Caged Warrior

by Lindsey Piper

Her throat felt papery and charred. Yet she could still swallow. She could still talk. “So bossy.”

  Leto enveloped her in a fierce hug. His heart galloped beneath her ear at the speed she knew he could travel. She’d worked so hard, but even she knew she was oddly still. His rasping exhale was a brush of warmth against her cheek. Good warmth. The kind that meant safety, not destruction.

  “Where is your armor?” she asked.

  “Shed it. Faster that way.”

  “How many lost?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Leto, no! I could’ve held on a little longer.”

  “Lonayíp woman, I grabbed you up through a wall of pure fire. You were being consumed by it, like the Dragon swallowed into the Chasm. Nynn, I couldn’t hear your thoughts or your heartbeat. Nothing left of you but a tiny pulse of life.” He bowed his forehead to hers. Only then did she realize they lay together in the snow. That was the cold she felt. “I wasn’t leaving you to die.” His blunt, wide palms framed her cheeks—his warmth battling the bristling cold. “Do you hear me?”

  She gulped cold air into her singed lungs and burrowed her body into his warmth. “I hear you.”

  “I can’t imagine my life without you. I had my arms around you and was running free. Saving you was saving myself. You’ve given me a taste of a life I never knew I could have. For me, for you, for Jack—I wasn’t going to give that up. I’ve sacrificed too much to lose you now.”

  “But the last prisoners?”

  Leto exhaled heavily. “I’ve always lived with the choices I’ve made.”

  He smoothed sweat-sticky hair back from her temples, which exposed her heated flesh to the elements. She liked the shock of cold as she returned to herself.

  “But that doesn’t mean the death of more innocents today,” Leto continued. “That Pendray man did what he could with the detonator. Hark said only half of the charges went off. He and Silence found the remaining patients several hundred meters back from the outpost. The Pendray was nowhere to be seen. He’s gone. Even the rebel Indranan woman can’t feel a trace of him.”

  She shook her head, which still roared with the sounds of whirling flames, like an enraged predator. “Where’s Jack?”

  “With your cousin. The Giva helped you, as he said he would. He took part of the energy, too.”

  “He’s a damn fool.”

  “He’s related to you.”

  She hurt all over, but Leto’s rough caresses began to heal her from the inside out. “You were my tormentor once. Maybe all of that harsh treatment led us here. I wouldn’t have survived without you, Leto. I wouldn’t have known my strength.”

  Nynn couldn’t hold it in any longer. The energy she’d funneled through her body had left her depleted. Completely depleted. Sensation returned—a mixed blessing as the memories of flames remained. The very real threat of an arctic night remained. She shook until her teeth clicked together. Yet a sense of joy began to warm her from the inside out. She’d defeated her own fears and, with the help of members of all Five Clans, she’d helped save almost three dozen Dragon Kings from Dr. Aster.

  Tears froze on her cheeks, but Leto kissed them away.

  “Here,” came a familiar voice. “I believe this young man belongs to you.”

  Looking up from the protection of Leto’s solid chest, Nynn found Malnefoley kneeling in the snow. Jack jumped from his arms and folded into Nynn’s. Leto closed his embrace around them both. Her grateful, awed sobs came in earnest then. Jack. Leto. She was holding them both. That Aster and the Indranan witch had escaped was a fight for another day. She was too busy thanking the Dragon for each breath she shared with her family.

  “I’ve communicated with the outside world, if you can believe it,” Mal said. “Who needs the Indranan when we have satellite phones?” He looked exhausted. Quietly sure of his place, but exhausted. “Rescue helicopters will be here in an hour. Then we’ll search what’s left of the underground complex for survivors.”

  “And the Pet?”

  “She’s under my protection now. Or my custody. Whichever winds up being more appropriate.” He smiled tightly and turned to leave them in privacy.

  “Mal? Who was that man? He said he was my father’s younger brother.”

  The Honorable Giva stopped, his back still turned. “Tallis of Pendray. The Heretic. And yes, your uncle. One day I’ll tell you the sins he confessed to me.” He looked over his shoulder with a glare as powerful as his lightning strikes. “But not tonight. Enjoy your family, cousin.”

  He returned to the people who needed him—who would need him more than ever now that the power of one of the cartels had been upended.

  Although confused, Nynn took Mal’s advice. She was safe. Really, truly safe. Leto kissed the top of her head, and she could’ve sworn he whispered prayers of thanks in their old, old language.

  Four snowmobiles pulled up alongside them. Two faceless Dragon Kings merely nodded before gunning their machines into the dark. Hark, however, grinned with his usual misplaced levity.

  “We’re throwing in with the rebels for now,” he said. “We have an idol to return to our clan, and a few collared brethren to free along the way. That sounds far too noble for me, but I’ll survive. I have it on tenuous authority we’ll see each other again—sometime between now and our return from the Sath leadership. Won’t that be a pleasant reunion? At least it’ll be warm in Egypt.”

  He tipped his chin toward his partner in a gesture to get going.

  Silence smiled down at Nynn and the two men in her life—one barely formed, one scarred and just as new to the world. “Take care, friends.”

  Then they were as much a part of the night as the stillness and stars. Leto helped Nynn stand, so that he could lead her back toward the huddled bundle of shivering bodies. Leto knelt next to Pell and touched her cheeks. “Jack, come sit with my sister, will you? Her name is Pell. And you’re both cold.”

  “It’s all right,” Nynn said to Jack with a growing measure of calm. “I’m right here. And I’m never going anywhere without you again.”

  Jack threw his arms around her neck and kissed her there—there, where she wore no collar and could feel his small, sure gesture. “Love you, Mama.”

  She swallowed back tears as her son scampered from her arms and laid down beside Pell’s motionless body. He huddled under a makeshift blanket that may have been from the young woman’s gurney. Nynn considered her survival and her reunion with Jack—let alone her love for Leto—to be miracles. There had been no future for Pell before, and she would’ve died in the labs. Maybe now . . .

  Leto settled behind Nynn, with his legs crisscrossed around hers. He’d held her that way on several occasions. She adored the safety and possessive weight of his limbs wrapped around hers. She leaned back against his chest, reveling in the man who’d become hers through a hell she would spend years trying to understand. At least she would have Leto to hold her throughout it all.

  Over her shoulder, looking up at him, she whispered, “I love you, Leto. I’m glad you came for me. I could’ve given all I had, but that wasn’t my right. It would mean sacrificing you and Jack, too—your happiness.”

  He leaned close and kissed her. Tenderly at first, but then with the growing heat of having survived. Together. His arms were her refuge. His heart was her home. His soul was the treasure she’d never knew she sought. She could never put right what had been lost, but she could look ahead to years filled with boundless potential.

  Leto’s tongue stroked over hers. Passion and power. Sweetness and sweat. They were everything and more.

  “I love you,” he said with that rough, deep rumble. “Be mine. Be mine . . .”

  As the distant sound of helicopter rotors filled her with another surge of hope, Nynn smiled against his mouth. “Always, my warrior. No matter what the future holds.”

  Continue reading for an exclusive excerpt from

  BLOOD WARRIOR

  The Dragon Kings

  Book Two
/>   by

  LINDSEY PIPER

  Coming August 2013 from Pocket Books

  Tallis shed his heavy leather jacket and levered over Kavya, the legendary goddess known as the Sun, where she sprawled on the ground, sheltered by the canvas tent. He wore sturdy military-style cargo pants, while she wore only a silken sari. She would be able to feel his desire taking physical form.

  “Should I kiss you again?” He touched her only from the waist down, where he used the weight of his lower body as more threat than seduction. Arms straight, he braced his hands on either side of her head. “I’d learn secrets about the Sun you’re too arrogant to admit possessing.”

  “More of the so-called justice you seek? I’ve done nothing to you!”

  “You know my weaknesses better than I do. Every fantasy—even those I can’t arrange into thought.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve used that knowledge against me for years,” he said, voice deepening with anger. “If I resisted, you invaded dream after dream like some Dragon-damned monster. You’d raid another corner of my mind to find more secrets.” He was still aroused. Kissing her had been calculated, but he’d been swept into the vortex where fantasy swirled with reality. “Is it any surprise that I desire you in person?”

  “You have the only mind I’ve never been able to read. How could I have done anything to your dreams?”

  A clamor of voices came from beyond the tent’s dingy white canvas. For a moment Tallis thought she’d managed to telepathically call for help, but she wore no expression of triumph. Then came more voices, more chaos.

  He edged away and grabbed the deadly Norse seaxes he’d kept out of her reach.

  His sense of hearing gave away her attack from behind as Kavya swung a cooking pot. The determination and, frankly, the vehemence in her glittering brown eyes was pure surprise. Ropes around her ankles meant she had one chance before losing her balance, but she made the most of it. The bulk of the pot hit his shoulder. One seax with its etched blade and honed edge skidded along the bare rock floor.

  She rolled onto her back and grabbed the hilt with both bound hands. A quick slice parted the ropes at her ankles. She spun so that she knelt again, bloodying her knees. Shins braced against the ground gave her more stability. The split skirt of her sari bared the sleek skin of her thigh.

  Although his shoulder ached, Tallis could only grin. “I’d hoped there was more to you than words and specters.”

  “Why would you think that of someone you kidnapped and profess to hate?”

  Her eyes were bright and widely spaced, wedded to the high, rounded apples of her cheeks. She had a tiny nose and a chin that, for all her defiance, was softly shaped. Tallis shivered. This was her, really her, not the witch who’d infected his dreams for two decades. The real Sun, this woman Kavya, was the perfect compromise between truth and fantasy, virgin and whore—a bound innocent holding his blade.

  Although she remained still, she vibrated with near-visible energy. Tallis could practically smell the heady cologne of her fear and focus. Her telepathic seductions were vile, but the surprising resilience of her fighting spirit made him smile more deeply.

  “I like to think,” he said, “that when I break you, I’ll have broken someone who deserved the worst I can dish out. Seems you’re in the mood to make me a happy man.”

  “Happy? I want you dead.” A look a horror crossed her face. She inhaled sharply, which lifted the supple curve of breasts draped in silk.

  Tallis chuckled. “You didn’t mean to say that, did you?”

  Exaggerating the ache in his shoulder, crouching before her, he shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet. Rather than leap, he leaned and swept his right leg. The toe of his boot caught her behind her upper thigh with a hard kick. He yanked. Between the blow and the pull, she fell hard onto her side.

  She coughed, struggling for air. He pushed forward with two crouched strides and snatched the stolen blade from her bound hands.

  “The Sun can fight. Gratifying, but it won’t change anything.” The gathering ferment outside the tent caught his attention again. “Stay. Unless you want to remain unaware of what’s happening among your flock.”

  Her mouth was . . . gorgeous. There was no other word. Bee-stung lips twisted into a sneer. “Do it.”

  “That’s the only command of yours I’ll obey.”

  Intending to piss her off, he took one more taste of the lips he’d never believed could be real. Seeing her in the flesh, tasting and smelling and touching her—those intimacies made her night visits more ephemeral. They were mere shadows compared to the sweet bitterness of the kiss he took without permission.

  She bit him. Tallis reared back. He swiped a hand against his mouth and came away with blood.

  “That wasn’t very nice, goddess.” But he was still grinning.

  Both seaxes firmly grasped, Tallis peered outside again. Dusk approached to take the place of full sunlight. Amiable pods of Indranan had been gathered around their fire pits. Now they hurried around wearing frightened expressions.

  Strange.

  Tallis’s own clan, the Pendray, were generally insane and suffered from historic self-esteem issues, but at least they displayed what they felt without pretense. They were boisterous and unapologetic. The Indranan, however, were made of mystery. To see the camp transformed into a frenzied, buzzing collection of scared souls was shocking—so many emotions laid surprisingly bare.

  “Let me go,” came the persuasive voice at his back. “Whatever grudge you hold against me, you know I can calm them.”

  “No. Their panic will remain unaddressed by their savior. Seeing you discredited and ruined has always been my goal, no matter how much I like kissing you.”

  The fervor outside the tent died down, but only because hurrying worshipers had frozen solid. Their attention was focused on the altar.

  Tallis narrowed his eyes. A man stood where Kavya had delivered her morning benediction. He was tall, with a commanding presence. His hair was brown, his features sharp, his clothing black on black. Among those gathered in the valley, his layers of leather and protective plates of silver armor stood out like a burn on a child’s skin.

  No matter Tallis’s grudge against the Sun and her cult, this stranger was pure violence.

  “You were expecting someone else,” the man intoned, his words hypnotic. They echoed back across the valley in a one-two punch of spellbinding power. “You were expecting a savior. I’m here to say there is no such thing. And there’s no such thing as reconciliation between the Northern and Southern factions of Clan Indranan. There never will be.”

  Tallis grabbed Kavya by her hair and dragged her to the tent’s opening. Her face went chalk white. The paleness looked sick and unnatural on a Dragon King, and especially eerie when it leeched the soft charisma of her beauty.

  “Who is that?” Tallis was more disturbed than he would have liked, but the unexpected was always a threat.

  “That.” She swallowed. “That is Pashkah of the Northern Indranan. My brother.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  If skin could turn to ice, Kavya’s became as cold as the glaciers along the Himalaya’s Rohtang Pass.

  She hadn’t seen Pashkah since she was twelve years old, but she would never mistake his stance, his face. Even as a boy, his expression had been freakishly blank. Devils and ghouls were nothing compared to his uncanny blankness. Had she been able to understand him, with telepathy or her senses, she might have been able to save their sister, Baile.

  But in those final moments, Baile hadn’t wanted to be saved. Before Pashkah had taken her head, she’d wanted his just as much.

  Every Indranan was born as a twin or, in Kavya’s case, as a triplet. Siblings grew up knowing that the Dragon had divvied up their true potential in the womb. Learn to share. So few did. By committing fratricide, an Indranan could unite the pieces of shattered potential. The ability to read another’s mind was the most intoxicating, terrifying g
ift among the Five Clans. To keep from wanting more was the ultimate responsibility.

  The Heartless.

  Kavya had never protested her clan’s derogatory nickname. She’d simply fought to rise above its hideous legacy.

  Now, having reduced their family to a series of grim victories, Pashkah stood within a few hundred meters of success. He would take Kavya’s gift and add it to the power he’d stolen from Baile. He would become thrice-cursed with his true potential sewn together in violence—while the never-ending shrieks of two dead sisters destroyed his sanity.

  Tallis shook her by the hair. “What is this, part of your big announcement? Bring in muscle to make sure everyone complies?”

  “This is my brother having found me after decades of searching. This is . . . this is the brink of chaos.”

  She jerked free. At least now she knew the identity of her captor.

  Tallis of Pendray. The Heretic.

  She still wasn’t able to read his mind, but his honed Norse seaxes held residual memories so strong that she’d caught flashes of his true self. His life on the run.

  A man of myth. But still a man.

  “You don’t need to be a telepath to sense the panic.” She tipped her chin toward where Pashkah owned the altar—the altar she’d hoped would be host to an evening of peaceful triumph. “Those are lambs being herded toward a butcher’s knife. Nothing I’ve done, no matter your delusions, will match the crimes Pashkah is capable of committing.”

  “He’s your brother. I wouldn’t expect anything less than deceit and mind-warping delusions.”

  Kavya’s heart was expanding with each beat, until it shoved against her trachea. Everything she’d worked for was at Pashkah’s mercy, while the notorious Heretic kept her from helping her people. “Do you hate me so much that you deny the obvious? Look at the men at his back. Each one of them is twice-cursed.”

  “You can tell? You’re reading their minds?”

  “I don’t need to. They’re Pashkah’s Black Guard. Whole communities have been rolled over by their arrival.”

  “He kills Dragon Kings? The Five Clans would’ve heard about that.”