Caged Warrior

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.

The straps around her torso left her arms free. A comfort. She didn’t want to let go of Leto’s hands. He was an amazing man. His fine, impressive armor no longer gleamed, but the streaks of clay and blood added to his vitality. That armor wasn’t for show; it was worn by a conqueror. The scar along his top lip was more proof. She remembered the scars on his back, which stretched beneath crisscrossed straps of leather. For a Dragon King to be scarred required a serious wound.

She had scars.

“Why do I have scars?”

Leto’s eyes widened briefly, before his stoic expression returned. He gripped her hands more tightly and shook them, as if trying to restore feeling rather than deaden her to the pain. “Focus. This will only get worse.”

“I don’t want to be numb.”

“That’s exactly what you’ll want. Soon.”

The straps bit into her lower back and across one shoulder. After that initial shock, the other shoulder sizzled with slowly gathering agony. The scent of burning flesh made her crinkle her nose, as if it emanated from someone else.

“No. I don’t want to be numb.” She hissed and shuddered. “I’ve been numb before, when . . . Leto, why do I have scars?”

“All warriors have scars.”

She held a strangled sound in her throat. “How did you bear this? You with your senses?”

“Golish. Drink.”

“No.”

She looked for other distractions. The other warriors had resumed their relaxed celebrations, but few kept their attention away from her for long. Flickers of interest. Curiosity that couldn’t be contained by conversation. What sort of initiation was this, where those she’d join treated her scarification as casual entertainment? Only Silence refused to be bashful. She tipped her head to one side and kept her eerily black eyes trained to where the needle dotted Nynn’s shoulder blade like never-ending bursts of fire. What was it about the woman? Direct in her gaze, blank in her expression—in that calm setting, she seemed like a living mannequin.

Yet she had a partner. Hark was hers, and she was his.

Nynn shut her eyes against a stab of envy that bit with the ferocity of the tattoo needle.

“You want me to do well,” she whispered. For him. For them alone. “In all things.”

“Of course. Your success—”

“Come off it. All other reasons aside, you want me to do well. Why?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You didn’t have to.”

The golish was traveling up her spine. Rather than giving Nynn the comfort she should’ve welcomed, it made her heart race faster. She was leaving her body on a wave of panic that felt so familiar she could almost taste fear—some old fear, like iron and lime on her tongue, mingled with the blood from her lip.

“I didn’t have to,” Leto said quietly, although she couldn’t be certain of that. Everything sounded soft and shadowed at the edges. Her vision was covered over with shades of coal and mud. “But I did for you.”

“Don’t want to go.” Peering through dank colors the opposite of her beautiful gift, she saw how fiercely she gripped Leto’s hands. Her knuckles were white. They wouldn’t be cold, not with his warmth to surround her. “They take him. If I go, they’ll take . . .”

She shuddered and hiccupped on a flash of pain that had nothing to do with the anguish of the soldering gun.

Leto shook free of her grasp and framed her face with his hands. “Do you see me? Nynn, look at me.”

His voice was less powerful when she was so far away, but his rumbling authority remained. He had trained her. He had trusted her enough to fight beside him. She didn’t understand what was happening—there in the complex, there in her mind—but she understood the sound of his voice. What’s more, she responded to it.

“You want this,” he said. “You want a mark to prove who you are and what you’ve accomplished. No one will ever take that from you.”

She grinned, although it felt sloppy across her lips. “You’d try if you thought it’d make me listen.”

Leto didn’t grin. He didn’t alter the forceful hold of his hands—thumbs at her temples, fingers spanning back into her hair and beneath her jaw. “Are you listening, Nynn?”

“Yes, sir.”

He bowed his head at that. The smallest dip. Yet his arresting stare remained fixed. He wasn’t letting her go, not even with his gaze. “Sleep now, knowing this will be the last time you’ll be numb. I won’t let it happen again. The pain is yours. The pleasure is yours. I promise you that.”

She smiled again, feeling drunk, limp, gone. “You promise me pleasure?” The words didn’t sound as if they came from her. So different. Liquid and subtle and inviting.

He lowered his mouth to her ear. No one else can hear us, she thought. Despite their combined efforts, she was losing him to the beckoning darkness. Only a few more words made it through the fog. “Yes, Nynn. I promise you pleasure.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Leto nearly slumped with relief when Nynn passed out.

“Never seen that before,” Fam said conversationally. He lounged on one of the padded benches, with his own bottle of golish in his hand. Three empty bottles were lined up at his feet. “You sure she’s one of us? Really?”

With an ache in his legs borne of unfamiliar tension, Leto stood and stared down at Fam. “She is.”

He didn’t wait to see the shorter man’s reaction, instead turning to assess Lamot’s progress. “Nearly finished,” the old man said. “But—” He nodded toward Fam. “That one’s not wrong. I’ve never seen anyone resist that strongly. Most are giggly on drink before the first touch of the needle. I even heard Silence speak.”

The woman visibly flinched, which was the strongest reaction Leto had ever seen in her outside of combat. Hark raised his brows. He wore a wide, teasing smile. Silence’s stiff body language suggested retribution of one kind or another later.

“Really?” Weil sat forward on her knees. “And what did she say?”

Hark’s smile never wavered. “She said, ‘Shut the fuck up, you Reaper shit.’ Oh, no, that was me. Right now. To you.”

“Out!” Leto’s shout reverberated against the far wall. “All of you. Get out.”

“Someone needs more private time with the new champion?” As if he needed more reason to lose temper, Leto turned to find Hellix propped in the doorway to the recreation room. “Seems your dorm would be more appropriate.” He shrugged. “Or hers. I hear tell you would’ve lost without her today.”

Hark had gathered up his gear and his last bottle of drink, with Silence following behind. Even Weil, still red in the face from Hark’s insult, was sensible enough to ready her departure.

“A warrior who fights with a partner wins and loses with that partner,” Leto said. “I want you to leave.”

“I suppose that means you don’t want to be reminded of the obvious. My whip lashes will mark her as surely as any tattoo.”

Leto felt hewn of rock and deep, motionless rivers of ice. Good. Any other reaction would mean crippling Hellix where he stood. He satisfied himself with the image of grabbing Hark’s nighnor, smashing it against Hellix’s skull, and praying to the Dragon that the man woke up so he could do it again. “The subject of permanent marks is not one suited to you. How long did they have to hold the knife against your skin? I hope you were in more pain than you inflicted on Nynn.”

“Unlikely. Your girl screamed loud enough that every man in the complex got hard.”

Yes, Leto would do Hellix permanent damage. One day. But he would do so when Nynn could witness the act with the satisfaction she deserved. “You are twisted.”

“Wait. What is this?” Fam barged past and knocked Lamot back from where he’d been hunched over Nynn’s shoulder. “A dragon? That doesn’t make her an Aster.”

The other warriors returned. Even Silence frowned. She glanced between the tattoo and Leto’s face. Weil cursed quietly under her breath and smoothed her frizzy red hair in that habitual way of hers. Hawk actually yawned, but the reaction didn’t mask his initial flash of surprise.

Fam had taken his usual place at Hellix’s side, which made him appear even weaker. A pantomime warrior. “You’ll answer to the Old Man for this. He’ll have Hellix whip the damn thing off her back. Can’t say that doesn’t have a certain appeal.”

“The Old Man will be no concern of yours.” That icy river still claimed Leto—for the better. “Are you finished, Lamot?”

The older Dragon King turned off his soldering gun and used a cloth to wipe away streaks of blood and ink. For motionless, speechless moments, everyone in the room stared at the tattoo. A perfect depiction of the Dragon. Not the fire-breathing monsters from Pendray myths, and not the snakelike creatures with great heads and lolling tongues, as the Garnis depicted. The Tigony, with their penchant for sidling up to the humans as the source of their long-standing power, had even gone so far as to portray the Dragon as a woman named Medusa.

Each clan had its own interpretation.

This, however . . . the tattoo on Nynn’s shoulder was the Dragon. It contained elements from all of the Five Clans’ mythology, blended into a cohesive creature.

“Now doesn’t that make your hair stand on end.” Hark shook his head. “How did he know?”

“Shut up, Thief,” Weil said. “Or we’ll ask how you’d know. Your kind keeps too many secrets.”

“I’m not a Sath elder, although it would be interesting for a day or two. Imagine all the mysteries I could solve about our people.” He leaned nearer to Weil, who was considerably shorter. “What secrets do the Pendray keep?”

She raised her red brows in challenge. “How to dispose of Dragon King bodies without anyone being the wiser.”

“Go,” Leto said. No shouts now. “Lamot, you, too. Thank you for your work.”

The contentious, infuriating lot filed out. Some did so without fanfare. Leto closed his mind to Fam’s parting question to Hellix. “Think he’ll wait till she wakes up before he fucks her?”

Fists clenched, jaw rigid, Leto stood alone. Only his breathing and Nynn’s very, very quiet respiration filled the heavy quiet. He hadn’t meant to add to her panic. The golish should’ve been a good thing, as Lamot had said. Leto had appreciated its effects more than once. For Nynn, the numbness must’ve chipped away at the barriers Ulia had constructed. Memories of being drugged? The terrors of the labs had returned to her in bits and frightened gulps.

Why do I have scars?

Jack . . .

He’d hoped the drink would blunt her pain and keep those memories from intruding. That assumption had been wrong enough to make him wonder which version of Nynn would awaken. Or if a fractured mind would make her into something altogether new.

He shook his arms until his ligaments and bones and tissue worked in concert. He’d needed to lock down his instincts to keep from mauling Hellix. Carefully, he unfastened the straps that trapped Nynn to the supporting chair. She slumped against his chest.

Only then did he wish he’d taken the time to remove his armor and wash. He would’ve liked to feel her body resting against his. Very little between them had been gentle. No matter how much he desired her, he craved the gentleness he knew she was capable of.

He stroked sweat back from her temple. Eyes closed, her brow was smooth and untroubled. The split bite marks on her bottom lip were already healing. That symbol of her distress and pain accentuated her exotic beauty by plumping her lush mouth. She was too pale, unnaturally pale, and her freckles stood out as constellations across her nose.

He’d never seen constellations, only heard tales from his mother.

Leto of Garnis. Full of ridiculous, fanciful notions. His mind had no place in his body if his body was to survive. Pell would never be safe. He would never fight in another Grievance to help perpetuate their line.

He would never father children of his own.

Why for my sister but not for me?

With motions far rougher than he would’ve liked, he lifted Nynn from the chair. She was still propped against him, in a way that gave him a clear view of her tattoo. Leto had been tempted, as Hark had, to ask Lamot how he’d captured the idea of the Dragon so accurately. It belonged to all of the clans, in a way that made all other portrayals seem purposefully wrong.

As eerie as that was, it was a question for another time. Nynn was his concern now. He had come to care about her. Yes, he cared enough that he would not see her permanently marked by the men she despised—men she would remember one day.

A more selfish reason was that she would never forgive him for letting it happen.

He’d been reviled before. The air around him was filled with the stench of unresolved anger, jealousy, and rage, much of it pointed at him. Being champion had afforded him respect and fear, the latter of which would turn against him when the opportunity arose. He trusted none of them.

To be hated by Nynn, however, was unsettling.

He shook his head as he lifted her from the chair. Nothing was making sense. She’d hated him throughout weeks of training. She’d hated him when he treated her as lab filth, watched her dress, cut her hair. She’d hated him when he used Kilgore as punishment. Why would this be any different?

Because he’d become vulnerable.

He’d enjoyed Nynn’s companionship as a neophyte, because she was a challenge. He’d enjoyed it even more when she stood by his side as his partner. No one else had ever held his hand in the dark, and no one else had needed him to hold.

She wouldn’t get out of his way, or quit talking to him, or stop touching him. Touching him. How could he keep from opening himself to this woman? He’d have thought of a way by now, had it been possible. That meant one day, when she was free of the mental blocks and reunited with her son, she would hate him just as much as the Asters.

He liked having her there. As he held her over his shoulder and carried her toward his dorm, he liked knowing she would share his bed—quietly at first, as she healed and awoke from the golish stupor. Passionately later.

He had promised her pleasure. And he had promised to keep her safe.

In body, that had been an easy vow. But her mind? What would be left of her when she returned to herself? Nynn would leave him. And Audrey MacLaren would never forgive him.