Caged Warrior

by Lindsey Piper

  “Hm?”

  He cleared his throat. “After the match, you said that you’d killed your mother.”

  Old pains seized her heart. She wanted to curl into a ball and curl and curl until she couldn’t be burned by flame. It had been banked for years, but if she let it, her mind could become that long-ago house on fire.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know when else to ask about it. Tomorrow, there’s no telling, Nynn.”

  “I know.” She inhaled his salty, masculine scent. She breathed him again, knowing she was the perfume that didn’t smell quite like Leto. “I’m half Pendray,” she said, not knowing where else to begin the tale.

  Leto made some noise in his throat. “Makes sense now. Freckles like them. Ears a little pointed at the top. And your gift, a blend of rage and electricity.”

  “That’s what I’ve assumed, too. Well, since finding out the truth of it.” She shifted against his side, glad for his protection. “My mother was Leoki of Tigony. She never revealed my father’s identity, afraid our clan would punish him. When she refused, she was banished. I was left in Mal’s care.”

  “Mal?”

  “Malnefoley.”

  Leto chuckled softly. “I suppose only you can refer to the Giva by such an informal name.”

  “Maybe, yes. My mother was his aunt, but she was only five years older. He protected me, and I defended him from those who called him the Usurper. I wasn’t trained in the martial styles for no reason. But I was still an outcast because of my bloodline. I lived a step apart.” She shrugged, adjusting those painful childhood slights. “Eventually my mother returned. Mal made sure she was accepted at the fortress.”

  “The privilege of the Giva?”

  “More like the power of a man coming into his own.” She sighed. Dragon be, this weight on her chest. She never wanted to feel it again. “But my mother was . . . unstable. Whatever she’d endured out in the world had not been kind. Mal was losing the ability to protect her. Things were tenuous enough when . . .”

  Nynn blinked back tears. They were welling inside her, with no other outlet. Telling the rest of the story would make crying inevitable. Leto was still looking at her, his grave features etched with concern and a sympathy she never would’ve thought possible from the great champion of the Asters. Not at first, anyway. Now she knew that he felt a great deal. She took refuge in the comfort he offered wordlessly.

  “You’ve seen what my gift can do. I didn’t know how to control it. The house. Our house, there in the Tigony complex. I was sitting next to my mother on her bed. She had a fever, raving, half lost to the world. Then I was fire. The first explosion of my gift.”

  “You remember it now?”

  “Not . . . entirely. I remember people’s reactions to it. Grief. Accusations. Hatred. But the actual moment the house exploded and she burned?” She shook her head as tears dripped toward the pillow. “Thank the Dragon I don’t remember. When Mal’s personal doctor said she would never recover, she begged to be killed. Mal took the responsibility himself when he wielded a Dragon-forged sword to take her life.”

  Leto petted the tears away, then kissed the corner of her lips. “So when they let some Indranan witch dredge your brain, they hid more than just your gift.”

  Nynn managed to nod, although her neck was stiff and cramping. “They took most memories of my mother. I became Tigony in name only. Blending in with the humans became a better option. I emigrated to the States. Studied art. Fell in love with Caleb. Became a teacher.”

  A sob shook her shoulders, then overcame what remained of her control.

  Leto pulled her into the hollow of his curved shoulders. He held her, even rocked her gently. The words he said in their ancient, Dragon-given tongue were a comfort, even if her tears drowned out some of the words. She’d lost so many versions of her life, then regained them in pieces only to have them taken again. All of those gifts and thefts had led her to the moment when a Cage warrior held her as if he could take her grief into his own warm skin—the Cage warrior who’d taught her how to forge a life of her own.

  The sound of metal scraping into a lock shocked Nynn back to herself. Leto had jumped clear of the bed and grabbed his shorts before she blinked. He threw clothes at her and grabbed a shield and curved sword off his wall. Perhaps he’d been awarded them as prizes after some victory or another, but he held them now like a man ready to defend his home.

  Maybe he was, because the lock began to turn.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  If anything proved how weak he was in the scheme of the Asters’ cartel, Leto knew it the moment his privacy was invaded by three armed guards. The shield and sword he hefted were no better than toys when the intruders leveled cattle prods and rifles loaded with napalm bullets. Without his gift, Leto was a medieval knight against an army from the future.

  “Nynn of Tigony,” said one of the helmeted men. “You’re coming with us.”

  “Where—?”

  The man leveled his prod at her as she yanked her tank top into place. “No talking.”

  Another of the guards gestured to the armaments Leto had snatched off the wall. “Put those down.”

  All this time, Leto had believed he was worth more. Now he was staring at faceless human opponents who aimed rifles at his bare chest. Faceless humans had come to take Nynn away.

  Without his collar, his decision would’ve been simple. Take them out. Three guards laid out on the ground. With it, however, he needed to gauge the outcome. He couldn’t be sure that he’d incapacitate the guards before one of them hurt the woman he loved.

  The woman I love.

  Dragon damn, that realization had felt so right when holding her close. It had become a weakness. He would never recover from the pain of losing her.

  That won’t happen.

  Leto dropped and did a somersault. He thrust his shield between Nynn and the guard holding the prod. Electricity sparked off bronze and jolted up his arm. He swung the sword low and took the guard out at the knees. The crunch of breaking bones was muffled by plastic-bonded armor. Behind his helmet, the guard’s scream was muffled, too.

  Angered beyond words, Leto used the language of violence he’d spoken since he was a child. He thrust the shield into Nynn’s hands and snatched up the fallen prod. Swirling it like Weil did with her lance, he jammed it into the second guard’s stomach. A buzzing, gurgling sound was followed by the stench of singed plastic.

  Two napalm bullets fired. That premonition feeling he experienced on occasion in the Cages showed him where to escape the trajectory of the bullets. He used sword and prod in a one-two attack against the final guard. Another bullet fired into the ceiling. Its lasting, unnatural green glowed until chunks of concrete rained down.

  Leto turned to search for the other two bullets. One sizzled in the middle of the pillow he and Nynn had shared. The other burned in a pool of green dead center of the shield.

  He ripped the shield away before the bullet ate through the bronze. Nynn leapt at him with a fierce shriek. Leto’s reflexes and his Dragon-damned collar saved him from taking a knife to his throat. He used momentum to roll with her until he lay stretched over her body.

  “You really wanted to keep that shield.”

  She smacked him across the face. “I didn’t know it was you!”

  “And this?” He yanked the knife from her hand.

  “Guard’s boot,” she said, nodding toward the first man fallen. “Leto, what the fuck is this about?”

  He pulled her to her feet. Efficiently, she grabbed her training gear and strapped it on. Silk-lined leather wasn’t the same as armor, but it would serve. The set of armor he retrieved from the wall had been his prize after the last Grievance. Yeta had miscarried three months later, so he’d never worn it in combat. Tainted. Now it was nothing more than a tool. The gilt trim and onyx inlay may as well have been plain steel.

  An alarm sounded.

  Nynn flinched mid-motion as she gripped two weapons—the guard’s kni
fe and Leto’s ceremonial sword. She met his eyes, then tossed him the sword. “Too heavy for me,” she said with a tight grin.

  “You’re learning, neophyte.”

  “You really want your ass singed.”

  “Not particularly.” He picked up the napalm rifle and checked the ammunition. Seven left.

  “You’re a Cage warrior and you’re amazing—but that looks completely wrong in your hands.”

  “It’s because I’m a Cage warrior and I’m amazing,” he said tightly. “This lonayíp toy is for cowards.”

  “Then you’re holding it why?”

  “Because we’ll be facing off against other cowards.” He nodded toward the first guard. “Can you handle the prod, too?”

  She’d already stripped an ankle scabbard and tightened it around her thigh. Knife stowed, she took up the prod and accepted the smallest shield from his wall of trophies. At least the Asters had been trusting enough in his subservience to allow him that. He’d walked around without manacles and with weapons on his wall because they’d believed him so neatly broken.

  “How many charges does this thing have?” Nynn adjusted her grip on the prod so that her thumb rested on the trigger.

  “I’ve only ever seen it used once at a time. No one gets up afterward.”

  The alarm continued to cleave the air. It was all Leto could do to find a balance between using his senses and protecting them from damage. A Dragon King could lose a limb and never grow it back. He didn’t want to test whether losing his hearing could be permanent.

  Yet he could always rely on his speed—nearly as powerful as within the Cages. He pinned Hark to the wall with a rifle before even registering the man’s presence.

  “What in the Dragon’s name is going on?” Hark choked out.

  “I’d ask the same of you. Wasn’t this part of your plan?”

  Hark coughed. “What plan would possibly involve you killing three guards and setting off alarms?”

  “You and Silence wanted a diversion so you could deactivate the collars. This looks a lot like a diversion.”

  “If this was our doing, I’d be holding her hand and we’d be getting the fuck out of here.”

  “Where is she?” asked Nynn.

  “Our room, probably grabbing our packs. Do you have cold weather clothing?” At Leto’s blink of confusion, Hark rolled his eyes. “We didn’t plan this, but we can use it. Are you coming or not?”

  “Really?” Nynn was frowning. “You and Silence planned an escape?”

  Silence snuck behind her and grasped Nynn’s head with her hooked forearm. The woman pressed the tip of a petite dagger at the soft juncture between Nynn’s jaw and ear.

  “For six months,” Silence whispered. “Let him go, Leto.”

  Despite his renewed surprise at the woman’s voice, Leto assessed her posture. He knew her affection for Hark and read the determination in her black eyes. Leto backed away. Hark doubled over to rest his hands on his thighs, coughing the pressure out of his abdomen.

  Leto tightened the last strap of his armor. “We’ll need another name for you now.”

  Silence only shrugged and released Nynn.

  “I told you, it should be Patience,” Hark said. “You’re lucky she likes you both. Normally she would’ve cut rather than turn all civil.” Then he spoke directly to her in what must’ve been some Sath code—or maybe one they’d devised together.

  She nodded.

  Hark grinned as if they’d agreed to a friendly sparring match. “Now, unless you’re excessively fond of the things, it’s time to take off these Dragon-damned collars.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  After taking down additional guards, Nynn and the others reached the training Cage arena. Hark carried two large duffels while Silence and Leto collected what weapons they could. In a telling gesture, Leto winced and rubbed one ear with the back of his hand. The alarm must be killing him, even with the collar still active and in place.

  The pair was likely insane—some sort of Sath madness—only adding gasoline to a fiery situation. Nynn wanted to be the one wielding the lighter fluid and matches. That meant she needed to take a chance on Silence and Hark. If they could get free of the dampening field, if they could escape the complex, if they could find her son . . .

  And if Pell was being held in the labs, they would find her, too.

  During the night, during the last few months, she and Leto had fused. That was the only way she could explain why the safety of his sister now ranked with saving Jack.

  With a ring of stolen keys, Hark locked the arena door behind them. “The others need to stay out of here when we make with the big bang. If this works, they can fight their way free.”

  From her duffel, Silence produced a small black dragon idol. The tiny hairs on the backs of Nynn’s hands stood. Why should a little figurine produce such a visceral reaction?

  “Hark was playing with that during my initiation,” Nynn said. “It was in two pieces.”

  Silence nodded, turned her around, and placed the idol at the back of the collar. With a snap and a strange, rusty groan, the steel dropped away. Nynn jumped at the chance to touch her own skin, which was raw in the center and calloused at the edges.

  Then came a flood. Unchecked, her gift surged to life under her skin, even more powerfully than in the Cages. It seemed that even in providing a measure of freedom to fight as Dragon Kings, the Asters had discovered a way to keep them small.

  “Leto,” she said, catching his gaze. “You’re going to love this.”

  He submitted to Silence as she fit the tail of the dragon idol into the hated lock. “Where did you get that? You’ve been hiding it?”

  Hark stood beside his woman. “Half of it was here. Silence found it. Isn’t that cool? Like any old rock—although, granted, we had an inside track on where to look. Don’t ask. You wouldn’t believe us if we told you. The other half came with me from Hong Kong. It’s not just a city of hot prostitutes and really, really high buildings.”

  While Silence spirited the idol into the folds of her armor, Hark sobered in that unnerving way of his, turning his jester switch from on to off. “So yes, we’ve hidden it. And we waited.”

  “Dragon-damned Sath with your patience.”

  “See? Patience. You’re catching on. We have thousands of years of experience keeping our mouths shut. Something of a clan specialty.” He grinned. “Although I didn’t get the official rule book.”

  The collar unsnapped and dropped with a metallic thud. Leto gasped, then groaned. He wrapped his hands around the column of his throat. A manic beauty filled his chocolate eyes. Nynn had seen that expression when he’d pressed her body into the mattress and strove toward satisfaction, finally overtaken by the strength of his release.

  He looked to the ceiling and roared an unnamable pain. “Twenty years!”

  While Silence and Hark unlocked one another, Nynn found her lover and caught his face between her hands. He was inhaling short, heavy breaths, his face distorted by anguish.

  “I did everything they demanded and more,” he rasped. “They kept this from me.”

  Nynn nodded. “They did. Now it’s time to dig those graves.”

  They stared at one another. A bright golden glow gathered between their faces. It had happened before, but never like this. They generated their own energy. Nynn reached to touch it. Nothing. It was entirely pure. She could see individual molecules as they shivered with unspent potential.

  “That’s it. Living gold.” Hark sounded awed. “That’s what we were waiting for.”

  When Nynn blinked away her amazement, she found the couple staring at her and Leto.

  “What is it?” Nynn thought her head should hurt. How could something so potent be without consequences? Yet she felt stronger than ever, and closer to Leto—joined in new, inexplicable ways.

  Hark slugged Leto on the shoulder, which would’ve been a very bad idea under other circumstances. “Come back to us, my friend.” He eyed the ceiling where th
e unseen alarms continued to blare. “It’s gotta be hell, but we need you.”

  Silence led Nynn by the hand until they stood at a far corner. Her eyes were dark marbles, like the unblinking gaze of a raven. “Weakest right there.”

  It was like hearing a cat start talking.

  “Weakest?”

  The clamor of metal caught her attention. Leto was racing in seemingly haphazard directions, so fast that her eyes couldn’t follow. Was he testing his powers, or being overwhelmed by them?

  “Leto! We need you!”

  He snapped to her side. A huge, unbelievable grin took ten years off his face. The care and grim thoughts were momentarily lifted. His throat was a column of scars and overlapping callouses. He would never be rid of that mark, nor his tattoo. Perhaps having his powers in full—not returned, but for the first time—would be compensation.

  “Okay, folks, we have one shot,” Hark said. “And even this is . . . well, let’s say I’d like to get out of this alive, but I’m not holding my breath.”

  What he explained was ridiculous. Ludicrous. None of it was possible, and yet Nynn felt deep inside that this was a strange destiny. That four Dragon Kings with such compatible skills could come together, work together. She could almost feel the tattoo on her shoulder buzzing with excited approval.

  “Too bad we don’t have an Indranan with us,” she said. “I’m half Pendray. The Dragon would be pleased by the cooperation of all Five Clans.”

  Don’t be so sure.

  Nynn and the other two stared at Leto. He’d spoken right into their minds.

  He appeared almost embarrassed. “I’ve always felt it.” His words were halting. “I could almost see what an opponent was going to do before it happened. The only Dragon Kings who can fight like that are the Indranan.”

  “The Five Clans it is, then. That’ll be nice and all kumbaya.” Hark flicked a glance at the door. “We’ll sort family trees later.”

  “Yes.” Nynn took Leto’s hand. “Let’s do this. Burn it down.”

  TWENTY-NINE