Edge of Control: (Viking Dystopian Romance) (3 page)

The list of things Eiryn hadn’t cried about grew longer all the time.

She hadn’t cried when Riordan had ripped her up inside way back when, at the end of that summer they’d never talked about directly and if she had her way, never would. Or any time since, not even when she’d finally found out what she should have suspected—that Wulf had ordered Tyr to cripple their father instead of killing him so that Amos could live out his days with the shame and dishonor. And not when Gunnar had taken such delight in telling her the truth in a way calculated to hurt her most.

Hey, Eiryn,
he’d said, so casually, as if she couldn’t see that glint in his frigid blue eyes that warned her something was coming. She’d readied herself for the attack, but it hadn’t helped.
How blind do you have to be not to realize that Tyr never would have crippled the new king’s father without permission? Absolute and unambiguous order to do exactly what he did. Hate him all you want. But he was only following orders.

He’d even laughed.

And Wulf hadn’t denied it. Or even pretended to apologize.

I never claimed otherwise,
he’d said, every inch of him the uncompromising king slapping down an upstart subject. She’d been an idiot to imagine he was ever anything else. Or that she was.
You assumed.

But she hadn’t broken down then. She hadn’t shed so much as a single tear in the month or so since that day, despite the approximately eight million times she’d examined all the facts and been forced to come to the conclusion that she’d been played for a fool by everyone. The king, her blood half-brothers, Riordan, the entire raider brotherhood. She’d been cold-bloodedly encouraged to believe the lie, because Wulf needed her loyalty and her skill.

She might as well be a hired blade. A mercenary, just like these cockroaches running around out here tonight. For all her blood kin liked to rant on about the bonds of clan and despite the tattoos on her body that marked her as a member of what was meant to be another, better family, she’d discovered that once again, she didn’t matter.

Hadn’t Riordan said as much? Gunnar’s insane, suicidal rampage against the clan in general and Wulf in particular had been forgiven a month ago. His fight with their brother, the king, had been allowed and excused, not deemed an act of treason and punished accordingly. Wulf himself had protected Gunnar during his yearlong descent into grief-tinged madness after the death of his first mate. But for Eiryn there was no such protection or consideration. As usual.

She hadn’t cried about any of it. Amos had beat that out of her when she was still little more than a girl. She wasn’t crying now.

And she was straight up scowling when she found the rest of the raiding party down near the base of the hill, slowly gathering around the makeshift fire one of the brothers had built to signal the rest. She received the usual nods of greeting when she showed her face, but no one approached her. Few ever did. Part of that was the simple fact that the three female members of the brotherhood were necessarily set apart from the rest by virtue of the fact they were women, no matter how deadly. She, Hedy, and Emmalyn made up their own little club within the brotherhood whether they liked it or not. But the brotherhood wasn’t necessarily a collection of close friends. Their bonds were far deeper and darker than that. They were made brothers through battle and blood, vows and raids, not friendship. And Eiryn had spent her entire adult life cultivating the idea that she was lethally spooky and so unnerving that even the biggest and brawniest of her warrior brethren preferred to give her a wide berth.

As long as she could remember, she’d wanted nothing more than that uneasy respect. She moved like a ghost and her blade flew like a nightmare. And that was all she’d been, all she’d wanted to be and all she’d ever dreamed of becoming, for a long, long time.

Eiryn stood off to the side now, half-hidden in the shadows, as Riordan hauled his captive—newly sodden and with a freshly bloodied nose to boot—into the flickering circle of light a few moments later. Riordan threw him on the ground with an easy, careless swing of his sculpted arm. He didn’t look around or indicate that he knew she was there, but that glimmering chain of unwelcome awareness that always hummed between them told her that, as usual, he knew exactly where she was.

She wasn’t about to cry about
that
annoying shit either. And it irritated her that some part of her clearly wished she could, and more than usual this past, rough month. Or maybe what she truly wished was what she’d danced around out there on the hillside earlier—that she was someone else. Some other weak, soft female who could surrender to the sharp, jagged thing that sometimes swelled inside her chest and, if it was a sob, let it out.

But wishing was for pampered children and whiny little bitches who didn’t know how to make their own way in this doomed and leftover world, not for a warrior of the clan. Not for her. And the truth was, Eiryn had grown out of that kind of softness long before she’d learned how to wield a blade.

She was still standing apart from the rest when her oldest half-brother Gunnar swung into view some time later, a bloodied ax held loosely in one hand, his blue eyes like smoke, and his dark braids and beard wild against his light skin. He was with Jurin, who had as many freckles on his pale face as kills to his name, and who drowned out the sound of the snapping trees in the distance with his boisterous big voice and bright red hair. Tyr, the prick of a war chief himself, strode in behind them with another captive that he added to the pile with a hard shove. Tyr was built like the powerhouse he was, shit-kicking strong from his steely dark gaze set against golden skin to his heavy muscles and warrior’s ease of movement. Every inch of him shouted out the fact he was a commander, though Eiryn still thought of him as her enemy first, and it didn’t help that he picked her out of the darkness with a single harsh glance.

That he was as annoyed as Riordan had been that she wasn’t with the king the way she was supposed to be—if not more, given he basically lived with his head up Wulf’s ass—was as obvious as if he’d shouted it. Not that he had to shout. Tyr was the kind of man who could be heard above any racket, if he chose. His mouth flattened into a line, that hard, dark gaze of his punching into hers from across the fire.

Eiryn stared back stonily, not so much as lifting her chin in an acknowledgment she didn’t want to give him. She didn’t care what Tyr thought, either. She hadn’t in years and there was no reason to start now.

It was only when another man appeared from the woods some time later that she moved from her position, something sharp and greasy and uncomfortably close to guilt kicking in as she did.

Wulf. Her blood kin. Her king.

Her job
, which she’d neglected for no good reason tonight. Or no reason she could explain to anyone’s satisfaction, anyway.

His blue eyes blazed in the dark as he strode down the last bit of the hill toward the fire, his customary laziness that he wielded like armor entirely absent tonight. He wore a single, thick braid instead of the many braids the rest of them favored. It somehow made him appear even more regal than he already was, despite the fact his usually fair skin was streaked with blood and soot.

He looked brutal and elegant at once, lit up from within with violence and fury. He looked exactly like the warrior king he was.

Wulf was not the largest or brawniest of the brotherhood, but that hardly mattered. He was obviously and inarguably the king. He was a gracefully wicked blade where Gunnar was an ax, Tyr a hefty broad blade suitable for taking down packs of men in one swing, and Riordan that damned scimitar he loved so much. Wulf was dressed for battle tonight, his leather harness making him look even longer, leaner, and tougher than usual as it stretched across his broad chest. And that astonishing power he held and exuded in equal measure was like its own fire, bright and hot and unmistakable, drowning out any other flames in the vicinity.

All the brothers fell silent, out of respect or deference or, in Eiryn’s case, because she hadn’t been shooting off her mouth in the first place.

Wulf tossed a hard glance around the gathered group, and Eiryn was certain he was taking stock of who waited there for him. Tallying up injuries and losses in a swift instant before he drew his blade and crouched down in front of the two captives where they waited. They looked as if they would have shrunk away from him if they could, despite the fact there was nothing but a ring of fire and a set of raiders behind them—still, it was likely a more appealing choice than a pissed-off raider king.

Wulf didn’t point his blade at them. He didn’t have to. He merely held it in a loose grip as he squatted down before them in the dirt, all of his considerable attention focused on the two brawny men with their shaved heads and their arms bound behind them. His mouth curved as he studied them, but not in any way that a sane person would call friendly.

“Did you try to blow me up?” he asked, almost casually. Almost as if he thought it was a joke, though only a suicidal blind man would think the steel-packed fury before them was kidding. About anything. “Because it turns out I’m not a big fan of explosions when they happen in my fucking face.”

The two captives exchanged an alarmed sort of look.

“We weren’t after you,” Riordan’s captive hurried to assure him. “Our orders were to destroy the temple, that’s all.”

“We didn’t expect anyone else to be here,” the second man chimed in, too quickly. “Where the hell did you come from? We didn’t get paid enough to mess with raiders.”

“I’m touched that we command a higher price for your compromised blades,” Wulf murmured, still with that dangerous curve to his mouth. “How many are you?”

“There were five,” Tyr belted out. “Now there are only these two douchebags.”

Eiryn was closer to the war chief now, having moved around the edges of the group almost without meaning to, the better to put herself where she should have been already—at Wulf’s side. And it still took getting used to, that Tyr wasn’t responsible for crippling her father. That he’d done it, yes, but only at Wulf’s command. She’d spent so long hating Tyr and plotting the many satisfyingly bloody ways she’d make him pay that it was hard to let go. Her years of black hatred hung between them like the thick, choking smoke from the temple fire and maybe she liked it that way, because she didn’t do anything to rein it in.

Tyr slid a hard look at her, then returned his attention to the grim little scene playing out before them.

Any other member of the brotherhood might have felt chastened by that, as they were meant to do. But Eiryn had never answered to Tyr like the rest of them. Not once she’d survived her prospective period and her trial year in the brotherhood. And certainly not since she’d claimed her place as Wulf’s bodyguard.

She might not be feeling that place any longer, but that didn’t mean she wanted to put herself back under the war chief’s command. He was a celebrated hard-ass and she’d already had enough of that from her blood—and her one goddamned mistake—to last her a lifetime.

Eiryn knew better than to think about Riordan again, however briefly. She was incapable of
not
looking over at him once she did, which she knew was a mistake even as she did it. And the fact she found him in exactly one half-second in the dark, smoky night with a fire in the way was not, as she tried to tell herself, because she’d been paying such close attention to everyone and everything the way she should have been.

It was that
thing
. That goddamned chain that maybe only she could see still connected them. That terrible pull that tugged at her no matter what she wanted.

He haunted her without even trying, the asshole.

Worse, when she found him there on the other side of the fire, arms crossed over that mighty chest of his and his legs in a fighting stance, he was looking right at her. His dark, knowing gaze was torture. It gleamed and it tore through her, and it took every bit of willpower she had to hold it a moment. To keep her face still and blank as she did. And then to look away as if she was bored straight down to her bones.

She’d been telling herself it would get easier around him for almost ten years now.
Fingers crossed that happens one of these days,
she thought darkly.
Any. Fucking. Day.

“Listen,” the first mercenary was saying, his voice cracking as he spoke, which made a few of the brothers bellow with laughter. “We have no trouble with you.”

“Tough shit,” Jurin boomed out, making both mercenaries flinch. “We have trouble with you, motherfuckers. That’s what happens when you try to blow a raider party straight into hell.”

“Who hired you?” Wulf asked when Jurin’s voice faded away, his own tone mild. Faintly inquisitive, if that. He looked casual and mildly bored as he squatted there, his blade dangling from his hands as if he’d forgotten about it.

But there was nothing but murder in his gaze.

Maybe that was why the mercenaries—who usually tended not to be a particularly chatty group of assholes, in Eiryn’s experience over any number of battlefields these last few years—fell all over themselves to answer. It was a garbled mess of
western highlands
and
the big one
until Wulf held up a lazy hand.

“One at a time,” he ordered them, precious little
casual
about him then.

“The church,” the first mercenary threw out. “It was the church.”

“The whole church?” Wulf sounded dubious. “That seems unlikely. This is one of their temples.”

“No. A bishop or some shit,” the other mercenary said. He spat blood into the fire. “The head of the Great Lake Cathedral.”

“Bishop Seph,” Gunnar growled from somewhere to Eiryn’s right. There was a low muttering from another part of the loose ring of raiders, as they all filled each other in on Gunnar’s recent adventures with the runaway nun who’d known that particular bishop back in her obedient days.

Eiryn exchanged an unfriendly look with Tyr in lieu of a discussion and figured they both knew the story as well as anyone. No need to trot it out now like all the other, gossipy brothers who were really just looking for a reason to remind themselves and each other that when they’d first laid eyes on Gunnar’s nun, beautiful the way the church’s chosen pussy were always beautiful, she’d been stark naked save for the collar and metal chain she wore. Horny bastards.