by Megan Crane
“‘Chafing,’” Eiryn repeated with distaste, the way she might have said slugs. “These clothes cause chafing? Why did you wear them? Why did you save them as if they were precious?”
“But I probably wouldn’t run anywhere without something binding me anyway,” Helena continued, without answering the chafing question. Or explaining the clothing thing. “It hurts.”
“That’s why the church kept us all unbound, of course,” Maud chimed in. “That and because they like their easy access, of course.”
Eiryn hated priests, as a personal policy based on their known idiocy and bullshit. Hearing things that confirmed her hatred didn’t help. She frowned at Lyla instead.
“Didn’t you say you liked it? Why?”
“Because it feels good to feel my body,” Lyla replied. She stretched as she spoke, lifting her arms over her head so that her heavy breasts moved beneath her flowy, gauzy shirt again. They were everywhere, Eiryn thought. And oddly mesmerizing, if she was honest. “It reminds me that I’m a woman. I like that.”
Eiryn didn’t have the slightest idea why a woman needed to remind herself that she was, in fact, a woman. Surely that, like breathing, didn’t require a set of daily reminders. She reined in her impatience and looked back to Helena.
“Did you normally bind yourself?”
“Sometimes.” Helena shrugged. “It depended. I didn’t like the last compound I lived in, so I usually kept myself bound because I didn’t like that pig Ferranti looking at me.”
That pig Ferranti had fancied himself a king and had claimed ownership of Helena. And Tyr had cut him down for his arrogance before the whole of the brotherhood. Right there on the stone floor of the Lodge in the presence of all his brothers and the king besides. Good times.
Eiryn didn’t have to like the war chief to admire how he’d handled that situation.
She plowed on, trying to make sense of these strange women and their mystifying rituals.
“So. If I’m following you, sometimes you bind yourself not because of what you might need to do during the day, or because it’s practical and feels better and allows you freedom of movement, but because of vile little men.” Eiryn considered that. “Since you can’t blacken their eyes when they’re disgusting, presumably.”
“Well, you could.” Helena’s lips twitched. “I mean, you could. But that would pretty much announce to the entire world that you’re not compliant. At all. And the problem with that is if you’re publically considered not compliant, the leader of wherever you’re staying can turn you out into the wilderness and leave you for the wolves.”
Eiryn thought she’d prefer to take her chances with the wolves. She ran her tongue around her teeth and decided to keep that revelation to herself.
“I couldn’t really imagine you not in black and so deadly all the time,” Maud said then. She was gazing up at Eiryn as if she’d never seen her before. “This is wild.”
“I’m still deadly,” Eiryn said. Perhaps a bit darkly, sure, but it was better than leaping forward and proving it. “I don’t even need my blades to kill you.”
Maud’s blue eyes danced. “I believe you.”
“That’s an excellent place for us to start talking about how to behave,” Helena said as Eiryn sat down again.
Stiffly, because the confining material of the jeans worked against her body, not with it. And because her breasts were all over the place, as if they had a life of their own. Helena’s lips curved when Eiryn was finally settled, if disgruntled.
“I’m listening,” Eiryn gritted out. She had no choice, did she?
“Don’t say things like that,” Helena replied. “About killing people with your blades. I know it’s true. But compliant women aren’t supposed to be deadly. Even if they are, it’s not smart to show it.”
“Prayer and punishment, punishment and prayer,” Maud said in an almost singsong tone, as if she was quoting. “In these things are we made new.” She smiled when Eiryn eyed her as if she’d lost her mind, which was always possible, in Eiryn’s view. “No blades or threats or dangerous hands. Or any kind of defiance at all, actually.”
“And the most important part of all,” Lyla added with a rueful expression, “is not to complain. Especially not about performing your solemn duty, as all decent people are called to do without the terrible distraction of passion. Or fun. Or suggestions about how to make it hotter.”
Both Maud and Helena laughed at that. Eiryn looked from one to the next and wondered what on earth they found funny about any of this. Was it possible all compliant people were just . . . crazy?
That would actually make a lot of sense.
“It could always be worse, after all.” Helena looked at Eiryn then and her expression was fierce. “You could be out there fending for yourself against the wolves, as tiny kings of sad little compounds will be the first to remind you.”
“The church takes a more direct approach to complaints, or anything that could be construed as a complaint, like a stray expression on your face during an evening chant,” Maud said in her too-calm way. “They beat it out of you. Pretty much daily. It works, too. You only need a caning or two to decide that really, all things considered, you have it pretty good.”
“This is what winter marriages are like?” Eiryn asked, appalled. More deeply appalled than she’d expected, if she was honest. After all . . . it wasn’t as if it wasn’t right there in the title. She hadn’t imagined compliance would involve a great deal of freedom and personal revolutions, had she? “This is how all those people live?”
She was so taken back that she didn’t object when Lyla and Maud moved over to sit on either side of her and started working to loosen and comb out her braids. Even though it involved touching her, which she would normally never allow. No one touched a brother without permission.
But when she realized what they were doing, it made her feel raw and off-kilter, not offended. As if she didn’t know who she was any longer. As if she was . . . outside herself.
She couldn’t get past the notion that she was sitting on this beach erasing herself, one seemingly small choice after the next. First no weapons on her body. Then free-range breasts, of all things. Then braid after braid after braid, all won in battle and earned in blood, gone as if they had never been.
And no matter how many times she told herself all these choices were the right thing to do, that they were necessary and the perfect solution to a whole host of problems that would otherwise sink her if not kill her outright, she couldn’t get her heart to stop its panicked, sick beat in her chest.
As if she was disappearing, one thudding heartbeat after the next.
“Winter marriages aren’t all the same,” Helena was saying. She slid a small pot of something over to Lyla, and Eiryn opted not to ask what was in it. She doubted she wanted to know. “Mine were all pretty standard and boring, really. We moved around a lot, but the compounds we stayed in for the winters were usually reasonably sized. Small, but not tiny.” She obviously suspected Eiryn wasn’t really following her, because she tried to explain further. “Sometimes one or two families will hunker down somewhere. That’s not a settlement or a compound or a kingdom. It’s just a few people out on their own, hoping the rains aren’t too bad and the wolves stay north.”
“That’s how I grew up,” Maud volunteered. “There were no winter marriages in my uncle’s caravan. It was only him and my mother and me. I don’t know what would have happened once I got older.”
“My family usually stayed in bigger places.” Helena took up the conversation again, moving around to sit directly behind Eiryn.
It felt like pure torture. But Eiryn sat there and took it, even when that meant another set of fingers in her hair and someone hanging out in her blind spot. She ordered herself not to flinch. Or shudder. Or flip out and start breaking things, like the pretty faces of these women who were only trying to help her.
“Like that compound I came from in Atlanta,” Helena said. “It was big enough to hav
e perimeter guards, but not big enough to have an army. Places like that handle winter marriages a couple of different ways. Sometimes, once the pairs are decided, they move into rooms together for the winter. Other times, anyone not in the second year of a winter marriage or more permanently mated stays in either the single men’s or women’s rooms. If that happens, then usually there are places around the compound where people can find some privacy to take care of their responsibilities, or you work out a schedule with the other people in the room.”
“That sounds fraught with peril,” Maud said, with what sounded like a bitten-back laugh.
Eiryn closed her eyes and ordered herself to surrender to this—to all of this—as if this was a torture session in enemy hands with the whole clan hanging in the balance. She had no choice but to succeed. But then, for the sake of this part she was going to play, she tried to imagine trotting off with some random fool to take care of her responsibilities, whether she felt interested and up for it or not.
She couldn’t quite conjure it up.
Until she substituted Riordan for the random fool. Oddly, that was a whole lot more appealing. If far more dangerous.
“Believe me, it’s better than having to move in together,” Helena was telling Maud. “It’s easy to do your duty once a day. Who cares. Your winter husband suggests you duck into an alcove and it’s another one of your chores that’s over quickly anyway. Not that it matters how long it takes, of course. You want to be seen as an asset to the compound, not a problem.”
Maud and Lyla murmured their assent, as if that made sense. It didn’t, as far as Eiryn was concerned.
“What would happen if you decided that actually, you’d rather be a problem?” she asked. She couldn’t seem to help herself. And she didn’t need to sit here picturing ducking into alcoves with Riordan.
“Long, dark winters,” Lyla murmured from the side, her fingers nimble in Eiryn’s braids. “Wolves with sharp teeth.”
“It’s more complicated when you have to sleep in a bed with them every night.” Helena made a low sound. “That’s a whole lot more interaction, especially in the first part of fall.”
Again, Maud and Lyla laughed at something that made no sense to Eiryn.
“The first part of fall?” she asked.
The last time Eiryn had been this lost, she’d been a prospective brother and the full brothers had been trying to confuse her and break her down so they could discover if she had what it took to become one of them. What made this conversation so odd was that she didn’t think these women were trying to confuse her at all. They were talking about lives they’d led. Lives other women were neck deep in this very moment, all over the mainland.
Lives Eiryn couldn’t imagine, not even for a moment.
“Fall is when a winter marriage is new,” Lyla said from the side. “People feel very holy and filled with the need to surrender to their church-decreed responsibilities in October, sometimes more often than ordered, if you know what I mean. That usually fades a bit by February.”
“But sharing space with your winter husband usually only happens when you’re in a really big, prosperous sort of kingdom with all kinds of places people can stay,” Helena said. “Or in very small vagabond caravans with no privacy or separate rooms at all, so you’re all bundled up with each other for warmth. Then whatever happens under the blankets happens. No one hides it.”
“The church encourages a lot of interaction,” Maud said quietly, her fingers a measured presence in Eiryn’s hair, with less tugging than the others. “And very little privacy. I was only ever a novice, so I spent a lot of time in penance with my confessor. Nuns are expected to stay on call for their duties in the chapels. When the bell rings, they run and pray. Over and over again, day and night.”
“I don’t think you mean pray the way most people use that word.” Helena’s voice was amused. “Do you?”
“I didn’t think the word was up for a lot of interpretation,” Eiryn muttered. “Is it?”
“Novices owe their virginity to the church,” Maud said, in a calm, matter-of-fact way that made Eiryn’s eyes open of their own accord. Not that she hadn’t known that. But it was one thing to know something. It was different, somehow, to know a person who’d actually lived it. “So they pray with their mouths. Nuns, of course, pray with their whole bodies. Whatever the priests or friends of the church who are given chapel passes desire, for the glory of god.”
Lyla shifted. “Like camp girls.”
“Not like camp girls.” Maud’s voice was gentle, but firm. “The role of a nun is to serve. She is to make herself useful. She is to be of open heart and giving demeanor. She is to make herself available. She is to make no demands. She is to give herself fully unto the church and its priests. Amen.” She sounded dreamy again when she continued. “In case you’re wondering, that means orgasms are sinful and shameful. For the nuns. Meanwhile, when a man of god releases himself into a vessel of the church, it is a sacrament.”
“I was never sacramental,” Helena said after a moment. “All of my winter marriages were very proper and excruciatingly compliant. I would lie there and accept my responsibilities and the men would always do their duty swiftly. With a little oil, it was usually over pretty quickly.” She let out a little laugh. “To be honest, I never understood why some women made such a big fuss about it. I always thought it was fine.”
“It was different where I grew up,” Lyla said from her place beside Eiryn, her fingers tugging at Eiryn’s braids as she talked, adding a sense of sharpness to her words. “Out in a farming valley in West Virginia. Everyone holed up in their own stone cabins for the winter, not in any central compound. Every September people as far as four or five days’ walk would gather at the lake for the equinox. And once everyone was paired off, you’d have to go back with your new husband to whatever remote little cabin he lived in and stay there for six months. Just you and him, usually, and whatever children he might have managed to make in previous years.”
She shifted slightly as she spoke, reaching over to dip her hand into the pot, and Eiryn saw it was a thick, fragrant oil that Lyla was using to help unwind the braids.
“The priests out there preached a lot about true compliance. That we were called to use the gift of the long, dark winters to work as hard on making babies as we’d spend working in the fields come spring and summer. And we all took that very seriously.” Lyla laughed at that, a low and rich sound. “The standard was three times a day. Just like any other farm chore. Wake up sex, midday sex with the noon meal, then more sex at night. Like clockwork. It was a very rare winter husband in that part of the world who didn’t think he was entitled to his three squares. Entitled and very, very noble for his efforts to replenish the human race. So he’d usually include a few recreational extra rounds whenever possible.” She laughed again. “For the good of the planet, of course.”
More laughter from the others, while Eiryn tried to keep her feelings off her face.
“That sounds extreme,” she said. Carefully, so as not to offend these women who she’d actually thought soft earlier. Clearly, she had to think of a different word, because soft didn’t apply. “It all sounds extreme.”
And very, very different from life in the clan. Especially for a member of the brotherhood.
But Lyla only laughed again, in her warm and happy way. “I actually enjoyed myself plenty. That’s the dirty secret about compliance, isn’t it? You’re not supposed to enjoy yourself, but of course you do. It’s sex. Priests can lecture you all day and night about how little you should feel, but then you go off and have all that sex. So what happens, happens.” She didn’t sound the least bit repentant. “What I minded were the restrictions on how. And having to restrict myself to one man per winter.”
“I think I would mind all of it,” Eiryn muttered.
“Because you’re thinking about it too much,” Lyla replied, easily enough. “When you’re a young girl you can’t wait to bleed so you can take part in the equinox
ceremony and do your part, like a grown woman. The first time I had a winter husband I was thrilled. I’d been waiting for it all my life. A lot of people actually do enjoy it, you know. Probably more than you imagine.”
“And if you don’t, you don’t think there’s something wrong with the system,” Maud said from the other side. “You think there’s something wrong with you that you can’t submit as easily as everyone else does.”
“You want to comply,” Helena agreed. “Or you wish you wanted to, because it’s a lot easier and life is hard enough. The truth is, most winter husbands are fine. The act itself is maybe a little weird sometimes, but no one ever said doing your duty to humanity would be a great joy. Only that it was necessary.”
Eiryn didn’t know what got to her more. The stories these women were telling her or the way they were telling them. So matter-of-fact. With some laughter here and there. This wasn’t some outrageous tale of a rampage of terror that could be stopped by a blade. This was simply how people lived.
How most people lived, in point of fact.
And Eiryn had grown up a raider. Life had never been easy, but at least she’d always had sex as a joyful, sometimes even thrilling outlet from the darkness, if she wanted. It had never occurred to her that it could be anything else.
Or that most of the world lived in a gray, strange place where it was a chore. Did it make a difference if it was a chore they didn’t entirely hate? Or not all the time?
“Did you all . . .” She didn’t know how to ask the question delicately. But then, she wasn’t delicate, was she? So she just asked it. “Did you all enjoy it even though you weren’t supposed to?”
The three women laughed and Eiryn had no idea why her face felt hot. Aside from the fact she never, ever talked about these things. Or much at all. To anyone.
“Well, I did,” Lyla said dryly. “A lot, as I said. That was part of the problem. I was way too enthusiastic and that led to experimenting with things like blow jobs and, yeah. The priests didn’t like that much.”
