He’d treated her and her baby and this cottage as if they were his. How had she missed that?
Jurin had left not long after his announcement back in the pool.
I’m done with this, he’d told her, that lethally intent look in his eyes that she knew was him at his most deadly. His most ruthless.
His most beautiful, something in her had thought, even then.
The fact was, now that she’d started to think of him as beautiful—or rather admitted that she always had—beautiful was all she could see when she was near him. Even when he was saying things that scared her down into her bones.
Tonight, he’d said in that same pitiless way. Tonight I make the claim final before my king and my brothers. I’m going to make you clan, little mouse.
He’d been basically uninterested in hearing arguments against that plan. Or any complaints about being compared to a rodent, either.
What had she thought he was doing if not laying down a long, slow, incontrovertible claim all this time?
But she still shied away from that word.
And now Melyssa was standing here with her sister, long after she’d tried to shower him off. Long after she’d decided, after all, to let the bed survive another day without throwing it in the fire. Helena had come down from the Lodge with the baby to change her into something warmer for the evening ahead, as planned, and Melyssa had to somehow act as if everything was normal. As if she was normal.
When Melyssa was sure she bore no resemblance whatsoever to the woman she’d been when she handed off her daughter this morning. She was inside out. Her skin no longer seemed to fit properly.
She worried she was forever altered.
Whatever Jurin had done with his hands, his mouth, the scrape of his beard and the thrust of his enormous cock—he’d changed her. She wasn’t sure how she could possibly be expected to act like everything was anything close to normal.
But she did. Somehow, she did.
“Rhiannon has quite an eye for the prospective brothers,” Helena was saying now, grinning down at her niece and using the tone of voice she reserved for the baby. “I pointed her at the green and made note of when she gurgled. I told Tyr he’d better pay attention, because the girl knows her stuff.”
“She’s magic that way,” Melyssa agreed, and was happy when her voice came out as smooth and quiet as ever, all her personal earthquakes concealed beneath the surface.
She wanted—desperately—to tell her sister that she was staying in her cottage for the night, but she knew that that would require the kind of explanations she didn’t want to give. Melyssa usually joined in with all the brothers and the other residents of the Lodge for the big, communal dinners that took place almost every night in the great hall. The only times she’d bowed out over the course of the last nine months had been when she was ill, or the baby was, and quite clearly neither one of those things was true tonight.
She was more than a little tempted to come down with a sudden fever where she stood.
But Melyssa was afraid that if she started making up stories then entire actual truth about how she spent her day would spill out instead. Because she wasn’t much of a storyteller. She didn’t have that kind of imagination. And she knew that no matter what, she had to keep what had happened this afternoon to herself.
If no one knew—if she didn’t even admit it to herself—it was almost the same as it never having happened at all.
You keep telling yourself that, that same voice inside of her mocked her.
It was just too bad that she could feel Jurin all over her. Her lips still felt so swollen she was surprised Helena hadn’t commented on their unnatural size. There was still that faint tenderness between her legs, and that melting heat that refused to go away. Every time she breathed she could feel the faint abrasion of her shirt over her breasts, making her nipples feel entirely too sensitive.
He was everywhere.
Even when he wasn’t here, he was with her.
She felt marked by him as if he was a tattoo that she was wearing now, inked deep into her skin, and the worst part was she still couldn’t seem to catch a full breath. It was as if, even after he’d gone, she couldn’t stop shivering.
Melyssa settled the length of wool she was using as a covering around her shoulders to ward off the night air, and then she took Rhiannon from her sister. She popped her happy baby in the little harness the raider women used that held the baby fast against her chest, left Melyssa’s arms free, and allowed her to wrap Rhiannon in the same wool she used to cover herself.
Raider women insisted that if harnesses could be made to hold a blade, they could be made to hold a baby, Jurin had told her when he’d presented her with hers and taught her how to use it—fastening it around her torso in a way that made her flush a little to recall. How had she missed the heat between them then? Every brush of his fingers against her skin had given her goose bumps, but she’d ignored it. And sure enough, they were right. If you ask the women in the city, they’ll tell you they always are.
But she wasn’t thinking about Jurin. She was definitely, defiantly not thinking about Jurin.
Melyssa followed her sister out of the cottage and felt the strangest sense of déjà vu as she stepped through the door, the light from the fire inside spilling out over her sister’s familiar back.
She’d followed Helena everywhere, it seemed. Off the western mainland after their parents had died and across the Mississippi Sea in that dank, terrible ferry where they’d held onto each other in a grim silence and tried to ignore the filth all around them. All over the eastern mainland, from compound to compound, caravan to caravan, as they’d tried their best to stay one step ahead of the mercenaries who’d stalked them.
Melyssa had followed Helena for so many years that she thought she could pick out her sister in the dark, thanks to the particular way her hair moved against her back. Even if these days, her sister carried herself differently than she had back on the mainland. Taller, somehow. Easier on her feet. As if all those years while she’d been pretending to be a compliant, she’d actually been made to wear a raider woman’s clothes.
As if she’d been born to be the war chief’s woman. While Melyssa had been made for . . . what, exactly? To follow her sister around while Helena involved herself with powerful men and their family’s long-term mission of saving the world from itself?
Melyssa told herself she hadn’t the slightest idea why she should feel that clutching in her chest, as if her heart was turning itself inside out too. Over and over again.
“I’ve been a follower my entire life,” Melyssa said out loud. She hadn’t meant to say it, and certainly not for Helena to hear, but there it was. And once she’d started, there seemed no particular reason to stop. “Never a leader. Never important. Just a follower. No wonder I was such a dedicated compliant. I obviously live for the chance to do what I’m told.”
Helena looked back over her shoulder, the grey eyes she’d inherited from their mother steady on Melyssa. Even when Melyssa closed the cottage door and they were left with nothing but the dim light of the lantern on her door, she could still feel that look.
“I don’t think that’s true at all,” Helena said after a long moment, her voice steady. Melyssa knew her well enough to know that steadiness meant she was concealing her true response underneath. “Why would you say that?”
“I was just thinking about my place in the world, that’s all.” Melyssa shrugged. Helena had stopped moving, so she did too, because that was what she did, wasn’t it? Whatever everyone else was doing. She slid her hand along the baby’s solid back, her daughter’s heat warm and reassuring beneath the wool. “Not everyone can change their life one night on a whim in the rain, in the middle of a raid.”
She shouldn’t have said that.
The truth was that she’d been in labor the night of the fateful raid when Helena had provoked Tyr into kidnapping her. She wasn’t exactly the best witness to what had happened. And more to the point,
offhanded comments like that were the kind of thing that had caused fights between them in the past. She and Helena had spent a lot of years mad at each other, maybe because they were sisters and had lost everything together, and had no way to handle that except to blame each other.
At some point over this last winter, ever since Helena had tried to sacrifice herself in place of Rhiannon last fall, Melyssa had decided to stop with all the pointless blame. Helena was a different person than she was, sure. But they were the only two people alive who remembered their parents. That meant they were the only ones who could teach Rhiannon where her name came from and what it meant to be named after two of the best people who’d ever walked this ugly old earth.
And most important, why she would need to remember them too, long after Helena and Melyssa were gone.
All of that mattered more than whatever blame they’d carried around between them, Melyssa thought.
But there was that hollow thing in the pit of Melyssa’s stomach. It had been there ever since she’d pushed away from Jurin in that pool, splashed her way back to the steps, and told him once again that there was no claim.
Not on the baby. Not on me. Not ever, she’d thrown at him.
Not that he’d listened. Or seemed to care too much that she’d had such an oversized reaction. It was almost as if he’d expected it.
“I’m sorry,” she said now, before her sister could fire back with some of her own ammunition, none of which Melyssa thought she was in a fit state to fight off tonight. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”
But Helena only laughed. “You tell yourself the craziest stories, Melyssa.”
Her sister’s voice wasn’t mean. It wasn’t even chastising, as Melyssa would have been forced to admit she deserved. She sounded nothing more than amused.
“I thought it was the trauma of the way you must have had to give birth that night and then that boat ride with Ferranti and Krajic and . . . “
Helena shook her head, because that was part of what they didn’t talk about now. The things that had happened that no one could change and no one should spend too much time remembering, either. They’d talked about these things last fall because they’d had to, but there was no need to rip open old wounds all the time. Melyssa was surprised Helena had mentioned it.
And her sister was still talking. “You keep telling the same story and it’s not true. I’m not the strong one while you’re the weakling. That was never true and that’s not true now. First of all, you survived childbirth and I know no one in that compound helped you because they could barely help themselves. Then you survived that crossing. And you’ve survived the winter here, which a great many people don’t, as the raiders will be the first to tell you. What about any of that makes you weak?”
Melyssa felt her chin rise. “You’ve always been the smart one. I just make do with what I have.”
“Yeah, and that. What is that?”
Melyssa dug in. “You know it’s true. You think so yourself.”
“Here’s what I think,” Helena said quietly. “We survived. Both of us. And if we’d done what I wanted to do, Krajic would’ve caught us and killed us years ago. You were the one who insisted we settle down in Ferranti’s little kingdom.”
Melyssa couldn’t help the little laugh that escaped her. “And look how that turned out.”
“It turned out perfectly,” Helena said fiercely. “Look where we are now.”
What Melyssa wanted to say was: we’re in the dark on a cold, damp night and I think I heard wolves in the hills. But she knew that was petulant. Just as she knew that she’d done nothing today but react. She whined about the fact her sister made choices but then, given the option to make her own, chose to run away and avoid it instead.
Because she knew where they were. They were in the eastern islands, which they’d been raised to believe were nothing more than myths told by fearful villagers to keep their children obedient throughout the long winter months. They were in the raider city where there was heat and light, food and water, and more than enough to feed the whole of the clan throughout the cold, wet season. More to the point, they were standing outside the sturdy cottage that Melyssa got to live in on her own. No compound filled with strangers. No other unattached women packed into the space to share resources and huddle together for warmth.
Not to mention, no price to pay. It had been nine months. No one had showed up at her door with a smirk and a demand that she offer payment in kind for the roof over her head and the food in her belly. No one had lectured her on her duty or responsibilities.
“We’re free,” Helena said, as if she knew exactly what Melyssa was thinking. “And we have Rhiannon. Life is pretty fucking good, I think.”
Melyssa didn’t disagree.
And yet, “Speak for yourself,” she said, because she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
It was that shivering thing inside her. Maybe it was that deep ache that had seemed to take over all of her bones, which she knew perfectly well wasn’t the onset of some awful illness. It was Jurin and all the things he’d done to her. All the things he’d taught her—about herself.
He was poisoning her from the inside out.
“I’ve never known you to suffer silently.” There was a little more heat in Helena’s voice then, but it wasn’t anger. Melyssa could have handled anger. But this was a darker, thicker emotion, and it only made that aching thing in her bones intensify. “Except here. I understand that you went through something horrifically traumatic. I don’t even like to think about it because it gives me nightmares. But you survived it and you’re here. And these people aren’t like the people we knew back on the mainland.”
That same dark emotion was all over Helena’s face and Melyssa wanted her to stop talking. Right now. But she couldn’t seem to do anything but stand there and listen.
“They’re not scared, Melyssa,” Helena said, as if it was a pronouncement from on high. That was how it felt inside Melyssa, like the ringing of a signal bell. “Do you understand what that means?”
“No,” Melyssa whispered through all that clanging. “I don’t.”
And then Helena did something crazy. She reached over and took Melyssa’s hand when they weren’t huggers. They weren’t the touching kind. Even when Melyssa tried to jerk her hand away out of surprise, Helena held on tight.
The way she had years ago, beneath that bridge, when Melyssa had wanted to give up and let go, let the mud take her. She’d been exhausted and terrified and certain that if they weren’t caught and killed now they would be soon . . .
Let go, she’d hissed at her stubborn sister.
Over my dead body, Helena had hissed right back.
And they’d held on to each other so tightly they’d left marks.
But maybe, Melyssa thought now, that was just love. Muddy and scared and furious and never letting go.
“I know that you don’t know,” Helena was saying fiercely. “But you will. It means they do the things they want to do, not the things they think they have to do because they’re afraid of the alternative. And every person in the city would die for you. Just as they would die for each other. That’s what clan is.”
“I’m not in the clan,” Melyssa said, with entirely too much emotion. She knew she was exposing herself. She was sure her sister could see all manner of things she didn’t want to share, right there in her eyes and all over her face. She couldn’t seem to stop her mouth from running, sharing all the things she usually hid away. It was as if Jurin had cracked her open and now that the light had gotten in, there was no getting it out again. “You are, but not me.”
“You’re my sister.” Helena squeezed her hand, hard, as if she wanted to leave marks the way she had last time. “You’re my family. You’re my clan, and that all that matters.”
Her grip loosened, but Melyssa didn’t let go as they smiled at each other there in the thick dark of the April night, while the sea murmured in the distance and the wind danced high and cold
through the trees. Sisters. Blood.
Survivors.
Whatever else they were, they’d always be survivors.
Melyssa had met a lot of people during their endless trek around the mainland. And she’d met the raiders here. None of them, as far she knew, had ever spent years on the run, dodging terrifying mercenaries and handling winter husbands in turn. Only she and Helena had done that. She supposed she had to accept that made them both strong, not just one of them.
“Stop talking about how you’re not smart,” Helena said as they started to walk. “It’s not like you fell head over heels in love with Ferranti and decided to have a baby to commemorate your feelings, only to find out he was an awful little shit of a man.”
Melyssa made a chiding sort of sound. “The church doesn’t approve of love. We have babies because it’s our responsibility as good, decent, fertile women, Helena.”
Her sister laughed. “You chose him deliberately. It was the best move available to us, and you knew perfectly well that I wasn’t going to make it. You took that hit for both of us and you kept us safe for two winters.”
“I’d love to take credit for that,” Melyssa said with a sigh. “But I can’t pretend my motives weren’t entirely selfish.”
“You can tell yourself that if you want, but I don’t buy it. You always wanted to be normal, and I don’t think you wanted it because you’re some airhead. You wanted it because it was safer.” She nudged Melyssa with her shoulder as they walked, which Melyssa should have hated. But she didn’t. “That’s nothing but smart. You might just have to own it.”
And despite herself, and the mess inside of her, and the fact that moments ago she’d thought she never would again, Melyssa found herself smiling.