Blood Warrior

“Exactly.”

“I told you about the boxes in our minds. I have a new one now. Tallis’s family. They’re secrets I don’t want, and ones I won’t share with anyone, not even you.”

“What do you mean about not wanting the secrets?”

She shifted so that she lay flat atop him. She crossed her hands on his chest and rested her chin there. “Your people are so . . . Just open. Like your expressions. Down there, I was bombarded by imagery and thoughts. Their minds tell stories as quickly as their mouths. It was all I could do to focus on you, keeping their enthusiasm for life from overwhelming me. Nothing was held back. I’ve never felt its like.”

Tallis pushed hair back from her face, so that he could admire her beauty and study amber eyes clouded by swirling thoughts. “Not exactly the Indranan way, is it?”

“Not at all.” She looked away, then set her mouth at an angle that suggested she’d made a decision. “I tried not to, but I envy you.”

“Me?”

“Why not? In this sad old castle are five family members who’d kneel before a chopping block if it meant taking your place. The way Serre hugged you—”

Her voice cracked. She tucked her face against his chest, between her hands. A sob shook her body. She swallowed it down as quickly as it came.

“I’ve been waiting for that hug for twenty years,” he said, “never knowing if it would happen. The trouble with loving anyone is that when they’re no longer in your life, it’s harder to bear the absence. It isn’t just a hole—a vacant thing. It’s a burning sore.”

“Here?” She kissed the skin above his heart once again.

“Yes.”

Their gazes caught. Tallis could have seduced her at that moment, with his cock growing impatient beneath the slight weight of her body. But something held him back. As Kavya had said, this was no longer something to joke about. Nor was it something to avoid by relying on easy pleasures that conspired in their own way to reveal, even create, deeper feelings.

Her eyes darkened and her mouth softened. She licked her lower lip, which was what Tallis desperately wanted to do.

She stopped him with five words. “Why did you stop believing?”

“Believing . . .?”

“The visions in your dreams. No matter who put those thoughts in your head, it was for the benefit of the Pendray. I can definitely relate to how you sacrificed yourself for the good of your clan.”

“My family, too,” he said. “And they weren’t given a choice.”

“Considering the weapons used against your subconscious, I don’t think you were either.”

“I’d love to take the easy way out and go with that. I just don’t think I can.”

Kavya sat up and unhooked her bra. It fell away, taking Tallis’s breath with it. “So, the rest of it. When did it change? When did it become revenge against . . . well, against a semblance of me?”

Tallis stared at her, absorbed her, adored her with every shift of his eyes. She was a vision made flesh. “When that semblance of you knelt above me, much as you’re doing now, and told me to help abduct my niece.”

Mouth open, Kavya shook her head softly. “I . . .”

“Her name is Nynn of Tigony. She’s the Giva’s cousin and my niece. I had one more brother, Vallen. He married the Giva’s aunt, who became despised by her clan. Bearing a child by a Pendray? From what I understand, Nynn was only accepted because of Malnefoley’s influence. He is the Giva. Who of his clan would contradict him to his face?”

“You said had one more brother.”

Tallis tried to calm his heartbeat, but that wasn’t happening anytime soon. He’d be lucky if he slept before dawn, no matter his exhaustion. “Vallen was killed sometime after Nynn’s birth. Our best guess is that some angered Tigony did the deed. Nynn crippled her mother by accident, with the first manifestation of her gift. Malnefoley swung the sword to end the woman’s misery.”

“Such a powerful gift? By the Dragon, that must have been terrifying.”

“Nynn is . . . special. Crossbred. She was banished because of those exceptional powers. She married a human and bore a son.”

“So the rumors are true? That’s her?”

“Yes. Jack is the first natural-born Dragon King in decades. My brother Serre must’ve been among the last born to our generation, as conception became harder and harder to achieve.”

His chest ached. More of that void, when loved ones were far away. Serre was far away in spirit, and Tallis had no idea where Nynn and her Cage warrior, Leto, had disappeared to. He’d only just found his niece again, before leaving, before being able to apologize.

“The last vision I believed came to me the night she commanded me to help the Aster cartel find Nynn. Just for questioning, she’d said. Everyone was curious about her son. I balked at first, with more strength than I’d ever used to resist. She seduced me. No, it was cruder than that. Remember the story I told you at the inn, when she’d straddled me but refused to join our bodies? She’d never taken me so far, only to leave me begging. It was . . . Dragon damn, Kavya, it was like being raped in my mind.”

“Lonayip witch.”

Kavya crossed her arms over her bare breasts and turned so that her hair created a curtain separating her expression from Tallis’s gaze.

“Kavya, I didn’t know the difference before, but I bloody well do now.” He took her hands and placed them flat against his chest. “That . . . thing drove me to madness, making me promises for months. One last assignment. One more deed in her honor. Then she would disappear while riding an incarnation of the Dragon—one I’ve never seen. Some mix of all Five Clans’ interpretations.”

Kavya frowned. Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “She even invoked the Dragon? That’s unholy.”

Tallis arched his chin toward the ceiling and blew out a ragged breath. “Yes. The same pattern each time. That’s how she was able to brainwash me and keep me servile for two decades. Or maybe I wanted to believe it was her fault. Because I led members of the Aster cartel to my niece’s house. Nynn and her son were kidnapped by force, and her human husband was murdered. It took me a year to find out where she was being held, and a little longer than that to convince the Giva to help me free her.”

“But it was too late, wasn’t it? For your niece . . . the damage had already been done. By you.”

—

Tallis flinched beneath her.

“Yes,” he said without looking away. Either he was the most insensitive man on the planet, or he’d spent countless, endless nights learning how to find peace with his mistakes. She knew he wasn’t the former, and the latter was still a work in progress. “The damage had been done. To Nynn, personally. I felt the need to atone for her loss, to save her and her son. But in that year, she became one of the most powerful Dragon Kings I’ve ever met. Part Pendray, part Tigony. She wields lightning with a berserker’s intensity. She’d fallen in love again, too. Leto was a Cage warrior—part Garnis, part Indranan.”

“Garnis and Indranan? How?”

“Dr. Aster had fulfilled his promise to Leto’s father, who won some ridiculous number of Cage bouts and annual Grievances to earn conception. Three children, including Leto. Only, his mother and father were both Garnis, and Leto’s powers were clearly a mixture. He and Nynn are out there now, trying to find out why he’s half Indranan, and to learn the secret of Dr. Aster’s methods.”

He seemed to blink away the past, while Kavya held on to the present by an unraveling thread. “It could be as easy as . . . crossbreeding?”

“I don’t think anyone would call it easy.” Tallis shook his head against the pillow, tangling the silver-tipped hair she adored. “Just that it makes some sense. Rifts have split your people. Centuries of raids have been to gather breed stock from other tribes of Indranan, yes? Like Pashkah was gathering there in the valley?”

“Yes. Three thousand years ago, it was easier on all our populations. We reproduced without worry. Except the Indranan split according to geography. Some in the Himalayas, believing themselves closer to the Dragon, and some down by the seas—even sailing to Australia. We remained one clan, but births dropped off over a few