains. They would come anyway, no matter if she liked them or not. Why cause a commotion?

  But that was her old life. And this was the new one, which her father had promised would be far more painful and grim than what had gone before. And Kathlyn was battered and sore, and the truth was, she wasn’t sure she had it in her to take another beating no matter how smart it was. Much less the endless parade of things far worse than beatings that he had planned for her.

  Which left another option, she thought, there in the night with only her fire as a witness. One she never would have considered before, but there was a raider king in the palace and she wasn’t the girl she’d been when she’d woken up this morning.

  What if she learned how to fight?

  8.

  It took Wulf a week to find her.

  It took him only a few hours to admit to himself that he needed to find her. Because he shouldn’t care about her either way and he knew it. A princess wasn’t his problem. He was supposed to be searching the palace for an entrance to the gorge he knew ran up behind it and led to the power station perched above this stronghold, a nightly quest that took him all over the glittery monstrosity, up one hall and down another.

  But it was quickly apparent that he wasn’t looking for tunnels as much as he was searching for the princess he’d had no choice but to leave behind in that hideous throne room with her vicious father.

  He’d quickly determined that his initial assessment—that the palace hadn’t been built for defense—was wrong. It wasn’t built for battle, maybe, or to withstand a violent siege. But it was deliberately confusing. Stairs went nowhere. Halls seemed to tie themselves in knots. Some doors locked from one side and not the other, making it a little bit exciting to explore the place, n
ever knowing what was on the other side of a door or whether he’d be able to get back through it.

  If he hadn’t been looking—with an increasing sense of foreboding—for a soft and breakable girl, he might have enjoyed it.

  Every night, Wulf took to the halls. After the first night, when he stayed shut up in his rooms and let the officious guards think that they were actually doing something useful in the hall outside with their fucking guns even while everything in him roared at him to find her, he roamed the palace until dawn. He waited until the cold, small hours when most of the assholes had finally staggered off to their beds, here in a place where the abundant electricity meant they didn’t have to pay attention to the natural rhythms of day and night. Where they could debauch themselves with bright lights shining on them like fucking spotlights if they wanted. And from what he could tell, they did.

  Wulf saw more mainlander cock than anyone should have to in those late-night wanderings, which he was pretty sure qualified as straight-up torture at the hands of his enemies. And none of it was compliant. No boring-ass missionary position bullshit, dutiful and cold and for humanity. It turned out that the rich fuckheads who pranced around the palace by day, sneering down their noses at Wulf and everything else they found beneath them liked to get a little freaky in the middle of the night.

  Well. The mainland version of freaky, anyway.

  It was hard to make it down a single hall without tripping over a courtesan on her knees giving anemic-looking head to some drunk and noble douche. The courtyard rooms were filled with windows and too many of these assholes didn’t bother to close their shades. Which meant anyone wandering past could look in and see what these mainlanders found so “twisted” they could only indulge in it past midnight in the company of women they considered “ruined.”

  Not ruined enough to not touch, of course.

  It was pedestrian shit. Two men beating one out while a couple of courtesans fingered each other, bored looks on their faces. A few red-faced old fucks here and there, too excited to make sloppy doggy-style fucking last very long—which the long-suffering women they were slamming themselves into so noncompliantly likely appreciated. And a whole lot of quick, vicious screws up against the walls, simply because, as far as Wulf could tell, courtesans weren’t allowed to say no.