Caged Warrior

¦   ¦   ¦

When the charges set off, Nynn had a blink of warning. She was overwhelmed with heat and pain. The charges kept coming. A chain reaction.

Her body tensed and her mind shut down. Pure instinct, as old as the Dragon. Millennia of power tempered by millennia of sacrifice. She saw it all as clearly as the scorching storm that boiled down the corridor. The force smacked her chest with the power of buses at full speed. She inhaled and sucked it into herself, into pores and cells and the follicles of her hair. She breathed lava and the concussion of endless waves of fire. Her lungs blistered. Perhaps the ends of her fingers and toes had turned to ash; she couldn’t feel them.

That fire was hers. She owned it. She was a daughter of the Dragon. The wall of searing heat gathered in front of her as a ball of living flame. The roof of the labs blew open, into the sky she couldn’t see. All was red. All was orange and yellow and evil. Her control of the energy was so close to nothing. She could only keep it, focus it, shoot it upward.

Fighting. Still fighting.

My brave girl.

Leto’s words were a chant even when her skin felt like it was peeling off. Soon her muscles and her bones would dissolve. She knew the moment when she’d lost the fight. Her body went cold. The fire took her and she felt no more pain. Shivers, uncontrollable shivers, swallowed her without mercy as she called out Leto’s name.

Her life was at an end.

No, the pain was . . . gone.

“Nynn! Dragon damn you. Open your eyes.”

So slow. So terrified of it not being true. Because she thought she heard Leto.

Her eyelids fluttered. She was that out of body, as if her lids worked of their own accord. Finally they parted to reveal Leto’s scarred, uncompromising face.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he growled. “I promised I’d come back for you. You heard me. Don’t make me a liar, Nynn. Talk to me. Do it.”

Her throat felt papery and charred. Yet she could still swallow. She could still talk. “So bossy.”

Leto enveloped her in a fierce hug. His heart galloped beneath her ear at the speed she knew he could travel. She’d worked so hard, but even she knew she was oddly still. His rasping exhale was a brush of warmth against her cheek. Good warmth. The kind that meant safety, not destruction.

“Where is your armor?” she asked.

“Shed it. Faster that way.”

“How many lost?”

“I don’t know.”

“Leto, no! I could’ve held on a little longer.”

“Lonayip woman, I grabbed you up through a wall of pure fire. You were being consumed by it, like the Dragon swallowed into the Chasm. Nynn, I couldn’t hear your thoughts or your heartbeat. Nothing left of you but a tiny pulse of life.” He bowed his forehead to hers. Only then did she realize they lay together in the snow. That was the cold she felt. “I wasn’t leaving you to die.” His blunt, wide palms framed her cheeks—his warmth battling the bristling cold. “Do you hear me?”

She gulped cold air into her singed lungs and burrowed her body into his warmth. “I hear you.”

“I can’t imagine my life without you. I had my arms around you and was running free. Saving you was saving myself. You’ve given me a taste of a life I never knew I could have. For me, for you, for Jack—I wasn’t going to give that up. I’ve sacrificed too much to lose you now.”

“But the last prisoners?”

Leto exhaled heavily. “I’ve always lived with the choices I’ve made.”

He smoothed sweat-sticky hair back from her temples, which exposed her heated flesh to the elements. She liked the shock of cold as she returned to herself.

“But that doesn’t mean the death of more innocents today,” Leto continued. “That Pendray man did what he could with the detonator. Hark said only half of the charges went off. He and Silence found the remaining patients several hundred meters back from the outpost. The Pendray was nowhere to be seen. He’s gone. Even the rebel Indranan woman can’t feel a trace of him.”

She shook her head, which still roared with the sounds of whirling flames, like an enraged predator. “Where’s Jack?”

“With your cousin. The Giva helped you, as he said he would. He took part of the energy, too.”

“He’s a damn fool.”

“He’s related to you.”

She hurt all over, but Leto’s rough caresses began to heal her from the inside out. “You were my tormentor once. Maybe all of that harsh treatment led us here. I wouldn’t have survived without you, Leto. I wouldn’t have known my strength.”

Nynn couldn’t hold it in any longer. The energy she’d funneled through her body had left her depleted. Completely depleted. Sensation returned—a mixed blessing as the memories of flames remained. The very real threat of an arctic night remained. She shook until her teeth clicked together. Yet a sense of joy began to warm her from the inside out. She’d defeated her own fears and, with the help of members of all Five Clans, she’d helped save almost three dozen Dragon Kings from Dr. Aster.

Tears froze on her cheeks, but Leto kissed them away.

“Here,” came a familiar voice. “I believe this young man belongs to you.”

Looking up from the protection of Leto’s solid chest, Nynn found Malnefoley kneeling in the snow. Jack jumped from his arms and folded into Nynn’s. Leto closed his embrace around them both. Her grateful, awed sobs came in earnest then. Jack. Leto. She was holding them both. That Aster and the Indranan witch had escaped was a fight for another day. She was too busy thanking the Dragon for each breath she shared with her family.

“I’ve communicated with the outside world, if you can believe it,” Mal said. “Who needs the Indranan when we have satellite phones?” He looked exhausted. Quietly sure of his place, but exhausted. “Rescue helicopters will be here in an hour. Then we’ll search what’s left of the underground complex for survivors.”

“And the Pet?”

“She’s under my protection now. Or my custody. Whichever winds up being more appropriate.” He smiled tightly and turned to leave them in privacy.

“Mal? Who was that man? He said he was my father’s younger brother.”

The Honorable Giva stopped, his back still turned. “Tallis of Pendray. The Heretic. And yes, your uncle. One day I’ll tell you the sins he confessed to me.” He looked over his shoulder with a glare as powerful as his lightning strikes. “But not tonight. Enjoy your family, cousin.”

He returned to the people who needed him—who would need him more than ever now that the power of one of the cartels had been upended.

Although confused, Nynn took Mal’s advice. She was safe. Really, truly safe. Leto kissed the top of her head, and she could’ve sworn he whispered prayers of thanks in their old, old language.

Four snowmobiles pulled up alongside them. Two faceless Dragon Kings merely nodded before gunning their machines into the dark. Hark, however, grinned with his usual misplaced levity.

“We’re throwing in with the rebels for now,” he said. “We have an idol to return to our clan, and a few collared brethren to free along the way. That sounds far too noble for me, but I’ll survive. I have it on tenuous authority we’ll see each other again—sometime between now and our return from the Sath leadership. Won’t that be a pleasant reunion? At least it’ll be warm in Egypt.”

He tipped his chin toward his partner in a gesture to get going.

Silence smiled down at Nynn and the two men in her life—one barely formed, one scarred and just as new to the world. “Take care, friends.”

Then they were as much a part of the night as the stillness and stars. Leto helped Nynn stand, so that he could lead her back toward the huddled bundle of shivering bodies. Leto knelt next to Pell and touched her cheeks. “Jack, come sit with my sister, will you? Her name is Pell. And you’re both cold.”

“It’s all right,” Nynn said to Jack with a growing measure of calm. “I’m right here. And I’m never going anywhere without you again.”

Jack threw his arms around her neck and kissed her there—there, where she wore no collar and could feel