Caged Warrior

by Lindsey Piper

The fear, apparently, was only part of what he was capable of feeling. Wariness, then aggression took its place. He looked more like Nynn with every breath. “What’s her name?”

  “Audrey MacLaren.”

  “Her other name.”

  “She told you that, did she? Stories in the dark?” The boy nodded, which made Leto smile. He’d never smiled with more vicious pride. “Your mother is Nynn of Tigony, and she’s been burning buildings to the ground to find you.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Hark walked cautiously toward the Pet. Nynn could barely keep her gift from obliterating the corridor. Her light blazed until the marble glowed white and sparkled with snaps of power.

  The Pet leaned against the far wall with her hands at the small of her back. She looked tidy and small, like a teenage girl who’d accidentally wound up with an ancient woman’s maturity behind her strange, piercing eyes.

  “Hark, who is she?” Nynn asked.

  “A soothsayer.” Although he seemed at ease, Nynn noticed the loose bend in his knees. With any breath, he could spring forward and wield that hunk of sheet metal offensively. “She sought out Silence. ‘Wait for the living gold’—and believe me, ‘living gold’ is the perfect description for when you two stare at one another. Then we’d know it was time to go.”

  “But why?”

  “Something about the Chasm.” He frowned. “But also something about keeping the children safe.”

  Nynn flinched. “What children?”

  “All of them,” the Pet said. “In the labs. I saw which would survive whole of mind and body, and which would not. Then . . . decisions were made.”

  Hark scowled. “Dr. Aster doesn’t hold the secret to conception?”

  “No, but he never stopped looking—to the misfortune of those housed here. I bought him time.”

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Nynn whipped across the hallway and caught the Pet around the throat—a throat unblemished by any collar. Sparks and flickers of white-hot light shot out from where their skin meshed. “You helped perpetuate this horror.”

  Although she gasped for air, the Pet’s green gaze was unapologetic. “Your Leto knows about slavery. He’s not the only one.”

  “Where is Aster?”

  “Helicopter.”

  “He left you?”

  “I stayed. I’ll be hunted now. Unless . . .” With a grimace of a smile, she showed off brilliant white teeth in tiny, even rows. “Will you kill me, Nynn of Tigony? I’ve seen it both ways.”

  Doubt stilled Nynn’s wrath. Could she kill a woman who had done nothing more concrete than stand at Aster’s side? She’d believed Leto a useless, brainwashed thug. There was no telling what the Pet had done to survive. She could be as guilty as the sadistic doctor, or as innocent as a child born to the dark life of the Cages.

  The decision wasn’t Nynn’s to make, not with Mal there. She exhaled, relaxed her grip, and let the woman go. The Pet didn’t flinch or dart away. She only tipped her head, retaining her deliberate means of moving—a woman as fluid as water.

  The dark-haired Pendray stranger who’d cleared the way through the guards caught up with them. “If you want to strangle the little freak, let’s take her with us.”

  “Tallis,” the Pet said evenly. “How interesting to see you here. Nynn deserves an introduction before you run again.”

  Nynn caught his eye. He flinched. And looked away. That eerie feeling of familiarity covered her skin like a fast-growing mold. “Tell me.”

  The stranger swallowed and met her gaze for the first time. Head proud. Chin lifted. “Nynn, your father was named Vallen of Pendray. He was my older brother. And I owe you a debt beyond words.”

  “Yeah, we don’t have time for that,” Hark said. “I’m Sath, remember? Borrow a little here and there? This green-eyed girl is a soothsayer, which means right now I’m seeing a big ball of flames and very crispy Dragon Kings. Couldn’t tell you why, but she doesn’t think this building has much of a future.” His attention flicked to a chuck of wall just behind the Pet. “And I don’t think it’s because of the Giva.”

  Nynn grabbed the Pet and swirled to one side, where Hark protected them both with the bent shield. Concentrated blasts of lightning scraped through the whitewashed inner walls. Mal ripped through marble and cinder block like shredding a paper towel. The blasted, blackened hole was large enough for her cousin to step through.

  Leto followed . . . holding Jack.

  Nynn leapt to her feet with a cry that was nearly a scream. She snatched her boy from Leto and crushed him to her chest. She smoothed his hair back from his dirty face and kissed him. Again and again. With a sense of disbelief making her shiver, she buried her nose in his hair and inhaled past the lab’s sterile stench. Jack. Her Jack.

  “Baby, oh, by the Dragon.” She breathed his name, like a mantra against the madness of having nearly lost him. She would never know his suffering. But then, he would never know hers. Perhaps they could protect each other that way.

  “You told me never to swear by the Dragon.” His voice sounded different. How could she have forgotten its timbre? No, this was different. Darker and artificially mature.

  “There are exceptions.”

  Wariness clouded eyes so much like her own, which shone with a golden tint. “You’ll explain all of it to me.”

  “Yes, baby,” she said with a shiver. She pulled him close again and met Leto’s gaze over her son’s shoulders. “Thank you.”

  She recognized distress in Leto’s dark eyes. They were narrowed so tightly that his lashes nearly touched.

  “What is it?”

  “This building.” He glanced at Jack, then closed his eyes. Set to explode.

  Nynn flinched as if burned. Not just the tickle of his voice in her brain, but the terrorizing words he delivered. “We could leave. Snowmobiles. The Sath borrowing your gift.”

  Silence and the Indranan woman from the snowmobile stepped through the hole. Together they supported an unconscious woman. Her head lolled at an angle that suggested she hadn’t had control of her muscles for a long time. No resistance at all.

  “Meet Pell,” Leto said quietly, helping them lower his sister to the ground. “And there are dozens more, Nynn. All of Aster’s test subjects. We can’t make it out—not all of us. Even with my gift, I don’t think I could move that quickly. If Silence is right about the detonator, we have roughly twenty minutes.”

  “Is that why the guards have gone?” She shook her head. “And the alarms. When did they stop? Everyone who could flee has already left.”

  “Including the other telepath,” said the Indranan woman.

  “Ulia?”

  “Gone with Aster.” The Pet still sat on the hunk of sheet metal Hark had used to protect her from Mal’s blast.

  Leto stepped to within inches of Nynn. “We could leave,” he whispered. His damp breath feathered over her lips. She couldn’t be sure if he spoke out loud or into her mind. The sensation that had been unnerving with Ulia was comforting from Leto. “You and me. Jack and Pell. I could get the four of us out. The Sath could take care of themselves.”

  “And the others? And those who’ve suffered?”

  He nearly shrugged—so slight. “I’ve never fought for anything but my family.” With a glance toward the fair-haired boy Nynn still clutched, he added, “That means both of you now.”

  Nynn’s heart jumped at the chance. Her family. A new family. Safe and away from this place of nightmares.

  “I haven’t seen this one either,” the Pet said without inflection.

  As if caught stealing, Nynn blushed. Her skin flared hot, then frigid cold. She met the gaze of each person in that blasted corridor. Mal and the dark-haired stranger. The Dragon Kings who’d come to their aid. Even the Pet and the Sath couple. That didn’t take into account the men and women—the children—who’d suffered at Aster’s hands.

  She wasn’t a soothsayer, but Nynn saw her future.

  She nuzzled her son’s hair
and drew in a breath, then kissed him. “Take him. Keep him safe, as I know you would’ve kept me safe for the rest of my days.”

  Mal stepped forward in the wake of Leto’s confused silence. “Nynn, what is this?”

  “You know what I can do. I take the energy from the air and make it mine. I own it. This detonation will be no different.”

  She said it with the confidence of a woman who knew her place in the world. She’d always envied that confidence when watching Leto in his element. Now it was hers—not the serpent she’d imagined when filled with Ulia’s twisted intentions. No, this was a destiny she’d never imagined. She would save her new family and these precious few Dragon Kings.

  “I won’t let you do it.” Leto’s rough, battered features bunched around an expression of fury.

  She touched his cheek. “You know there’s no other way.”

  “I’ll stay, too,” Mal said. “I can help absorb the energy.”

  “The Honorable Giva? No way.” She quickly kissed his cheek. “Our people need you. I understand that now.”

  Mal’s head bowed. She’d never seen him humbled, but maybe her awkward forgiveness held that power. If for no other reason, she was glad to have said it.

  Hark was the first to move. He and Silence lifted Pell between them. “Twenty minutes isn’t much time, people.”

  “Out.” Mal’s voice held all the authority of his station, plus that added punch of charisma and assurance he’d possessed even as a child. “All of us. We need to escape the blast radius and take as many of the prisoners with us as we can.”

  The group mobilized. Nynn slipped through the hole in the cinder block wall. She wanted to take Leto’s hand, but he held his crude weapons at the ready. His profile was grim as they ran side by side. She cradled Jack’s head instead. She remembered his weight, the cadence of his breathing, his shivers of fear—and she held on tighter. The time she had to hold him close was coming to an end.

  She sobbed against the side of his head.

  She’d been mistaken all along. She held her boy—the child she had conceived in love with her dear, murdered Caleb—and she was still fighting for him. That didn’t mean she would be the one to raise him. The realization shot spikes through her chest and pierced her heart.

  Leto growled at her side. “I know what you’re thinking, Nynn, and you’re wrong. He’ll never be alone. And neither will we.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  I have to do this,” Nynn said, her throat pinching shut. “You know there’s no other way. If the worst happens—”

  Leto’s expression was black with fury. “No.”

  “—then Jack will still be safe. Dozens of lives in exchange for one Dragon King? Our people are so scarce. This is taking advantage of the odds. Other warriors like Weil may still be alive down underground, too. And what if I can save this place from the worst of the destruction? No matter how he acquired the information, or what he did with it, we need to learn what Dr. Aster knew. Tell me I’m wrong. Deny me any of this.”

  Leto stopped with a sudden jerk, took her by the shoulders. “You made me see you and hear you and feel you because you were so Dragon-damned stubborn. Now you want to leave me.”

  “I don’t want to!”

  “I’ve seen the snow and the sun now, but without you, I’ll live in the dark forever.”

  She inhaled sharply.

  His every hardened feature was pleading—pain-filled eyes, a compressed mouth, nostrils flaring in that way she knew, when he was trying to hold on to his temper. “I need you, Nynn.”

  Never, not ever, had she expected to hear such a thing from him. Her stoic teacher and her tender lover. But those words spoke of a desire for forever. She would’ve honored him in a heartbeat had she trusted any promise she could make in return.

  They were close enough to a hallway that she remembered. Small doors. Small chambers to trap the most powerful beings on the planet and keep them meek. She heard pitiful sounds and whispered, fearful words, which meant Leto heard them, too.

  She released the back of Jack’s head and twined her fingers with Leto’s. “They need us and they need you,” she said, huddled into Leto’s waiting embrace. “I need you . . .” Her voice clogged with tears in her throat. “I need you to be with me on this. I can’t do it any other way. I can’t leave you and leave Jack without knowing you were proud of me. I’ll go down fighting, Leto. Nothing you’ve ever taught me will have been wasted.”

  That got to him. She could see it take hold behind the eyes she’d taken so long to read. He swallowed tightly, and she was oddly gratified to be able to see his Adam’s apple bob. Such a small gift: his bare throat.

  She touched it with fingertips still shaking, although her resolve didn’t waver. A strange calm had overtaken her, even as her heart shattered. So much of life she would never know.

  One for the many.

  “They still wear collars, Leto. They deserve to survive and know what it is to have their gifts returned and to feel that beautiful pain for the first time.”

  Leto leaned close and brushed his lips against hers. “This, my brave girl. This is beautiful pain.”

  My brave girl.

  His words became her new mantra. She could save Jack but she could not keep Leto—only his quiet, stoic benediction. With one more kiss, when she gathered his taste on her tongue, he stood upright. He still wore the ceremonial onyx-tipped armor that made him larger than life. A god. The warrior who would raise her son.

  As Leto turned to lead the others in their tasks, she trailed her fingers across the back of her son’s hand. Then his softness was no longer hers to touch. Jack began to call for her, reaching back from over Leto’s shoulder. Against her son’s frightened, suddenly incoherent sobs—sobs that nearly shook her to cowardice—she watched them go.

  I’ll come back for you.

  She wanted to protest the words Leto whispered in her mind, but he and Jack slipped completely out of view.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Leto scooped up two thin, unresisting patients and slung them over his shoulders. He raced into the vast cold, cursing the disappearing sun and the snow he’d quietly longed to see. None of it mattered now. Just the people he ran to safety. He could move fast enough. He could get them all out. He could save Nynn, too.

  Then they’d be together—a real family he could hold and watch grow and love.

  He banked his thoughts and kept them tucked in the dark, where he had once been held captive. He delivered the two he carried to the makeshift meeting area the Giva had established two miles away from the arena, where Jack waited with the shivering, shocked patients. The snowmobiles ran circuits, too, and the Sath stole little chunks of Leto’s speed to do what they could. By last count, they had under three minutes and fifteen people to save. Leto cursed the Dragon for tipping the odds so heavily against Nynn.

  His neophyte. His lover. The woman he’d hoped would be his for the rest of his life as a free man.

  Two more test subjects reached the checkpoint. Although the number they’d pulled to safety was growing, huddled together in the snow, blinking even in the twilight, the remaining number was a weight on his chest.

  “Silence, Hark—no more. Stay with Jack and Pell. Let me do this at full speed.”

  “I’m going with you,” said the man named Tallis. Even Leto had heard of the Heretic, although his knowledge went no further than a sense of foreboding and distrust. “I’ll do what I can to dismantle the detonator. Two gone in exchange for these people. Not so bad.”

  Leto protected himself from any more of the man’s grim fatalism by racing back to the outpost. The arena shed long, dark shadows over what remained of the lights inside the lab.

  He returned to the corridor of death. Eight remained. Outside, he heard the thrum of two snowmobiles. Then came the glimmer of Tallis’s energy and the sharp crackle of the Giva—distant, but near enough to honor his promise to help Nynn.

  Two more prisoners freed. Leto was fueled by fear and
desperation and Dragon-damned grit. Time could fuck off. That human expression fit best. He wouldn’t give up on Nynn, and while he still breathed, he would not bow to an enemy.

  Even if that enemy was time itself.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  When the charges set off, Nynn had a blink of warning. She was overwhelmed with heat and pain. The charges kept coming. A chain reaction.

  Her body tensed and her mind shut down. Pure instinct, as old as the Dragon. Millennia of power tempered by millennia of sacrifice. She saw it all as clearly as the scorching storm that boiled down the corridor. The force smacked her chest with the power of buses at full speed. She inhaled and sucked it into herself, into pores and cells and the follicles of her hair. She breathed lava and the concussion of endless waves of fire. Her lungs blistered. Perhaps the ends of her fingers and toes had turned to ash; she couldn’t feel them.

  That fire was hers. She owned it. She was a daughter of the Dragon. The wall of searing heat gathered in front of her as a ball of living flame. The roof of the labs blew open, into the sky she couldn’t see. All was red. All was orange and yellow and evil. Her control of the energy was so close to nothing. She could only keep it, focus it, shoot it upward.

  Fighting. Still fighting.

  My brave girl.

  Leto’s words were a chant even when her skin felt like it was peeling off. Soon her muscles and her bones would dissolve. She knew the moment when she’d lost the fight. Her body went cold. The fire took her and she felt no more pain. Shivers, uncontrollable shivers, swallowed her without mercy as she called out Leto’s name.

  Her life was at an end.

  No, the pain was . . . gone.

  “Nynn! Dragon damn you. Open your eyes.”

  So slow. So terrified of it not being true. Because she thought she heard Leto.

  Her eyelids fluttered. She was that out of body, as if her lids worked of their own accord. Finally they parted to reveal Leto’s scarred, uncompromising face.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he growled. “I promised I’d come back for you. You heard me. Don’t make me a liar, Nynn. Talk to me. Do it.”