Caged Warrior

SEVENTEEN

Nynn woke with a massive headache and little memory of what had happened the night before.

Night. As if anyone could tell light from dark when underground. The bare bulbs were out, so that meant night. There was no other way to mark time other than the schedule Leto set for her training. She was grateful for the attention from the Asters’ champion. Being given over to a lesser warrior’s tutelage would mean her defeat.

The idea of defeat was as powerful as the idea of death.

Leto was fast becoming more than a trainer. She remembered being at odds with him as if watching the memories of another woman. Why had she been so contentious? She should’ve been paying attention from day one. And why, for so long, had she denied her attraction to him? He was a godlike man—a living example of why Dragon Kings should be revered. All graceful power. His skills made him impressive, and his teachings had made her strong, but he possessed a magnetism she no longer wanted to refuse.

Despite her headache and how her back throbbed, she lay in the dark and combed through the images of how he’d held her. How he breathed. How he caressed. How he kissed.

She hadn’t seen him with the right eyes. Blinded by pride, she was of Tigony blood. From the house of the Giva, no less. Her condescension and a few years of martial training in her youth had made her stubborn—just enough knowledge to be a danger to herself. She’d wasted too much time.

Why she’d put old Tigony biases above her survival was beyond her. Aside from Mal, they’d treated her like dirt. Worse than dirt. Dirt could nurture crops. She was more like the barren rock aisles jutting up from the Aegean. Pretty. Useless.

Not anymore. That wasn’t her world anymore, trying to fit in where no one wanted her. This was a new day.

Or it would be soon.

Aside from her pounding skull, she felt good. Refreshed, even. She sat up and ran a hand over all of her aching places. Her recollection of their last training session was fuzzy. Her powers were still so big and strange that she closed her eyes when she set them free. Gaps in her memory made sense. They must’ve gone a full twelve rounds with how much pain pulsed down her back and thighs. Yet the flesh beneath her fingertips was whole.

A Dragon King’s gift was a mysterious, powerful thing.

Nynn of Clan Tigony could harness lightning. Pull it into a sphere so beautiful that she was reluctant to let it go, make it burn, set it free. But she would. Leto would be her partner in her first Cage match. He needed her. Relied on her. And they both had reasons to fight.

He would provide comfort to his sister.

She would . . .

There in the dark of her cell, where the only sound was trickling water from the crevice in the corner, Nynn frowned again.

The lights above her winked on. She blinked away her confusion and stood. Stretched. Shook out the last of her foggy fatigue. That strangeness must be the remnants of an unpleasant dream. She knew who she was and she knew her place: in the Cage.

Excitement merged with a case of nerves. She’d only ever practiced. The idea of stepping into a real Cage, with clay beneath her boots and a crowd roaring its approval, was too much to imagine. Her first time would give detail to her vague, eager visions.

“Armor on,” Leto called as he strode up the corridor. “Today’s the day.”

“Today . . . ?” Even as she tried to sort her memories, she was already obeying his command by gathering her things. “I thought we had more time to prepare.”

“You must’ve lost track of time. You’ve worked hard these last few days.”

He crossed his arms and leaned against the nearest wall, as was his habit. He looked . . . magnificent. Whatever armor he’d worn in the past must’ve been for the sake of training. This set was immaculate. Polished bronze accented black metal as dark and lustrous as onyx. Protective layers over his right shoulder accentuated the breadth of his upper body, while his bare left shoulder revealed striated, defined muscle. The leather wrapped around his forearms seemed to be a part of him. Stronger. More supple. Not on its own, but because of the toned flesh it protected. More leather tucked around his waist and laced around his thighs, clinging and accentuating his strength.

He was freshly shaved. Defiant jaw. Lean cheeks. Raised chin. Even his hair was shorter. Dark. So dark. She ran a hand over her own cropped hair and felt a rush of camaraderie.

“You’re going to need to dress faster than that,” he said, “if you want to meet the Old Man before we begin the match.”

“Of course.”

One eyebrow lifted only a fraction. She read more of his cocky, amused mood from the way he widened his stance. He pushed his shoulder blades flush against the wall. Chest out. Taller now. More intimidating. Only, she wasn’t intimidated anymore. She couldn’t remember why she had been.

More likely, she’d probably thought him beneath her. Clan Garnis. The Lost. What did they know about tradition and long millennia of controlling their human subjects? The idea of having anything to learn from a man of such wandering stock must’ve been laughable.

She wasn’t laughing now; she was staring.

Rather than rush through her preparations, Nynn crossed the training cell—not toward the pile of her armor, but toward Leto. Wearing only her leather trousers and the tank top she slept in, she was conscious, so conscious, of his dark eyes following her. No animal. No beast. This was a man who knew his place in the world. Reveled in it. She was becoming the woman he wanted her to be, but he was still Leto. Her mentor. She wanted to touch him, to bask in his courage.

“Do you believe that I deserve to stand in a Cage with you?”

“Yes.” He said it with such confidence.

She needed to close her eyes. His approval. It meant more to her than she could explain. All she knew was that the rush of sensation upon hearing that one word was liquid and warming.

“May I?” She lifted her gaze to the head of his snake tattoo. His fresh buzz cut left it clearly visible. “I want to see it. All of it.”

“That would mean turning my back to you.”

“I’m not your enemy, remember?” She grinned. “Besides, you haven’t armed me yet. Collar on. No knife in hand. What could you fear from me?”

“Nothing.” But then he swallowed.

Nynn hid her surprise, her curiosity, and reached up to touch the snake’s hissing tongue. First, just skin beneath her fingers, where that tongue licked toward his smooth temple. She pushed back. Farther. The hair beneath her fingertips was stubbly but not coarse. She traced the body of the serpent until he was left with a choice: let that be the end of her exploration, or turn.

He watched her with unmistakable curiosity. Unmistakable even for him. Normally reading his expressions was like casting rune stones, a trick only the wild Pendray in the Highlands knew how to do. Right then, however, he lifted his coal-dark brows even higher. A muscle twitched along his scarred lip. Nearly a smile? A dare?

No, accepting a dare.

He turned slowly. Nynn had free rein to continue the path of that black serpent. It lay only partially concealed behind rich velvet hair. The tattoo ink was so dark. She tipped her finger to another angle. Fingernail now. The clash of swords and the swing of a scythe weren’t enough to make this fantastic male specimen flinch, but the scrape of her fingernail did. She shivered in response.

Still he turned. So slowly. She flicked her gaze between the tattoo and the portion of his back left bare by his crisscrossed armor straps. Muscles flexed and pulled, even with that achingly patient pace. The overhead bulbs cast extreme shadows. Every ridge sharper. Every curve more graceful. New patterns of light and dark and flesh were revealed no matter how insignificant his movement.

That sounded poetic, even to Nynn. Had she always thought to describe things with an artist’s eye, or was Leto just special? After all, he was man enough to inspire poetry in any mind. Throughout human history, odes had been written and masterpieces had been created to honor Dragon Kings.

Olympus. Thebes. Varanasi. Cahokia. Skara Brae.

No matter the city, no matter the tribe, men such as Leto had walked among human beings and reigned as gods. Awed subjects had looked upon such perfect bodies and found generous muses. Now she was touching him. Scraping his skin with one ragged fingernail.

He turned to face her, so that she finished with the serpent’s tail—slim, slimmer, gone—just at his other temple.

Their eyes met. Gold sparked between them. They both blinked and Nynn drew her hand away.

“Why the tattoo?”

“Initiation ceremony. If you do well tonight, you might be offered the same honor.”

She smiled, which always seemed to catch him off guard. “I don’t intend to do well.”

“That’s not the attitude of a—”

“Of a champion?” Her smile widened. “I know it’s not. Are you listening to your neophyte, Leto of Clan Garnis?”

His brows pinched toward the bridge of his nose. Confusion didn’t suit him but she enjoyed taking him by surprise. “Yes, I’m listening.”

“I intend to be astonishing. Be ready to keep up.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Leto didn’t need to watch her dress for the Cage. He’d seen her prepare often enough. Details stayed with him, whether he wanted them or not. Three weeks had emblazoned her across his senses.

Except for touch. He would never get enough of touch.

So he lingered. This was her first Cage fight. He wanted her to help him show up the Old Man. Not that he’d dare say it. Too petty. Even petulant. All he knew was that the head of the Aster cartel had reservations about Leto’s successes. With Nynn at his side, he would prove those reservations ridiculous.

He adjusted her armor and cinched the straps across her back. He lingered. Just as she’d traced his tattoo, he also needed to touch. Her back was a mess of cuts and whip marks. Most had healed, even if the skin still appeared puffy and red. He placed two fingers on either side of a long, angry slash and traced it down—from shoulder to where her skin disappeared beneath layers of metal and leather.

Hellix. The bastard. And Dr. Aster as his puppeteer.

Leto needed purpose. He found the fruition of that purpose staring up at him when Nynn turned. An untested warrior. A resilient woman. Her potent femininity collided with his body’s repressed needs. They were trainer and neophyte, but the fire in her icy eyes said she wanted more. A rough sort of want, no more gentle than the armor they wore.

Any gentler touch had no place between them.

Yet he’d held her while Ulia probed Nynn’s mind. He’d felt every tremble and each unconscious twist of her fingers against his skin. He’d smelled her hair and the sharp stench of dried blood. He just kept holding, as if in penance for the pain he could not save her from on that whipping post.

Or in the labs.

Or when her family was destroyed.

She’d come out of that session a different woman—apparently one who could stare him down. A woman who could touch him. Study him. Make him feel something very new. For a warrior who’d honed his reflexes and his senses for two decades, feeling anything new was both novel and unsettling.

Of course he remembered the continuous burning bite of the tattoo needle after his first victory in a Grievance. He’d been only sixteen—too young to receive an official initiation. But the Old Man had made an exception, because no sixteen-year-old had ever been invited to fight in a Grievance. No one had expected him to live. Possibly not even his father.

Leto had triumphed.

When he’d bowed his head to receive his tattoo, adrenaline yet pumped in his veins. Celebratory cups of golish had softened his brain. He’d been lucky that his heightened senses were damped. Back then, he hadn’t been able to carry over as much of his gift once the collar was reactivated. Otherwise the prick, prick, prick of the tattoo needle might have been too much to handle.

After a lifetime of practice, he’d learned to control all of it. When to feel. When to cut off feeling. Yet he still felt her nail trailing along the serpent’s undulating body. Over and over. A tickle across the back of his skull. And he still felt the skin of her back where he’d traced his fingers.

All he could do was keep her safe now. They would conquer all comers.

“I’ll wait for you outside the gate,” he said roughly.

He left her cell—which wouldn’t be her cell much longer. Victory in that evening’s match would see her established in a warrior’s dorm. She would have privacy and small luxuries. In other words, she would not be his to control so completely.

Frustrated, edgy, he waited outside the locked gate for Nynn to emerge.

A shiver crept up his back like a spider’s eight legs. The neophyte who’d insisted on being called Audrey had defied him at every turn. Only the goal of saving her son had given her strength and purpose. That goal had helped him justify why he pushed her so hard. That their goals were so compatible only eased the process.

This woman . . . This was Nynn of Tigony.

She wore her perfectly fitted armor with confidence as she strode into the light. Blond hair glimmered and cast spiky shadows across her forehead and cheeks. Those freckles gave her features extra depth. Texture, even. Something untenable and unique to her.

Any woman could move with poise when wrapped in flowing silk. It took a warrior to move with the same grace when outfitted for battle.

Underneath it all, she still bore the red slashes of punishment for having tried to escape. And she didn’t seem to recall any of it.

Leto smashed his doubts into pieces. If he tried hard enough, he wouldn’t remember them by the time they reached the Cage. The workings of her mind were not his to ponder. He couldn’t afford to care, not with Pell’s future at stake.

The guards let her out of the cell and secured her hands with manacles. Leto held his hands out as well. She angled him an arch look. “You, too? Why?”

“Because we’re leaving the complex. The Old Man never hosts visitors down here. We’re escorted to where the guests assemble around the full-size Cage.”

“Ah, so you have been outside. You’ve seen the sun.”

He kept from curling his hands into fists. No show of limitation. The simple recitation of fact. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“What would you think of such a thing if you lived your whole life belowground?”

Her lower lip rubbed over the upper, which plumped them both. He hated his gifts for cluttering his mind with distracting details.

“I’d see it as an enemy,” she said. “A disadvantage.”

“And the Old Man knows it. We travel in buses and wear blindfolds between.”

“Safer.”

“Necessary. Any visiting warrior would be at a serious disadvantage.”

“But if we looked?” She shook her head.

“What?”

“If we didn’t wear the blindfolds, we could see where we are? Cities. Mountains. Rural Dragon-knows-where. That could be important.”

She sounded as if she were speaking through a long, long tube of glass. Distant, even to herself. Whatever Ulia had done, Nynn had come out with her powers—and no apparent memory of fighting to free her son. He didn’t want to mention her little boy again, for fear of reversing her real potential. Or splitting her mind in two.

So he maneuvered her. He didn’t like it. It felt more like the sort of games the Tigony would play. Tricksters.

“Glory is only found in the Cages. Why would it matter where they are?”

She nodded firmly. The clouds of confusion ebbed from her eyes. “Then let’s do this.”