Edge of Control: (Viking Dystopian Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Things changed, apparently.
    Eiryn wouldn’t mind chipping away at Wulf a little bit herself. Not to kill him, necessarily. He was decent king. But he was a shitty older brother and it turned out there was a little sister inside her after all. A bloodthirsty one.
    Though she’d rather die than show that side of herself. To anyone.
    “To the ships.” Tyr’s voice rang out. “We’ll camp on the beach tonight. Ellis, take your thumb out of your ass and put this fire out. Jurin, do a run to see if these assholes left any of their crappy guns lying around. Gunnar can use the scrap metal.”
    But Eiryn stopped listening to the war chief and his usual barked orders, because Wulf turned to her. Making it clear he’d known her precise position all along. The look he fixed on her, his bright blue eyes electric and shocking in the dark, was as steady as it was unnerving.
    “Walk with me,” he said quietly.
    It wasn’t an invitation.
    Eiryn fell into her usual place at his shoulder without comment, one quick step behind him. Wulf walked with the same lethal grace that infused everything he did, his long strides eating up the distance and his sharp gaze moving from one dark shadow to the next, cataloguing any potential danger without any conscious thought. She knew, because she did the same.
    He didn’t speak, and that was much worse than a lecture. She could handle anything that came at her, but waiting for it to come was like splinters under her nails. She gritted her teeth and kept going, trying to figure out if it made tactical sense to speak first. To offer an apology for abandoning her post or some excuse. He wouldn’t believe either one, of course, but it might be good strategy. Then again, it might just piss him off.
    She was still mulling over the best approach when he stopped, on a flat ridge that rose up over the water. The cove where they’d anchored their ships was still a little bit down the coast. The moonlight bounced off the two sleek crafts a distance offshore, bobbing idly with the tide. On the beach, those who’d stayed behind from the temple raid had lit a bonfire and when the wind changed, Eiryn thought she smelled meat. They hadn’t brought any fresh game with them on the weeklong journey from the eastern islands, which meant someone had gone hunting while she was running down a rambling old mountain, trying to avoid incineration.
    She had no idea why that struck her as poignant. Life going on the way it always did, even in this drowned world in the middle of a botched mission and a deadly explosion, while she’d stood there debating whether or not to pretend she was dead.
    Wulf didn’t look at her. He stared out toward the dark, inky sea instead, and Eiryn told herself it was the wind that made her neck prickle. The remnants of the temple, acrid and harsh on the smoky breeze. Not the still, furious way her half-brother held himself, as if he was moments away from carrying out her execution right here where they stood. Not the pulsing temper she could see written all over his lean, powerful frame.
    “If I can’t trust you,” he said softly, so quietly she almost thought she’d imagined it, “then you’re of no use to me. You might as well declare yourself my enemy. And if you are my enemy, there’s no particular reason not to slit your throat and dump you over this cliff, is there?”
    Eiryn didn’t defend herself. There was no point. The truth was, she should have made sure he was safe and she didn’t. She’d run. The temple had gone up and she’d been gone. She hadn’t even thought about him until she’d stopped.
    And there was a time when that tone in his voice—not quite a threat, not yet—would have rocked her.
Killed
her. She would have done anything to prove to him that she was trustworthy. That he could trust her above all others.
    That she was nothing like their father.
    But that was gone. Smoke. Eiryn noticed the great, gaping hole inside of her where her need to please Wulf