Caged Warrior

actual game Cage was inside.

Perhaps she and the other warriors had traveled that short distance on some convoluted, disorienting path, because those two miles could’ve been traversed in mere minutes. Their bus rides had taken a good half hour. She didn’t trust much about her perspective from that time, but she read it as another Aster trick to keep their slaves subjugated.

One long, squat building among the others was lit for business.

That bastard has my son.

Leto climbed out behind her and staggered. He shielded his eyes. Nynn wrapped her hands around his upper arm, hoping to steady him. She’d never expected to get this far. The tortures of the previous year—no, the tortures that extended back into her childhood—had nurtured a fatalistic streak she only recognized now that the cold sun touched her face.

Training, fighting, hating . . . they’d taken on a numbing cadence. Saving Jack had become a mantra, not an actual thing. No wonder Leto had been able to continue without question for so long. He would’ve kept fighting forever, to make sure his sisters were safe and that his clan name continued.

But if he had continued, he never would’ve seen the sun or the snow.

Eyes shut, he tilted his face up and panned across the horizon until he faced the sun where it arced toward evening. The thick muscle of his neck was shaded by the angle of his uplifted chin. Callouses and raw skin were reminders of his captivity, and of how intensely his freed gift must be amplifying that moment. He swallowed, opened his mouth, and slowly, slowly, opened his eyes.

The shudder that worked down his body fed into Nynn through her hands, and maybe through her pores. Intimate and elemental.

Beautiful pain.

Those two words, spoken with his roughened voice, tickled between her temples. Beautiful pain. Yes, that was it exactly. She looked at the sun, stared at it, dared the elements to take what remained of her. Nothing could. She wasn’t numb anymore. She was in pain, the beautiful pain of being awake, finally awake.

“A little help here, firecracker,” Hark said. “We need to clean up our mess. I’d rather not share this lovely snow-covered holiday with a passel of guards.”

Nynn blinked away from the sun and looked toward Hark. His face was partially obscured by black dots strewn across her vision. Funny that she could look upon the bright colors of her own gift, and through the golden tunnel of light she and Leto could create with their gazes, but the sun was still the sun—more powerful than all of them. Even Dragon Kings needed humbling.

Nynn gave Leto’s arm another squeeze before joining Silence and Hark around what now looked like a pit. They’d been living in a pit. Dozens of the Asters’ guards were trying to climb to the surface.

The Sath must’ve been gaining control of their uninhibited gifts, too, because Nynn felt as if they were only borrowing her light. They shared it. They weren’t Thieves but comrades in arms. Nynn concentrated on building her power, layering, gathering the energy of the sun and the electricity in the cold arctic air into a lethal ball.

An inner confidence told her when it was enough. She was able to disperse the bright ferocity rather than launch it like a megaton bomb. Silence and Hark shaped it yet again. Together the three remade the gaping hole. Rock fell and twisted, melting into fresh lava before cooling in the frigid air. She staggered back and dropped ass- first into the snow. What remained of the blasted exit was a giant scar on the ground. Steam poured skyward.

“One door opens,” Hark said, “and another closes. Ta-dah.”

A big hand reached down. Leto helped her creak to her feet. Without speaking a word, she and the others began a fast trudge to the distant outpost.

A few hundred yards of snow had numbed her feet before she frowned. “Why are you two coming with us? Do the Asters hold relatives of yours?”

“Nothing so selfless. We can’t walk out of here.”

Leto’s armor clanged because of his fast pace but he wasn’t even winded. Likely he could travel there and back a dozen times before Nynn and the others ran a quarter of the distance.

Nynn stopped. “Wait. Leto. I’m slowing you down. All of you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just like how they channeled my gift. They can borrow yours. The three of you can make it to those buildings—fast, together.”

Leto charged into her space in that restrained, angered way of his. “Leave you here?”

“Yes. You could carry me, but that would be three people digging into your strength. The alarms have already warned the guards at the labs. We don’t have time to let them fortify. And we need you as strong as possible to take on those who have.”

“You are my partner.”

“But right now,” she said, “I’m your liability. These two have been lying in wait for months. They helped us get free. You’ll have them at your back, and they’ll have you at theirs.” She touched his face, ran her thumb over the scar along his upper lip. Out in the daylight, that streak of silvery pink was easier to see. “I’ll catch up. Go, please. Find Jack and Pell.”

Sometimes the words that shivered out of his mind, into hers, were as distinct as if he’d spoken. Sometimes they were just feelings. Did all Indranan work that way, or was it because he was crossbred? She only felt his desperation. She felt it and echoed it. They would do what they needed to. Their goals would not waver. Even if that meant parting. Her heart was as hot as the rock she’d turned into molten slag.

After a curt nod, he turned away and took a breath. The strength of it lifted his scarred armor. He was a mountain preparing to run—the most impressive thing she’d ever seen. Nynn had only blinked when Leto and the strange couple churned snow in their wake.

She stood there. Blank. Frozen. Colorless and bereft. When tightening her fists, she could still feel the old breaks where her knuckles had been crushed. Escape was not the same as safety for their loved ones. And as much as she loved Leto of Garnis, having lost sight of him amid a cloud of powder white, she didn’t need him for exacting revenge.

THIRTY

Leto was part of the world rather than trapped beneath it. Tiny shards of ice as small as grit scored his face and his gloriously bare throat. Inhaling the air stung his nostrils with pure cold, and he could’ve sworn he could still smell Nynn—her sweet, feminine scent on the wind. Every time he’d stepped into a Cage, he’d thought his gift was in full force. Not even close.

This was what it was to be a Dragon King.

Even with Silence and Hark gathering some of his power for their own, he processed details at a pace that should’ve made his mind spin. He put each in correct places: environment, velocity, potential threats, and the effect his run was having on his body.

That was an unknown. After all, he didn’t know his limits now.

But he realized that his limits didn’t matter. He would do what he’d always done. He would fight until he emerged victorious. These stakes were the highest of his life.

As the outpost gained shape and size, he signaled to his unlikely companions. They responded as they would have in the Cages. Instantly. Efficiently. They split away from Leto to flank the building to his left and right. As long as their goals overlapped with rescuing Pell and Jack, they would be welcome allies.

The lab was more like a fortress. He circled but could find no way in. He was on the verge of returning for Nynn—her gift would’ve made fast work of this hellish place—when his senses sizzled. He sniffed the air. The hair at the base of his skull prickled. Without diverting power to his conscious mind, he ran based on instinct, following the path Silence had taken. Around a sharp corner. Down a long stretch of marble and ice and iron.

The low building they’d assumed to be the laboratory was menacing. It was an eerie blight on the white landscape, even more pronounced than the hole Nynn and the Sath had punched out from the ground. This place radiated with screams. Leto couldn’t tell if he heard the screams with his ears or his brain. His newly freed