Edge of Control: (Viking Dystopian Romance) (29 page)

“And what happened?” Riordan asked from the doorway, the same suppressed excitement coloring his voice that Eiryn felt coursing through her. Because what if the family in question was Helena’s? How many different families could there have been out there, being hunted down for an old-ass tablet that bishops and kings might want? Very few, Eiryn imagined. Maybe only the one. “Did he find this family?”

“I have no idea,” the princess said. “I don’t usually hear the orders he gives, unless they’re about the new and exciting ways he plans to control my life.” Her smile was thin. “Another hobby of his. But this summer, everything changed.” Eiryn was close enough to hear her take a breath. “Something happened midway through when some men came to see him from a small compound outside of Atlanta. With the bishop, which was unusual, as he’d already visited us in June. Whatever they told him made my father furious. More furious than I’ve seen him in years. He lost it. He was more vicious than usual, and you have to understand, this is a man who finds the darkest cruelty a sweet little pastime in between more serious tortures.”

A small compound in Atlanta was where Tyr had found Helena earlier this summer. Not long after he’d taken her back to the raider city, the douchey little kinglet of that compound had appeared on the shores of the raiders’ eastern island home, making a whole lot of grand pronouncements. He’d also brought along that piece of shit Krajic, the mercenary asshole who had killed a brother and messed with entirely too many raider settlements over the years. Tyr had cut down both of those motherfuckers in the center of the Lodge, with all the brotherhood looking on and voicing their enthusiastic approval. Wulf had sent the survivors of that afternoon in the Lodge to the interior to do a little hard farm labor and to keep them quiet. But there had been a whole boatful of idiots in the ship that had brought the fools to clan territory in the first place who hadn’t been allowed off that ship once it touched ground. Eiryn knew they’d been offered a choice the way many intruders were, after Krajic and the kinglet had been dealt with: turn around without any supplies and see if the sea was kind, or die where they stood.

It wasn’t a tremendous leap to imagine that ship could have made the return journey across the sullen Atlantic, one way or another. Leaving a number of little fucktard survivors to race off to their western king master and tattle like the bitches they were.

“Why are we standing here talking about some rich asshole’s temper tantrum?” Riordan asked from the door, as if none of what the princess was saying was at all interesting.

“It’s what happened next that I think will interest you.” Kathlyn swallowed hard. “He’s declared war.”

“You said he does that the way some men scratch their balls,” Eiryn pointed out, pulling at the copper dress’s bodice to see if it felt any better against her breasts. It didn’t. “Who cares?”

“Against the raiders,” Kathlyn clarified. “He said he would lay waste to the eastern islands or die trying.” When neither Riordan nor Eiryn responded to that, too busy staring at her in utter shock that any land-bound asshole would dare issue such a threat, she hurried on. “My father is not a man who only talks. He’s forming an army and he plans to move on the raider king. As soon after the March equinox as possible once the seas are passable.”

“There isn’t only one raider clan,” Eiryn said harshly, not that she or anyone in the clan thought too highly of the others. They existed either way. “And there’s more than one man who calls himself a raider king.”

She didn’t make the rude noise she usually would at that notion, because obviously there was only one true clan and only one Wulf. And like before in the hallway, she was surprised to find that it didn’t stick in her craw to think positive things about her blood kin. She shoved that aside. This was about far bigger things than her petty little family drama. The threat of an early spring attack, when so few dared bring the fight to the raiders at all and none ever attempted it in as changeable a month as March, when the sea was an even bigger whore than usual, was infinitely more serious than her own personal shit.

Still, Eiryn willed this golden, gleaming princess to name one of the other ragtag wannabe raider kings who carved out their own versions of clan in the eastern islands. The other woman only straightened her spine, as if she anticipated some kind of retaliation, which couldn’t be good.

“This particular raider king’s name is Wulf,” Kathlyn said quietly. Seriously. Her dark gold gaze was as steady as it was intense. “And my father plans to make his bones into a hat.”

“Incoming,” Riordan bit out from the doorway, not letting the idea of his king’s bones as some asswipe’s hat take hold of him—because that kind of insult could only end in blood. Right here, right now, and he’d heard a whole lot of voices and feet against the marble floor. Coming this way. Fast.

He was moving before the word was fully out of his mouth, heading for the couch where the unconscious girls were still in a heap. He tagged Eiryn’s T-shirt and binding wrap from the floor, shoving them in the waistband of his trousers. Then he arranged the princesses themselves on the couch with their backs to the door and only their heads visible from behind, so it might look as if they were engaged in a serious private conversation instead of knocked the fuck out. At least at a casual glance.

By the time he made it over to the window, the ridiculously beautiful Princess Kathlyn with the gold dress and the game-changing story was sitting on the couch nearest the curtain she’d emerged from and urging Eiryn to sit down with her.

“Just run your fingers through your hair and let it hang there,” she was saying as she studied the raider sitting next to her, pretending to be a princess. “And make sure to keep those boots hidden under the gown’s hem. Your hair isn’t done to standard and the dress doesn’t quite fit you, but that only means they’ll think you’re the daughter of a lesser nobleman.”

“A lesser nobleman.” Eiryn’s voice was a flat warning of impending violence. “Really.”

“That’s a fact, not an insult,” the princess said briskly, either not hearing the warning or wisely choosing to ignore it. “Higher ranked nobles will pretend they don’t see you if they think you’re too far beneath their notice, and that’s a good thing. You want them to think you’re an upstart, especially because you dare to sit next to me.” Her voice got a touch dry. “Unless, of course, you want them to find out you’re something far more alarming than merely one more woman with marital aspirations far above her station.”

Eiryn’s gaze cut to Riordan’s as he hit the curtain. She looked lethal and murderous and remarkably hot, just the way he liked her. He smirked at the sight of her in that brash copper dress that made her part princess, part pissed-off brother, then upgraded that to a full grin when she shot him the finger.

“I’m beginning to think that’s your version of a love letter,” he told her.

He was pretty sure the disrespectful
babe
was implied. And that she heard it, loud and clear.

Her dark gaze simmered with violence while, beside her, the notably calm princess with the surprisingly cool game face looked faintly surprised, if that. It probably meant she was shocked to her royal compliant core.

“Go fuck yourself,” Eiryn suggested. Almost nicely.

“You’re making my point for me.”

With that, Riordan stepped behind the grand, brocaded curtain and went still in the next instant. There were small slits cut into the heavy fabric surrounding him, suggesting a great many people liked to stand back here and stay hidden. He hated the fact that he was one of them. He was a brother of the clan, for fuck’s sake. He didn’t
hide
like a weakling bitch. Ever.

But that was the deal. He couldn’t take out a Cathedral full of compliants, not even with the fastest blade in the clan at his back. He had to suck it up and choose his battles. All his freaking battles. Here tonight and all over the damned mainland. With Eiryn, not that this was the time to think about that. It was hard to get his head around having to stand still and wait when all he wanted—with everything that roared in him and reminded him he was a brother and a warrior and the fact he was
hiding
was bullshit—was to make these assholes bleed.

He had to bend into a weird position to get his eyes in the right place on the carefully cut slits, but once he did, he could watch. And the moment after he got the curtain to stop moving around him, a stream of women flooded into the room, all of them in the same metallic dresses in the same colors. A whole mess of silvers and a lot of coppers he noticed. Maybe one or two other golds. But he couldn’t figure out if they meant something or if compliant princesses happened to really like metal-colored shit and weird, slicked up hair.

And he had to deal with the fact that he was standing here, hidden in a curtain like a little bitch, paying attention to
dress colors
when there was some psycho king out there not only talking war—which Riordan figured everyone did for shits and giggles the same way he did, because what else was there to do during the long winters but plot out the intricate deaths of any and all of a man’s enemies—but making
actual plans
to bring that fight to the eastern islands.

Hitting the clan in March was smart. Too smart for Riordan’s peace of mind. It sent something cold straight down the length of his spine, making him tight and tense. No one would ever expect an attack that early. In the history of the clan, no one had ever tried it that close to winter. Mainlanders were giant pussies when it came to the sea. Their boats were slow and their sailors were pathetic. It was a generally held truth that mainlanders attacked rarely, but when they did, it was always in high summer when the sea was as calm as that sullen gray bitch ever got.

Some years—and this was what was pounding in Riordan’s blood then as if he was actually under attack instead of standing there, wrapped up in some velvet shroud like he’d been sidelined—Wulf didn’t even bother putting up a full summer watch in all the outlying coves where intruders could land until it was nearly April.

The fuckers could walk right into the raider city if they hit it right, with no one to sound the alarm.

The very idea made his entire body go tense and tight, like he was braced for a mortal blow.

But there wasn’t a single thing he could do about it now, standing in a room stuffed full of pointless women in ugly metal dresses. Riordan glared out through his little bitch peepholes. He focused on Eiryn, whose humiliation tonight far outstripped his, he was forced to admit. He didn’t know how well he’d handle it if he was out there wearing some copper monstrosity and pretending he was a lesser anything. She kept her furious attention straight ahead and directly on him, as if she could punch her way through the heavy curtain with the force of her pissed-off gaze alone. Riordan knew she couldn’t actually see him. But the fact she was here with him in this absurd room stuffed full of princesses squawking about like wild turkeys, suffering the same breathtaking indignity and deep, abiding insult that not one of their brothers would ever understand, kept him still. And silent.

And marginally less enraged than he would have been if he was alone.

He shifted his scrutiny to Princess Kathlyn instead, trying to figure her out as she sat there next to Eiryn with every appearance of being completely at her ease. He didn’t get why a woman who seemed unfazed by raiders would hide from two empty-headed girls. It made him think there was a lot more going on with her behind all that soft, brown prettiness and her deep golden glow—but he didn’t have the time to puzzle that shit out.

Still, it was quickly apparent that some of the things Kathlyn had told them were true. That she—or her father, more likely, this being the heart of the western highlands where, as far as Riordan knew, there had never been a woman with any particular authority—had great power in this suffocating place was instantly clear in the way all the other women treated her. They called out her name the moment they saw her. They fawned all over her, rushing over to compliment her and ask her opinion on a thousand stupid-ass things and yet, just as Kathlyn had warned they would, they all ignored Eiryn completely.

When the two unconscious princesses were finally noticed, a pack of the women set themselves to howling as if marauders had breached the walls of the Cathedral and were coming at them, blades drawn and guns blazing. Riordan was the only one looking at Eiryn, so only he saw the sheer, offended gleam of pure raider mayhem in her gaze before she dropped it to her lap—sparing the lives of at least four copper-clad, wailing creatures, little though they realized it.

Then Kathlyn waved an elegant hand in the air, and the godawful shrieking stopped. Almost instantly.

Riordan found that fascinating. He suspected Eiryn did too.

“I imagine they had a bit too much wine,” she said mildly, as if it was a subject of very little interest to her. Riordan noted that she didn’t raise her voice or even address the room as a whole. She spoke only to the women standing in a circle around her, letting the whispered repetition of her words ripple out from where she sat like a heavy stone into still water. “Portia seems to have misplaced her gown, the poor thing. Better she should sleep it off here than in the middle of the party, where there are no angry fathers or overly attentive gentlemen to come to the wrong conclusions.”

And that was the end of that.

Then, for no apparent reason that Riordan could see, the tutting and murmuring women . . . sat there. They filled up all the little couches and chairs, so the whole room flashed and sparkled in the reflected glow from the chandeliers. They talked about the food they’d eaten and the weather out in the Cathedral courtyard in the sort of exhaustive detail the brotherhood reserved to discuss extremely dangerous battle plans with high projected losses. They applied powders to their faces, strange black pastes to their eyelashes, and more of the sticky substance they used to keep their hair in those unnatural shapes. They adjusted their gowns and wrapped strips of fabric over their heels to cover their blisters. They laughed a little too brightly and many of them, he saw, sipped from discreet flasks they kept tucked between their breasts when they thought no one was looking. Or with calculated defiance. There were a few tears, quickly wiped away, and a great many darkly stoic expressions when they subsided into silence. They whispered behind their hands to each other, sometimes bursting into high-pitched laughter and often shifting their gazes to another woman or group of women while they conferred with one another.

If they reminded Riordan of anything, he realized after he watched this all go on for some time, it was the packs of vendors in the clogged Louisville streets. Desperate and hard-eyed no matter how wide their smiles. And endlessly calculating.

Because what they talked about most, in a never-ending loop, no detail too small or insignificant, was men. This royal, that nobleman. Rumors about how this one had treated his last winter wife. Stories about why that one would make a terrible permanent mate. How many children each king claimed and how many permanent wives were still part of each court. Which wealthy suitor appeared to have taken an interest in one of the princesses here tonight and which one only pretended to be wealthy when everyone knew his real holdings were less than impressive. And on and on and on, until Riordan thought he might slip his blade out of his boot and cut his own damned throat. Anything for the chatter to
stop.

Though the women who clustered around Kathlyn talked mostly of price. Her price.

“I believe he’d hand over the whole of his territory,” one thick-browed woman said at one point, a smile on her pinched mouth that didn’t match her pale eyes at all as she looked down at Kathlyn. “From mountains to outer compounds and back, all for you. Such is the fervency of his desire. He made that clear to the whole of the assembly.”

Kathlyn looked unmoved. Almost bored, if anything.

“My father would never accept a territory so far to the north,” she said with a shrug. “What use does he have for snowy wastes and wolves?”

“Then I suppose you will wear the gold forever,” another woman in a copper dress said with a sigh, as if she was being friendly. But Riordan knew, somehow, that she was not.

Kathlyn only inclined her head. There was a soft chiming sound from somewhere out in the hall, and all the fluttering, metallic women surged to their feet again in a tittering, whispering mass.

“Your father’s attendants were already asking for you before the bells,” a woman in silver told Kathlyn as the others started for the door. “I think he might dispatch his guards to drag you back if you hide yourself away for much longer.”

“And cause a scene on this most important of occasions?” Kathlyn asked in mock horror. “When his eminence is celebrated by so many at once? Never!” She smiled, and this time, Riordan thought, it was actually genuine. For the first time since the room had filled up. “I’ll only be another moment or two. I suspect my friend here ate something that didn’t agree with her.”

“Nothing out there agrees with me,” the other woman murmured darkly. She was the only one who looked at Eiryn directly, if only to smile faintly. Then she took her leave.

It took another few minutes for the room to empty out completely. Once it did—the very second the last princess swept out—Eiryn got up and moved to the doorway to make sure they were truly gone. Only when she nodded the all-clear did Riordan step out from behind the curtain.

He wanted to roar his fury to the chandeliers. He wanted to shatter every piece of crystal with the force of his outrage or his own two fists. He didn’t know how he kept himself from it. He could feel his blood pump hard and hot in his veins, dark and angry. But this was a nearly empty room where women gathered. The king who planned to attack his people wasn’t standing in front of him. This wasn’t the place to indulge his instincts.

Riordan had made himself a weapon a long time ago. He detested having nowhere to aim it.

“I hope you enjoyed your behind-the-scenes view of the famous princess market,” Kathlyn said, as calmly as she’d said anything else tonight. She was still sitting on the couch directly in front of him, perfectly composed, as if she hadn’t told them her father was a warmongering dick with a hard on for Wulf and the clan a mere fifteen minutes ago. “There are more than a few narcissistic noblemen who would fight for the opportunity to sneak in here and listen to what’s said about them. Of course, the ones who are so certain they’re discussed endlessly never really are.”