Caged Warrior

TEN

The next afternoon, Leto and Nynn squared off against two other warriors within the octagonal framework of the practice Cage. A dozen others had gathered to watch, taunt, cheer.

Leto had expected Nynn to see sense, break down, and beg for an Indranan to help unlock the gift she couldn’t control. He’d been a fool to expect her to be that rational.

In two more days, they’d fight in a real match.

Too much of her old self remained. Why did she let resentment and a stubborn, impossible grasp on her human life keep her from embracing her fate? Now it was worse. She knew of her gift’s existence and chose to ignore it. She was a fighter who refused to use the weapons at her disposal, choosing a rock instead of a broadsword.

“Get up!”

“Fuck off!” she spat from all fours.

She could conjure a nasty temper. Nothing wrong with that if she aimed it at the right opponent. Instead, she was going to ruin his chances at keeping Pell safe. He would be humiliated in front of the Old Man and his guests.

“Don’t make me fight you, too.” His shout echoed off the domed ceiling above the practice Cage. “Get back in this! Now!”

She jumped to her feet and readjusted a practiced grip on her dagger. Had her glare been a gift from the Dragon, she could’ve leveled continents.

Leto knew their opponents well. The first was a bulky middle-aged Southern Indranan named Fam. If the man had ever been muscular, his brawn had since turned to fat. Fam had sold himself into service after gunning down three people in a failed robbery. The Asters could protect such criminals from the human justice system. Lately, Leto was surrounded with more thugs and delinquents than true warriors.

Fam was sorely lacking in martial skills. His clan’s unique telepathy, however, made him formidable when the collars were randomly deactivated. Always birthed in sets of two, the Indranan were born with what amounted to half of the Dragon’s gift. Some decided that wasn’t enough. Fam, for example, had killed his twin. Decapitated her. In doing so he stole her abilities to make his gift whole.

The Indranan were known as the Heartless for that reason.

The other opponent was a female Sath known only as Silence. Five years hadn’t been enough time for Leto to determine her real name or her reasons for fighting for the Asters. Only her lover, another Sath named Hark, might know those secrets. He’d descended to the Cages six months earlier, when Silence had returned from a mission to Hong Kong on behalf of the Old Man.

She was called Silence because she never spoke. Fit and slender, her ghostly blond hair and fathomless eyes added to an unnerving aura. The Sath had the ability to mimic the powers of another Dragon King within a certain range, which varied widely. A Sath’s real skill was in picking which foe to mimic.

The collars deactivated.

Dragon-given powers surged back to life. Leto breathed. He gathered the rush of being the warrior he was meant to be.

For but a moment.

He was bombarded by the combined attack of Fam’s mind-scrambling telepathy and the lightning-quick reflexes Silence stole from Leto. She swept around, sliced her shield behind his knees, and used his shoulders as a launching point to jump away.

The small assembly of spectators cheered their approval.

“Thief bitch,” he growled.

Those born to Clan Sath were known as the Thieves. Leto had been raised to believe them parasites, but he couldn’t deny that Silence’s long years of surviving physically stronger opponents had served her well. She never used a traditional weapon, instead using a shield as confidently as Leto wielded his mace.

Although he needed but a moment to recover from Silence’s attack Leto couldn’t see past the white-hot glare Fam painted across his vision. If Nynn’s gasped outrage was any indication, Fam had her in his grips, too. The Sath were limited to one theft at a time, but the limits of an Indranan’s mental meddling were untold and unpredictable. Some were weaklings in mind as well as body. Some were as powerful as devils, digging into the psyche, exploiting unacknowledged weaknesses.

Some were the witches who had locked Nynn’s gift in a mental box.

He didn’t need to see. Although Silence could mimic Leto’s reflexes and speed, she hadn’t refined those gifts for a lifetime as he had. He located both opponents by minuscule clues—the vibrations of footsteps, the warmth of skin heated by exertion, the scent of sweat, leather, and metal. Fam had never been able to obscure all of Leto’s senses at once.

Nynn gasped. “Get the hell out of my head!”

Silence’s hesitation was almost nonexistent, but it was the moment of weakness Leto needed.

He sped around the Cage in blurring fast circles. Every time Silence tried to swipe the serrated edge of her shield, he stopped, changed direction, struck out. He identified Fam by the unique cadence of the man’s breathing; his respiration slowed when he concentrated. To locate calmer respiration within the adrenaline-filled Cage was simple. Leto used his agility to snake the chain of his mace around Fam’s calves. He yanked hard. The man toppled to the padded floor and cheers erupted from the onlookers. Fam only cursed.

Dragon Kings could only be killed one way, but that didn’t mean they were immune to pain.

Leto shook his head to clear the last of Fam’s telepathic interference, just in time to see Silence swing her shield in a glancing swipe across Nynn’s mouth. Blood welled from his neophyte’s split lip.

Although Nynn didn’t stop moving—which was at least proof of her resilience—she only used hand-to-hand techniques. Silence, however, was thriving. Her reflexes and speed, sapped from Leto, outmatched Nynn at every turn.

“Dragon damn you, Nynn,” Leto bellowed. “Use your gift!”

She spewed curses of her own. The warriors surrounding the Cage laughed and hooted. He’d seen her practically explode with concussive force—the promise of undeniable victory.

Then it was too late. The collars reactivated.

Leto growled his frustration. He always felt bereft when his gift was curtailed. His energy, potency, even confidence took a dip. He shrugged off that split second of weakness, knowing the others felt it, too—the cruel switch from gods to the pitiful equivalent of humans.

He hauled the mace’s grip back and away from his body. The chain snapped taut. A quick yank spun Fam onto his back. The ball of the weapon swung in an arc that Leto controlled with long practice. He twirled in a sharp circle. The spiked spherical head slammed dead center of Silence’s shield. She staggered back.

At the corner of his vision, Leto saw Nynn grapple with Fam. The latter was bleeding from his shins and calves. He’d dropped his sickle after Leto’s attack, while Nynn still held her dagger. She didn’t need it now that the collars put her on equal footing. She was quick. Observant. Graceful. The softer, older Indranan man didn’t stand a chance.

The match continued until the stench of sweat was almost too much for Leto’s senses.

Collars off. Collars on. Again and again. Always random. Taunting. Returning and hampering his gifts.

With his powers back in force, he chose another strategy. Not Silence. Not Fam. He attacked Nynn. Their eyes locked just as he swung his mace. A moment in time caught between them. So clearly, he could still see every detail. Her narrowed ice blue eyes and distinctive freckles. Damp honey blond hair streaked across her forehead. He even caught the tiny lines creasing her top lip as she pinched her mouth.

She raised her shield just in time to save her skull from the arcing smash of his mace.

Leto didn’t stop. He kept at her, again, again, trying to provoke her. Only when the mace caught her inner thigh did he relent. She sprawled on the Cage floor among shouts and groans from those gathered to watch.

“Enough!” He signaled that match’s Cage operator to shut it down. The spotlights on each octagonal post dimmed to half intensity. Leto’s collar resumed its damping properties. “Well done,” he said to Fam and Silence. “We’re finished for today.”

Some good-natured heckling accompanied the Indranan as they left the Cage. Fam had a slight limp. He would be in pain for the next few hours, but with a Dragon King’s physiology, he’d be back in fighting form in mere days.

Disgusted, Leto knelt where Nynn lay in a sweaty heap. She clutched her thigh. A massive contusion turned her thigh ugly colors. Welts and spots of blood showed where the mace had bit her skin.

“Idiot.” Her lips curled back in a hateful grimace. “No armor for thighs. Why not?”

“It limits mobility and encourages speed. If you’d done your job and fought back, you’d be standing as victor. Not lying here defeated.”

“You wanted this. To teach me another bathatéi lesson.”

“That was last week. And the week before. Now, I’m pissed. I’m two days on from a Cage match with a piece of lab filth who won’t use her greatest asset.”

“I can’t.”

“You did. And you sure as hell remember it.”

“But control it? Make it happen? No way.” She waved an unsteady hand at her bruised thigh. “This should be proof.”

Leto grabbed her chin with wrenching force. She gasped, struggled. He held fast. Her ragged breathing heated his skin. He could make out every blond lash and each delicate freckle.

“Do you want to lose?”

“I wouldn’t be working this hard if I did.”

“Do you want me to lose?”

“What the hell does that matter?”

“If you do, if you want to show me up, if you seek revenge for these weeks, then I will kill you after the third match.” Her jaw clenched beneath his gouging fingertips. “Do you understand me?”

“What, no ‘lab filth’ on the end of your threat?”

He pried her hands away to get a better look at her wound. Rather than apologize or even assess the need for medical treatment, he raked taut fingers over the damaged skin. Nynn screamed. She whirled her good leg in a well-aimed arc. Leto caught her ankle, threw it away from his body, and felt only disgust. She lay gasping on the Cage floor.

“Nynn of Tigony, I can’t think of an insult strong enough to justify your failure.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Audrey crawled onto all fours. The welt on her thigh throbbed as if on fire. The sharp points of Leto’s mace had cut a stippled pattern in her skin. Just as disturbing was the way she could still feel his blunt fingernails dragging across her marred, trembling muscles.

Fucking sadist. No wonder he was heralded.

Body, mind, soul—stabbing pains became the full measure of her world. Only that wasn’t true. Somewhere beyond these cavernous burrows, her son was in pain. And in a place she had never seen, her husband lay dead in the ground. Who had arranged his funeral? Probably his parents. She’d always told them she was an orphan. Because she was. She’d just never told them that she was an orphan born in shame, high in a fortress in the northern mountains of Greece.

Dragon Kings adapted. That had been the key to their survival for so many thousands of years. She wondered how many, if any, had envisioned such a fate for their race. Hiding among the humans. Retreating to spend isolated lives in clan strongholds. Grasping at any chance to bear a child.

The woman she’d fought still stood in the Cage, in a pose that reminded Audrey of Leto. Arms crossed. Leaning against one of the eight support beams. She had black-on-black eyes and spiky, luminous silver hair. Tall and thin, her limbs were like those of a track-and-field athlete. Maybe a high jumper.

Here, she was every inch a warrior.

Silence, she was called.

Even her expression was silent, if the word could be applied to a set of features. She revealed nothing as she stared at Audrey. No disdain. No pity. No empathy. Just . . . staring. The only thing Audrey might discern was curiosity. Why else would a person stare so long?

The Indranan man, Fam, fell into limping step with Leto outside of the Cage. He looked like a puppy trailing after the alpha of the pack. Perhaps he had been fighting for some time, but Fam carried himself with no grace and little authority, especially considering the wounds on his shins and calves. Had Leto trained him? Instinctively, Audrey knew that wasn’t the case. He possessed few of the traits and skills Leto had been droning on about since her arrival.

Yet Fam was popular. Fellow warriors greeted him with ribald comments and slaps on his bulky back. His only strength came from the gift the Dragon had inexplicably bestowed on the Indranan. Telepathy. She shuddered at the remembered feel of Fam’s mind plundering hers. That eerie feeling stayed with her long after the contact. A slithering familiarity.

No wonder she resisted contact with the Heartless. She . . . Dragon damn, she’d lost something. What if getting it back was even worse?

When Fam embraced Hellix in that masculine football player way, her respect sank even further. He was sloppy and cocky. He was soft. Yet she was the one still breathless and quivering on all fours. Pride pushed her to her knees, then to unsteady feet. A stumble. A hearty laugh from those who still watched.

“Useless Tigony bitch,” Hellix said. “Tricksters aren’t worth anything more than a bad fuck.”

Fam dropped his sickle. “I’d take her. Trickster or not.”

“You’d take a hole in the wall if it got you off,” said another of Hellix’s followers.

Audrey noticed Leto’s reaction, even if he refused to look in her direction. He had taken up a towel. Face, bare shoulder, upper back—he scrubbed the sweat from his incredible body. Upon hearing the comments from Hellix and his friend, he dropped the towel and picked up his mace and shield. Not aggression. Just a reaffirmation of his place within their society. Champion. Default leader.

While she’d made him look like a fool.

She would have no dependable ally in Leto of Garnis. As for the world at large, she needed to find it. Soon. Before pleasing that man and winning ridiculous sparring matches became as important to her as it was to him.

Silence finally pushed away from the post. She walked forward and held out an arm. Warily, Audrey considered refusing, but in a place of such isolation and mistrust, she chose to accept the gesture at face value. With Silence’s help, she tested her leg’s ability to hold her weight and found it resilient enough to walk. Silence looked her up and down with that unnerving black stare, and nodded. Dragon damn, even her body language was unreadable. Audrey couldn’t have interpreted that little nod had her next breath depended on it.

The woman returned to the Cage wires and retrieved her shield, with its serrated edge.

“Thank you,” Audrey called.

The slight lift of Silence’s brows was practically a spoken question.

“You could’ve taken off half my face.” She touched her bleeding lip and nodded toward the shield. “I appreciate that you didn’t.”

“Hey, quit flirting with the new kid,” came a man’s voice, although this one had none of Hellix’s aggression. “That was me once, all shiny and useless. I might get jealous. But food first. You know how hungry I get sitting around and watching other people fight. Just famished.”

Silence nodded her slight good-bye to Audrey, then joined a man at the base of the Cage’s steps. He was Silence’s lover, Hark. He didn’t look like the rest of the muscle-bound warriors. He didn’t need to. His lean, street fighter’s build was a deceptive trick. He could carry the Sath’s traditional nighnor as if it weighed nothing. With cheekbones high and elegant, and his eyes the clearest, brightest blue—his combination of strength and grace was surprising, but in that, he was perfectly paired with Silence.

Audrey watched as the pair stealthily, unhurriedly moved past Hellix and his sycophants. The bullies didn’t heckle or jeer. Only watched them pass.

Strange.

But useful information.

Audrey staggered toward the Cage’s exit. Surprisingly, Leto met her there. He looped the mace over his shoulder, offered his hand.

“What, some pity gesture?” she asked.

“You should know by now that pity is of no use down here.”

“If you think I’m touching you after what you did to me, you’re insane.”

The nearly placid set of his features didn’t change. “Let Hellix or Kilgore touch you instead. Makes no difference which way you want to torture yourself.” He dropped his hand and nodded toward the whipping post in the corner of the training arena. “That will be your next lesson if you fail to learn from this one.”

A shudder ripped up the length of her spine. The agonizing pain in her leg was only a taste of the pain a whipping post could entail.

Leto stalked away. Much as had been the case with Silence, the others made no sound as he passed. Only Hellix stabbed a hard glare his back.

Audrey berated herself as she slowly, unevenly made her way out of the Cage. Between the menace of Leto’s threat and the admiration she couldn’t yet admit, she realized exactly how much danger she faced. Stick. Carrot. And losing herself.

She couldn’t stay in this underground prison any longer. But did she dare risk her life and Jack’s to make an escape?