Leto abruptly let her go and circled the Cage with a shout of victory, even more powerful than the intimidating growl he’d postured to the crowd before the match. Every step was powerful, his thighs taut. His back was arrogantly straight. His outthrust chest was accentuated even more because of that beautifully crafted armor. He swung the mace in quick, deadly arcs.
Show-off. But Nynn soaked up every minute, as did Leto’s audience.
Only when he turned, met Nynn’s eyes, and flung the mace aside did she shiver in what could only be described as anticipation. He strode toward her and positioned his body within inches of hers. “You’re not wrong. You’re no longer my neophyte. But you will be mine. Tonight.”
“What happened to that arrogant crap about how I’d come to you?”
They stared at one another. That tingle of something otherworldly and profound glimmered between their eyes. Nynn wanted to blink if only to clear her senses, but the sensations were too seductive.
“Does it really matter who chooses whom?” Pitched so low, beneath the diminishing applause, Leto’s voice was an earthquake ready to rip her open. “We’re both victors.”
“And if I choose someone else?”
Rather than continue his posturing menace—much better suited to those who wagered on his prowess and adored his blunt ferocity—he licked his lower lip. “Then I’ll convince you otherwise. Or I’ll convince your choice that you’re not worth fighting me for.”
“But I am. I am worth fighting for.”
She said it with as much assurance as she’d ever known.
Leto’s nostrils flared on a long, deep inhale. The muscles on either side of his jaw bunched, with radiated movement up to his temples, to his tattoo. “Yes.”
That moment fled, like clinging to smoke and expecting it to hold her in return. Nynn followed him out of the Cage. Her body and her mind felt equally abused. She was still buzzing with an indescribable tingle of violence. If she wanted anything from Leto of Garnis, it was to strip his armor and become combatants of another sort. She wanted to get rid of her edginess, rid of the confusion that kept her from thinking clearly.
She exited the Cage just in time to see Leto and the Old Man squaring off. Before, she’d seen only deference from Leto when talking with the head of the Aster family. “Keep him away from her,” Leto said with unmistakable force. “Feel free to ask him why.”
The skeletal man’s smile never faltered. Never even changed shape. “You overstep.”
“You brought this on us all.”
Leto didn’t even wait for the Old Man’s dismissal; he simply turned and walked out of the arena. Now Nynn was not only confused but also bereft of her partner in this madness. Although she followed him, she was unable to refrain from looking back toward the Asters’ patriarch. That smile remained. Her skin shivered up her arms and down her spin.
Keep him away from her.
Nothing about the fight compared to the way her brain fractured on the most random thoughts.
“Trouble in paradise,” came a voice at her shoulder.
Nynn found the near-inseparable pair, Hark and Silence, suited up for their match. Only once had she fought Hark. He had a don’t-give-a-damn demeanor that he backed up with canny, daredevil tricks. Nynn had been in the complex for only three or four days when she’d met Hark in the practice Cage. He hadn’t even needed to borrow her gift in order to leave her busted and humiliated. His brown hair was shot through with blond streaks that seemed out of place in their underground world. As if he . . . belonged on a beach. A beach. The word sounded unfamiliar in her mind, but she knew it was right.
Silence whispered something in his ear and he laughed. He had a big laugh and a big smile and a really big nighnor in his right hand. The left he wrapped around Silence’s trim waist, as if the woman might actually require protection of any kind. Ever.
“Tell me,” Hark said. “Since you’re in a unique position of knowledge.”
“Unique?”
Hark’s smile was infectious. She might’ve been sucked into his good humor had she been in a less cataclysmic mood. “You’ve spent more time with the grand Leto of Garnis than anyone. No one can remember a neophyte thriving so well under his tutelage.”
That knowledge sank in slowly, like water eroding stone with only drip after drip.
Leto. Neophyte. Survive. Thrive.
“Mostly,” he continued, “they’re made ready to fight and do well to hold their own. You seem to have become his special project. That means you’re unique. And that means, as his most doted student, I’m curious . . . Have you ever seen him so defiant? Toward the Old Man?”
Nynn swallowed back her reply. She’d registered the strangeness of it. On some level, she understood that it had to do with her. These two warriors, with their bizarre whispers—Hark’s disarming smile, which was almost a weapon of its own, and Silence’s cool, appraising stillness—they knew something she did not. She hated them for their mockery.
“Good hunting,” she managed to say.
Another whisper between them. Another private smile. Their names were announced and they turned toward the Cage. Hark tipped two fingers to his brow, as if in salute. Nynn wanted her collar disarmed so she could fry them both.
Despite her disorientation and a labyrinth of hallways, she searched until she found the weapons room. Leto was standing with his back to the door, which bothered her more than she could say. He was not a man to turn his back on any potential threat. That warriors such as Hellix and those from the other cartels were still within the complex should’ve been enough to keep him on guard. Instead, he’d placed both hands on the wall, as if propping it up. His head was bowed. Had she not recognized the armor and his distinctive tattoo, she would’ve thought her initial assessment wrong.
Yet . . . he was Leto.
“Which blade should I have chosen?” she asked quietly. Everything sounded muted once beyond the din of the arena.
“The gilt-edged one.”
“Why?”
He pushed away from the wall and retrieved the dagger in question. “This one is thin enough to be wielded as a whip—slicing rather than hacking.”
“What lesson was I supposed to learn from picking the wrong one? Weren’t the odds bad enough already?”
Leto swept the blade. The air parted in a swish of sound, as if molecules could be split as easily as skin. “Now you know you can win even when conditions aren’t perfect.”
“Oh, because you were perfectly happy with being chained together. I saw your frustration.”
“That wasn’t frustration.” He tossed the weapon aside so that it slid beneath a metal bench. “That was humiliation.”
“We won.”
“Yes.”
She swallowed. She inhaled. She prepared to ask the next question as if swords and shields would be drawn. “What did you say to the Old Man? You looked . . . defiant.”
“I will not be chained again.”
That didn’t answer her question. It was a statement, as if he’d made a decision.
Keep him away from her.
What had he meant?
She dared reach up to touch his collar, although she risked her hand in doing so. Danger pulsed off him like the explosive potential of gasoline. He might combust at any moment, and she had no idea what would set him off. Were his sexual promises in the Cage truthful? At the moment, those promises were the best she could hope for.
That made her situation sound passive. She wanted him to honor those blunt, hard-edged promises. Her body was keyed up, desperate, starved in ways she’d never know.
For now, she only touched his collar. “You’ve been chained for a very long time. I would’ve thought your senses acute enough to know that. To feel the weight on your neck. To recognize the satisfaction of walking into a Cage and feeling these monstrous devices set us free.” The metal was warmed by the heat that pulsed from his majestic body. Her fingertips prickled. She didn’t touch skin, but she touched the one
thing that had been with him nearly as long. “Leto of Garnis, what would you be without this?”
His eyes blanked. No emotion there. No connection. “I’d be a better Cage warrior.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Leto had hoped that returning home would erase how unsettling the match had been—before, during, and after. The return should’ve been simple. Drink golish. Pick a woman from among the selection kept by the Asters for just that purpose. Release this grinding tension.
He could rely on none of those easy routines. First, he had Nynn’s initiation ceremony to attend. Then . . . he had Nynn. He’d boasted that she would come to him, but he didn’t trust his judgment regarding the woman. After all, he’d never spoken to the Old Man as he had after the match. Yet what he’d said was vital. Whatever Ulia had done to Nynn’s mind would not last if Dr. Aster continued to test the boundaries of the telepathic block. Instinct alone had caused Nynn to draw her weapon against the man. Any further contact might snap her mind in two.
That prospect shouldn’t bother Leto on a personal level. He had been tasked with helping Nynn survive for three matches. This was one down. Two more to go. The thought of Nynn’s sanity fracturing in the process added weight to his burdens.
Their return to the dorms was heralded with raucous shouts and congratulations. Leto accepted the well-wishes of his fellow warriors, and from those who hadn’t been chosen for the evening’s contest. Silence and Hark had won their match, as had Hellix and Fam. Their gloating made Leto’s teeth clench together.
Through the narrow corridor leading to the dorms, they filed into a common area where the golish was already flowing freely. Leto hadn’t shed his armor. He wouldn’t until he stripped naked that evening and cleaned himself in his quarters. Some of the men washed each other in the communal baths, a practice that held no interest for Leto.
Wearing his armor was a sound choice, rather than habit. He was uncomfortably aware of his body’s reaction to the thought of Nynn, let alone seeing her enter the common room. The lights were softer here, more inviting—less like the industrial wing inhabited by the humans. This was a space for lounging in the few moments when warriors were free to relax.
She had cleaned and changed into a clean set of her silk-lined, leather training clothes. Her short blond hair gleamed, and tiny droplets of water clung to individual strands. He tried to remember the feel of her long tresses between his fingers—the beautiful hair he’d cut out of necessity—but his blasted senses failed him.
That she had washed and found a spare set of clothes meant someone had shown her to her newly appointed dorm. She would still be his responsibility, but not to the same degree. She would be a Cage warrior who determined her own regimen and sparred with whom she chose. He would no longer dictate every waking and sleeping hour.
Leto sat up from the bench and tunneled his fingers across his freshly buzzed scalp. He shouldn’t care, shouldn’t want, shouldn’t be so Dragon-damned tormented.
This had to stop.
“Congratulations, Nynn of Tigony,” he said.
The room quieted at the sound of his voice. He had enjoyed that influence for nearly two decades. Only now, when faced with the one person who should’ve ranked lowest of their group, did he feel his power slip. Nynn was looking at him, with eyes so pale that her irises were more like light than color. Her freckles added depth and beauty to golden skin, while the confidence she wore across her shoulders and up her spine said what no words needed to express.
She had won.
“I think we’re all eager to get on with your initiation. Not since Hark’s arrival have we welcomed one into our own.”
Nynn’s expression was placid, despite the fierce burn in her eyes. She was practically laughing at him. He could tell. The power he had taken for granted was being stolen, minute by minute, by a fierce woman who made him feel. He hadn’t felt for years.
“Be careful what you wish for.” Hark sat hip to hip with Silence. He wore a short-sleeved shirt—some holdover from the clothes he’d brought with him upon volunteering to fight. Silence absently stroked her thumb over a crescent-shaped scar on Hark’s inner arm. Leto had never given much thought as to why the man served the Asters, but now he knew. The crescent was evidence of the Sath bonding tradition known as the Ritual of Thorns. Not to pay debts or to earn favors, Hark had come belowground to be with his wife.
“Why is that?” Nynn asked, jarring Leto’s thoughts.
“Initiation is no pretty process,” Hark said. “My screams may have been a tad less than manly. Maybe just a bit. I try to be as studly as the rest of these meatheads, but of course, there’s no keeping up with so much testosterone. I have to taunt them with the fact I’m getting laid more than once a month.”
Silence sighed softly, as if vexed by his chatter.
“I haven’t wished for any of this.” Nynn lifted her chin and stared the jester down. “But now it is my privilege. My right.”
“This is never going to work,” Hark muttered to Silence. He played with two shards of black rock as if they were three-dimensional puzzle pieces. “You know that, right? It’s impossible.” Only when she rolled her eyes and took the pieces did Hark return to Nynn. “Anyway, wanting it or not doesn’t mean it won’t hurt. ’Cuz that thing is a bloody bitch.”
Lamot, another elder who’d retired from the Cages in the good grace of the Asters, arrived with his equipment. Nynn’s confident expression wavered only once, as she glanced toward Leto. He met her where Lamot prepared the needle and ink.
“I have a tattoo.” Leto could not remember the feel of her silken hair in his hands, but he would never forget her fingertips along his scalp. “Now you’ll have one, too. The emblem of the Asters.”
“Where?”
“Your choice.”
She raised her brows to his shorn hair. “Didn’t that hurt?”
Her eyes added to that unfinished sentence. Didn’t that hurt . . . considering your gift?
“Hark didn’t lie. It will hurt. Our physiology means it’s a more aggressive process than with humans. More like scarification, infused with ink.”
“And this is the reward I get for having flattened Weil?”
“Lucky shot, neophyte,” came Weil’s reply.
Nynn turned deadly cold eyes on her. “A win’s a win.”
The woman cleared her throat and returned to a conversation she may or may not have been having with Fam.
“Choose.” Lamot motioned to his special chair, which was outfitted with various restraints and clasps. “Then sit.”
She eyed the chair with obvious trepidation, but she didn’t hesitate in her choice. “My shoulder blade. Left. Armor won’t conceal it.”
Lamot nodded. As Nynn sat, he set about fastening her into a position where her upper body was immobilized. Leto knelt before her. He took her hand. “You deserve this. Breathe into the pain. Take it into yourself. You’ve already done and survived worse.”
Keep this woman safe.
Ulia, that twice-evil Indranan witch, had told him that. He wanted to set it aside as the strange babble of a mad meddler, but Leto could not. A strengthening part of him didn’t want to set it aside.
One day, she would be released from her captivity. He harbored no further doubts that she could and would survive another eleven months and regain custody of her son. When that day came, she would be released from the mental block that kept her sanity intact and her gift contained. When she awoke, she would find her golden skin marred with yet another scar bestowed by the Asters—their serpent on her shoulder.
He moved to stand.
She grasped his wrist. “Don’t. Stay.”
“I will. Breathe with you, remember?”
Leto no longer cared who heard or what they made of his relationship with his neophyte. No, not neophyte. She was his protégé now. His partner. That meant keeping her safe. That meant keeping her safe from a future where the Asters would scar her forever. He remained proud to wear the symbol of the
ir house, but Nynn would take a blade to her own skin rather than live with their brand.
He gave her hand another squeeze before pulling free of her grip. As Lamot readied the soldering gun and well of ink, Leto whispered in the man’s ear. “Not a serpent. Give her the mark of the Dragon.”
TWENTY-ONE
Leto held a bottle of golish to her lips, but Nynn refused another drink. She could endure the pain more than she could endure the embarrassment of vomiting in front of her new comrades. The strong drink would’ve knocked a human being unconscious after a few ounces, but for Nynn, for a Dragon King—they needed to drink it like water before feeling the numbing effects. The warm withdrawal from her body began at her toes and crept upward. Her shoulder blade would be among the last parts of her body to be anesthetized.
“I want to be awake,” she said to Leto, who knelt before her. The harsh lines of his face had not eased since their exit from the Cage. Deeper in his eyes, however, she found something like concern. He looked on her as if nothing mattered more than ensuring that she would not only survive, but become stronger for it.
Again.
She was bent over a wide, flat attachment to the front of the chair, as if leaning over the top of a taller, rounded student desk like . . . “Jack . . . ?” Nynn mumbled.
The first burn of the cauterizing needle scattered thought. She bit her lower lip until she tasted blood, and she sucked air through her nose. She would not cry out. Only hours before, Nynn had been chained to Leto and they had both emerged victorious. There was no place for weakness in their world.
That didn’t mean the pain was easy to absorb. She flinched against it. Her body wanted to be in charge. No wonder Lamot had strapped her to the strange chair. Those who held any reservations about receiving the mark of their fellow warriors would’ve fled with the first touch of the stinging needle.
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