by Megan Crane
Where Tyr was fighting, gleaming with exertion while putting all his glorious muscles on display. By himself.
He punched and kicked a bag hanging suspended from a metal contraption in the center of the room with fluid and breathtaking ferocity. Some kind of historical disc playing on the screen behind him. The bag rocked back and forward as if it weighed nothing—but then Tyr stopped it with one hand the moment she stepped into the room and the loud thunk it made suggested it weighed a great deal after all. His hard gaze found hers instantly, as if Helena had tripped an alarm when she’d entered.
The touch of his dark, considering gaze from across the room set off an explosion inside of her, flooding her with light.
As if he’d punched her as hard as he had that bag.
Suddenly it felt as if there were no space between them at all. No distance down the center of this room of weapons and threats, and only some of them on the wall. There was nothing but that harsh set to his brutal mouth and the closed expression on his hard face. He’d twisted his thick hair back out of his way and secured it, braids and all, on the back of his head. Helena had the sudden, hysterical notion that he ought to look feminine. Delicate. Something, with his hair like that.
He didn’t.
Tyr rested his hands on his hips, and Helena noticed that he’d wrapped them in some kind of fabric, which was one of the few signs she’d seen so far that he was as human as she was. That even his powerful fists could get hurt if he kept battering them like that. He wore a very low-riding pair of trousers cut short as if he wanted nothing more than to show off the carved marble of his torso and those angled lines that hugged his abdomen and cut down toward his groin.
And he might be human, just as she was, but he was a fine, mighty version of a male, all that dark hair and those sculpted muscles. He was as mesmerizing standing still as he was in smooth, stunning motion—
Helena’s throat was suddenly so parched she thought it might choke her.
And she honestly didn’t understand how she could still want him, because that was clearly what was swamping her then as she stood there. Gaping at him. How was it physically possible? How could it scrape through her chest like that, like a growing, angry sort of hollow she would never fill, that she knew somehow only he could?
It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense.
But telling herself that didn’t make it go away. It didn’t lessen his impact on her in the slightest.
And it didn’t change the fact that despite all this strange yearning, she had things to accomplish that had nothing at all to do with his naked body.
“The girls brought up some clothes and some other stuff they said you’d want.” Tyr’s voice was a low, dangerous bit of thunder, and did nothing to that hollow inside of her except make it yawn wider. The shame at her own weakness flooded in right behind it. “There’s food on the table.” Another touch of that dark gaze made her feel as if every hair on her body shivered, then stood on end. “I’d eat something if I were you.”
He went back to his solitary battle, hitting the bag even harder than before. Helena swallowed and ordered herself to stay quiet, for once in her life. Not to provoke a skirmish she didn’t know how to handle, when there was nothing to be done about the storm inside of her except live with it. Deal with it, somehow. Hope it went away.
Or at least faded enough so she could concentrate on what was actually important: the family mission. Light, for god’s sake, not this … messy thing that was still, at the end of the day, just sex, which shouldn’t matter to her at all. She couldn’t understand why it seemed it did.
She had to bite her tongue to keep from saying something stupid as she picked up the bundle on the table next to a basket of freshly baked bread and a hunk of hard, yellow cheese. Her stomach growled at her, but she ignored it. She headed back down the hall with the bundle, pushing on doors—a dark closet, two doors locked tight—until she found the bathroom.
Like everything else about the raiders’ home so far, it was a shock. It was nice. She’d lived in many self-proclaimed kingdoms where the only toilets were holes dug outside or chamber pot situations that were still horrifying years later in her memory. This bathroom had an old tile floor and flat stones in a giant shower that not only looked like it could hold several raiders at once, but gleamed wetly, indicating it wasn’t a relic. It actually worked and was used. Even Tyr’s toilet was water based. It flushed. She stared back and forth between the two, trying to work out all the implications, of what it meant that the raiders had this kind of access to water and power and more, the infrastructure to maintain it and use it.
But she couldn’t concentrate. It was as if she’d left her brain in Tyr’s decadent bed, buried somewhere beneath all those gorgeous furs. She couldn’t bring herself to use the shower and waste all that water, or maybe it was that she didn’t want to get naked again and feel that vulnerable, so she used a cloth and the sink instead. She opened her bundle and found a pair of dark brown trousers that fit her well enough, though they rode lower on her hips than she liked, and two tops of the same stretchy material she’d seen on the other women that she layered for warmth. Socks that actually fit her feet and a pair of sturdy boots that nearly did, with just a hint of extra room at the toes. She went to work on her hair with the stiff brush they’d sent up, and when she’d finally worked out all the tangles, she twisted the heavy mass of it into a single long, loose braid she tossed over one shoulder.
And when she looked at herself in the mirror, she didn’t look like the captive she was. She didn’t look like her mother’s dutiful daughter, dedicated to a mad quest she had almost no hope of completing, especially with Krajic on her trail.
She looked like a raider.
And something lurched inside of her, as slick and damaging as a wish.
“I don’t know who you are,” she told her reflection. Sternly. The way Melyssa might have if she’d been there, forever first in line to put Helena in her place or make her own feelings clear.
But unlike all the times her sister had reminded her that she was strange and unnatural, Helena didn’t feel dislocated or distorted today. Not here. She felt … alive. Bright with color, with that wild, drumming need that didn’t seem to ebb at all. With yearning and hunger. She felt bold and colorful, somehow, as if all that sea air had given her delusions of grandeur, and it even showed high on her cheeks where she couldn’t seem to stop blushing.
Helena knew how to do one thing, unnatural or no. She was good for that one thing only. That one thing had been the only constant in her entire life.
She had no idea why that one thing—her single mission on this earth, especially now that it was entirely down to her—kept getting tangled up in her mind with the man who’d sailed her right past the Catskills and kept on going. Why Tyr seemed to loom so large there instead. Why small, insistent voices inside of her kept arguing that she should share the burden of her family’s knowledge with a man like Tyr who might actually present some kind of obstacle to Krajic—and maybe even stop the demon in his tracks. With a man like Tyr and all his raider brothers, who already had light and might understand why it was so important to share it with others. Or anyway, to beat back the dark a little bit instead of holding it hostage.
More than all that, it would be a whole lot harder to stop a whole pack of them from getting into that temple in the Catskills than it would be to stop her.
It was only sex, she reminded herself fiercely, maybe a little desperately, glaring at her crazy raider-ish reflection. Why was she trying to convince herself to betray her lost parents and all her family’s secrets simply because a little bit of sex, of all things, had thrown her for a loop?
Her stomach growled again, ending that uncomfortable conversation with no answers she particularly liked.
When Helena walked back into the great room, the disc was still playing on the big screen, but Tyr was gone. She stood for a moment, eyeing the screen and the remote control he’d left in plain view
on the low table that sat in front of it. Something kicked inside her. Hard. Helena looked around again, but she was still alone. She moved quickly to the remote and snatched it up, studying it while her heart made a racket in her chest and a knot of anticipation swelled in her gut.
He could be back any second.
It took Helena only a few endless, terrifying moments to figure out that this particular screen wasn’t connected to any kind of Internet. No local network, or none she could find using the old remote in the few moments she dared look. Why had she imagined otherwise? But of course, she knew why. The raiders had fairly sophisticated tech here, in defiance of all known fables about them. Telephones with internal wiring, generators offsite so there was no roar to contend with when the lights came on—or so he’d said. What if it was actual electricity on one of the old power grids? Tyr might not have told her that. Or know it himself, for that matter. And she’d had the wild idea that if the raiders had accessed the old power grids, they might have already solved half her problem for her.
She’d imagined that quite by accident, she might have found exactly what she was looking for. But no—it waited for her precisely where she thought it did, in the Catskills several days to the west. Helena felt sick from her own jarring heartbeat and the distinct possibility he’d come back in to find her messing around with things she probably shouldn’t touch. She put the remote back down where she’d found it, then hurried over to the big stone table.
And it wasn’t until she’d torn herself a hunk of bread and a bit of the hard cheese, then gone to sit down on one of the large, flat pillows like a well-behaved captive who didn’t know the first thing about tech or networks or power grids or the satellites high above the earth most people seemed to think were stars, that she took a full breath.
Another breath or two and a few bites of sharp cheese and crusty bread later, it occurred to her this was the first time since she’d met Tyr that she’d been alone or out of his sight for any prolonged period of time. That was weird, surely. Wasn’t it? Or it was new, anyway.
Helena considered it. She chewed her bread.
She looked around again, but the room was as empty as it had been when she’d entered it. She couldn’t hear him anywhere, which seemed odd for a man of his size and sheer bulk. There was only the chatter of the people in the ancient movie he had on his screen, and beyond that, the hint of the wind outside when it rattled the glass doors that led out to his balcony.
Maybe raiders only made noise when they were out raiding. Maybe here at home, they were quiet and unassuming. Introverted. Shy. She had to bite back a silly, completely inappropriate giggle at that.
She was getting hysterical. When what she really should have been doing was making some kind of escape attempt.
Helena popped a piece of cheese in her mouth and tried to imagine how she’d do it. She’d heard what Tyr had said earlier about how doomed any such attempt would be. More than that, she’d believed him. Even if she somehow got out of this room, where would she go? And was she truly foolish enough to believe he wouldn’t come after her? He would. Of course he would. It didn’t matter that he might not want her for himself now that he’d had her, if the camp girls had been right about him—a thought that felt particularly unpleasant as it snaked through her, though she tried to shake it off. What mattered was that Tyr did not strike her as the kind of man who let anything get away from him unless he released it himself. Deliberately.
Which made her wonder why he’d left her alone.
“Something wrong with the bread?”
Helena hadn’t heard him come in, and she filed that disconcerting fact away for future reference in the same instant she fought to keep herself from jolting in her seat. He was very light on his feet for such a big, tough man. Then she stared. She couldn’t help herself. The towel around his neck suggested he’d dunked himself in that hot pool outside again, and he’d thrown on trousers and boots. No shirt. Why should Tyr bother with a shirt? It marred his brutal perfection.
Stop, she ordered herself. Now. She was verging on some kind of emotion that made that hollow place inside of her feel fizzy and dangerous and wound up much too tight.
“Not at all.” She chewed. Swallowed. Failed entirely to control her mouth. “I was planning my escape.”
His dark eyes narrowed, she was sure of it. “Yeah? How’s that working out?”
“Not great, I’ll admit.” She eyed him. “How captive am I?”
He ran the towel over his face, then slung it back over one broad shoulder. “Why? You thinking of testing the length of your chain, little girl? Try it. See what happens.”
“That sounds like you’re planning on keeping me.”
The way he studied her then made her cheeks flush hot. Hotter. She hated it. And the worst part was that Helena had no idea how to control her reaction to him, so he saw it. Of course he saw it.
And the more her words hung there in the room, echoing back at her, the more she realized that had sounded like a question, not a statement. That hollow thing inside of her gaped wide open and she wished she could crawl inside it and hide. Especially when she was sure she saw temper flash over his hard face.
She told herself she was mistaken when he walked over to the table, flipping his towel down on the stone surface. The leather harness he’d left there earlier with all his weapons was gone, she noticed then. It took her a moment to find it, hung on the wall near the door, so that it seemed to hug his ghost, all the blades bright and gleaming with menace.
He’d cleaned them, of course. She could easily imagine him sitting at that huge table and treating each blade with the intensity of focus he’d paid to her body. The image made her skin prickle.
Tyr picked up the bread, tore some off for himself, then leaned back against the stone table to watch her much too closely as he ate it.
“What are you doing here, Helena?” he asked her, and she sat up a little straighter on her pillow. She’d never heard this particular tone from him before. It wasn’t the bossy, war chief Tyr she’d seen in the courtyard and on the ship. It wasn’t the badass raider who brooked no opposition, whom she’d spent time with on that beach and more recently in his bed.
His voice was a dark, implacable thing, much too low and direct, and it insinuated itself deep within her. As if he was interrogating her from the inside out.
“I was abducted from my home in the dark of night,” she replied, fighting hard to keep the nerves out of her voice. “I’m pretty sure you know this story. You were there.”
“I don’t have the patience for these games.” He stayed where he was, looking lazy—and that made her spine freeze solid where she sat, because if she’d learned anything at all about him by now, it was that he was never lazy. Ever. Tyr looking lazy had so far done nothing but lead her straight into trouble. “This is about as relaxed as I get. I fucked, I trained. I’m golden.” He shrugged, his gaze hard on her. “What I’m not is stupid, which is too bad for you. Women approach raiders for one reason, and they do it with their tits out, on their knees, making their motives crystal clear. That’s not how you played it.”
“I was protecting my sister.”
“Bullshit.”
Helena swallowed, aware that her pulse had kicked into a higher, panicked gear. “I was.”
“You didn’t so much as glance back over your shoulder when I carried you out of that compound,” Tyr pointed out, and Helena knew perfectly well what that heated thing was that clutched tight inside of her then, digging in deep. Shame. “And no one came after you or even protested when I did. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there’s no love lost between you and your sister.”
“I love Melyssa very much.” Even if saying that made her feel like a liar, because it was so much more complicated than that. It was about what her parents would have wanted and not always how she felt inside, and surely that made her some kind of monster? “But what does it matter? Family is family. It doesn’t matter how it feels and it cer
tainly doesn’t matter how it looks to complete strangers.”
He studied her for too long. “And family is important to you.”
It wasn’t a question, but she tilted up her chin and treated it like one. “Of course.”
“Fine. Whatever. Let’s say that’s true.” His smile went nowhere near his dark gold eyes. “Why did you provoke me into taking you out of that place? Were you running to something or away from something else?”
Helena’s head spun. She hadn’t expected this—and she should have, shouldn’t she?
“What, exactly, does the term war chief mean?” she asked, carefully. She was pleased her voice sounded far calmer than she felt.
His hard mouth curved. Once again, it went nowhere near that sharp gaze of his. “I’m the king’s right hand, first and foremost.”
“I thought he already had one of those. All dressed in black and always with him, like a terrible shadow.”
“Eiryn’s job is to protect the king, to place herself bodily between him and any potential threat. My job”—his dark eyes pinned her where she sat like one of his war blades—“is to anticipate any threats and neutralize them before they become an issue for either the king or this clan.”
She couldn’t quite breathe. “A tactical role, then.”
He let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I spend a lot of time thinking about variables in any given scenario. Like why a coward with an old, waterlogged gun and no ability to protect himself or his pathetic compound would shoot at a raider minding his own business in the woods. It only makes sense if he was fool enough to think whatever he was protecting was worth taking that kind of risk.”
She definitely couldn’t breathe now and Helena was certain he’d notice if she simply … collapsed from lack of oxygen. And she didn’t need to raise his suspicions any further.
“There have been marauders in the area all summer.” She didn’t say the name Krajic and still, it seemed to pollute the room, like the smoke from the fires he’d set had made it here, too. “Bands of scavengers, looting what settlements they can find. People are on edge, that’s all. People are always on edge.”