Caged Warrior

survive another eleven months and regain custody of her son. When that day came, she would be released from the mental block that kept her sanity intact and her gift contained. When she awoke, she would find her golden skin marred with yet another scar bestowed by the Asters—their serpent on her shoulder.

He moved to stand.

She grasped his wrist. “Don’t. Stay.”

“I will. Breathe with you, remember?”

Leto no longer cared who heard or what they made of his relationship with his neophyte. No, not neophyte. She was his protege now. His partner. That meant keeping her safe. That meant keeping her safe from a future where the Asters would scar her forever. He remained proud to wear the symbol of their house, but Nynn would take a blade to her own skin rather than live with their brand.

He gave her hand another squeeze before pulling free of her grip. As Lamot readied the soldering gun and well of ink, Leto whispered in the man’s ear. “Not a serpent. Give her the mark of the Dragon.”

TWENTY-ONE

Leto held a bottle of golish to her lips, but Nynn refused another drink. She could endure the pain more than she could endure the embarrassment of vomiting in front of her new comrades. The strong drink would’ve knocked a human being unconscious after a few ounces, but for Nynn, for a Dragon King— they needed to drink it like water before feeling the numbing effects. The warm withdrawal from her body began at her toes and crept upward. Her shoulder blade would be among the last parts of her body to be anesthetized.

“I want to be awake,” she said to Leto, who knelt before her. The harsh lines of his face had not eased since their exit from the Cage. Deeper in his eyes, however, she found something like concern. He looked on her as if nothing mattered more than ensuring that she would not only survive, but become stronger for it.

Again.

She was bent over a wide, flat attachment to the front of the chair, as if leaning over the top of a taller, rounded student desk like . . . “Jack . . . ?” Nynn mumbled.

The first burn of the cauterizing needle scattered thought. She bit her lower lip until she tasted blood, and she sucked air through her nose. She would not cry out. Only hours before, Nynn had been chained to Leto and they had both emerged victorious. There was no place for weakness in their world.

That didn’t mean the pain was easy to absorb. She flinched against it. Her body wanted to be in charge. No wonder Lamot had strapped her to the strange chair. Those who held any reservations about receiving the mark of their fellow warriors would’ve fled with the first touch of the stinging needle.

The straps around her torso left her arms free. A comfort. She didn’t want to let go of Leto’s hands. He was an amazing man. His fine, impressive armor no longer gleamed, but the streaks of clay and blood added to his vitality. That armor wasn’t for show; it was worn by a conqueror. The scar along his top lip was more proof. She remembered the scars on his back, which stretched beneath crisscrossed straps of leather. For a Dragon King to be scarred required a serious wound.

She had scars.

“Why do I have scars?”

Leto’s eyes widened briefly, before his stoic expression returned. He gripped her hands more tightly and shook them, as if trying to restore feeling rather than deaden her to the pain. “Focus. This will only get worse.”

“I don’t want to be numb.”

“That’s exactly what you’ll want. Soon.”

The straps bit into her lower back and across one shoulder. After that initial shock, the other shoulder sizzled with slowly gathering agony. The scent of burning flesh made her crinkle her nose, as if it emanated from someone else.

“No. I don’t want to be numb.” She hissed and shuddered. “I’ve been numb before, when . . . Leto, why do I have scars?”

“All warriors have scars.”

She held a strangled sound in her throat. “How did you bear this? You with your senses?”

“Golish. Drink.”

“No.”

She looked for other distractions. The other warriors had resumed their relaxed celebrations, but few kept their attention away from her for long. Flickers of interest. Curiosity that couldn’t be contained by conversation. What sort of initiation was this, where those she’d join treated her scarification as casual entertainment? Only Silence refused to be bashful. She tipped her head to one side and kept her eerily black eyes trained to where the needle dotted Nynn’s shoulder blade like never-ending bursts of fire. What was it about the woman? Direct in her gaze, blank in her expression—in that calm setting, she seemed like a living mannequin.

Yet she had a partner. Hark was hers, and she was his.

Nynn shut her eyes against a stab of envy that bit with the ferocity of the tattoo needle.

“You want me to do well,” she whispered. For him. For them alone. “In all things.”

“Of course. Your success—”

“Come off it. All other reasons aside, you want me to do well. Why?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You didn’t have to.”

The golish was traveling up her spine. Rather than giving Nynn the comfort she should’ve welcomed, it made her heart race faster. She was leaving her body on a wave of panic that felt so familiar she could almost taste fear—some old fear, like iron and lime on her tongue, mingled with the blood from her lip.

“I didn’t have to,” Leto said quietly, although she couldn’t be certain of that. Everything sounded soft and shadowed at the edges. Her vision was covered over with shades of coal and mud. “But I did for you.”

“Don’t want to go.” Peering through dank colors the opposite of her beautiful gift, she saw how fiercely she gripped Leto’s hands. Her knuckles were white. They wouldn’t be cold, not with his warmth to surround her. “They take him. If I go, they’ll take . . .”

She shuddered and hiccupped on a flash of pain that had nothing to do with the anguish of the soldering gun.

Leto shook free of her grasp and framed her face with his hands. “Do you see me? Nynn, look at me.”

His voice was less powerful when she was so far away, but his rumbling authority remained. He had trained her. He had trusted her enough to fight beside him. She didn’t understand what was happening—there in the complex, there in her mind—but she understood the sound of his voice. What’s more, she responded to it.

“You want this,” he said. “You want a mark to prove who you are and what you’ve accomplished. No one will ever take that from you.”

She grinned, although it felt sloppy across her lips. “You’d try if you thought it’d make me listen.”

Leto didn’t grin. He didn’t alter the forceful hold of his hands—thumbs at her temples, fingers spanning back into her hair and beneath her jaw. “Are you listening, Nynn?”

“Yes, sir.”

He bowed his head at that. The smallest dip. Yet his arresting stare remained fixed. He wasn’t letting her go, not even with his gaze. “Sleep now, knowing this will be the last time you’ll be numb. I won’t let it happen again. The pain is yours. The pleasure is yours. I promise you that.”

She smiled again, feeling drunk, limp, gone. “You promise me pleasure?” The words didn’t sound as if they came from her. So different. Liquid and subtle and inviting.

He lowered his mouth to her ear. No one else can hear us, she thought. Despite their combined efforts, she was losing him to the beckoning darkness. Only a few more words made it through the fog. “Yes, Nynn. I promise you pleasure.”

¦   ¦   ¦