Her only focus was that she had survived. More than that, she had devastated their
opponents. The Pendray named Weil limped out of the Cage, while the Townsend man—some
Tigony whose name bounced through her head and slipped free—was carted away by what
looked to be medics. Nynn’s sword was on the ground where his body had been.
“Stay with me,” Leto growled. “You pass out and I’ll find some new pieces of your
soul to steal. You stand here and behave like a Dragon-damned champion.”
He’d hit that particular timbre, even among the crazy cheers—the tone of voice that
she recognized as hypnotic but was powerless to resist. She nodded. With his hand
at her back, she was able to refashion the numb lumps at the bottoms of her legs into
feet. Feet in boots.
Boots on scuffed floor. Leto still scowled down at her. How could a victor appear
so dissatisfied and angry? Well, in her case, how could a victor feel ready to vomit
and lie down on the clay?
That wasn’t Leto, and that wasn’t her.
She grasped his hand and lifted her chin. “I told you. Astonishing.”
His lips quirked. “So I’m to trust your word now, neophyte?”
She hadn’t wanted to let go of his bare shoulder, so she didn’t. This was not a gesture
of necessity, but one of greed. She wanted the feel of his flexing muscles and pulsing
blood where she dug her fingertips into his flesh. His eyes briefly fluttered shut.
She raised up on tiptoes and pitched her voice above the echoes in the Cage room.
“I am no longer your neophyte.”
Leto abruptly let her go and circled the Cage with a shout of victory, even more powerful
than the intimidating growl he’d postured to the crowd before the match. Every step
was powerful, his thighs taut. His back was arrogantly straight. His outthrust chest
was accentuated even more because of that beautifully crafted armor. He swung the
mace in quick, deadly arcs.
Show-off.
But Nynn soaked up every minute, as did Leto’s audience.
Only when he turned, met Nynn’s eyes, and flung the mace aside did she shiver in what
could only be described as anticipation. He strode toward her and positioned his body
within inches of hers. “You’re not wrong. You’re no longer my neophyte. But you will
be mine. Tonight.”
“What happened to that arrogant crap about how I’d come to you?”
They stared at one another. That tingle of something otherworldly and profound glimmered
between their eyes. Nynn wanted to blink if only to clear her senses, but the sensations
were too seductive.
“Does it really matter who chooses whom?” Pitched so low, beneath the diminishing
applause, Leto’s voice was an earthquake ready to rip her open. “We’re both victors.”
“And if I choose someone else?”
Rather than continue his posturing menace—much better suited to those who wagered
on his prowess and adored his blunt ferocity—he licked his lower lip. “Then I’ll convince
you otherwise. Or I’ll convince your choice that you’re not worth fighting me for.”
“But I am. I am worth fighting for.”
She said it with as much assurance as she’d ever known.
Leto’s nostrils flared on a long, deep inhale. The muscles on either side of his jaw
bunched, with radiated movement up to his temples, to his tattoo. “Yes.”
That moment fled, like clinging to smoke and expecting it to hold her in return. Nynn
followed him out of the Cage. Her body and her mind felt equally abused. She was still
buzzing with an indescribable tingle of violence. If she wanted anything from Leto
of Garnis, it was to strip his armor and become combatants of another sort. She wanted
to get rid of her edginess, rid of the confusion that kept her from thinking clearly.
She exited the Cage just in time to see Leto and the Old Man squaring off. Before,
she’d seen only deference
from Leto when talking with the head of the Aster family. “Keep him away from her,”
Leto said with unmistakable force. “Feel free to ask him why.”
The skeletal man’s smile never faltered. Never even changed shape. “You overstep.”
“You brought this on us all.”
Leto didn’t even wait for the Old Man’s dismissal; he simply turned and walked out
of the arena. Now Nynn was not only confused but also bereft of her partner in this
madness. Although she followed him, she was unable to refrain from looking back toward
the Asters’ patriarch. That smile remained. Her skin shivered up her arms and down
her spin.
Keep him away from her
.
Nothing about the fight compared to the way her brain fractured on the most random
thoughts.
“Trouble in paradise,” came a voice at her shoulder.
Nynn found the near-inseparable pair, Hark and Silence, suited up for their match.
Only once had she fought Hark. He had a don’t-give-a-damn demeanor that he backed
up with canny, daredevil tricks. Nynn had been in the complex for only three or four
days when she’d met Hark in the practice Cage. He hadn’t even needed to borrow her
gift in order to leave her busted and humiliated. His brown hair was shot through
with blond streaks that seemed out of place in their underground world. As if he . . .
belonged on a beach. A
beach
. The word sounded unfamiliar in her mind, but she knew it was right.
Silence whispered something in his ear and he laughed. He had a big laugh and a big
smile and a
really
big
nighnor
in his right hand. The left he wrapped
around Silence’s trim waist, as if the woman might actually require protection of
any kind. Ever.
“Tell me,” Hark said. “Since you’re in a unique position of knowledge.”
“Unique?”
Hark’s smile was infectious. She might’ve been sucked into his good humor had she
been in a less cataclysmic mood. “You’ve spent more time with the grand Leto of Garnis
than anyone. No one can remember a neophyte thriving so well under his tutelage.”
That knowledge sank in slowly, like water eroding stone with only drip after drip.
Leto. Neophyte. Survive.
Thrive
.
“Mostly,” he continued, “they’re made ready to fight and do well to hold their own.
You seem to have become his special project. That means you’re unique. And that means,
as his most doted student, I’m curious . . . Have you ever seen him so defiant? Toward
the Old Man?”
Nynn swallowed back her reply. She’d registered the strangeness of it. On some level,
she understood that it had to do with her. These two warriors, with their bizarre
whispers—Hark’s disarming smile, which was almost a weapon of its own, and Silence’s
cool, appraising stillness—they knew something she did not. She hated them for their
mockery.
“Good hunting,” she managed to say.
Another whisper between them. Another private smile. Their names were announced and
they turned toward the Cage. Hark tipped two fingers to his brow, as if in salute.
Nynn wanted her collar disarmed so she could fry them both.
Despite her disorientation and a labyrinth of hallways,
she searched until she found the weapons room. Leto was standing with his back to
the door, which bothered her more than she could say. He was not a man to turn his
back on any potential threat. That warriors such as Hellix and those from the other
cartels were still within the complex should’ve been enough to keep him on guard.
Instead, he’d placed both hands on the wall, as if propping it up. His head was bowed.
Had she not recognized the armor and his distinctive tattoo, she would’ve thought
her initial assessment wrong.
Yet . . . he was Leto.
“Which blade should I have chosen?” she asked quietly. Everything sounded muted once
beyond the din of the arena.
“The gilt-edged one.”
“Why?”
He pushed away from the wall and retrieved the dagger in question. “This one is thin
enough to be wielded as a whip—slicing rather than hacking.”
“What lesson was I supposed to learn from picking the wrong one? Weren’t the odds
bad enough already?”
Leto swept the blade. The air parted in a swish of sound, as if molecules could be
split as easily as skin. “Now you know you can win even when conditions aren’t perfect.”
“Oh, because you were perfectly happy with being chained together. I saw your frustration.”
“That wasn’t frustration.” He tossed the weapon aside so that it slid beneath a metal
bench. “That was humiliation.”
“We won.”
“Yes.”
She swallowed. She inhaled. She prepared to ask the next question as if swords and
shields would be drawn. “What did you say to the Old Man? You looked . . . defiant.”
“I will not be chained again.”
That didn’t answer her question. It was a statement, as if he’d made a decision.
Keep him away from her
.
What had he meant?
She dared reach up to touch his collar, although she risked her hand in doing so.
Danger pulsed off him like the explosive potential of gasoline. He might combust at
any moment, and she had no idea what would set him off. Were his sexual promises in
the Cage truthful? At the moment, those promises were the best she could hope for.
That made her situation sound passive. She wanted him to honor those blunt, hard-edged
promises. Her body was keyed up, desperate, starved in ways she’d never know.
For now, she only touched his collar. “You’ve been chained for a very long time. I
would’ve thought your senses acute enough to know that. To feel the weight on your
neck. To recognize the satisfaction of walking into a Cage and feeling these monstrous
devices set us free.” The metal was warmed by the heat that pulsed from his majestic
body. Her fingertips prickled. She didn’t touch skin, but she touched the one thing
that had been with him nearly as long. “Leto of Garnis, what would you be without
this?”
His eyes blanked. No emotion there. No connection. “I’d be a better Cage warrior.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Leto had hoped that returning home would erase how unsettling the match had been—before,
during, and after. The return should’ve been simple. Drink
golish
. Pick a woman from among the selection kept by the Asters for just that purpose.
Release this grinding tension.
He could rely on none of those easy routines. First, he had Nynn’s initiation ceremony
to attend. Then . . . he had Nynn. He’d boasted that she would come to him, but he
didn’t trust his judgment regarding the woman. After all, he’d never spoken to the
Old Man as he had after the match. Yet what he’d said was vital. Whatever Ulia had
done to Nynn’s mind would not last if Dr. Aster continued to test the boundaries of
the telepathic block. Instinct alone had caused Nynn to draw her weapon against the
man. Any further contact might snap her mind in two.
That prospect shouldn’t bother Leto on a personal level. He had been tasked with helping
Nynn survive for three matches. This was one down. Two more to go. The thought of
Nynn’s sanity fracturing in the process added weight to his burdens.
Their return to the dorms was heralded with raucous shouts and congratulations. Leto
accepted the well-wishes of his fellow warriors, and from those who hadn’t been chosen
for the evening’s contest. Silence and Hark had won their match, as had Hellix and
Fam. Their gloating made Leto’s teeth clench together.
Through the narrow corridor leading to the dorms, they filed into a common area where
the
golish
was already flowing freely. Leto hadn’t shed his armor. He wouldn’t until he stripped
naked that evening and
cleaned himself in his quarters. Some of the men washed each other in the communal
baths, a practice that held no interest for Leto.
Wearing his armor was a sound choice, rather than habit. He was uncomfortably aware
of his body’s reaction to the thought of Nynn, let alone seeing her enter the common
room. The lights were softer here, more inviting—less like the industrial wing inhabited
by the humans. This was a space for lounging in the few moments when warriors were
free to relax.
She had cleaned and changed into a clean set of her silk-lined, leather training clothes.
Her short blond hair gleamed, and tiny droplets of water clung to individual strands.
He tried to remember the feel of her long tresses between his fingers—the beautiful
hair he’d cut out of necessity—but his blasted senses failed him.
That she had washed and found a spare set of clothes meant someone had shown her to
her newly appointed dorm. She would still be his responsibility, but not to the same
degree. She would be a Cage warrior who determined her own regimen and sparred with
whom she chose. He would no longer dictate every waking and sleeping hour.
Leto sat up from the bench and tunneled his fingers across his freshly buzzed scalp.
He shouldn’t care, shouldn’t want, shouldn’t be so Dragon-damned tormented.
This had to stop.
“Congratulations, Nynn of Tigony,” he said.
The room quieted at the sound of his voice. He had enjoyed that influence for nearly
two decades. Only now, when faced with the one person who should’ve
ranked lowest of their group, did he feel his power slip. Nynn was looking at him,
with eyes so pale that her irises were more like light than color. Her freckles added
depth and beauty to golden skin, while the confidence she wore across her shoulders
and up her spine said what no words needed to express.
She had won.
“I think we’re all eager to get on with your initiation. Not since Hark’s arrival
have we welcomed one into our own.”
Nynn’s expression was placid, despite the fierce burn in her eyes. She was practically
laughing at him. He could tell. The power he had taken for granted was being stolen,
minute by minute, by a fierce woman who made him
feel
. He hadn’t felt for years.
“Be careful what you wish for.” Hark sat hip to hip with Silence. He wore a short-sleeved
shirt—some holdover from the clothes he’d brought with him upon volunteering to fight.
Silence absently stroked her thumb over a crescent-shaped scar on Hark’s inner arm.
Leto had never given much thought as to why the man served the Asters, but now he
knew. The crescent was evidence of the Sath bonding tradition known as the Ritual
of Thorns. Not to pay debts or to earn favors, Hark had come belowground to be with
his wife.