by Megan Crane
Literally.
She should look at him the way she had back in the hall before the alarm came. When she’d laughed and had seemed a little bit brighter than the dawn. That was how she should always look at him. That was how she would look at him, from this day forward.
Tyr wanted to make sure there was no more doubt about any of these things. No more concern about loyalties or secrets or enemies coming in on the tide. He wanted this over. All of this.
And then maybe he and his woman and his brothers would find a way to turn on the damned lights all over this sorry world. If they felt like it.
“Of course,” he said now, through lips like ice, his rage making his voice an octave deeper than it was usually and never breaking eye contact with Krajic for a second. The other man only grinned, making his scar grotesque against his jaw. Tyr found that soothing. “When you put it that way, I can think of nothing our king would like more than to offer you safe passage to his hall, so he can respond personally to each and every one of your messages.”
“I can’t wait,” Krajic replied, with an ugly laugh.
And it was on.
Tyr informed Ferranti he could bring five men with him. Krajic butted in to tell the little kinglet he could choose two. When Ferranti sputtered about his own safety, Krajic merely shrugged.
“You can choose two men or you can swim back to Atlanta,” Krajic bit out. “Your decision.”
Tyr was too busy keeping himself from launching an attack at Krajic, which would render him as dishonorable a piece of shit as a mercenary himself, to enjoy that slap down as much as he might have otherwise.
Ferranti grudgingly chose two people. One of them the little surprise he’d brought with him, yet another gem tucked away in the hold of that squat ship, that Tyr could not allow himself to think about. Not yet. Not while Krajic drew breath and it required every last bit of Tyr’s self-control to keep from splitting him open where he stood.
“If the rest of your men try to follow us,” Riordan announced as their little band of men with less honor than one of Tyr’s toenails started to move up the path, his voice hard and pitched to carry, “they’ll die right here on the trail. Know that.”
And Tyr tried to take a certain satisfaction in the fact that when they’d climbed all the way up the steep, narrow trail to the top and looked back down, sure enough, three of Ferranti’s idiots lay in a heap on the beach where the brothers on watch had tossed them.
Ferranti ground his teeth together, so loud Tyr could hear it from several feet away, then looked at Krajic’s impassive face and said nothing.
And normally, Tyr and Riordan would have made the hike back to the Lodge last all day. There was an art to confusing visitors, dragging them through the shittiest terrain on the island and claiming it was the only way. It helped reinforce the idea that the clan lived somewhere completely inaccessible. It also made it very unlikely that anyone would ever find their way back along the meandering trail they took on their own. Jurin had famously taken three full days once, leading an uninvited guest back to the raiders’ lair through the worst of the island’s forests and inhospitable lava fields already dusted with frost. The man was a legend.
But they had to speed up the process today, or Tyr would start cutting off heads in the middle of the forest, breaking his word entirely. It didn’t matter that every man there likely knew that Krajic would no more have honored a request for safe passage than he would have shown an enemy mercy on the field of battle. What mattered was that Tyr was not Krajic. Tyr was not a savage, no matter how he felt at the moment.
Tyr was not what the death of this brutish creature would make him if he snapped.
He had to keep telling himself that as they walked.
Over and over again.
Riordan took the lead at the end, directing them through the mountains on a killer trail that the brothers only ever used for hardcore training exercises. The path wound down to the back of the Lodge, where the bay looked completely enclosed and inaccessible by water and none of the shipyards were visible.
Tyr hated the fact that his nerves were biting at him. That he couldn’t simply turn the buzz of adrenaline into a rough fight or a hard fuck and smooth it out. That unlike either one of those things, he had no idea how this bullshit with Krajic was going to end or what was going to happen. He’d had the whole way back on the trail to think about the fact that Krajic didn’t seem at all concerned about walking into raider territory.
That was pure stupidity. And Krajic had lived entirely too long to be that stupid. Which meant he either didn’t care if he died here, or had an alternate plan.
Tyr was no greater fan of mysteries today than he’d ever been.
But, finally, they marched their motley party in through the Lodge’s isolated side entrance, which was specifically designed to mess with their visitors’ heads. It was another deliberately narrow hallway, forcing them all to walk single file, which no warrior liked. Gunnar had messed around with the vents in here, making them pipe in freezing cold air, then hot, so dumbasses might worry they were having some kind of panic attack until look at that, they really were.
By the time they got into the great hall, most visiting parties or captives were a whole lot less arrogant than they might have been going in. Ferranti and his crony looked appropriately ill at ease, and that was before Riordan stepped out of the way to show the entire brotherhood waiting there for them inside. When he did, the red-faced kinglet looked outright sick. The two mercenaries in Krajic’s ghoulish crew looked something like alarmed.
Krajic, by contrast, grinned.
Wulf sat in the great chair high on the raised platform at the far end of the room like the king he was, draped in the gold and furs he saved for formal occasions and ritual ass kickings. The long tables had been pushed back and the brothers lined the hall instead, creating a fierce, stone-faced gauntlet.
Tyr usually enjoyed this kind of drama. This was his favorite kind of show. The deliberate, ferocious silence as Krajic strode up the aisle toward Wulf, his men flanking him and Ferranti’s ragged little trio behind them. Camp girls in their finery, turned out in provocative poses that best showed off the rings in their bellies and the plump curves of their ass cheeks in those tiny shorts, advertising the riches the raiders enjoyed in case the well-furnished hall all around them was too subtle. And the whole of the brotherhood in their battle gear, weapons unsheathed and in their hands, ready to answer any and all challenges with lethal force and pure raider joy.
Welcome to the eastern islands, Tyr usually thought with something a lot like glee.
But this time was different. He searched the crowd, but he couldn’t spot Helena, which he didn’t like at all. His palm itched, because he no longer particularly liked it when she wasn’t right there, her neck exposed to him, letting him guide her where he wanted her to go.
He didn’t have to think about that, or worry what it meant. He knew what it meant. It felt simultaneously right and twisted, and he didn’t care. It was what it was. She was his.
Krajic strolled along the length of the hall, stopping a few feet before he made it to where Eiryn stood watch, sleek and lethal at the foot of Wulf’s raised dais, nothing but a painful death in her gaze as she stared at the man who dared draw too close to her.
The mercenary ignored her completely, his eyes on Wulf.
“So this is the man who calls himself a king and yet has hidden from me for all these years,” Krajic said. He didn’t use the word coward, but then, he didn’t have to. Tyr could tell from the dark rumble of outrage that filled the hall that everyone knew exactly what he meant.
Wulf barely reacted. He waited, lounging in his chair as if he hadn’t noticed the disrespect in his own hall. As if he was barely awake, for that matter.
“Welcome to my island,” he said mildly. “I trust you enjoyed the scenery on your walk here.”
“These men requested safe passage.” Riordan’s voice echoed through the hall, as much a warning t
o all the brothers with murder in their eyes as information. “That’s the only reason we didn’t litter their bodies through the scenery as we walked. As disrespectful fertilizer.”
Krajic only laughed at that. Wulf’s smile looked something like amusement, but wasn’t. Tyr knew it was pure, focused fury.
“Where is the woman?” Ferranti threw out from several feet behind Krajic where he’d come to a furious stop, and his voice sounded hysterical in all the dangerous quiet of the hall. “The little bit of castle trash who creeps around temples and tries to cause trouble all over the mainland?”
Castle trash was another phrase Krajic would answer for, Tyr vowed, fighting back the wave of homicidal fury that washed over him. He concentrated on the officious little kinglet instead of Krajic, forcing himself to stay calm no matter how the urge to start hacking his way through these assholes bit at him.
Unlike the sharp-eyed men on either side of Krajic, the Ferranti hadn’t turned around to see that the brothers had filled in that long aisle behind him, blocking any possible escape route. Dumbass. He didn’t know enough to check his retreat. Tyr entertained a series of fantasies of simply taking him out with a single swipe of his blade, the way he should have done back in that compound. That was what he got for showing a little mercy. Lesson learned.
Up on the dais, Wulf’s blue gaze had gone glacial and he stroked his beard in that considering way of his that he still somehow made look relaxed. It wasn’t. It was a sure sign that he was more than halfway to unleashing the sheer mayhem that made him who he was.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” he said in that quiet way of his that invited fools to misread him, to underestimate him. They always, always did. He waved a languid hand at the nearest knot of camp girls. “I have a lot of women.”
“This one is new,” Ferranti piped up. “From the mainland.”
“Have mainlanders started sharing husbands as well as wives?” Wulf asked coolly. He kept his gaze on the mercenaries, not the tiny kinglet. “I’d think that was delightfully kinky if I didn’t know you’d ruin it somehow. You mainlanders always do.”
“The woman in question has something that does not belong to her,” Krajic said, smiling. Almost friendly, were it not for that look in his dark eyes and the scar across his face. “My employer is willing to grant you certain concessions if you turn her over.”
Wulf’s smile turned terrible. “Do I require concessions from a man who dares not fight his own battles? Who sends a blade for hire in his place?”
Krajic’s laugh boomed through the hall, and sliced its way down the length of Tyr’s spine. He remembered that sound, tinged with blood and buoyed by screams. Krajic had laughed exactly like that as he’d cut Zyron down. Tyr wanted to cut it right out of his throat.
Tyr had his blade in his hand before he knew he’d meant to move. Only a cool glance from Wulf kept him from calling Krajic out where they stood. That and the fact he wasn’t a punk ass bitch. He attacked from the front, he didn’t sneak up from behind, unlike some.
He lowered his blade. But he didn’t sheathe it.
“Did you bring me a message from this master of yours?” Wulf asked quietly. “Or did you demand safe passage to provide the clan with your brand of comic relief?”
“The days of raiders terrorizing the mainland are at an end,” Krajic told Wulf when he’d finished laughing. He looked around, meeting the eyes of the brothers surrounding him as if he had no fear of his own death. It occurred to Tyr that he really didn’t. That this wasn’t an act. “I’ve already taken your settlements. How hard could it be to take these islands? Did you truly believe you could pillage other men’s property at will with no repercussions?”
“Is this the repercussion?” Tyr asked from behind the knot of mainlanders, blood fury gnawing at his bones, urging him into action. Or maybe it was the simple fact that the longer Krajic talked, the less Tyr seemed to be able to maintain his cool. “All this talking until we’re bored to death?”
“You are nothing but a minor irritant,” Krajic told Wulf, as if he pitied him. He didn’t address Tyr at all. “A grain of sand in a shoe who thinks himself an impassable mountain. A naughty child playing in the affairs of men. But today you have a choice. You can accept the reality that your days are numbered and your influence is waning. My employer is willing to call you his ally and excuse your trespasses, in exchange for the woman and the tablet I’m told she carries with her. You should consider this a gift.”
“Tempting.” Wulf sounded almost sorrowful. “But I am not in the habit of allying myself with men I cannot see. In the same way I trespass where I please, with no need to excuse it. A personality flaw, I’m sure.”
“You do not understand me.” Krajic shrugged. “You can give me the woman now, or my employer will send an army to secure her. The choice is yours.”
Wulf eyed him for a moment. “I’m not particularly inclined to make choices based on armies who may or may not brave an ocean crossing. If you want to fight, fight. Or is that not a part of your job description?”
Krajic laughed again. “My job description is clear. Find the bitch. Bring her back. Taking down raiders is what I do for fun.”
“Will you take us all down?” Wulf sounded mildly curious, though the look he gave Tyr when Tyr might have taken exception to Krajic calling Helena a bitch was hard. A direct order to stand still. Tyr vibrated with contained fury. With bloodlust. “That would certainly be fun for me. I love watching the bloody end of lost causes.”
“You can’t kill us all,” Krajic sneered. “Your own rules of pointless honor forbid it. That means one way or another, the secrets you hide away in this remote ass end of nowhere will be secrets no more. Your only power was your mystery.” He lifted his arms, as if encompassing the whole of the hall. “But there is no mystery here. Only men and their whores. A king who hides behind a woman’s blade. Only tiny children fear the likes of you.”
Wulf’s eyes gleamed. “Mystery is our only power? Here I thought it was our blade craft.”
“I will gladly teach a coward king the weakness of his blade craft,” Krajic said then, his voice as smug as the look he shot around at all the brothers. The look that seared Tyr through, like the thrust of a blade. The bloodlust in him roared, loud and lush. “I welcome it.” Krajic nodded at the floor in front of him as if Eiryn didn’t stand there before him, cool murder in her gaze as she leveled it at him. “Will you come down from that throne or will I desecrate it with your bloodied corpse?”
Wulf laughed then, and Tyr knew he wasn’t the only raider in the room who stiffened at that sound. They’d all heard Wulf laugh when he was actually happy or amused. This was not it. This was a call to arms. A battle cry. The harbinger of Krajic’s end, little though the man seemed to recognize it.
Every cell of Tyr’s body, on the other hand, knew exactly what it was.
Wulf leaned forward. “I do not lower myself to squabble with the trained dogs of mysterious masters who demand safe passage only to call a king a coward in his own hall,” he said, very distinctly. A wise man, Tyr knew, would tremble where he stood at that look on the raider king’s face. Krajic did not so much as flinch. “A man must earn the right to challenge me in combat, and I don’t even know your name.” He shook his head when Krajic started to speak. “That wasn’t an invitation. I don’t give a shit what a dead man calls himself.”
Krajic smirked. “I want to see the woman. For all I know you threw her over the side of one of your ships or left her in the Atlanta woods when you were finished with her.”
Behind him, Ferranti bristled as if Helena was his property. And in that instant, Tyr didn’t know which head he’d like to remove more. Krajic or Ferranti’s.
Both, that grim, bloodlust-soaked voice within him asserted. Now.
Wulf nodded to the side of his throne. The crowd shifted, and then Jurin led Helena out from behind the wall of the brotherhood.
Tyr’s chest felt tight. She was his, damn it, and he didn�
��t want her within arm’s reach of these assholes. She was already frowning as Jurin brought her in, particularly when her gaze landed on Ferranti as she passed him. Then Tyr saw the small, almost imperceptible jolt that went through her when she realized who was standing in front of him.
It was a lot like the one that went through him when her gaze found his, at last. A shot of lightning, swift and electric. She tipped her chin up, his stubborn little mainlander, with her gray eyes like rain and her lush mouth a firm line, and he liked all that a little too much.
“Happy news,” Wulf said when Jurin deposited her beside the throne. “These men have come all the way from the mainland to claim you.”
If she was anxious at the sight of the two men she’d fought so hard to escape right there in front of her, still stinking from the sea, she gave no indication of it. It made Tyr proud. Helena stood tall. Her gray eyes gleamed with hatred, and something else besides. Maybe her own version of mayhem. Tyr approved.
“These men have no claim on me,” she said, clear and loud enough to fill the hall around her.
“Are you certain?” Wulf sounded lazy. “They’ve come so far and seem so adamant.”
Ferranti bristled again. “She was stolen from my kingdom and she took my property with her. I want her and that tablet. They belong to me.”
Tyr knew he should have been considering why the little kinglet thought such a thing and how he thought it might benefit him, but he was too busy trying to contain the growl that seemed to rise up from his bones at the sound of another man laying claim to what was his.
That little turd would touch Helena over his dead body. That was a promise Tyr would have no trouble keeping.
“If you want her, one of you will have to win her,” Wulf said in his lazy way, glancing from Ferranti to Krajic. “The little one or the bought one, I don’t care.”