Their first kiss as husband and wife. Gasps of passion. Groans. Awed whispers in the night. So many plans.
And the best. The most perfect. The hardest to hear again. “It’s a boy, Audrey. Our son.”
After Jack took his first breath on a gusty cry, their nighttime whispers had been for him, about him, centered on keeping their little family happy and whole.
Her mind was crying again.
“Hush, now,” she’d whispered while trapped in a cell in Aster’s lab. Jack’s baby-fine hair had smelled of antiseptic and iodine. “Everything will be all right.”
She’d lied to her boy. Nothing was all right.
Yes. Gone now. Thankfully gone. The painful weight Nynn had carried for more than a year lifted and lifted. The agony was a bird escaping, flying, disappearing into a blue too bright to follow. It carried away the sharp brambles of her mind.
The space was empty now, quiet now. What had been there? She’d lost something.
“What do I do?” she called into the black. “Ulia, help me!”
Relief washed her like a cleansing rain. Her skin was new. Her mind was clear. Her gift was ready to surge. She would wield it as easily now as Leto swung his mace and circled the Cage with unimaginable speed.
Leto. Holding her.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I promise.”
Although she could no longer remember what promise she’d made.
¦ ¦ ¦
Leto stroked back the sweat from Nynn’s brow and temple. Her body raged with a sudden, fierce fever. Unnatural. Overwhelming. She shook uncontrollably no matter how firmly he pulled her against his body. Lithe feminine limbs twitched without warning. Strong. Punches and kicks to the air. More than a few struck him.
The strangest Cage match of his life.
The consequences extended beyond winning and losing. He wasn’t accustomed to long games.
All he could do was tend to the woman he held. He focused on Nynn. The hair he’d cut short was not entirely blond, as he’d assumed in her cell. It was tinged with streaks of copper. A half dozen strands here and there. Thin as filaments. Ethereal as ghosts. Her freckles covered more than her cheeks. Nape, shoulder blades, and forearms—all touched by a faint dusting of beige color. He traced a line of them up her neck. He didn’t know what caused her to shiver at that moment, but he tightened his arms.
He wanted the cause to have been his touch.
“Promise, promise, promise . . .”
Her chant grew stronger as her body began to still. More voice. Less frantic fighting. Leto exhaled against her damp skin. He forced his muscles to release. Slowly. The adrenaline rush of combat, no matter how strange, began to ebb. First his legs, where hers no longer kicked. Their limbs were sticky with sweat. Locked together. Then his arms—softer now, as she eased back. His chest became her wall, although he remained hyperconscious of the damage done to her back.
A quick-fire fury reignited at the thought of what he’d seen done to her. Hellix. That thick, powerful whip. Nasty smiles and debauched taunts.
Nynn’s breath shuddered with every ragged inhale and sloppy, off-tempo exhale. Even that pattern wasn’t normal. Warriors breathed hard and fast after a tough contest, yet always with the rhythm of lungs and heart working together. Her body had no grace. No balance.
He pressed his mouth against her damp, salty temple. “What do you promise?”
“Save my son.”
“One year, Nynn. You will.”
“Burn it all down . . .”
Leto frowned on a sharp intake of hot, electric air. He banked his surprise as Ulia was the first to emerge from her trance. The old woman looked toward him with those eerie, dull bronze eyes.
“Was it a success?”
That was not worry in his voice. He was only evaluating whether a tool at his disposal would be ready for its time in the Cage.
Ulia smiled in a way that gave him no assurances. “Of course. Nynn will have full control of her powers now. She may even outshine you, champion.” She cackled softly, as if her pun about Nynn’s powers was intentional.
Shaking off his frustration, he stretched his aching legs. “What happened in there?”
“We freed what needed to be freed, and tucked away what needed to be tucked away.”
More foreboding. Leto hated this. He couldn’t remember a time when his skills and reputation hadn’t been enough to solve a problem. The whole night had been a study in just that. Frustration built under his skin. With the collars deactivated there in the Cage, his gift became a flood of water ready to burst through a dam. He could destroy concrete and wrought iron and steel.
Nynn coughed. Gasped. Jerked nearly to her knees. Only Leto’s arms kept her from toppling. Watching her wobble because of muscle fatigue after a hard day’s training was one thing. Satisfying. Goals achieved. To see her disoriented and graceless for so many hours was disconcerting. This creature hadn’t returned from a hellish place. Not yet. That it existed in her own mind was not something he could shake away. He’d suffered it as well. Looking too closely would mean admitting the same dark places lurked inside of him—darker than he already knew.
“Nynn,” he said. “Sit still. Breathe with me.”
Slowly, with exaggerated care, he showed her the rhythm she needed for respiration. He stroked her bare arm with the same tempo. She nodded in time as well. They were more attuned than Leto had ever been with another being. Rather than push that realization away, he hid it. Kept it for later. A Cage warrior could not afford softness.
Yet he was a champion. Surely that meant one small concession.
“Leto,” Nynn whispered. She turned in his arms. She touched the head and the tail of his tattoo. Soft fingertips shook where she traced lines of ink and his throbbing veins. She lowered her head until her mouth nestled behind his ear. “I have a serpent, too.”
“Where is yours?”
The touch of her hot, wet tongue against his skin was as unexpected as it was provoking. “Behind my breast. It waits to bring down our opponents.”
“Good.” Better than good. He smiled against her roughly cut hair. “It will be a treat to share victory with another. Something new.”
He swallowed. Exhaled. She had barely emerged from a psychic trance. The desire he felt had no place in that moment, but the need remained. Changed. Stronger. More dangerous.
He meant what he’d said. The prospect of standing beside this unflinching woman while the crowd cheered their shared triumph was incredible. He wouldn’t be alone. His heartbeat sped and his body swiftly roused. Concern plunged straight back down to primal need. He’d never had a partner in the Cages. They shared the same goal: win. Win again and again.
They could share that triumph as lovers. Fierce. Together.
Yet her groggy words would not leave his mind.
He wanted to ask Ulia what it meant. Something stilled his tongue. For now, the ritual had been a success. He had a partner who might be more than a burden, more than a tool. That was all he needed to know.
Ulia levered onto her feet with great difficulty. Leto would’ve aided the old woman, but Nynn needed just as much help in standing.
Her smile quirked. “You can let go now.”
Leto nearly matched her grin. Nynn seemed lighter. More at ease. The change was hard to pinpoint. A certain cockiness in the set of her shoulders? A brow smoothed of so many worry lines? Even his ability to read a fellow Dragon King fell short.
