Caged Warrior

Indranan.”

“The Five Clans it is, then. That’ll be nice and all kumbaya.” Hark flicked a glance at the door. “We’ll sort family trees later.”

“Yes.” Nynn took Leto’s hand. “Let’s do this. Burn it down.”

TWENTY-NINE

Leto was in pain. He was buzzing. He was furious.

He was himself.

Only when he felt the roughness beneath his fingertips did he realize he was touching his neck. He didn’t even know its contours. Hidden from him for two decades. Although he would bear those scars until he died, he would never wear a lonayip collar again.

Another surety was harder to accept.

I’m one of the Heartless.

Had his mother been Indranan, or had Dr. Aster done . . . something to ensure Leto’s conception and birth? Pell had been incapacitated by her gift. Was she a crossbreed, too? Nynn was, and she was powerful—so powerful. And her son was half human. Perhaps that explained some of the Dragon Kings’ trials. Split and segregated, bigoted and aloof, they’d retreated into tight-knit clans and doomed themselves to extinction.

“We’re not going die.” Even his voice sounded different. Some combination of his liberated senses and his voice box free of a permanent metal grip.

There was no more time to delay. He turned to face Nynn. Their gazes caught. They held hands. At the far end of the disorienting golden tunnel of light, he found her icy blue eyes. She looked scared, elated, anxious.

“Never let me go,” she said.

“Neither of us is in the habit of letting go of the ones we love.”

She blessed him with a radiant smile that added more gold to their intimate bonfire. “Be ready to keep up, sir.”

His heart pinched. “Make me proud, neophyte.”

He could only watch as Nynn pulled the golden energy into her body. He couldn’t imagine what Nynn could do with this much pure energy at her disposal. The Pendray in her must be the difference. She wasn’t a pure, polite, straight-thinking Tigony. She possessed a wild touch of berserker.

His job was to keep the berserker calm and speed her to safety just before the full concussive blast neared its peak. For Hark and Silence, they had the task of channeling Nynn’s gift. Two wrathful blasts were better than one. For Leto’s peace of mind, he hoped the split would save Nynn from flat-out exploding. She’d lost control before.

Leto recalled the tattoo on her shoulder, now more a premonition than anything he’d done to save her from the Asters. It was as if Lamot had uncovered the color and shape that had already been there. Nynn, who carried a piece of the Dragon.

Did that mean she could succumb to her own inner violence, falling into the Chasm as the Dragon had done?

The golden energy disappeared. She threw her head back. Her whole body shook, as if his hands were live wires she’d caught while standing in a puddle of water. Lightning burst and sparked outward from where they touched. With his wild senses careening around the arena, collecting information he could barely process, Leto heard voices, guards, keys.

Hark and Silence positioned themselves before the section of arena wall they claimed was weakest. Leto found a strange sympathy for them. If no other Dragon Kings existed, the Sath would be as powerless as humans. No gifts to steal. What would it be like to only borrow the unfamiliar? They would never know in advance what intensity they prepared to take into their bodies.

A test, Hark had said. Can’t rely on a weak link.

There in the Cage, they’d already tasted a sample of Nynn’s power. Leto’s long games looked like snap decisions compared to these two.

A tremor in Nynn’s mind, a cry, a truncated scream. Between them had grown a bubble of fireworks and sputtering light. It doubled in size until its perimeter sizzled Leto’s skin. His sense of touch was radically sensitive. He jerked back, slipped, lost her hands.

“Nynn!”

The bubble was as tall as she was.

Just at his peripheral vision, he saw Hark and Silence touch. Just hands. A quick squeeze. Silence had a lovely smile. He looked away, unwilling to intrude on what may have been two lovers’ wishes for luck. Or their goodbyes.

The bubble burst in a furious blast of fire and stinging electrical currents. Leto was faster. No wonder they’d wanted to restrict what the Dragon had bestowed. He grabbed Nynn around the waist and pulled her to the far side of the Cage. She was limp in his arms.

The blast was a tidal wave pouring over them in an arc of molten light. The Cage, which had been the bedrock of his existence, shriveled and burned like paper in fire. Briefly, the Sath pair was silhouetted against the onslaught. He cringed closer to Nynn and groaned as his eyes were stabbed by indescribable brightness. Pain ricocheted between his sockets and the back of his skull.

Leto gave her a shake. Maybe too hard. He couldn’t tell how loud he shouted or how fast he moved. “Don’t you leave me.”

“Going . . . nowhere.”

The last of what had been forged steel landed in bits and chunks, all brittle and black like charred wood. Leto realized that much of the training arena looked the same way. Their insane plan had worked. What looked like singed wood was enclosed where layers of metal girders and roofing had been. Maybe it still was metal, just altered beyond recognition.

Light filtered through crags and cracks in the rock, and streamed in great gushes through a gaping hole where Silence and Hark had stood. The hole was almost as big as the octagonal base of the obliterated practice Cage.

“You meant it,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “Burn it down.”

“Hell yeah.”

“You’re a wreck.”

“You should see your face.”

“You want a pretty boy instead? Can’t help you there.” He kissed her forehead. “Time to leave. You promised to show me the snow.”

“What if I killed them, too? Silence and Hark?”

“Then they died on their terms. Free.”

¦   ¦   ¦

Nynn stumbled over the rubble and into the bright glare of late midday on an artic field. She’d assumed it would be morning, but the artificial markers of time in the complex didn’t match the turn of the earth. She’d also imagined mountains. This was just flat. Flatness without end. Features mashed together into a stark wash of ice on white on blue.

That wasn’t to say it was devoid of life. Hark and Silence stood staring at the white wasteland. They looked like refugees from a coal mine.

“Where’s your pack?” Nynn called.

Hark looked over his shoulder with a teasing grin. “Someone’s Dragon-damned gift has a nasty kick. Our packs are ash. On the upside, we thought we’d need supplies for a long foot trek. I’m glad we can be proven wrong and still survive the shame.”

In the distance, maybe two miles away, stood another complex. It was aboveground and ringed with helicopter pads and smaller buildings that looked like private, individual villas. Nynn knew without question that the