Caged Warrior

she never would’ve thought possible from the great champion of the Asters. Not at first, anyway. Now she knew that he felt a great deal. She took refuge in the comfort he offered wordlessly.

“You’ve seen what my gift can do. I didn’t know how to control it. The house. Our house, there in the Tigony complex. I was sitting next to my mother on her bed. She had a fever, raving, half lost to the world. Then I was fire. The first explosion of my gift.”

“You remember it now?”

“Not . . . entirely. I remember people’s reactions to it. Grief. Accusations. Hatred. But the actual moment the house exploded and she burned?” She shook her head as tears dripped toward the pillow. “Thank the Dragon I don’t remember. When Mal’s personal doctor said she would never recover, she begged to be killed. Mal took the responsibility himself when he wielded a Dragon-forged sword to take her life.”

Leto petted the tears away, then kissed the corner of her lips. “So when they let some Indranan witch dredge your brain, they hid more than just your gift.”

Nynn managed to nod, although her neck was stiff and cramping. “They took most memories of my mother. I became Tigony in name only. Blending in with the humans became a better option. I emigrated to the States. Studied art. Fell in love with Caleb. Became a teacher.”

A sob shook her shoulders, then overcame what remained of her control.

Leto pulled her into the hollow of his curved shoulders. He held her, even rocked her gently. The words he said in their ancient, Dragon-given tongue were a comfort, even if her tears drowned out some of the words. She’d lost so many versions of her life, then regained them in pieces only to have them taken again. All of those gifts and thefts had led her to the moment when a Cage warrior held her as if he could take her grief into his own warm skin—the Cage warrior who’d taught her how to forge a life of her own.

The sound of metal scraping into a lock shocked Nynn back to herself. Leto had jumped clear of the bed and grabbed his shorts before she blinked. He threw clothes at her and grabbed a shield and curved sword off his wall. Perhaps he’d been awarded them as prizes after some victory or another, but he held them now like a man ready to defend his home.

Maybe he was, because the lock began to turn.

TWENTY-EIGHT

If anything proved how weak he was in the scheme of the Asters’ cartel, Leto knew it the moment his privacy was invaded by three armed guards. The shield and sword he hefted were no better than toys when the intruders leveled cattle prods and rifles loaded with napalm bullets. Without his gift, Leto was a medieval knight against an army from the future.

“Nynn of Tigony,” said one of the helmeted men. “You’re coming with us.”

“Where—?”

The man leveled his prod at her as she yanked her tank top into place. “No talking.”

Another of the guards gestured to the armaments Leto had snatched off the wall. “Put those down.”

All this time, Leto had believed he was worth more. Now he was staring at faceless human opponents who aimed rifles at his bare chest. Faceless humans had come to take Nynn away.

Without his collar, his decision would’ve been simple. Take them out. Three guards laid out on the ground. With it, however, he needed to gauge the outcome. He couldn’t be sure that he’d incapacitate the guards before one of them hurt the woman he loved.

The woman I love.

Dragon damn, that realization had felt so right when holding her close. It had become a weakness. He would never recover from the pain of losing her.

That won’t happen.

Leto dropped and did a somersault. He thrust his shield between Nynn and the guard holding the prod. Electricity sparked off bronze and jolted up his arm. He swung the sword low and took the guard out at the knees. The crunch of breaking bones was muffled by plastic-bonded armor. Behind his helmet, the guard’s scream was muffled, too.

Angered beyond words, Leto used the language of violence he’d spoken since he was a child. He thrust the shield into Nynn’s hands and snatched up the fallen prod. Swirling it like Weil did with her lance, he jammed it into the second guard’s stomach. A buzzing, gurgling sound was followed by the stench of singed plastic.

Two napalm bullets fired. That premonition feeling he experienced on occasion in the Cages showed him where to escape the trajectory of the bullets. He used sword and prod in a one-two attack against the final guard. Another bullet fired into the ceiling. Its lasting, unnatural green glowed until chunks of concrete rained down.

Leto turned to search for the other two bullets. One sizzled in the middle of the pillow he and Nynn had shared. The other burned in a pool of green dead center of the shield.

He ripped the shield away before the bullet ate through the bronze. Nynn leapt at him with a fierce shriek. Leto’s reflexes and his Dragon-damned collar saved him from taking a knife to his throat. He used momentum to roll with her until he lay stretched over her body.

“You really wanted to keep that shield.”

She smacked him across the face. “I didn’t know it was you!”

“And this?” He yanked the knife from her hand.

“Guard’s boot,” she said, nodding toward the first man fallen. “Leto, what the fuck is this about?”

He pulled her to her feet. Efficiently, she grabbed her training gear and strapped it on. Silk-lined leather wasn’t the same as armor, but it would serve. The set of armor he retrieved from the wall had been his prize after the last Grievance. Yeta had miscarried three months later, so he’d never worn it in combat. Tainted. Now it was nothing more than a tool. The gilt trim and onyx inlay may as well have been plain steel.

An alarm sounded.

Nynn flinched mid-motion as she gripped two weapons—the guard’s knife and Leto’s ceremonial sword. She met his eyes, then tossed him the sword. “Too heavy for me,” she said with a tight grin.

“You’re learning, neophyte.”

“You really want your ass singed.”

“Not particularly.” He picked up the napalm rifle and checked the ammunition. Seven left.

“You’re a Cage warrior and you’re amazing—but that looks completely wrong in your hands.”

“It’s because I’m a Cage warrior and I’m amazing,” he said tightly. “This lonayip toy is for cowards.”

“Then you’re holding it why?”

“Because we’ll be facing off against other cowards.” He nodded toward the first guard. “Can you handle the prod, too?”

She’d already stripped an ankle scabbard and tightened it around her thigh. Knife stowed, she took up the prod and accepted the smallest shield from his wall of trophies. At least the Asters had been trusting enough in his subservience to allow him that. He’d walked around without manacles and with weapons on his wall because they’d believed him so neatly broken.

“How many charges does this thing have?” Nynn adjusted her grip on the prod so that her thumb rested on the trigger.

“I’ve only ever seen it used once at a time. No one gets up afterward.”

The alarm continued to cleave the air. It was all Leto could do to find a balance between using his senses and protecting them from damage. A Dragon King could lose a limb and never grow it back. He didn’t want to test whether losing his hearing could be permanent.

Yet he could always rely on his speed—nearly as powerful as within the Cages. He pinned Hark to the wall with a rifle before even registering the man’s presence.

“What in the Dragon’s name is going on?” Hark choked out.

“I’d ask the same of you. Wasn’t this part of your plan?”

Hark coughed. “What plan would possibly involve you killing three guards and setting off alarms?”