Riordan adjusted his pack on his back, did one last visual sweep to make sure they didn’t have any unwanted company, and then followed her upthrust finger north.
And he might not have been completely sold on this whole idea. He’d spent very few winters somewhere other than the clan stronghold on the eastern islands, and he wasn’t exactly thrilled about this opportunity to change that pattern. He had some doubts—okay, maybe it was pure ego talking—that he could ever pass for a random little punk bitch and, more than that, he deeply disliked the fact that no one could tell exactly who and what he was at a glance, the better to then act appropriately cowed.
Because another truth was that everything in him revolted at the idea that he could be confused for a farmer like his father had been. Not when he was responsible for killing his family and losing the very farm his ancestors had worked since the Storms, a betrayal of his own blood so severe that he’d always known—with a bone-deep certainty that matched the names stamped deep into his spine—that he would be paying off that debt for the rest of his life. If not with his life. It was what he deserved. The very least of what he owed them.
But it felt easier to shove those things aside than maybe it should have when he could take a brisk stroll through the rolling countryside in the middle of nowhere with his eyes trained on Eiryn’s taut, firm ass.
Jeans were a stupid thing that only mainlanders wore. These particular jeans rode a little low on Eiryn. But Riordan had to admit he liked what the stretch of denim over a toned ass did to help a fine woman look that much better.
The morning mist gave way to a blazing summer sun and the buzzkill of near-total humidity to go with it. Eiryn eventually lowered her hand to her side—but not until she’d kept it up and her finger extended for as long as possible, of course. It was a sweaty, breathless hike, but they kept up their near-punishing pace despite the fact it started to feel a lot more like swimming upstream all of two steps into it. The wet green woods went on and on. It was well into the afternoon before Riordan began to smell the smoke from far-off cookfires in the warm, thick air and soon after that, the woods they’d spent the day in opened up to a road.
Eiryn stopped walking while she was still concealed by the trees, going perfectly still as a caravan chugged by, belching out black engine smoke into the surrounding humid green. Riordan took a knee beside her, and together they watched a second caravan roll down the bumpy road that was more of a wide trail with some leftover asphalt here and there to make things a little more exciting.
After an impressively fat farmer trudged by with a pair of bony-looking cows, Eiryn reached up and unbraided her hair as she stood there, letting it fall all around her, a smooth, gleaming swirl from her pink headband. The expression on her face told him she would have preferred to leave it braided, and Riordan couldn’t blame her. It was hot as balls. The last time he’d been in Kentucky it had been much earlier in the summer and in higher elevations. Still, there’d been rain and mud and a thousand swarms of asshole mosquitos—though all of that had kind of faded next to the drama of Gunnar’s first mate taking a run at Wulf.
All things considered, Riordan kind of wished Kentucky had fallen into the sea like so much of the rest of the world.
He stood, then pulled the bottom of his shirt up to wipe the sweat off his face, futile as it was to even bother. He heard Eiryn hiss as he did it, and knew that there was no possible way she was admiring the view. That was definitely not the day he was having.
“You know you can’t do that. You have raider marks all over you. Why not invite people to come at you?” She glared at him. “And let’s be clear, what annoys me is that they’ll come at me too.”
“There’s no one here but you and me, babe,” he said, dropping the shirt back down. “And you already know what my tattoos and brands look like.” He flashed a grin at her. “Or are you afraid you can’t control yourself when you see them?”
“You got me. I’m overcome with lust. Whatever will I do.”
Her arid tone should have sucked up all the Kentucky humidity. Riordan’s problem was it only made him hard, again. Then actively uncomfortable when she looked away. Dismissing him. Again. That was how contrary his cock was. The one woman who thought he sucked, who once long ago he’d gone out of his way to make sure thought he sucked, was the one he wanted beyond reason.
Eiryn frowned down at the stretch of road before them. “We have to assume we’re being watched at all times or we’ll get lazy and we’ll be exposed.” She shifted from one foot to the other as if she was strongly debating shoving a boot up his ass. He hoped she tried. “I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of dying on this little adventure. Much less living out my days as an actual compliant.”
“Eiryn.” He waited until she made a production of turning to look at him again. “I don’t need you riding my ass like I’m a prospect with a death wish. Okay?”
“Then don’t act like one,” she shot back. “Risk your own ass all you want. Go nuts. But I don’t need you risking mine.”
She didn’t wait for his response to that. She headed down out of the trees and into the center of the hard-packed road with its bumps and hollows, leaving Riordan no choice but to follow her. Every part of him wanted to throw down and fight it out right there the way he would have if they’d been back home on the eastern islands, but that, like everything else that made life worth living, wasn’t compliant.
It also wasn’t smart, given the circumstances.
He fell in beside her instead and matched his stride to hers, both of them slowing down from their previous breakneck speed and finding a more reasonable, more-likely-compliant pace without any discussion about it. She slid a glance at him once, he met it, and he thought her chin rose a little, as if he’d challenged her.
So that meant he spent a good long while imagining what would happen if he did. If he demanded Eiryn meet him blade to blade or even better, bare handed. He imagined kicking her ass for at least a mile or two, which he greatly enjoyed, but he wasn’t fooling himself. Any excuse to get his hands on her. Any excuse to wrestle her beneath him, and who cared that he’d have to weather some serious blows to make that happen, since Eiryn was no lightweight pushover and would fight not only to win, but to hurt him.
Still. Any excuse at all.
You’re a sick fuck, he told himself, but without any heat. It wasn’t like that was new.
It was another five miles or so before they reached the actual port settlement of Louisville. The air was thick enough to choke him, and he had no choice but to wear too many damned clothes, which made him a little overexcited about getting there. An excitement that was definitely not warranted, he saw immediately. Louisville wasn’t the most impressive place Riordan had ever seen, not even close. There were low buildings like old hangars and warehouses clustered all along the edge of the hills, suggesting enterprising people a long, long time ago had toted them up here to give themselves somewhere to wait out the floods. Back when people had imagined the water would go down again, the poor fools.
The wall surrounding the city was bristling with self-important, strutting guards and had clearly been made after the Storms, obviously by largely unskilled hands and without the help of any of the ancient machines. That meant it was only as safe as the men who guarded it and probably wouldn’t stand up to much of an attack. Riordan clocked the guards and assessed the wall’s structural integrity from a distance, and he didn’t have to look beside him to know Eiryn was doing the same.
“Pathetic,” she said. Under her breath.
“An insult, really,” he replied the same way.
They could have sacked the place themselves. Right now. Without much effort.
There was a thin, if steady, flow of foot traffic watched over by guards with heavy semiautomatic guns hanging off of their chests. Riordan took against these overfed apes instantly. It was easy enough to feel tough with a waterlogged gun to shove in people’s faces. It was a lot harder to be Riordan in
this scenario and to not beat the shit out of the puffed-up scumbag who dared to poke the muzzle of his weapon into Riordan’s side.
He prodded Riordan with his piece-of-shit gun that probably wouldn’t fire when he wanted it to, the dumbass.
How the little bitch didn’t realize he was staring down his own bloody and painful death, Riordan would never know. Just as he’d never know how he managed to rise above the provocation and keep his hands to himself. He thought of his clan. He thought of his king.
And he thought that still, all things considered, he’d like to shove that Uzi up the douchebag’s ass and see how he liked getting prodded with it.
“Keep moving, buddy,” the asshole guard barked at him, like he could do anything about it if Riordan didn’t.
But that wasn’t why they were here. Riordan sucked it up, though it hurt him to do it, and he kept moving.
Beside him Eiryn flashed him a look that was as murderous as he felt, and he almost laughed. Here they were, two blades forged in raider steel and sharpened for battle, forced to submit to the petty, bullshit whims of dickwads like that guard and his Uzi when either one of them could have ripped the man’s head off without breaking any more of a sweat. If he could get past the deep insult of it, it was almost hilarious.
Would they manage this? Or would they break the way Riordan nearly had? Because raiders in general did not like being told what to do by anyone they didn’t respect—which was everyone not a raider, for a start—and brothers in particular viewed that shit as an outright personal insult, answerable in blood.
A lot of blood.
Maybe this mission was going to be even more exciting than he’d thought.
He tried to calm himself down as they shuffled along in the slow-moving line. That in itself was something new. There were more people milling around outside this ramshackle city than Riordan was used to seeing in one place on the mainland, which maybe had something to do with the fact that he spent most of his time here conducting raids in the dark of night. But unlike the chaos of those glorious nights, everyone here obeyed the Uzi-wielding douchebags without much comment and waited their turn to step up to the gate guards and make their case for entry.
Riordan was tempted to turn around, go back to the forest, and wait there for dark, when he knew he could vault over the shitty wall, kick a few guard’s asses just for fun, and welcome himself to Louisville at his leisure without having to subject himself to this bullshit. The longer the line took, the more he was tempted to do exactly that.
But his king wanted answers, not the keys to a shitty port city.
The farmer with the skinny cows they’d seen earlier was waved through. One of the caravans had turned around and was letting outgoing passengers board, while those it had carried had joined the line for entry into the city. Which meant that smoke-belching piece of shit was one of the shuttle caravans Helena had mentioned that careened around between mainland cities. Probably this one went to Atlanta, if Riordan had to guess. He thought he’d rather walk and take his chances with wolves and bandits alike rather than pack himself onto that rusted-out scrap metal disaster.
Meanwhile, all around him were mainlanders. It was odd to see so many people who should have been afraid of him . . . not particularly afraid. Sure, he got a lot of side eye because he was taller and more built than most of the other men, which he couldn’t hide. But the real issue was that he was used to encountering these people in the dark and usually over the fallen bodies of whatever idiots they’d imagined would protect them. It was more than a little disconcerting to stand here like he was one of them.
They were so . . . soft. The men were egregiously puny. Some had weak, skinny arms and rounded bellies, which made no sense to Riordan on any level. The women were soft in different ways. Much quieter than raider women, as if they were actively trying to avoid calling attention to themselves. There were a few children here and there, but not many, because children were precious and usually kept safe in the compounds and settlements where they were born. A group of men stood in a loose little pack a ways ahead, talking in low voices in a way that made Riordan’s sixth sense for trouble kick in. But they weren’t eyeing the guards, or even Riordan, they were looking at two women who stood with their arms linked a small distance away. Unlike the rest of the women, these two were smiling and making eye contact.
A lot of eye contact. Like, camp-girl-level eye contact.
Somehow, Riordan doubted these soft, gross men with their puffed up chests and greedy eyes would treat anyone the way the raiders treated their camp girls. But there was no denying that whatever was happening, it was about sex and unless he’d missed this part of Helena and Maud’s lesson, it wasn’t compliant. He filed that away.
Eiryn moved closer to him and he tensed, waiting for her to strike out at him or maybe go after the men herself. It took Riordan a beat to realize she was in character. All the women around them stuck close to the men they were traveling with or to each other if there didn’t appear to be any men—even the mainland camp girls. Eiryn was mimicking them. She slid into his space, in a way a woman who expected to wield a weapon never would, as if, given the opportunity, she would fit herself beneath his arm and hide there. She even let her body graze his chest.
It was impossible to think of Eiryn as someone he needed to guard and protect. It was equally impossible not to like, on a deep and visceral level that wasn’t only about his cock, how well she fit there. As if she’d been made to fit him, and not only when he was inside her.
Not a productive line of thought, he was aware, and he had to grit his teeth to get that roaring hunger in him under control. Then he shifted to take up a little more space around her, making it clear this woman was with him even though they were at the point in the summer where those allegiances could be a little fluid.
Some people just stay with their winter spouse until the new equinox celebration in September, Helena had said. You’ll see a lot of that while you’re traveling, especially, because traveling alone as a woman is harder. Riskier. A lot of women prefer to stick with what they have rather than get out there and maybe find someone a lot worse.
Not to mention, Lyla had added in her throaty way, training a new winter husband is a hassle.
The line inched forward, and Riordan wondered idly how many of the people in front of them were permanent mates and how many were letting their winter marriage play out in the hope they’d find a better option in a few weeks when the rains started. Next to him, Eiryn started moving strangely, and he almost opened his mouth to ask her what the hell she was doing before he understood.
Maud had spent a lot of time talking about how they both walked that afternoon on the beach in the Catskills.
You carry yourselves like threats, she’d told them. That’s going to get you into trouble. She’d smiled at Eiryn in that blissed-out way of hers that Riordan knew was far more a weapon than a shield. Especially you. There are men who will take that as a deliberate provocation. Better to avoid it.
Eiryn rounded her shoulders and shuffled one foot in front of the other, leading with her heels. She shot him a look of suppressed rage and he grinned. She was famous for being light on her feet and here she was, dragging ass in a crowd.
It was almost funny. This was all kind of funny.
About as funny as his shorn head and the fact his raider tattoos had to stay hidden, he guessed.
It took a whole lot longer than Riordan thought it should have to make it to the heavily guarded gate and the bored-looking dirtbag who stood there in front of five more behind him and a couple of whining pit wolves besides. Riordan assessed them all quickly and dismissed them even faster. Silly, slothful, lazy-ass mainlanders. They were talking among themselves. They were standing with very little attention focused on the crowd, their weapons hanging loose and untended, and would be completely unprepared in the event of any attack. He could take all five of them out without much effort while Eiryn stood around playing grab ass, or vice versa. It was
astonishing how tempted Riordan was to prove that theory.
But he remembered what Maud had told him and tried to slump. To look smaller, though he was much taller and significantly more solid than all of the guards put together. He tried to concentrate on appearing less threatening, whatever the hell that was to these assholes who pointed Uzis at supposedly unarmed people to get them in a line. Still, he tried his hardest to look as unlike a raider as possible.
Not that he had the slightest idea how to do that.
“What’s your business in Louisville?” the guard in front of the gate asked, as if there were an infinite number of reasons to come to this shithole instead of the one. His suspicious gaze traveled all over the width of Riordan’s shoulders and widened a little as he took in the sheer heft of Riordan’s arms and chest.
And Riordan couldn’t exactly will himself to be as chubby and cringing as all the pathetic males around him, could he? Though he did his best.
Eiryn inched closer to him, as if she was intimidated, then kicked it up a notch by resting her hand on the side of his chest as if she thought she might actually fling herself behind him in the next breath. It was a nice touch.
It also reminded him that if she was playing the cringing compliant female, he was going to have to swing his tiny mainland dick around and do the talking.
“We’re just passing through,” Riordan said. It was difficult to keep himself from boldly meeting the man’s eyes or squaring his shoulders and shifting his stance to ready himself for potential danger and a little scuffle or two. Reminding himself that there wasn’t actually any danger here helped. Like . . . none for miles, despite the wall and the gate and the useless Uzis hanging off these soft guards’ bodies like a collection of limp dicks. “We’re heading to the Great Lake Cathedral for the equinox.”
The guard rolled his eyes as if that was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. Or maybe he was just sick of hearing it. Either way, Riordan watched the very moment the man stopped seeing them and saw instead whatever he imagined travelers who wanted to board the ferry to the western mainland were. It was as if a screen went down. He ignored Riordan’s size and whatever mixed messages his brain was sending him about how a man with Riordan’s kind of muscles might have come by them.