Edge of Control: (Viking Dystopian Romance)

by Megan Crane

  Eiryn had sighed. That sounds like the usual crock of shit.

  Also blasphemous, Maud had replied merrily. The equinox celebration lasts a few days. Ample time for pairing up with the perfect winter husband or avoiding the one you don’t want, I’d imagine. Not that I ever did either.

  It can be fun, Lyla had interjected, with a husky little laugh.

  Helena had made a rueful sort of face. Or not.

  Maud had folded her hands in her lap. There are always different tiers of celebrations. Anyone can show up and enjoy whatever’s happening in the streets, but if you want to get close to the Cathedral, much less inside, you need to either be invited or be a high-ranked person from one of the western kingdoms.

  Which western kingdom? Riordan had asked.

  Maud’s smile had been dreamy. All of them. They traffic in their daughters, and the Cathedral ceremonies are the place to do it.

  Oh good, Eiryn had murmured, her attention on the last of her braids, which she’d been combing out herself. That will make it so much more fun to kill them.

  Royalty is different, the former nun had continued in her serene way. The western kings can have as many wives as they like, and they like quite a few, as wives who fail to produce children either take very ill and die or mysteriously run away from their responsibilities, never to be heard from again.

  Are you saying they kill their own wives? Eiryn had looked around as if she expected the other women to react to that, but they’d only shrugged.

  No one can prove that, Lyla said after a moment. But no one can prove they don’t, either.

  They treat the September equinox celebrations as their own wife markets, Maud had carried on, and they handpick the girls they want in that role. But they also trade their daughters among themselves. The princesses of the western kingdoms are bargaining tools.

  You think of princesses as being so grand, Helena had said softly. Wrapped up in furs and riding around in ornate carriages on a snowy February day, haughty and rich and warm. But no. Not so much.

  There’s an art to it, Maud had said, as if in agreement. A princess is expected to have a proper introduction to society, of course, with the most highly ranked man she can find, to settle her worth. Her worth is very important.

  By introduction to society she means princesses sell their virginity to the highest bidder, Helena had clarified. They don’t look at it that way, of course. The buyer is usually another royal, in very fancy, invitation-only ceremonies. There is the proof of virginity part, the losing the virginity part, and then the feast. Very sophisticated stuff, I’m told.

  Each princess is expected to have a certain number of winter marriages to shore up alliances, but not too many or her worth is diminished. And they’re all expected to make brilliant, permanent marriages to another royal or aristocrat when their winter marriage days are over. Maud had shrugged, wrinkling up her nose in the sunshine. It’s all very political.

  Riordan had let out a sigh. It had as much to do with his newly shorn head and the reappearance of the Eiryn he’d last seen spread out beneath him on his bed in the Lodge, taking his cock in those last moments before she’d cut him.

  And I care about the political aspirations of western mainland princesses why?

  Maud had met his gaze, her blue eyes dreamy and strange, as ever.

  Because there will be a lot of them at the equinox celebration, and they can wander almost anywhere they like on the Cathedral grounds. They’re your best way in.

  Riordan moved to the side of the flow of traffic as they hit the crowded streets around what had to be Cathedral Square. He waited for Eiryn to twist around two squealing teenaged girls, then come over to join him at the mouth of a clean alleyway that snaked between two tall, also very clean and neatly maintained buildings. No illicit sex deals here.

  It was beyond creepy.

  “Do you have a strategy in mind?” she asked, coming to stand next to him in that way she did on the mainland, with her hand resting against his side so he could feel it like a brand and her body much too close to his. It had amused him in Louisville. Here in the shadow of the Great Lake Cathedral it made him predictably hard and something far more dark and muddied and complicated at the same time.

  “I’m thinking we find a princess and her trusty guard, as suggested.” He scanned the street in front of them, but no one stood out as dripping with wealth and privilege, or not in the way Maud and Helena had described it, anyway. Despite how clean and satisfied they all looked. “Knock them out, tie them up, and then pretend to be them. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

  “Delightful.” She said it with the suggestion of her old edge, but no real bite. He didn’t like that either. “Or maybe we can sidestep the princess thing altogether. Maybe in this round of make believe I can shave my head.”

  Riordan studied the sun in the sky. He thought of her hands stained with his blood and that searing pain in his back. How it hadn’t diminished his hunger for her at all. Quite the opposite.

  He’d spent a decade forgetting that scar was there. Now it was all he could think about.

  “Only if you you’re jonesing to become a nun.”

  “Why not? It’s basically the high-octane version of compliance. Might as well go in all the way if I’m going to go in.”

  “Eiryn.” He waited until she tilted her head up to look at him, and he was sure he could feel his scar light up as if her blade was still stuck inside him. “Please. You’re only compliant on the surface or from a distance. There’s not a single thing about you that works here.”

  He’d meant that as a compliment. An acknowledgment of what they’d been through and who she was, all at once.

  So he had no idea why she looked at him as if that troubled her. As if he’d hurt her again. But she blinked and it was gone, leaving Riordan to wonder if he’d imagined that expression on her face. If he was letting his unease at this fake, plastic-coated bullshit city work its way a little too deep inside him.

  “We need to find a place to stow our stuff.” Eiryn’s voice was gruff. As if she was concealing heavy emotion—but he had to stop this. If she didn’t want to get into anything on a crowded, public street, why was he pushing it? Why couldn’t he stop pushing? Why did he want to push anything in the first place? He was still who he was. “I somehow doubt we’re going to find any princesses wandering around with the rest of the unwashed masses.”

  They started walking again, skirting their way along the outer ring road that surrounded the square, doing a little recon as much as looking for the temporary housing Maud had mentioned the church provided for equinox celebration attendees. Even that was far more regimented and clean than Riordan would have expected. It was nothing like a raider encampment, sprawled out wherever the fuck they felt like it. Here there were tents set up in neat lines in every park they passed, with careful Campground at Capacity signs at every entrance.

  They ducked around a thick scrum of men who looked rough enough to be miners, all chanting something together. Eiryn melted against him as they moved around the loud, heaving group of them—but Riordan saw the gleam of violence in her gaze as she did it. It was a relief. He was getting the impression that the more she wanted to kick a few asses, the more she forced herself to act even more compliant and helpless than before. He couldn’t say he blamed her, really. It went against every instinct he had not to knock a few heads together, just for fun.

  They were clinging to each other like the very people they’d always hated and nearly tripped onto the wide front steps of the building nearest them when one of the miners spun out a little too wildly, mid-chant. Riordan felt Eiryn tense, but he reached out and broke their fall with his hand against a metal railing.

  “You two look bonded,” a sweet voice said from above them.

  Riordan pulled Eiryn upright and kept his arm around her because, what the hell, he could do that here. And he didn’t feel like interrogating himself about it. Eiryn cuddled up with his side again, which he couldn’t d
eny he liked. He more than liked it. He just wished it didn’t come with a personality transplant.

  An older woman sat on the top step, her white hair in a bun on the top of her head and both of her pale gold chins jiggling as she smiled. “Let me guess,” she said, her dark eyes sparkling as if she was secretly delighted about something. Riordan didn’t think he wanted to know what that something was. “You’ve had a winter or two, but no babies, so you’ve made a trip here to receive a blessing.”

  They both stared at the woman.

  Riordan couldn’t imagine the expression on his face, and tried his best to lock down any thoughts of Eiryn with his baby. He didn’t particularly like the fact he didn’t instantly hate that notion. What the hell was that? He was never going out that way. He was never passing on his bullshit, much less mating with anybody. That shit had been set in stone when he was ten years old.

  Beside him, Eiryn smiled—and then leaned in even closer, so she was pressed up against him so tight there was no air between their bodies and he could feel the press of her tits against his ribs. He hooked his arm around her neck and didn’t exactly hate that either.

  “How could you possibly know that at a glance?”

  Eiryn’s voice was so husky with suggested emotion and quietly delighted besides that if Riordan didn’t know better, he’d have easily believed the old woman really had read the two of them correctly.

  “We have a few rooms left for believers,” the old woman said. “I like to keep one or two open for good, church-fearing folks who are here for the right reasons.” She wrinkled up her nose as she looked past them into the street. “People these days have forgotten what the equinox is all about. It’s all a big party.”

  “It can get a bit selfish sometimes,” Eiryn murmured, sounding delicate and vaguely put off at once. It was masterful. “It makes me wonder where it will all end.”

  “Nowhere good,” the old woman agreed, running her tongue around her teeth so her lips seemed to bubble. “That’s my fear. Things don’t happen in a vacuum, you know. We might as well roam outside the city walls in the dark of winter and pray the raiders get us before the wolves do!”

  How neither he nor Eiryn reacted to that, Riordan would never know.

  The old woman stood with some difficulty, then slowly led them into her building. She nodded to the men standing there, who Riordan supposed were guards in this alternate fantasy world where such soft-handed, sleepy-looking men could possibly ward off a goddamned thing that came at them.

  She led them higher into the building, up two flights of stairs that took her approximately six hours to climb, then down a long hallway with doors set at intervals. She opened one of the furthest doors with the key that sat in the lock, then handed that key to Riordan.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” she said, doing that thing with her teeth again. Then she set her gaze on Eiryn. “I’ll pray for your fertility this winter, child.”

  “Thank you so much,” Eiryn breathed, and sounded as if she was on the verge of tears, which Riordan would have said was impossible. It told him something about how good Eiryn was at this that he had no idea if she was entirely faking.

  He pushed his way into the compact room while the old woman gave Eiryn a rundown on this place. What time the front doors were locked, where the shared bathroom was, when communal meals were served downstairs. Inside the suite, there was an efficient living area and a loft bed set above with just enough room between the mattress and the ceiling that he might not take off the entire top of his head when he sat up. He heard the old woman shuffle off. Eiryn closed the heavy door behind her, then locked it. He waited until she’d sloughed off her pack before he turned to face her, tossing his own pack on the strangely industrial couch.

  “You do that too well,” he said, aware he sounded slightly more aggressive than necessary. “You’re freaking me out.”

  He noticed she didn’t look at him.

  “We have a place to stay, a stone’s throw from the Cathedral. I would have happily shaved my head and called myself a nun if that was what it took. A little chat with a nice old compliant lady was much easier.”

  Riordan studied her, standing there in jeans and a T-shirt, her dark hair streaming down to one side and her hands on her hips. “Is that what this has been, the last few days? Your dedication to your cover story?”

  “On the tiny caravan filled with nosy assholes who could hear it every time we shifted position?” Her gaze met his, dark and cool. “Yes, Riordan. I was dedicated to not being exposed as a fraud and thrown off to wander the Utah desert for the rest of my very few, very dehydrated days.”

  “Then why do you look so sad?”

  He hadn’t meant to ask that question. He didn’t know why he had.

  The air between them seemed thicker. Muddy, even. The small room faded away. There was only this fierce, unbreakable woman with her strong hands curling into fists at her side and what looked entirely too much like torment in her midnight blue eyes.

  It took her a long time to answer. “I’m not sad.”

  “You’re disappearing into this.” He hardly recognized his own voice. “You don’t want to be more compliant. Why would you?”

  “You don’t have the slightest idea what I want.”

  “Do you?”

  She laughed at that, and it wasn’t that silvery, edgy thing he liked so much. This was harder. Far more brittle.

  He wasn’t a fan of it.

  Eiryn shoved her fingers into her hair, shoving the glossy mass of it back from her face. Then she let her arms drop to her sides again. He thought she was about to speak but instead, she shook her head.

  “I’m going to wash off the last of that caravan ride,” she said quietly. Too quietly. It didn’t sound like her at all, and Riordan had no idea why that was making him so tense. “She said there were shared baths down the hall.”

  “You’re a warrior of the brotherhood.” His voice was much too loud, and Riordan couldn’t have said why he was reacting that way. Why it felt as if she was holding his chest in a vice. Why he was half afraid he was the one breaking apart here, which was impossible. “You’re not fucking compliant, Eiryn.”

  Her gaze slammed into his, and that hollow thing inside him yawned wider. She looked desolate. She looked fierce.

  She looked like somebody else.

  “Don’t you understand?” she whispered and not, he understood, because she was worried about being overheard this time. “Maybe I wish I was.”

  That sat between them for a long, long time. Maybe whole winters. Riordan thought the storms of at least three dark seasons pummeled him as he stood there, studying this woman who could not have said what she’d just said.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” His voice was dark and cold and still, it barely scratched the surface of the things careening around inside him.

  Eiryn’s eyes got much too bright. So bright it made something like adrenaline pump through him, thick and wild. She wrapped her arms around her middle in a way that he had never seen her do before, ever, but still, she held his gaze.

  “You don’t get it,” she said, very distinctly. “You knew you wanted to be in the brotherhood from the time you were a kid.”

  She didn’t touch on his methods for getting there. But he felt the sting of it, even so. “So did you.”

  “Yes, and everyone sighed and laughed and suggested I set my sights somewhere else. Somewhere more realistic. Because there have only ever been a handful of women in the brotherhood in all the years the clan has existed.” Her gaze was liquid midnight now, and the small room felt even closer than it was, as if the ceiling was coming down on his head. “You had the enthusiastic support of every male in the clan, including King Donovan and my own father before he got hurt. I’m sure they told you the clan needed good fighters. I had a pat on the head and a suggestion I learn how to be a good caretaker for my poor father, because he’d need me. The clan wouldn’t.”

  “It’s harder for wom
en, but you fought.” He shook his head, trying to make sense of this. Of her. “You fought hard. That’s what you do.”

  “That’s all I do.” Her voice was rough then. Intense. “But I haven’t had to fight at all in two weeks, unless I wanted it. I can just . . . walk around. I don’t have to worry about who’s watching me. What expression I have on my face. If I look tough enough while I’m eating, or sleeping, or fucking, so that everyone still takes me seriously. You don’t have to worry about any of those things. No one ever doubts that Riordan, member of the brotherhood, is dangerous. No one is waiting for you to look weak. There aren’t whole factions of the clan and even the brotherhood certain that someday, your armor will crack and your true, soft self will be right there for everyone to see. No one thinks that you’re a fraud, Riordan. No one would dare.”

  He thought she’d never looked fiercer than she did then or, paradoxically, more fragile.

  “You’d rather be a pet than a warrior?” he asked quietly. “That’s your solution? Because I have to tell you, I think it’s a shitty one.”

  “No one expects me to do anything but flutter around and have sex every night.” She shrugged, but he thought her mouth looked much too vulnerable. It ate at him. “That’s not the worst life I’ve ever heard of.”

  Under normal circumstances he would never have dared touch her in a moment like this, where she was something other than primed for battle. She’d take off his hand. But there was nothing normal about any of this, and maybe that was why Riordan took the step that brought him to her and took her hands in his, pulling them up between them. He was surprised she let him.

  “Do you know why I left Wulf’s side when that temple blew up?”