Dragon's Honor (The Dragon Corps Series Book 1)

by Michaela Kendrick

  “Stand here.” They deposited Cade at the middle of one row as a series of commands were yelled from one side of the room. “You know what you’re supposed to do? They trained you, right?”

  “What is this place?” They were already reaching out for the machinery on the lines, taking one piece from the buckets at their side and twisting it onto the hot metal that emerged from the tunnels at the end of the room.

  “Assembly line,” one of them said impatiently. “Move. We’ve still got quota to make. Which district are you from?”

  “I’m from Gendir.” The words came out of his mouth while his mind, still working at what felt like one-quarter speed, caught up too late for him to suggest that this was all the wrong set of questions.

  There was a moment of silence among those still close enough to hear.

  “The planet?” one of them asked at last.

  “Yes.” He looked around at them. This was a mistake, all of it. “I’m…” Caution took hold of him at last, and he leaned close to one of them, marking the man’s eyes. No deception there. “I’m not supposed to be here,” Cade said, his voice low. “I have to get out.” Aryn. He had to get to Aryn.

  God alone knew where he was now, though. He closed his eyes. What godforsaken corner of space had Ellian sent him to? Somewhere close, or more of him would have healed, but if they’d put him in stasis…

  No way to know. He just had to get to a spaceport and back to Ymir.

  “Hey!” The call came from behind him and a blow drove Cade forward onto the moving belt. “Get moving!”

  He didn’t think. His muscles hurt, but instinct didn’t care about that. He shoved himself back, already turning, an elbow catching the man behind him in the temple. The guy went down like a sack of bricks and Cade staggered sideways, trying to keep his balance as his head spun. His motions were too slow. How much blood had he lost?

  Pain exploded through him the next moment, a buzz in his ears as his body hit the floor. He could taste metal and dust and his muscles were seizing. Boots appeared in his vision and a kick was directed at his midsection. Blows rained down, and he managed to take a deep breath, sinking away and down. This wasn’t Ellian, speaking of Aryn—this was just pain. This was pain for the sake of pain. That, he’d been trained to leave behind him.

  Yelling caught his ears. The unique tenor of threats, and the pleading of the ones next to him. Hands picked him up and Cade wanted to tell them not to bother. He was on the edge, his head spinning and his heart slowing. He was supposed to be dead, anyway. He could just lie here… But either the words didn’t make it out of his mouth, or no one listened. He was propped back up on the edge of the machine.

  “You have to move,” one of them whispered. “They’ve increased quota.”

  “Tell him to hurry it up,” one voice said, unfriendly. “We can’t do his work, too.”

  “Shut up.” The voice was female and young, but the others fell silent at the authority in it. Small hands reached into Cade’s view. “Watch me. You take the cap here, and screw it on like this, then drop the combination into the hole by your feet. Got it?”

  Cade looked up at her, and her grey eyes were so urgent that his request for them just to let him die froze on his lips. He found it in him to nod and picked up a piece of metal, hissing as the hot metal seared at the cuts on his skin. His right wrist, poking out of a too-short sleeve, was red and raw where he had yanked it free of the ropes.

  “There you go,” the woman said. “As quickly as you can. They’re still watching.”

  Cade nodded, keeping the motion as small as he could. Pick up, twist, drop. Pick up, twist, drop. Steam hissing and dust heavy in the air. His eyes were burning.

  “What happened to you?” the woman asked finally. There was genuine sympathy in her tone. When Cade looked up, her look said that he had very bad luck, indeed, to end up in whatever this place was.

  Cade spent a moment trying to decide how to answer that. His hands were moving automatically now, but his knees were shaking and he could taste blood in his mouth.

  “Tortured,” he said finally.

  “And then they sold you here? Someone must really hate you.”

  The shapes around him nodded.

  “You could say that.” Cade allowed a bitter smile to touch his lips. His fingers fumbled on one of the pieces and it dropped to the ground. He hissed with pain as he tried to kneel and find it in the dark.

  “You! You.”

  “Oh, just let him be.” The woman’s voice was suddenly sharp. “We’re running ahead on this line.”

  There was a tense silence while Cade’s useless fingers scrabbled for the piece and the people around him waited for the guard’s response.

  “Fine,” the man said at last. “But one more bit of trouble out of him—”

  “There won’t be any more trouble,” the woman promised. Her voice was shaking a little, but she stood her ground.

  “Good.” The voice retreated.

  The piece was wedged between two support struts. Cade scrabbled for it and yanked it free, examining it as he pulled it out. Domed, small, it had two tiny openings on the side for…something. When he flipped it over, there was a tiny place that looked like it would hold a bottle.

  “Hey, you.” The woman ducked under the table. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” Cade pulled himself back up on the other side of the belt. “Look, where the hell am I?”

  “The mines.” She shook her head impatiently. “Ymir.”

  “What?” His head swam. “I’m on Ymir? I’m still on Ymir?” Hope flared, contradictory.

  “What do you mean, still on—” She broke off. “You said you were from Gendir.”

  “Originally. I’m—I came here with…” He shook his head. “Listen to me, I need to get out. There’s someone I need to get away from the Warlord.”

  “Yeah, all of us.” Her voice was suddenly unfriendly.

  “No. Her name is Aryn, she’s married to a man named Ellian Pallas.” He leaned close to hiss the words. “The Warlord took her. That’s part of what happened to me, I was her bodyguard.”

  “Ellian Pallas is the warlord’s armorer,” a voice said. “We’re not helping his wife.”

  “You don’t understand, she’s from here.”

  Their looks said that this was even worse, and Cade scrambled to recover.

  “Listen to me, she persuaded her husband to stop selling weapons to the Warlord, do you understand? And the Warlord took her hostage to persuade him to start again.” He had the sense, at least, not to mention that Ellian was not particularly likely to be influenced by this. Whatever the man was planning, getting Aryn out was Cade’s first priority. “I have to get to her. Do you have any passageways, any way to contact the resistance?” Cade asked them urgently.

  At once, they all looked away. They could not have been more obvious if they tried, but their eyes were flat.

  “We know nothing,” the woman said flatly.

  “I know I’m unknown to you, but I swear I mean you no harm. I am here to help.”

  None of them actually snorted in disbelief, but they might as well have.

  “It looks like you know something about hand to hand combat,” the woman across from him said quietly, at last. Her hands had not stopped moving, but he had read the flare of tension in the tremor of her arms, the set of her face. The others shot her terrified looks, but she ignored them. When she raised her head at last, there was both terror and hatred in her eyes. “Where does someone get training like that?”

  Ms. Beranek, kindly tell Williams what every citizen on Ymir knew before the Dragons did…

  They knew.

  “Listen to me,” Cade said urgently. “You have to believe me. Find Samara. She’s in Io, she knows who I am, she can get you weapons, you have to—”

  The blow, when it came, was several bodies crashing into his. Fingers were at his neck, over his mouth and nose, a rag soaked in something that made his throat burn, and
the world faded to a blur, and then to blackness as Cade struggled desperately for breath.

  Chapter 32

  The door creaked faintly and Aryn tightened her grip on the gun. She was going to die. She could feel tears starting in her eyes and she needed to have her vision clear, she needed to be quick and move without hesitation. She was going to die, and that was all right, she told herself. Taking down a man like the Warlord was a perfectly good way to go, all things considered.

  But no one came in the door. Aryn narrowed her eyes, her heart thudding wildly. Was the Warlord wearing some sort of invisibility cloak? Was he modified somehow, like all those rumors claimed? Could he become invisible? The back of her neck was prickling. He could be behind her; she could hear scuffling—

  “Aryn?” The voice was low.

  “Talon?” Aryn poked her head around the edge of the desk and bit back a scream as she abruptly came face to face with the man. Her hands shook wildly on the gun and he scrambled to hold them still and remove it. Her eyes darted to the door and back as he pulled her upright. “How did you get in here without me seeing you?”

  “I crawled,” he said, wiping away her dreams of high-tech invisibility cloaks with a single look. “Come on, we have to go. I promised Samara I’d find you and get you out.”

  “We need to find Cade.” Surely he’d agree with that. She’d seen the respect between the two men.

  The look of pity flashed across his face and was gone so quickly that she assumed she’d imagined it.

  “I know where Cade is,” he said simply. He frowned at her. “Is there any way to get the blood off? We don’t want you to look noteworthy.”

  “We have to be quick, the Warlord’s coming back. Is Cade all right?”

  “Mmm. We have a couple of minutes. Better to get away clean. But quickly.” As Aryn spat on her palms and tried to rub her skin clean, the man paced worriedly, examining the Warlord’s gun.

  “I found something,” Aryn told him. She reached out and brought up the computer screen again, swiping until she found the schematics. “This is something he wants help with from Ellian. Maybe it’s the weapon?”

  Talon came to peer at it, his eyes flicking over each measurement and shorthand. His eyebrows drew together.

  “I’ve never seen anything like that.” He pulled something small out of his pocket and took a short series of pictures.

  “Neither have I. I hoped you’d know what it was.”

  “We’ll see if Loki can figure it out—he’s good with machines.” His earpiece buzzed and he looked over at her critically, watching as she scraped her hair back into a semblance of a neat bun. “Good enough, let’s go. The Warlord is close.”

  “And you said Cade is safe?” Aryn clarified.

  “We have to be quiet.”

  “Talon—”

  “Quiet.” He looked over at her, dark eyes holding hers until she fell silent. The command in his voice, she thought with some amusement, might even have caught Ellian.

  They made their way quickly down deserted corridors, and Aryn tried not to let her bare feet so much as scuff on the floor. Talon, for all that he wore heavier armor now, was moving with the same predatory grace Aryn had seen in Cade. She swallowed hard; much as she tried to forget it, she could not stop seeing Cade in her mind’s eye, his fists catching James in the face, the torso. He had crushed the life from the man before James even had a chance to ready his weapon. It was only at that moment that she’d realized what, exactly, Cade was keeping in check. That was the faint shadow of control that she saw in every movement, every glance.

  Her thoughts were interrupted the comm buzzed faintly in Talon’s ear. He grabbed her hand and started running, and at his impatient look, Aryn hiked up her skirts again and ran as fast as she could, pushing her legs until she could no longer feel them, until her heart was about to burst out of her chest.

  They skidded around a corner and through a door in the wall that slammed shut behind them.

  “This way,” a woman’s voice hissed, and Talon pulled Aryn onward, yanking her up when she stumbled.

  She bit back the questions of why they were running. She knew exactly why: the Warlord didn’t want them to leave. It didn’t matter who or what, precisely, was at their heels. And she knew Talon wouldn’t take kindly to plaintive requests for information she did not need. But in the dark, moving blind with only her own breathing in her ears, it was difficult not to beg for assurances that everything would be all right.

  When they came out into the open air, the chilly drizzle was a shock. Aryn looked up at the dark sky as Talon hurried her along. The woman who’d assisted them gave Aryn an impassive once-over and took up the rear, jogging with a rifle in her arms. Like Talon and Cade, she moved as if she was one moment away from killing everything in sight, and the impassive, almost-pleasant look on her face only made the effect more unnerving.

  A truck waited nearby, the old type with treads and gears. Talon evidently knew how to drive these, as he swung ably into the driver’s seat and Aryn clambered into the bed of it with the woman.

  “I’m Aryn,” she said in response to the woman’s more careful appraisal.

  “Nyx,” the woman responded after a moment. She nodded, as if having decided that she liked what she saw, and then, almost casually, reached over and grabbed Aryn by the back of the neck, pulling her down flat onto the bed of the truck. “Lie still. Arms underneath you. There are spotlights.” Quick fingers pulled Aryn’s hair free to hide the pale skin of her bare shoulders.

  Aryn trembled as the truck took off. Nyx lay on one side, peering through her rifle sights at the landmarks moving past outside. Through the jolting and jostling of the truck, the woman hardly seemed to move. Aryn watched her as if she were a living puzzle, as if from the deep blue eyes and slow, steady breaths, she might learn something about Cade, instead. This was what he had been, pure purpose, lingering humor around the eyes, each movement an efficient threat.

  Why had he left the Dragons?

  Shouts rang out periodically and Aryn bit her lip to keep back the very sound of her breath. Footsteps would crunch up to the truck as it slowed, and she heard Talon exchange jovial comments with the Warlord’s soldiers as Nyx lay coiled, ready to strike. Only once did the men get too close, and their deaths were quick, so quick that Aryn had hardly registered Nyx sitting up before she was lying back down again, waiting once more, and the truck had lurched back into motion.

  When they arrived, it was Talon who helped Aryn out of the truck and hurried her up a tumbled slope of shale and rocks. His pace was quick, but now that they were away from the palace, he gave Aryn more time, letting her choose her steps carefully so as not to cut her feet.

  “Where are we?”

  “Right at the edge of Io. You grew up here, right? This is the outer set of tunnels into the bunkers.” Grudging admiration sounded in his voice. “I hadn’t known you all built these yourself.”

  Aryn smiled in memory. It had been an exhausting two years, that, pushing sledges filled with dirt out one way, and bringing them back loaded heavy with cement blocks. The bunkers took shape slowly, with a great many bruised fingers and toes, exhausted miners sleeping in the corner despite the constant noise. She had hardly seen them completed before she left, and she had never used these tunnels.

  “Wait.” She stopped just outside the mouth of the cave.

  “We have to get inside,” Nyx told her, almost gently.

  “Is Cade here?” She swallowed. “I…” Need to see him. Need to see that he’s all right. In the castle, she had been able to focus on the enemies, the Warlord, the trap that was waiting for them. Here, with a little bit of safety, all she could remember was Cade, the way she had last seen him: covered in blood, bruised, broken. She needed to see him now.

  “He’s not here,” Talon said. His face was impassive.

  “Where is he?” She had to get to him.

  “He’s alive, and if you want to stay that way as well, we need to get insid
e.” He propelled her over the threshold and into the shadows.

  “Wait! If he’s not here, I want to go where he is.”

  “We can’t do that right now.” There was no regret in Nyx’s voice, although she was clearly trying to be gentle.

  “Where is he?” Aryn stared Talon down.

  Talon sighed and rubbed his head.

  “We’re doing everything we can,” he assured her.

  “Ellian has him, doesn’t he?” her voice came out, panicked. “You got me out of the palace and I could have helped him, I could have gone back—Ellian’s going to hurt him, don’t you understand?”

  “Ellian doesn’t have him. Anymore.”

  “He’s hurt.” She saw it in his eyes.

  “Yes,” Talon admitted after a moment. “But he’s alive, Aryn, and you know he would want you to be safe.”

  “And I want him to be safe. They nearly killed him, Talon, and they did it because he was protecting me. I can’t sit around while he’s in danger. If Ellian gave him back to the Warlord…”

  “He didn’t. Not…precisely.” Talon’s mouth twisted bitterly. He measured his resolve against Aryn’s, and then rubbed his head again, sighing. “If I tell you, will you promise me that you’ll let me handle the task of getting him out?”

  “Yes.” Her answer was instant. She always knew the right answer.

  “Very well, then. He’s in the mines.”

  His words hit her like a blow. Aryn felt her knees buckle. He was hurt, he couldn’t be in the mines, he wouldn’t last a single day down there. They had to get him out.

  “You’re going for him? Now?”

  “Not now. We need to get the weapons distributed. Aryn, I will take care of it.”

  “You’ll let him die,” she accused. “If it’s Cade or the mission, you’ll let him die.”

  “You have to trust me.”

  “I can’t trust you. I’ll go for him. You handle the mission.”

  “Aryn.” He was at her side at once, looking down into her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”