Hunted Warrior

by Lindsey Piper

  The light surrounding Nynn was overwhelming, until the women disappeared in the glaze of their gifts. Nynn screamed in release as the bubble burst with a blaze of blinding color. She obliterated what remained of the deeply recessed arena. Leto used his armor to protect Avyi, but she refused the arm that he tried to use to cover her eyes. She was not missing a second of this, no matter how it burned her eyes.

  The Dragon.

  The dragon from her prophecy.

  The heat of the explosion Nynn conjured paled compared to the spectacle. Great wings pushed a wash of steaming flame into the arena. It circled like a whirlwind above the power station. Fire ripped across the makeshift bleachers until they were hewn of sparks and cinders. Massive teeth bared in a grimace that looked like a parody of a smile. A snakelike tongue lolled just before an unearthly roar mixed with a banshee’s screech split Avyi’s ears. Leto collapsed at her feet, holding his ears and moaning, his senses overloaded.

  Avyi had nearly forgotten that particular vision, where the Grievance wouldn’t simply be the last ever held, where Cadmin needed her bow and arrows, and where a dragon flew across the night sky and breathed the fire of legend.

  On his knees, Leto murmured something in the ancient language of the Dragon Kings, the language that predated what had developed uniquely among each of the Five Clans. In human myths, it would be their language before the fall of Babel. Only, Avyi heard the words and knew, deep in her heart, what Leto said.

  “The Great Dragon. It is risen. It lives.”

  Avyi watched in fascinated horror as the dragon assumed the five shapes known to the clans. It circled the power station with another magnificent screech of bone-shaking ferocity. Dragon Kings dropped in reverence when, finally, it assumed its true form. Elements of each of the Five Clans’ interpretations could be seen. It had a forked tongue that jutted out from a sharp, angular face that was lined with overlapping scales. Each scale shimmered with color that moved and bent depending on the glint of the light.

  Four powerful wings gave its flight a staggering grace. It could’ve been swimming rather than flying, so easily did it move through the skies.

  Awed, Avyi stepped past Leto and walked to where Nynn lay dazed on her back. Leto joined them both within seconds. Together they pulled the woman out of harm’s way, although instinctively, Avyi knew none of them would be harmed by the Great Dragon—because, oh, it truly was the Great Dragon risen.

  She still held the sword that she’d intended to use on Malnefoley, to put his body and mind out of the prolonged misery that would hold a Dragon King until he or she was beheaded. But her eyes were playing tricks on her. Her mind was failing her. Because as the Dragon flew overhead, she looked for Mal’s body.

  He should’ve been a charred mass of writhing flesh, bloodless now, and waiting for death.

  Instead, his body was gone.

  Avyi looked up. Her head spun with promises of prophecy.

  The man she loved circled Battersea with a glorious flick of his three-pronged tail and serpentine body. The man she loved had become the most powerful being in all creation.

  He raged and twisted and burned.

  He breathed out and felt the stinging delight of fire ripping free of his mouth.

  And apparently, he had chores to attend to.

  Watching Mal fly free was the most excruciatingly beautiful thing she’d ever see. He was the elements and eternity. With another twist, he spun over the makeshift arena.

  Swooping down, he grazed the topmost edge of the seating reserved for the audience. Avyi scanned the line of seating and with an amazing clarity of sight, saw Mal’s target. The Old Man. She would know that grizzled face anywhere, with evil that shone from unrepentant eyes. An easy, gorgeous flap of wings made flicking shadows of the bright arena lights, but then there were no more shadows. With a gusting exhalation, fire and smoke burst from between bared teeth. Old Man Aster shrieked, but his was nothing to the screaming anger of the Dragon.

  “What’s happening?” shouted Orla, the woman once known as Silence. Now she had the strongest voice among the dozens assembled. “Avyi!”

  “I don’t know!”

  She had cursed her gift as often as she’d valued it. Only now did she realize how much she had depended on its presence in her life. This moment was unprecedented. She genuinely didn’t know what was going on, which was made all the more terrifying because Mal was at the heart of the confusion.

  The Heretic, Tallis of Pendray, appeared at her side. His expression was stony. Only his eyes moved, following the skyward path of the dragon. “The Dragon is supposed to die in the fires of the Chasm. He has a long way to fly to reach Nepal.”

  A shiver wracked Avyi’s body. The Chasm wasn’t fixed, and perhaps it wouldn’t be until the most powerful Giva in centuries asserted the full extent of his strength and leadership. Nestled high in the Himalayas, the Chasm was thousands of miles away. She could imagine this beautiful creature strong enough to make such a journey—and die upon its completion. Was that what their people needed? Did they need Mal to die in order for their kind to endure?

  Her stomach pinched.

  The Dragon roared. Rippling grace surged through his muscled, serpentine body. Three forked tails balanced through every banking turn as he sailed through the air. He breathed out another gust of fire.

  Mal circled higher and higher in a spiraling arc above Battersea. Fires in the arena glinted off his iridescent scales—the only way Avyi could see him as he flew up into the night.

  Tallis shook his head. Kavya appeared equally troubled. “He may be right,” she said. “What if he’s not coming back?”

  Avyi shook her head, at a loss for words. Not only were her predictions gone—or outright wrong—she couldn’t even order her thoughts. This wasn’t happening. She’d seen so much of the impossible, but those impossible things had never threatened such a heart-wrenching love.

  Orla reached out with her free hand. Avyi took it, gratefully, and watched as others joined them in a loose circle.

  Hark was standing gingerly at Orla’s side, balancing on his injured leg. “You know how the Sath have secrets? We’re gossip pack rats, keeping them like treasures.”

  “Do we need your chatter?” Leto glared from the other side of the circle, where Nynn leaned heavily against him, with her arm wrapped around his middle.

  Orla took up her partner’s tale, speaking in monotone. “A powerful Giva is destined to rise in times of crisis, standing tall, to end the squabbling and renew our people. When the wrongs are righted, he returns home as he has a dozen times before. It’s a cycle. What’s that old saying? What was once will happen again. Then the Chasm is fixed.”

  “And,” Hark added, “it just so happens that the ancient Sath word for dragon is Giva.”

  Tallis practically snarled. “My ass.”

  Hark shrugged, but his expression was clear and intent. “I never gave it much credence. But whispers among the Leadership make a lot more sense when Malnefoley is flying over London.”

  “No!” Avyi found her voice with a vengeance. She broke free of comforting hands and stared up where, she hoped, a glittering dragon circled far overhead. “We are the Children of the Dragon. We are those young voices on the edge of the Chasm, calling out to choose our Giva. He belongs with us. He belongs with me.”

  A glint of green, then blue, then red shimmered and grew larger as it swooped earthward. Avyi’s pulse leapt. Suddenly he was upon them, flying dangerously low. He shrieked. Bricks shook loose from the power station. Dragon Kings ran for cover.

  “Stay!” She lunged and caught Kavya’s arm. “Two from every clan. He needs us all. Please!”

  Dragon Kings emerged from the shadows. No … the ones who volunteered didn’t creep. They strode. They were not ready to give up on this life or on their Giva. They were not afraid.

  Avyi joined the others in a circle. Until …

  A circle of ten. Fires surrounded them and wove between them. They were implacab
le amid a roaring inferno that rivaled the Chasm itself.

  She dropped to her knees. “Malnefoley of Tigony! We choose you!”

  Love and groundless hope fueled her words until shout after shout rubbed her throat raw. The other nine in their circle joined her in the chant. It was unearthly. It was ancient and terrifying. She couldn’t breathe or think, and when she chanced on the memory of how she and Mal had moved together when making love, she used it to shout even louder.

  Avyi was unafraid of the beast who circled with such grace and shimmering life. But in her heart, she traded one truth for another. She had been right all her life in believing in the Great Dragon. All the myths were true. Her gift had not led her astray … except for one prediction that would haunt her for the rest of her days.

  She would never be given the chance to live her life with Malnefoley of Tigony.

  Her Giva.

  Mal.

  Perhaps she’d been wrong, all those endless hours ago, when they’d been tangled together in the utter, untouchable peace that followed their joining. Perhaps that was all the time they would be allowed.

  She’d simply wanted more.

  Now she would be a woman without a partner. She would not be buried for life, half mad, untrusted and feared and hated. She would simply be a woman who mourned what had briefly, so briefly, been hers.

  Still, she chanted with all of her voice and every beat of her heart. Former enemies who had become friends—even an odd sort of family—did the same.

  The Dragon faltered. His tails tangled. His wings flapped without rhythm. His great head lolled from side to side with a scream of what sounded like pain. A shot of flame was only a puff against the darkness, not like the ten-meter gusts of flame that had left the heads of the cartels in piles of dust. He spasmed and hunched, rolling into the massive banners of the various cartels. Tangled in those banners, he crashed through walls, steam stacks, seats, and charred concrete, until he was simply …

  Falling.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  There was no Chasm to catch his body. There were only the dying fires that charred the arena floor.

  Avyi screamed her lover’s name.

  The others scattered as the giant body fell and fell. They gasped as it disappeared into the flames. The greatest being on earth hit the ground with a thud that made Avyi scream again. A gust of smoke obliterated the fires, leaving a small crater at the center of Battersea. The concussive force of the impact tossed the Dragon Kings to the ground.

  The others dragged themselves upright, looking dazed and worn. On her knees, Avyi found Mal’s sword and pulled it behind her, fearing that after all he’d undergone, she would still need to swing that deadly blade—be it against a man or a dragon. Without the Chasm, how would the Dragon die? Or had this been its final act?

  Heart pounding a jumbled rhythm in her throat, she climbed down into the smoking crater. Knees unsteady, eyes filling with tears that had nothing to do with the swirling cinders, she pulled back the white banner that concealed what she knew would be a bloody splatter.

  Instead, she found Malnefoley. His body steamed in the cool night air.

  She edged closer. “Mal?”

  Avyi didn’t dare believe, but the nearer she crept, and as more of the steam cleared away from his skin, she saw the truth she didn’t dare believe.

  He was alive.

  Whole.

  Unbroken.

  Sprawled in a tangle of white banners, but otherwise nude.

  She threw the sword aside and practically pounced. She examined his neck. Completely healed. He shimmered, as the Dragon had, but his skin was that of a man. He was her Malnefoley returned to her. Unless …

  “Mal?”

  As when she’d hesitated so often—with Cadmin’s arrows and her bow, and with Orla’s Dragon idol—she couldn’t force her hands to touch his body. There would be no pulse. No life. Not even a Dragon King could survive what he’d just endured.

  Could he?

  Knowing she owed it to him, and to herself, and to the unlikely love that had grown between them under the most trying circumstances, she forced herself to reach out. She touched the base of his throat. Only a few minutes before, that same throat had gushed with Mal’s lifeblood. She still bore the stains in deep red arcs around her fingernails and in the crevices of her knuckles.

  She gasped in surprise, cried out in relief and delight, and cast out the last thoughts of disbelief.

  He was alive.

  More than that, he radiated the intensity of a man in his prime. His heartbeat was vigorous and strong. Now that the steam had cleared, she could see every sign of life, where pulse points throbbed with the pump of blood. His bare, broad, muscled chest took in deep breaths and expelled them with equal force.

  She threw herself down on his body, holding him, crying. She’d thought she had nothing left to give, but that had been the thought of a woman preparing for the worst—a poor and ineffective try at self-defense. Now she gave him her tears and sobs, her soft words and her angered ones. Mostly she gave him her touch, with unsteady fingertips and a mouth that wanted to taste every bit of him, just to add more certainty to what her senses told her.

  “Mal,” she said, ignoring the begging tone in her voice. “Malnefoley, you’ve come back to me. Please, my love. Open your eyes. My Giva, don’t leave me now. Not after so much.”

  The familiar touch of his hand against the back of her head made her flinch, then shiver. Arms that were not that of a dying man but of a man reborn encircled her shaking body. “Do you see it now?” he asked.

  He’d spoken. Spoken. But what did he mean?

  “Tell me,” she said. “What do I need to see?”

  “Your vision. You and I together, tangled together in white. In love.” He kissed her forehead. “Because I do love you, Avyi.”

  She looked down at where their legs intertwined. Of all things, the white banner of the Aster cartel was their sheet. She’d been right all along, but her interpretation had been skewed. Because, really, who could’ve read her vision this way? Who, even with her experience and faith, would’ve seen an image of them wound together as lovers and assume anything other than a bed, comfort, satisfaction?

  Now she had the peace of knowing the last of her prophecies had been fulfilled.

  “You love me?” she asked tentatively. So strange to be tentative now, but fear still triumphed. She was simply too stunned. She was barely used to living in the present, let alone one so astonishing as this.

  “Of course I love you.” He dipped his lips lower to kiss her mouth.

  “You taste of …” She framed his face, the face of a man born to rule, but who’d never been more of a leader than when he lay there wrapped in the white banner of their mutual enemies. “You taste of smoke and fire.”

  “I’ve been busy. Now kiss me again.”

  She did, with all the love and emotion pent up in her chest. The taste of fire on his tongue was intoxicating. She had him back, not just as a man, but as a man who’d enacted and survived a miracle. She wanted more of that power until it filled her blood and washed her clean of fear.

  “You were the Great Dragon,” she whispered. “Do you remember it?”

  “I was. I do.” He shuddered and tried to sit up. Avyi pushed him down with an entreaty to rest. “I … Avyi, I fought him.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It was like—” He swallowed and gasped for a breath. She petted his chest and arms until he calmed. “I was drunk on what it felt like to be this astonishing being. I was angry. I was greedy for more. But I wouldn’t let it overtake me.” Brushing loose hair from her temples and cheeks, he looked into her eyes. The stunning blue Avyi saw was clear and crisp and wholly Malnefoley. “I saw you standing here in the arena, unafraid. It was the first moment when I knew I could fight the temptation. And then the others …”

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” she said. “It was all I could think of to bring you
back to us. To me.”

  “It worked. I saw the circle—but it wasn’t like the rigid traditions. Nynn, Leto, you—crossbred from the Five Clans. It was a coming together. Powerful. But …” This time he did sit up. His upper body appeared even stronger and more defined, with sharp ridges of muscle and unbreakable bones. “But mostly, I wanted to come home to you.”

  *

  Malnefoley was able to stand, with Avyi’s help, but then his body took over. He felt superhuman. No, that was the wrong term. He felt even more powerful than the strongest Dragon King that had ever lived.

  “This has happened before, my Avyi,” he said against her temple. She was wrapping the banner around his body.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I saw it all.”

  Others from the circle were gathering around, although Mal wanted them gone. He wanted Avyi to himself. He wanted time to process the mush the last hour had made of his head. But he could have neither … yet. He was the leader of the Dragon Kings, and they needed to know what he had experienced. As much of it, at least, as he could put into words.

  “I saw Givas of old. Dragons of old. Each time our people became too decadent and too fractured, with the Five Clans as contentious as rabid animals, there has been a resurrection like …” He shook his head, almost unable to admit what had happened. “A resurrection like this.”

  “The Dragon has always been one of us?” asked Kavya. Mal could feel the quiet tapping of her mind inside his, as if looking for proof of what she’d witnessed—or proof that he was actually the same man returned to them.

  That wasn’t the case at all. He would never be the same man.

  “I don’t know about always,” he said carefully. “There’s always a start. But there are downward cycles, too. And there are, apparently, moments of rebirth.”

  “Told you,” Hark said, grinning tiredly.

  “But nothing has changed.” Leto held Nynn, who still looked dazed. “You destroyed the cartel leaders, but that doesn’t mean other human opponents won’t spring up in their place. And who’s to believe the tales that come out of this place?”