by Megan Crane
This was a risk. This, she thought as she met the cold gaze Wulf had trained on her, was terrifying and might end the same bloody way for her. But it was better than Krajic. Anything was better than Krajic. And these raiders and their world were a hell of a lot better than any of the people or places she’d seen as she’d traipsed around the mainland trying to switch on power plants with her family. She had to believe they’d be better stewards of the information she carried than western kings and greedy priests.
Helena took a deep breath. She looked at the raiders flanking Wulf, one by one. There was Eiryn on one side of the king with Tyr like a rock on the other. That giant Ellis with the bones threaded into his beard. Riordan, still looking furious. Another female warrior with her inky black hair in straight, long braids nearly to her knees, pale skin, and dark eyes tipped in the corners. And two more men Helena had seen before, one the color of birch and the other of oak, whose names she didn’t know. They both looked focused in that way all the raider brotherhood did that suggested they could spring into action if necessary, at the slightest provocation.
Helena believed they would. That they always would.
And she missed her family, suddenly and almost violently. A longing a lot like homesickness swept over her, though she had no home. She’d never had one, not really. She’d only ever had people. She missed her parents then. Hell, she even missed Melyssa.
Helena met Tyr’s gaze then. Dark gold and steady. Intent and possessive.
Trust me, he’d said.
And she knew that she hadn’t lied to him before. She did trust him, however crazy that might be given the fact he’d taken her captive. Or she’d provoked him into taking her captive, whatever. But that was the key point: she’d trusted him when she shouldn’t have, back in Ferranti’s courtyard. She’d trusted him with her body and her safety and her life. She’d trusted him on some deep, wordless level since the first moment she’d seen him vaulting over the walls into that compound. She still did.
Tyr was a hard kind of safety, stark and harsh, but absolute. Like high stone walls lined with steel and sharp-edged spears. Blade craft and might, all wrapped up in one commanding raider war chief who would keep her safe. He had. He would.
Tyr was the only safe place Helena had ever known.
Looking at him, as beautiful as he was deadly, she found the tightness in her throat and the knot in her tongue eased. The panic clawing at the inside of her chest ebbed. She cleared her throat and stopped stalling.
“The western kings and the priests want the world to think there’s only as much light as they allow,” she said, and this time, her voice sounded like her own. And it was as if she was thrust back in time, then, to all those little family gatherings huddled around campfires on the mainland. When she’d been small, her grandmother had still been with them. Even her uncles, for a time. All born into the same family business—to fix things. To change at least one small thing for the better. “They want us to think we earned all this darkness and need them to navigate it. The truth is, technology didn’t disappear simply because the seas rose and the world changed. Some of it sank, yes. But some of it is just waiting to be reactivated and used again.”
She reached over and pressed her finger to a spot on the big screen. It was deep in the western highlands where one mainland power plant with its connected server farm was nestled between distant mountain ranges and powerful kingdoms. Then she found the other one in the much closer, less populated Catskills, where there were rolling hills and handfuls of missionaries and a much better chance for success.
“Here or here,” Helena said. She went from one to the other, then back. “These are both locations of old world power plants that the priests have made into grand temples.” There was a quick, cut-off sound from the corner, where the naked woman Gunnar had paraded into the hall sat on her pillow. But Helena didn’t look in her direction. It would be too easy to be distracted. And god knew, there was some part of her that wanted to be distracted. “They’re also connected to server farms with direct satellite links.”
There was a muttering at that. She thought she heard someone call her a lunatic, but she didn’t look to see who that was, either. She wasn’t sure she disagreed.
“Because you want to re-create the age of the Internet,” Gunnar said from his stool, his tone as scornful as it had been when he’d been addressing the whole clan. “To what end? No one has computers any longer and even if they do, few still work. To say nothing of signals and routers and all the rest.”
“I thought you told me the Internet was a myth,” Wulf said. Mildly enough.
Gunnar glared at his brother, his king, in a way that made Helena’s stomach flip over in warning. “I told you it might as well be a myth. It’s like claiming the wolves really do turn into men at the full moon, but having no moon to prove it one way or the other. Who can say if the Internet is a myth or a memory if no one can access it to find out?”
“The Internet isn’t the point,” Helena said, and this time, she didn’t feel like sinking down to the ground when all that fierce attention turned back to her. “It’s a tool.”
She felt as much as saw the way Tyr’s hard mouth curved, but she couldn’t acknowledge it then. He’d known she was lying about something anyway. He’d always known. Helena only wished she could read him half as well.
“The Internet will be useful in figuring out how much of this”—she zoomed the map out again, showing the whole of the known pre-Storms world—“is left. There could be all kinds of people out there and the Internet could help us find them. But that’s secondary. The primary reason I need to get to a power plant is power, just as I said. Electric power.” She looked back at her too quiet audience, and found the dark gold gaze she was looking for. The one that made her feel calm when she shouldn’t. The one that felt like all the strength she didn’t have on her own, as if he could carry it for both of them. “That’s my secret. I want to turn on the lights.”
* * *
The debate raged for hours. Each of the raiders Wulf had brought to Helena’s little presentation was, she learned, a member of what he called his council. His sounding board and advisory committee, she understood as they talked and talked and talked some more.
They asked Helena a hundred questions. They pored over the maps and compared them to the clan’s knowledge of the mainland, for which there were no convenient maps to reference. There were only educated guesses. Gunnar’s extensive tech knowledge. And the clan’s long experience sailing up and down the new coastline and tracking the interior. They all talked loudly and with great animation that Helena feared might shift to blows at any moment, and none of them agreed with each other about anything.
“I think we’re overlooking the obvious,” Eiryn said at one point. “Why should we waste the clan’s resources on this? We have light. And a dark mainland is easier for us to raid. Why should we act against our own interests?”
“If our interests align so closely with those of petty western tyrants, maybe they need changing,” Riordan retorted. “Or why not ally ourselves with them and call it a day?”
No one, Helena could see, liked that suggestion very much.
“Krajic and his band of scumbags are mercenary whores,” Tyr said some time after that, during a lull in the debate. “They bend over for whoever can afford them. I want to know who that is.” He raised a brow at Helena. “Do you know?”
“We never chatted about it with him,” she replied. The long hours in this basement were getting to her, she thought. Or she’d never have been quite so flippant in public. Or then again—maybe this was the other side of trusting him. Maybe she no longer believed he’d kill her at any moment. Was that progress? “We were too busy trying not to die.”
That gleam in Tyr’s dark eyes told she might regret that response. And the debate that carried on around them after that felt a lot like a reprieve. She told herself he’d forget. Then she thought about his last version of a punishment and kind of hoped
he wouldn’t.
Finally Wulf, who’d remained quiet throughout most of the discussion unless he was asking a direct question, lifted a hand. There was instant silence.
“Thank you,” he said, very simply. Almost formally, Helena thought. “I have all I need to make my decision.”
Wulf nodded at the council, who started for the door at that evident dismissal, most of them starting up their various arguments again as they moved. The king waited a moment, his gaze on the maps still lighting up the screen, then he shifted his gaze to his blood brother.
“Welcome home, Gunnar,” he said softly. “Put clothes on that woman the next time you bring her into my hall.”
“Do you no longer like naked women?” Gunnar laughed as if there was no danger here. As if Wulf wasn’t deadly. Or as if he was daring his blood brother to reprimand him there and then. “That must be a tragic loss for all your grateful minions who line the shores of the eastern islands for a taste of the royal cock.”
Wulf’s smile was a baring of teeth. Fangs at best. “We’re not like those savages up north. By choice. We don’t keep slaves and call it sport. Don’t make me remind you again.”
“Are you telling me that as my king?” Gunnar asked, almost mildly. Almost.
“If you want to test me, as your brother or your king or a random member of the clan you abandoned, I’m happy to oblige you,” Wulf replied in a soft voice that made Helena’s stomach hurt all over again as it twisted up into a hard little ball. Next to him, Eiryn shifted, as if readying herself to strike. Tyr only glared. “Come at me. See what happens.”
Gunnar stared back at him. Helena still stood near the big screen, frozen solid, her eyes on Eiryn and the blade the deadly woman had her hand on even then. As if it would be nothing to her to kill one of her blood right there where they stood. As if she welcomed the chance.
Another tense moment crept by.
“That’s what I thought,” Wulf grated out. “All complaint and no action, as usual. Nothing ever changes.”
“Nothing at all,” Gunnar agreed, but his voice was an indictment more than any kind of agreement.
Wulf shifted his attention to Tyr. He didn’t say a word. Yet Tyr nodded, once again as if whole, complicated messages had been passed between them.
No one said anything as Wulf stalked away then, Eiryn melting into the shadows at his back, with only a dark look thrown Gunnar’s way to indicate she even knew who he was.
“Still telepathic, the two of you,” Gunnar observed from where he lounged against his worktable. His gaze was a hard, glittering thing as it landed on Tyr. “How sweet.”
“Careful, old man,” Tyr growled. “Your jealous bullshit is going to get you hurt one of these days in a way even you can’t repair.”
They made rude gestures at each other and then Tyr hooked Helena around the neck in that way of his that she knew she shouldn’t love the way she did. Surely there was something wrong with her. She threw a last glance at the bound and naked Maud in the corner, who smiled back with every appearance of serenity, and then Tyr was guiding her through the messy basement whether she liked it or not.
“What about Maud?” she asked, breathless for a thousand reasons she wasn’t sure she wanted to examine. “Are we really leaving her here?”
She meant: with him.
“She’s not your business,” Tyr retorted, a certain resolute note in his voice. “He claimed her.”
“So he can … do whatever he wants with her?”
Tyr’s hand was hard at the nape of her neck as he steered her through the basement. Hard and warm. “Who am I to get between a man and his mate? She isn’t injured. No bruises, no marks. She didn’t reject his claim. She didn’t appeal to the clan or the king to intervene on her behalf.”
“But—”
“If I were you, Helena, I’d worry less about Gunnar’s little nun and more about your own sweet ass.”
His voice was little more than a commanding growl with his battered hand on her neck as emphasis. And it was so much like that first walk through the woods with him that it made her skin seem to prickle with need and anxiety at once. Her heart started to pound the way it had then, making her feel as if it might rocket straight out of her wrists, her neck, her chest. It was leftover panic—or maybe it was simply that the reality of what she’d done was finally hitting her.
She hadn’t thought this through. She’d been focused on Tyr, on trust. She’d given the raiders everything they needed to take on the battle her family had been engaged in for so long. They were not only more likely to be able to defend themselves from Krajic and his men without having to hide in any mud or subject themselves to the rule of men like Ferranti, they were much more likely to be able to make it to the Catskills and do what needed to be done.
She told herself she didn’t regret the decision she’d made. But it meant she was without a purpose for the first time in her life.
Why are you alive? Wulf had asked. She didn’t think it had been a rhetorical question.
Helena had always assumed she’d find some way out of her predicament, whatever it was, because she always had before. Telling the raiders about the power station in the Catskills had been less about her own survival and more about making sure that the knowledge and information she had wouldn’t die with her, whenever that death might come. It hadn’t occurred to her that giving up her secrets put her in a much different kind of danger.
Because … now what? What if this had all been a trick—the war chief playing bedroom games with the compliant girl who didn’t know any better? All to make her do his bidding? Was she really that easy?
You’re exactly that easy, a dark little voice inside of her confirmed as they walked, that hand heavy on the back of her neck in that way of his that seemed directly wired into her breasts, her belly, her pussy. You’d die to touch him again right now, and who cares what a mess you’ve made of everything?
Helena blinked in confusion as they walked into the grand hall, because dawn was climbing over the mountain and she’d completely lost track of the night, somehow. It was pink and clear outside, the rain and fog gone at last. Tyr stopped near one of the huge windows, never releasing his grip on her neck.
And her tragedy, she understood then as the pink light danced over him and made him gleam like some kind of cold island magic, was that she was in love with him. The very last man she ever should have met, much less touched. Much less had sex with in so many ways, with so much raw enthusiasm, before handing over the single thing she’d ever been entrusted to keep sacred.
She loved him, though that was the height of folly and well nigh suicidal besides, and he had almost certainly been using her—manipulating her—for the information he now had. The full panic Helena had been so surprised she’d been holding at bay this whole time crashed into her then. Like one of the raider ships out in the bay, mowing her down, leaving nothing in its path but destruction.
Pieces of who she’d been. Pieces of what she’d built her whole life around. The promises she’d made to her family, to herself. A thousand scattered, twisted pieces, and precious little hope. Because after all, she knew him now. Love wasn’t something a man as hard as Tyr acknowledged, much less felt. She didn’t have to ask him. She knew.
He tugged her around to face him and he scowled down at her, his face painted in the deep pinks and reds of the brand new day. Of what was very likely their last day, she thought, and the notion cut at her like one of the blades he wore.
It hurt, and she knew it shouldn’t. She knew it in the same way she knew that despite that, it likely always would.
“Are you going to kill me after all?” she asked, before he could say anything.
Tyr’s scowl deepened.
“You think you’ve earned my blade?” he growled at her.
But he was still gripping her, his hand in that crook between her neck and her shoulder, and it was almost sad, how she clung to that. How she wanted to make that matter. How she tried to convinc
e herself it was a sign. A good sign.
When really, it was nothing more than his hand.
“I thought maybe that was what Wulf ordered you to do,” she said when she realized he would keep scowling at her until she did. “Or what you’d want to do anyway, now that you know. Everything I was hiding, I mean.”
“You finally decided to trust me but now you think I’m going to take you out?” His voice was harsh, his dark gold eyes hard. “What kind of weak ass trust is that?”
“Your loyalty is to your clan, Tyr,” Helena said, and she had no idea how she managed to sound so calm. As if none of this bothered her. As if she wasn’t shaking apart inside. “Not to me.” She shrugged. “You’re the war chief. I’m the one who might have led Krajic here.”
That she was inconveniently and inexcusably in love with him seemed beside the point. Better to keep that to herself.
“Krajic was always going to find his way here,” Tyr told her, making an impatient sort of noise. “Especially if whoever’s bankrolling him has access to the same kind of maps you do. He’s been messing with us for years. Burning down settlements, picking fights. It’s only ever been a matter of time before he tries to bring that fight to us. At least this way, we’re ready for him.”
She laughed at that. She didn’t know which one of them was more surprised by the sound.
“Maybe I should punish you, then,” she said.
And Tyr smiled. Slow and steady, until it changed his whole hard face. He would never be soft. But he was no longer stone. He shifted his hand to her cheek, cradling her face as if she was fragile, and his dark gold eyes turned molten. She wondered if he could hear the way what few walls remained around her heart cracked apart and then crumbled into a heap of dust at their feet.
“You can try.”
Helena wished she could tell him how she felt about him. How deep it went inside of her. She wished it would matter to him if she did.