Hunted Warrior
Page 26
She snatched up the damping collar he held and raced back to Cadmin. “Your injuries are already bad enough,” she said. “Wear this.”
“What about my powers?”
“They’ll be taken from you. Your choice, my young one.”
“I’m not a Dragon King without my gift. This is the first time I’ve felt my fury gathering. It’s pure. I want it, even if it means pain, too.”
Avyi bent swiftly and kissed her first babe’s forehead. “I knew you would be strong. I never knew you would be this strong.”
Cadmin touched Avyi’s cheek. “Mother before my mother. Save our Giva?”
“Now that you’ve done your part, absolutely.”
She turned to find a sight out of her deepest, most terrifying nightmares. Dr. Aster. Standing over Malnefoley. He held the Dragon-forged sword.
All she could count as a blessing was that Ulia’s incapacitation had allowed Mal to return to himself, with his blue eyes clear and full of the shining intelligence and canny skill she’d come to respect so dearly. But was it a blessing? To see her lover returned just in time to have his head wrenched back by the one man in the world she hated the most?
Yes. A blessing. Because with her gaze alone, she told Mal what she could not with words.
We both knew this was coming.
Roughly fifty years old, but still sickeningly handsome with a smile made of distilled charisma, he locked eyes with Avyi. “My Pet in a duel to the death. I imagine you’ve waited for this for years.”
“No.” A part of her heart ripped in two. But only a part of it—a single vulnerable edge where old memories of this man still lived. “I waited for years for you to change. I didn’t want this.” She nodded toward the grip the doctor had on Malnefoley’s scalp, the sword poised over his vulnerable neck. The doctor was within cutting distance of killing the man who had helped make Avyi into a woman. Who had made her Avyi. “I didn’t want to face you, until you threatened this man’s life. It’s always been inevitable. Only now, I’ll enjoy it.”
“Is this love, my Pet? For your selfish, useless Giva?”
“Not the kind of love you expected from me.”
“Then, my dearest prophet, you’ve probably seen this, too.”
He angled the Dragon-forged sword down and across. Avyi screamed and lunged. Blood covered her shirt. She was temporarily blinded with the sight of it, such a brilliant scarlet, so terribly, terribly red. The doctor’s mirthless laugh rang out around them.
Her hands were slippery when she grabbed the hilt of the sword and pulled it free of Dr. Aster’s weaker grip. She swung her right hand, connecting brass to jaw. He grunted. Bone on bone made a grating sound. She hit him again and again, as years of rage welled up in her like a never-ending spring and came bubbling out in a flailing geyser.
When she stopped, breathless, she looked down at the fallen form of her former master. His face was devastated. What she hadn’t expected was the crushed-open cavity of his chest and the compound fractures along his thighs. For a moment, she’d become like a Pendray in the throes of a berserker fury. No memory of the violence. Just the possession of it and being possessed by it.
Aster stared up at her with eyes that barely held life. He grinned, toothless and bloody, and laughed until he coughed. Avyi adjusted her grip on the sword and swung in a clean, downward arc. The doctor’s head rolled across the arena’s sandy ground.
“Av … yi …”
“Mal!”
She screamed his name again, dropping to her knees as if in prayer. His throat was cut. So deeply. Oh, Dragon be, he had come within mere inches of death, and there was no certainty that death had loosed its final hold.
Three prophecies in succession. Cadmin. Her fight with the doctor. The attempt on Mal’s life. They were coming faster, faster. Her stomach was a twist of acid as the copper scent of blood filled her nostrils, like a noxious poison intended to drive her mad.
A shout in the ancient, shared language of the Dragon Kings rang out from the amplifier Old Man Aster had used.
She looked up and saw a familiar figure high atop one of Battersea’s four smokestacks.
Tallis, of Clan Pendray. The Heretic.
Dragon Kings who had finished their grim work in the stands had either fled into the night or gathered on the arena floor. A flood of familiar faces were among them. Leto of Garnis waded through the warriors with astonishing speed and agility, divesting everyone of deadly swords.
But the fact that Malnefoley gagged beneath the pressure of her hands was all that mattered. With damage to his neck so severe—nearly beheaded by the doctor—would there be any saving him now?
She cursed the Dragon. She threw every word in every language to the sky, furious that the being she had trusted and believed in when others abandoned their faith had forsaken her now. He had given her a gift unique to their people, and that gift had shown her three visions yet to come.
One was Mal burning.
One was the shadow of the dragon over Battersea.
And one was she and Mal in love.
It seemed none would come true, as his blood flowed between her fingers and his mouth went slack.
*
All around Malnefoley was red. Red everywhere. He tried to find Avyi, with her night-black hair and eyes as gold as a cat’s. He wanted to find her bewitching smile-that-wasn’t-a-smile and the resilient way she moved forward with each step, knowing each step could lead her to a dismal future.
He wanted her.
“Mal,” she cried, from such a distance.
At least the pain in his head had subsided. The red wasn’t a physical color so much as a picture of himself from very high above. He was outside of his body, as if he’d suddenly assumed an Indranan’s telepathic powers and could see the damage the doctor had wrought.
He was going to die.
There was no way to survive a cut as deep as the one that slashed across his throat.
Avyi was there. He could see her from as far away as he could hear her distant, desperate voice.
“You can’t leave yet.” Her hands were pressed tight around his gash, but wouldn’t stop the inevitable. “Do you hear me? I have three visions left, Malnefoley of Tigony, and two of them involve you. Neither reveals you dying by that bastard’s slice. So you hold on. Hold on!”
She called to other Dragon Kings, whose names rattled through Mal’s brain like marbles rolling across hardwood floors. He was losing it, losing himself.
Losing Avyi.
No.
He concentrated on how she held him in her lap, and how her hands grasped him with the strength of a desperate woman. She was trembling. Or was that him? Maybe they trembled together, as the future lapped at their heels. Only this wasn’t a gentle tide. This was an oncoming storm, sent to sweep them away too soon.
He wasn’t ready.
“What … visions … ?”
She leaned nearer. “Don’t talk. Don’t you dare. Here, you, help me.” Another woman joined them, kneeling in a swirl of golden silks. “What’s your name?”
“Kavya,” she said.
Avyi stilled. “The Sun?”
“That’s right,” came another familiar voice. Mal was having trouble piecing voices to faces to memories. But this one was unmistakable.
“Heretic,” Mal rasped.
“I said shut up!” Avyi squeezed harder, as if to emphasize her point. “You’re an Indranan, yes? Tallis, can she be trusted?”
Tallis of Pendray laughed tightly. “The Pet is asking me? The irony is thick in this place.”
Mal tried to find a sword with his free hand. “Name’s … Avyi.”
“What this Dragon-damned fool is trying to say is that I’m no longer the Pet. My name is Avyi, and I need your help. Both of you.” Mal felt more hands tighten around his neck. “Is Nynn here? Can you find her?”
“She’s here,” Kavya said. Mal liked the Sun better, because she glowed with the radiance of the sun he would never see again. “B
ut what you’re thinking … Why not just use another Tigony?”
“There are things about their clan that can’t be trusted.”
“That’s rich,” the Heretic snorted. “The mighty, vaunted Tigony? With ghosts in their closets? I never would’ve guessed.”
“He’s not thinking very kind thoughts about you right now, Tallis, dear. Do be quiet.”
“Here, hold his hands in place.” That from Avyi. Another woman’s hands laced fingers with his and applied more pressure. “Kavya, I need you to do what you can to enter his mind. Can you do that? Are you willing?”
“Yes.”
“With my help before, he used his gift to cauterize a wound in his own shoulder. I need more precision than that. I need …” She gasped and inhaled two quick breaths. “I need a miracle.”
“I’ll try,” said Kavya.
Mal tried to focus on her face, but she was shining. He squinted.
Nynn arrived. Mal could smell her. Strange that his senses were more acute, even as pain obliterated physical sensation and muddled his thoughts. He couldn’t remember why he and his cousin had fallen out, why he hadn’t ever met her late husband or her son, Jack. It seemed another reason why dying right then, in Avyi’s arms, was to shortchange a life.
No, more than one life. He found a tickling trail of reason. If he died … if they had assassinated him … there would be repercussions.
There would not be another Giva. No one would send their precious, rare children. The entirety of the Dragon King culture would collapse without a leader, even a leader as flawed as he had been. As flawed as he would continue to be. All he could do was make decisions and hope for the best possible outcomes.
He’d chosen to trust Avyi. He’d chosen to make love to her. He’d chosen so many skewed paths in order to stay with her. Long enough to fall in love with her.
“Nynn, you need to help him,” Avyi said. “I don’t know if he has enough strength or control, even with Kavya to guide him.”
“Dragon be, we need a sword and someone to say his funeral rites.” Nynn was blunt, but tears clogged her throat.
Avyi lunged for the woman. “I won’t give up on him! You need to help me. Help me fix the Chasm. It starts here with Mal!”
“Get off of me, you freak,” Nynn growled. “The last time I saw you, you were Aster’s latex-clad footstool.”
The women tussled until Nynn was unceremoniously hauled up, onto her feet. “Enough,” came the rough command of her partner, Leto. “The Chasm isn’t fixed. She’s said it. Others we’ve met have heard it in dreams. If this isn’t a moment to trust in each other and the Dragon, there never will be.”
Nynn sank to her knees. She joined with Avyi, their hands around his neck. Kavya’s slipped into his mind.
Concentrate, Giva. We need you to live.
What were her visions? Ask her.
Avyi asked, “Ready?”
“Wait.” Kavya spoke up. “He wants to know what your visions are.”
Avyi shook her head. She was wild and frantic now, when Mal wanted to reassure her … of what, he couldn’t say. “We don’t have time.”
“I get the feeling he won’t cooperate until he hears them.”
“No, I won’t say.” She slid her hands up to hold his cheeks. Mal struggled to open his eyes. He found her green-on-gold waiting for him, with that raven-dark hair haloed by the bright lights circling Battersea. “I won’t tell you a thing until you come back to me. That means paying attention to other people, for once, and doing your job. That means using your Dragon-damned gift to save yourself!”
Kavya slipped into his mind again. She found him like a child and held his hand, until he was able to actually see himself from above. It wasn’t imagination. He could see through her eyes. He understood that through her, he was to communicate where to place their fingers—and his.
Mal cried out as the powerful women converged on him. Nynn’s firecracker electric shock slid into the base of his brain like a knife, but Kavya was there to defend conscious thought from the pain. He smelled the sizzle of his flesh. He felt the tremble of his legs. There was no controlling this. He was as helpless as a baby being born, pulled through into the unknown, shrieking as the comforts of his old life were ripped away, one by one.
He lost Kavya. Her reassuring calm slipped away until he was left with his own panicking thoughts. Avyi screamed and pressed harder, but her fingers slipped in the blood. Kavya wrapped bloody hands around her head in obvious pain. “He’s going. I can’t stay with him. I’m sorry.”
“You can’t go, you stubborn lonayíp bastard,” Avyi shouted, her lips brushing his with humid sweetness. “I’ve seen us in love. Do you know that? That’s why it wasn’t right before. We were lovers, but we weren’t in love. I love you, and you’re not leaving me until you can say it back and stay with me.”
Across what must’ve been a hundred miles, he found his cousin’s face. “Light it up, firecracker. I want to go out in a blaze … like our creator.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
Avyi had never felt anything like the power Nynn could summon. She and Mal had to be the two most powerful Dragon Kings on the planet.
Only, Avyi hated Nynn in that moment, when the woman began to conjure a ball of kinetic fireworks between her hands. Her partner, Leto, held her by the waist. Whether it was to ground Nynn for what was to come, or to protect her from Avyi’s mounting anger—who knew?
But the hatred in Avyi’s heart was as real as any gift, and so much more real than the Dragon that had failed her so completely. What manner of creature tempted her with a life beyond pain and torture, only to let her feel Mal’s lifeblood flowing like a river between her fingers? Even their combined efforts hadn’t been enough to repair severed bone, arteries, veins, and delicate nerves. Tallis wrenched Avyi’s hands away from Mal’s increasingly cold skin. She cried out, thrashing, swinging her brass-encased knuckles, trying everything to get back to his side.
She was practically useless when held captive by a Pendray and his Indranan lover. Tallis’s arms, crisscrossed around her torso, were like bands of the thickest, most immutable steel. Kavya touched her mind, so subtly, trying to calm Avyi with a feeling of sunshine and hope.
She pushed past Kavya’s ministrations. Her anguish overflowed. She was insensate with grief like she’d never known. Even seeing the painful destinies of the unborn she helped bring into the world couldn’t compare. She couldn’t take her eyes off Mal’s mangled throat and, worse still, his expression that so resembled peace that she almost believed he was destined to be accepted back into the Great Dragon’s fold, a soul forgiven no matter its sins. But that was the expression of a man who’d stopped fighting. He was her warrior, her Giva, her only love.
He couldn’t stop fighting, and neither did she when she snarled and kicked Tallis. A few of her desperate swings connected with skin and bone. He grunted, cursing as ferociously as she did—a different kind of comfort than what Kavya offered.
Every Dragon King who remained in that crumbling power station was mourning. They all knew what Mal’s death would mean.
She was heartsick as Nynn’s bubble of energy grew and grew. For the first time, Avyi knew one of her surest predictions was not going to come true. It was betrayal upon betrayal. Her heart was cracking open for more than the death of Malnefoley. What would become of their people?
And who would she be after he was gone? There was nothing about herself she could ever trust again. She’d be a madwoman possessed by visions she couldn’t trust. They might as well throw her in a fathomless pit and seal it with a metal lid to block out the sun. There, she wouldn’t be able to spread her poisonous hope to anyone else.
Slowly, as Nynn began to lose reality in favor of a trancelike swaying, the others backed away from Mal’s motionless body.
Tallis pulled Kavya to a distant corner, holding her with his chin tucked against her crown. The other rebels and the freed Dragon Kings took shelter.
He wanted to go out in a blaze, burned like the Great Dragon after it had given birth to the Five Clans before diving back into the fiery Chasm of its own birth. But fire wouldn’t kill Mal. He was still a Dragon King, after all. Only beheading him—charred and bloodless—would finish the job. Only beheading him would put him out of abject misery.
Avyi would be the one to do it.
Nynn moaned. Leto waved Avyi away. “Go! You can’t survive this!”
“And you?”
He kissed Nynn’s neck and whispered something in her ear, something Avyi would never know. Nynn’s eyes rolled shut. Leto let her go, then grabbed Avyi’s free hand. He pulled her into a crevice along the arena wall. “I hated you once,” he said roughly. “And I sure as fuck didn’t trust you. Now … I’m sorry. This is an end for us. But you can’t believe it’s the end. None of us can, or we might as well drop to the ground and wait for time or the humans to take us. I won’t believe that. I won’t let that happen to me or Nynn or our baby.”
“Baby?” Avyi whispered, chilled to her marrow.
“Nynn is expecting.” Whatever joy he possessed was tempered by the solemnity of the moment. “I don’t know …” He swallowed thickly. He smelled of sweat and blood—that of the Cage warrior he’d been raised from birth to become, only to be freed by Nynn’s love and devotion. “I don’t know what this will do to her or the babe. But she’s doing it for him. Any of us would if we could.”