Edge of Power

by Megan Crane

  She nodded, her throat too tight to allow even the faintest hint of sound through.

  “King Donovan was not a popular man while I was growing up,” he said after a long while, his voice gruff. “But kings do not necessarily need to be popular. It is required only that they be effective. And in his way, he was certainly that.”

  “Wolves are effective,” Kathlyn murmured. “But that doesn’t mean anyone wants to live in the snowy wastes with them.”

  “Donovan’s approach was similar. He ruled by fear and intimidation and no one dared stand against him.” Wulf’s lips thinned. “Not only because he would strike them down, but because no matter how much of an asshole he was, his raids kept the clan fed during the winters. Everyone began to think it took a king that terrible to keep the clan happy.”

  “Is being fed the same as being happy?” Kathlyn asked.

  “I’m guessing you’ve never gone hungry.” Wulf shifted, then crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s not the same. But in those years, Donovan made it seem as if the clan only ate well from the stores collected on the raids if he allowed it. You’d be surprised at how easily a powerful man can convince people they owe him the air they breathe, because he says it’s so.” His mouth crooked a little. “Or maybe you wouldn’t be.”

  Kathlyn couldn’t quite smile, though she tried. “My father would tax the air if he could. I’m astonished he hasn’t tried.”

  That crook in Wulf’s mouth faded. “It was clear from the time I was small that I was different. That while many boys dreamed of growing up and winning a place in the brotherhood, going on raids and defending the clan, there was something in me that suggested I was made to be a leader. The elders whispered that I was the clan’s next king in the making, right there in the nursery.”

  “I can see that,” Kathlyn said quietly. “You have a certain . . . thing.”

  His gaze was dark as it met hers. “So I’m told. But Donovan was a jealous man. He hated the idea that some little shit was getting that kind of attention and he went out of his way to make sure everyone knew it. Especially me.” His mouth tightened, making Kathlyn wonder what the old king had done to him. “Still, he was the king, not me. It was my problem to figure out how to gain his favor. It was up to me to prove to him that I was no threat.”

  “I can’t imagine you’re capable of being anything but a threat. It’s all over you.”

  “Perhaps. But I had no desire to challenge the old man. I love my clan, Kathlyn. I love my people. I believe in our laws, our vows, and what it means to pledge to uphold both with my life. That’s all I ever wanted to do. The trouble was, that was never enough once the king had it in his head that I was a rival.” He moved then, prowling across the floor as if he was restless. In contrast, Kathlyn couldn’t seem to breathe, much less move. “He attempted to kill me, of course.”

  “Of course?” she echoed. “Surely that’s frowned upon?”

  “Says the daughter of King Athenian.” Wulf shook his head, something she would have called pain—had he been anyone but the raider king—making the blue of his eyes shine almost too sharply to bear. “He was the king. Whatever he did was allowed, by definition.” He shrugged, a remarkably male shift of one powerful shoulder, and a faint smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “In the first year that I fought as a full-fledged brother, a warrior and a defender of my clan, I had to fight off his asshole surrogates as well. I managed it. But the trouble with that was, the more I fought and the more I won, the more the people grumbled about a king who was so consumed with a revolution no one was planning that he spent all his time trying to take down a seventeen-year-old. I was barely a man and he had a clan to consider, but he was obsessed.”

  He went still again, coming to a stop only a few feet from where Kathlyn stood. She was surprised she could hear a word he said over the wild beating of her heart. And the storm in his blue eyes threatened to blow her backward, but she fought it off and stayed where she was. No matter how shaky her own feet felt beneath her.

  “Mine is not the only raider clan in the eastern islands,” he told her. “Most years, in the summers, all the raider clans come together. There are festivals. Trading. Mostly we make noises about treaties and alliances while secretly believing that our ways are the best ways and all the other clans are little better than savages. But everyone finds this entertaining. And in the start of my seventeenth summer I enjoyed myself thoroughly at just such a gathering. I met a girl and we spent the whole of the festival together.” His gaze was frigid. “She was inventive and I was young, and I doubt I would remember her at all had she not fallen pregnant. I got the news before my very first raid.”

  “Did you stay home?” Kathlyn asked.

  He looked incredulous. “Stay home? From a raid? I was a brother, not a little bitch.”

  “My mistake.”

  She thought there was something like amusement in his gaze for a moment, there and then gone. “It was decided that she would spend the winter with her people and she would show me the child the following summer.”

  Kathlyn searched his face. “Is family not something raiders do?”

  “Raiders have families. You met my sister last fall.”

  That made Kathlyn blink. But of course, she thought. Of course his sister was the most awe-inspiring woman Kathlyn had ever met. “Your sister is a warrior.”

  “As is my blood brother.”

  “Do all families usually do the same thing?” she asked then, fascinated despite the fact she knew this wasn’t why he was telling this story. That he wasn’t sharing raider culture with her in the middle of the night for the sake of it. “All healers, or farmers, or tradesmen?”

  “Most raider families count themselves lucky to have one member—a blood brother or a cousin, maybe—join the brotherhood in a generation. But often, when brothers themselves have children, which is rare, they are more likely to become brothers than not. I suspect, given my own father’s numerous deficiencies as a parent, that this is largely because the children of brothers are raised in the clan nursery.”

  Kathlyn considered that. “So it was normal that you didn’t bring your pregnant girl to your clan, then, if children are raised apart from their parents?”

  Wulf shrugged. “It was entirely possible I would die on my first raid. Many do. But even if I lived, I had just joined the brotherhood. I liked the fact that I had a child on the way, but I never had any intention of raising children. My duty was to the clan. I assumed, as all brothers do, that if I had children the clan would see to their raising if their mother could not. So I went and spent the summer on my first raids, as planned. Donovan tried to have me killed, and failed. And then came the winter.”

  He stood so still Kathlyn wondered if it hurt. If he ever worried the cold in him would overtake him entirely. But she didn’t dare ask. She pressed her toes into the thick rug beneath her feet, and she waited.

  “It became increasingly obvious throughout the dark months that Donovan was unhinged,” Wulf said. “That his obsession with me was only growing. Most likely because he had no sons, no daughters, and he viewed the fact I had impregnated this girl as evidence against me. As if it was the same thing as a plan to usurp him.”

  “Did you have a plan to usurp him?”

  Wulf let out a sound that was far too bitter to be a laugh. “I wanted him to like me. Attempting to usurp him would have been less doomed to failure, but I didn’t believe that then. I suffered from the delusion that there was some way I could convince him that he was wrong about me.” His gaze slammed into hers. “But that’s the fucked-up thing about assholes, princess. They believe what they want no matter what you do.”

  He didn’t wait for her to do much more than inhale, sharply. “When summer rolled around and the clans prepared for yet another gathering, Donovan insisted that I remain back at the raider city. He claimed he wanted me on watch, but everyone knew he was punishing me. Because he could. I thought he was a dick, but he was my king. I had no choice b
ut to obey. And when my brothers returned from the gathering, they told me there had been no sign of the girl or the child. I thought nothing of it.”

  Kathlyn did not like where this story was going. She could feel the dread in her throat, choking her a little. Some part of her insisted she stop him, stop this—but she didn’t say a word. And she couldn’t look away.

  “It was another summer of long, prosperous raids,” Wulf told her, “with a sea between me and Donovan. It was like a fucking vacation. More seasoned brothers cautioned me about his focus on me and how it could only end badly. They advised me to play along, to humiliate myself if necessary all winter, so that Donovan wouldn’t feel so threatened. And the truth was, I wanted my king to value me, but I didn’t know if I had it in me to humiliate myself for anyone.” He held her gaze, his own something too hot to be entirely bleak. “So I can’t claim I’m innocent.”

  Kathlyn tried to speak, but she couldn’t seem to move. There was something building in him. She could feel it. It was as if this story boiled beneath his skin, making her wonder how she’d ever found him cold.

  “When we returned at the end of the summer, I wanted to lay eyes on my child before the winter came. It was late August and it had occurred to me, and others, that it might be the wiser move to winter with this other clan. To keep some space between the king and me before the situation imploded. Or to stay and do as I’d been told. Debase myself. Lose a few fights. Pretend to be less than I was.” His blue eyes were ferocious then. “My ego won, as it often does. I traveled north but planned to return.”

  It was bad, Kathlyn could see, whatever it was. She didn’t mean to move, and if she’d thought about it she wouldn’t have, but the next thing she knew she was directly in front of him. And it didn’t occur to her to be terrified as she reached out a hand and laid it against the hard, flat planes of his chest. He looked something like surprised. But he took one of his big hands and covered hers.

  “I was crossing one of the final beaches in the neighboring clan’s territory, just below their stronghold, when I was set upon.” His gaze was grim. “I fought them off, though I couldn’t understand why a clan that had always been friendly to us should turn on me like that. It wasn’t only unfriendly. It could start a war.”

  “Wulf, you don’t have to tell me this.” His name felt dangerous in her mouth, but all he did was tighten his hand on hers.

  “They told me I was a murderer. They accused me of kidnapping the child and her mother before the clan gathering, holding them all summer, and then killing them both.”

  Kathlyn was stricken, as much by the ravaged look in his eyes as by the long-ago deaths of a mother and her child.

  “I told them to go fuck themselves,” Wulf said darkly. “I assumed King Donovan had paid them to tell me these lies.” His gaze slammed into her. Through her. It hurt her. “They brought me my child on a pallet, perfect in every way, save the gash across her throat that had stained her tiny body red. The girl who had mothered my daughter had fared no better, though it seemed they’d had their fun with her. Two lives,” he gritted out, his voice hoarse and raw and nearly shaking with fury. “Two lives I carry here.”

  And he pressed down on the hand that she held to his chest, holding it hard against his heart.

  “They left me there on the beach in the cold,” he gritted out. “With my fucking ego and two people I could have saved if I’d kissed Donovan’s ass even a little. I built my child and her mother a funeral pyre with my own hands and I gave them to the sea.”

  Kathlyn’s eyes were damp. “I’m so sorry.”

  And she thought he might tear her apart with his gaze alone. She felt as if he had.

  “And when I returned to the raider city, I called out Donovan in front of the whole of the clan in the middle of the September equinox feast. I cut him down in the streets, like the dog he was. But not before he told me that while he had given the order to kill my child and her mother, he had tasked his war chief, my very own father, to carry it out. He reported that my father had been more than eager to take on that task. To kidnap and then kill his own grandchild out of spite. I killed Donovan. But my father?” The curve of his lips was ferocious. “I crippled him.”

  Kathlyn stared at him for a long moment, her thoughts whirling around and around inside her head but never quite managing to land. “I don’t know which one of them is worse,” she whispered.

  “And I was never a soft man to begin with, princess,” he told her then, his brilliant gaze intent on hers. “I was raised by a war chief who loved violence more than anything else on this earth, something he showed us daily. I was forged into a warrior from the day I was born. And I will tell you that while I would not change a single choice that I made, the making of them burned out any last hope I might have had of being anything but a sharp, poisoned blade.” His hand tightened on hers. “I understand why you want this. Why you want to fight back and draw blood. But you don’t want what it will bring you.”

  “There’s a certain point at which remaining soft is the same as lying down and asking for your own painful death,” she told him fiercely. “You would never do it. You didn’t.”

  “Don’t challenge your father to a fight you can’t win,” he growled at her.

  “I don’t care if I win. All I want is to fight a little. My father likes to stamp on things that are already lying flat at his feet. A little resistance would be good for him.”

  His hand tightened around hers again, but then he let go. “You asked for my help. I’d suggest you take it. Don’t fucking sacrifice yourself, Kathlyn. Not for a sick fuck like your father.”

  “I don’t want to sacrifice myself, I want—”

  “Your church is already filled with martyrs,” Wulf threw at her. “The women who dutifully give themselves over to whatever jackass offers for six long months. All that pointless sex and self-flagellation while the priests deny themselves nothing.”

  “That’s not martyrdom.” She scowled at him. “Maybe you haven’t noticed while you were busy raiding things, but there aren’t that many people. We need to make more.”

  Wulf only watched her, that same challenging light in his gaze. “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?” She was breathing much harder than this conversation warranted. What did she care about church doctrine? Like everyone else, she followed it because there were no alternatives. But Wulf was looking at her as if even that was a lie. “We’ve already lost too much. We can’t die out, too. Then what would be the point of having survived any of this?”

  “What did you lose here?” Wulf asked her, his voice hard. “Because you’re right, I’ve been busy raiding things. All over the dark and scary-ass eastern mainland. There’s no light there, princess. There are a few generators here and there, but mostly the people huddle in miserable little compounds and pray for a long, hot summer that never comes.”

  “I don’t see what—”

  “Did the world end here, Kathlyn? Because I’ve seen the Great Lake Cathedral City and all its bright lights and tidy houses. The dark winter is just a story they tell. The western kings talk about wolves when all they really care about is pussy. They lock it down and control it, and I thought that shit was crazy enough from across the planet. Up close, it’s even worse, because you buy in to it.”

  Kathlyn felt as if he’d set her on fire. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “This is an entire courtyard built to house a certain kind of woman the men in this palace get to fuck. Once a day, by law. Meanwhile, your life is ruined because you dressed like the other women who live in this palace, the ones who do the really fun shit but are called dirty and disgusting for it. And instead of burning it all down, you’re in here talking about maybe swinging a dagger at your father. What would that accomplish except making him mad?”

  “It would make me feel better!” she threw at him. Her nails were digging into her palms. “And what is it you think I can do?”

  “It nev
er seems to occur to you mainland women that you can just leave,” Wulf told her roughly. “That these dickheads only have the power you give them.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” Kathlyn said, her voice so poisonously sweet it felt a bit like glass in her own mouth. “Why didn’t I think of that? I should just leave. Assuming I’m permitted to leave the wives’ quarters. And I can get past the guards. And manage to make it out into the high villages, where I’m known by sight and everyone is perfectly aware I’m not allowed to be on my own, ever—and especially not now that the very sight of me is scandalous. And then make my way all the way to the city gates. And then through them. And then, when I’m on the other side and blissfully free, I’ll just wander off into the wilderness on my own, shall I? Or, I know. Find a caravan to take me somewhere though I have nothing to trade. While hiding from my father’s men. And protecting myself from all other men . . . somehow. I don’t have any idea why this never occurred to me before.”

  Wulf looked furious, and it occurred to her that she should have been afraid of him. Or maybe she was, it was just buried beneath all the rest of it. Beneath that trembling thing inside of her, slick and hot, that it took her a moment to realize was her own temper. Something she’d spent so long shoving back down into dark little corners within her that she’d forgotten it was there.

  “Maybe,” she told him, as heedless as if she’d already learned how to fight like that warrior raider woman who was also his sister, “you shouldn’t judge the sacrifices of people you know nothing about.”

  “Sacrifice feels like a power move when you think you have nothing, princess, but that’s bullshit. It’s the path of least resistance.”

  “Is that the moral of your story?” Kathlyn asked him. “Because it sounded to me like what you did was fight. With weapons. And win. Why should I settle for less?”

  “Because no one wins a battle without losing something,” he hurled at her. He got closer to her, much too big and dizzyingly powerful, and bent to put his face near hers. Far too near. “Sometimes you lose everything. Are you prepared for that? Because once you lose it, you can’t get it back.”