Caged Warrior

getting it back was even worse?

When Fam embraced Hellix in that masculine football player way, her respect sank even further. He was sloppy and cocky. He was soft. Yet she was the one still breathless and quivering on all fours. Pride pushed her to her knees, then to unsteady feet. A stumble. A hearty laugh from those who still watched.

“Useless Tigony bitch,” Hellix said. “Tricksters aren’t worth anything more than a bad fuck.”

Fam dropped his sickle. “I’d take her. Trickster or not.”

“You’d take a hole in the wall if it got you off,” said another of Hellix’s followers.

Audrey noticed Leto’s reaction, even if he refused to look in her direction. He had taken up a towel. Face, bare shoulder, upper back—he scrubbed the sweat from his incredible body. Upon hearing the comments from Hellix and his friend, he dropped the towel and picked up his mace and shield. Not aggression. Just a reaffirmation of his place within their society. Champion. Default leader.

While she’d made him look like a fool.

She would have no dependable ally in Leto of Garnis. As for the world at large, she needed to find it. Soon. Before pleasing that man and winning ridiculous sparring matches became as important to her as it was to him.

Silence finally pushed away from the post. She walked forward and held out an arm. Warily, Audrey considered refusing, but in a place of such isolation and mistrust, she chose to accept the gesture at face value. With Silence’s help, she tested her leg’s ability to hold her weight and found it resilient enough to walk. Silence looked her up and down with that unnerving black stare, and nodded. Dragon damn, even her body language was unreadable. Audrey couldn’t have interpreted that little nod had her next breath depended on it.

The woman returned to the Cage wires and retrieved her shield, with its serrated edge.

“Thank you,” Audrey called.

The slight lift of Silence’s brows was practically a spoken question.

“You could’ve taken off half my face.” She touched her bleeding lip and nodded toward the shield. “I appreciate that you didn’t.”

“Hey, quit flirting with the new kid,” came a man’s voice, although this one had none of Hellix’s aggression. “That was me once, all shiny and useless. I might get jealous. But food first. You know how hungry I get sitting around and watching other people fight. Just famished.”

Silence nodded her slight good-bye to Audrey, then joined a man at the base of the Cage’s steps. He was Silence’s lover, Hark. He didn’t look like the rest of the muscle-bound warriors. He didn’t need to. His lean, street fighter’s build was a deceptive trick. He could carry the Sath’s traditional nighnor as if it weighed nothing. With cheekbones high and elegant, and his eyes the clearest, brightest blue—his combination of strength and grace was surprising, but in that, he was perfectly paired with Silence.

Audrey watched as the pair stealthily, unhurriedly moved past Hellix and his sycophants. The bullies didn’t heckle or jeer. Only watched them pass.

Strange.

But useful information.

Audrey staggered toward the Cage’s exit. Surprisingly, Leto met her there. He looped the mace over his shoulder, offered his hand.

“What, some pity gesture?” she asked.

“You should know by now that pity is of no use down here.”

“If you think I’m touching you after what you did to me, you’re insane.”

The nearly placid set of his features didn’t change. “Let Hellix or Kilgore touch you instead. Makes no difference which way you want to torture yourself.” He dropped his hand and nodded toward the whipping post in the corner of the training arena. “That will be your next lesson if you fail to learn from this one.”

A shudder ripped up the length of her spine. The agonizing pain in her leg was only a taste of the pain a whipping post could entail.

Leto stalked away. Much as had been the case with Silence, the others made no sound as he passed. Only Hellix stabbed a hard glare his back.

Audrey berated herself as she slowly, unevenly made her way out of the Cage. Between the menace of Leto’s threat and the admiration she couldn’t yet admit, she realized exactly how much danger she faced. Stick. Carrot. And losing herself.

She couldn’t stay in this underground prison any longer. But did she dare risk her life and Jack’s to make an escape?

ELEVEN

Audrey actually had no idea how she’d escape until the opportunity presented itself.

Kilgore. The galley cook who never looked at her as if she wore clothing—always straight through her garments, searching for skin.

She hid a shudder when the guards summoned her to the bars of her training cell. Kilgore waited for her. He appeared as spit-shined as a man could manage in that underground prison. Hair washed and combed. Threadbare uniform clean. In a warped way, he looked like a man picking up his date.

For Audrey’s plans, the strange little man with the round, too-large head would do nicely.

Leto would never let her out of his sight, and the guards were like machines. She’d gone over every crevice and crack in the training room. She’d even gotten completely soaked probing the trickling waterfall, as well as where it transformed from clean-flowing water to a one-woman latrine. Not the best evening.

“Leto keeps you locked up in here,” Kilgore said, pityingly. “Would you like to go for a walk?”

She glanced at the guards, who watched with some interest. Each of her words would be important, chosen with the same precision as a well-timed roundhouse.

“Of course. I’m yours to command.”

Kilgore’s eyes widened. They were tinged with yellow. Jaundice? Audrey hid a shudder.

He handed the guards one package each. They accepted them without fanfare, only secreting them into their armor. What was inside each . . . she didn’t want to know. One man unlocked the iron bars. He literally looked away.

Audrey had learned that the entire complex traded black-market goods through Kilgore, even though it was obvious he hadn’t been outdoors in a very long time. He was revolting. Jaundiced eyes. Sallow skin. Sunken eyes. His hair barely covered his scalp. Proof that human beings shouldn’t spend forever in the dark.

“Come on, then, Nynn of Tigony.”

Even the way he said her clan name was enough to make her skin itch with disgust. He thought he was going to fuck a Dragon King. Better than that—a Tigony woman from the Giva’s inner circle.

Not going to happen.

“I’ll be right back,” she whispered.

She hurried back up the corridor to her room. Leto had started the habit of leaving a training knife with her overnight. With no way out of her personal prison, why not spend free hours practicing? Although made of wood, the knife might be enough to disable one unsuspecting opponent. Then she would need to find a real weapon.

And find her way out of the complex.

Carefully, somewhat impatiently, she’d interpreted slivers of sentences and carelessly exhaled facts. The human quarters were her best bet. When the workers’ contracts expired, they needed a means in and out. The Dragon Kings never left except for matches, and so far, that procedure was swathed in questions. How were they transported? To where?

She would be gone before that was her issue.

The most important piece of information had been a guard’s casual grouse that he needed to help transport another lab patient into the complex. I hate the walk to that place. It’s creepy as