Caged Warrior (13 page)

He studied her for a long time. She didn’t waver, just waited for his answer.

“Yes, I held her. A little girl they named Shoshan. She has my sister’s dark hair.
Fairer skin.” He looked away. Shook his head. “It was an honor to see her. To know
I’d earned such a gift for them and for our clan.”

“Then it
is
possible. The Asters . . . ?”

“I told you. Winning is important. Keeping their family profitable is vital. Without
them, the system collapses.”

“Maybe for the best.”

“My father died in a Grievance after fathering three children. He didn’t believe it
a useless system, and neither do I. There’s too much to be earned for those we cherish.”

Cherish.
Such a tender word from a brick wall of a man.

“We will never agree on this,” she said, almost to herself.

“Just do your job. That means controlling your powers. Indranan live here. They could
unlock what we haven’t been able to.”

She stepped away. Once. Again. “My mind is not theirs and it’s not yours.”

No matter Leto’s faith and his skills, no matter the birth of his niece, she didn’t
trust that her son would be returned out of the goodness in Old Man Aster’s heart.
He and his warped son had no hearts. They didn’t give away anything that didn’t earn
them something in return.
Letting Leto hold little Shoshan only kept him focused on earning their respect and
adding to his family’s glory. The incentive had successfully bought the rest of Leto’s
life, and had taken the life of his father.

She sure as hell wasn’t letting anyone into her mind on that scant possibility. Already
her thoughts were blended, distorted, and still aching with an old, forgotten tremor
of bloodshed she didn’t want to see.

“What else do you get out of this system?” She was trying to shed her uncertainty.
For nearly three weeks, that had meant baiting Leto. “Maybe extra beans at dinner
time? A pillow for when you sleep on the floor? Or do you just like to feel important
once a month? I’m assuming it’s not only for procreation, otherwise your sister would
have half a dozen children.”

“I’ve won eight Grievances. Shoshan has been the only child to survive.” He blinked
once. “You’re not the only one here who’s suffered.”

His emotions shut down. Closed off. He was as opaque now as when he’d first strode
into her training cell—further evidence of how many of his subtle clues she’d unconsciously
learned to interpret. He exited the Cage. A brief shudder marked the moment when the
collar revoked his gift.

Leto was skilled in all methods of combat, but the amazing power that set him apart
from human beings could be withdrawn on a whim. Even among the Dragon Kings he was
special. Clan Garnis. The Lost. He had the heart and soul of a warrior. The taunt
of having his greatest asset offered, then stolen again . . . Surely he must regret
losing that precious blessing.

Nynn had only just discovered her potential, and
even she felt its loss. As soon as she followed him out of the Cage, her new potential
flipped off like a light switch. The tease was nearly as cruel as the promised rewards.
Deep beneath his misplaced loyalty, Leto must hate it, too.

Shadow claimed most of his body. Only a glimmer of golden skin shone where his breastplate
left room for muscles to maneuver freely. Bare. Smooth. Flexing with each movement.
She remembered her vision of him as a work of art. Charcoal and warm, fluid pastels.
She wondered briefly how she would draw him while he fought. Blurs of color. Smudges
of steel gray and swirls of his mace.

Shutting her eyes blocked those visual distractions, but the details of his body followed
her into the dark. She was free to imagine Leto posing for an artists’ class on the
male anatomy. An exemplary specimen, with every muscle and ligament ripe for study.

Nude and
glorious
.

With a frustrated noise, she ground her knuckles against her eyes. She was behaving
like some desperate victim succumbing to Stockholm syndrome. Sympathizing with his
cause. Changing her beliefs to suit his. Accepting his praise like a cracked desert
floor drank the rain. Her fears were coming true, that she would wind up just as brainwashed.

Jack was her lifeline, as was her vow that the Asters would burn for their crimes.

Ten minutes later, Leto and a pair of guards walked her back to her training cell.
He left without a word or a backward glance.

Alone, Audrey opened the butcher block paper. Inside
were peppermints—the round kind that only old people ate, or what children left for
last after Halloween. Didn’t matter. She grabbed one of the candies. The mentholated
sweetness was a shock. Work and work and more terrifying work. Now she rolled candy
across her tongue.

The contrast was nearly as shocking as how tenderly Leto had kissed her.

She glanced down the corridor toward the gate. There stood the sleepy, ridiculously
overdressed guards. What was the purpose of their SWAT-style armor if they traded
for peppermints and
Playboy
? What sort of men were they to imprison and torture and snivel like moles in the
ground?

Only the locks held her prisoner. Not those fools. They were as useless as the rest
of the humans in that complex.

Audrey froze. She spit the peppermint onto the ground.

She’d been trained since birth to believe the old, pompous prejudice that Dragon Kings
were better than humans. Millennia of examples proved it. Only, Audrey had fallen
in love with Caleb—with his caprice and warmth and lack of centuries-old ego. Here,
she was sinking into the morass of ancient bigotry against the resourceful, thoughtful,
amusing people she’d spent years among.

No matter how much she disliked that thought, Audrey recognized the pragmatic truth.
Her heritage was impossible to deny. She was a Dragon King, and she would need to
embrace that old, powerful arrogance to save her son.

T
he next afternoon, Leto and Nynn squared off against two other warriors within the
octagonal framework of the practice Cage. A dozen others had gathered to watch, taunt,
cheer.

Leto had expected Nynn to see sense, break down, and beg for an Indranan to help unlock
the gift she couldn’t control. He’d been a fool to expect her to be that rational.

In two more days, they’d fight in a real match.

Too much of her old self remained. Why did she let resentment and a stubborn, impossible
grasp on her human life keep her from embracing her fate? Now it was worse. She knew
of her gift’s existence and chose to ignore it. She was a fighter who refused to use
the weapons at her disposal, choosing a rock instead of a broadsword.

“Get up!”

“Fuck off!” she spat from all fours.

She could conjure a nasty temper. Nothing wrong with that if she aimed it at the right
opponent. Instead, she was going to ruin his chances at keeping Pell safe. He would
be humiliated in front of the Old Man and his guests.

“Don’t make me fight you, too.” His shout echoed off the domed ceiling above the practice
Cage. “Get back in this! Now!”

She jumped to her feet and readjusted a practiced grip on her dagger. Had her glare
been a gift from the Dragon, she could’ve leveled continents.

Leto knew their opponents well. The first was a bulky middle-aged Southern Indranan
named Fam. If the man had ever been muscular, his brawn had since turned to fat. Fam
had sold himself into service after gunning down three people in a failed robbery.
The Asters could protect such criminals from the human justice system. Lately, Leto
was surrounded with more thugs and delinquents than true warriors.

Fam was sorely lacking in martial skills. His clan’s unique telepathy, however, made
him formidable when the collars were randomly deactivated. Always birthed in sets
of two, the Indranan were born with what amounted to half of the Dragon’s gift. Some
decided that wasn’t enough. Fam, for example, had killed his twin. Decapitated her.
In doing so he stole her abilities to make his gift whole.

The Indranan were known as the Heartless for that reason.

The other opponent was a female Sath known only as Silence. Five years hadn’t been
enough time for Leto to determine her real name or her reasons for fighting for the
Asters. Only her lover, another Sath named Hark, might know those secrets. He’d descended
to the Cages six months earlier, when Silence had returned from a mission to Hong
Kong on behalf of the Old Man.

She was called Silence because she never spoke. Fit and slender, her ghostly blond
hair and fathomless eyes added to an unnerving aura. The Sath had the ability to mimic
the powers of another Dragon King within a certain range, which varied widely. A Sath’s
real skill was in picking which foe to mimic.

The collars deactivated.

Dragon-given powers surged back to life. Leto breathed. He gathered the rush of being
the warrior he was meant to be.

For but a moment.

He was bombarded by the combined attack of Fam’s mind-scrambling telepathy and the
lightning-quick reflexes Silence stole from Leto. She swept around, sliced her shield
behind his knees, and used his shoulders as a launching point to jump away.

The small assembly of spectators cheered their approval.

“Thief bitch,” he growled.

Those born to Clan Sath were known as the Thieves. Leto had been raised to believe
them parasites, but he couldn’t deny that Silence’s long years of surviving physically
stronger opponents had served her well. She never used a traditional weapon, instead
using a shield as confidently as Leto wielded his mace.

Although he needed but a moment to recover from Silence’s attack Leto couldn’t see
past the white-hot glare Fam painted across his vision. If Nynn’s gasped outrage was
any indication, Fam had her in his grips, too. The Sath were limited to one theft
at a time, but the limits of an Indranan’s mental meddling were untold and unpredictable.
Some were weaklings in mind as well
as body. Some were as powerful as devils, digging into the psyche, exploiting unacknowledged
weaknesses.

Some were the witches who had locked Nynn’s gift in a mental box.

He didn’t need to see. Although Silence could mimic Leto’s reflexes and speed, she
hadn’t refined those gifts for a lifetime as he had. He located both opponents by
minuscule clues—the vibrations of footsteps, the warmth of skin heated by exertion,
the scent of sweat, leather, and metal. Fam had never been able to obscure all of
Leto’s senses at once.

Nynn gasped. “Get the hell out of my head!”

Silence’s hesitation was almost nonexistent, but it was the moment of weakness Leto
needed.

He sped around the Cage in blurring fast circles. Every time Silence tried to swipe
the serrated edge of her shield, he stopped, changed direction, struck out. He identified
Fam by the unique cadence of the man’s breathing; his respiration slowed when he concentrated.
To locate calmer respiration within the adrenaline-filled Cage was simple. Leto used
his agility to snake the chain of his mace around Fam’s calves. He yanked hard. The
man toppled to the padded floor and cheers erupted from the onlookers. Fam only cursed.

Dragon Kings could only be killed one way, but that didn’t mean they were immune to
pain.

Leto shook his head to clear the last of Fam’s telepathic interference, just in time
to see Silence swing her shield in a glancing swipe across Nynn’s mouth. Blood welled
from his neophyte’s split lip.

Although Nynn didn’t stop moving—which was at least proof of her resilience—she only
used hand-to-hand
techniques. Silence, however, was thriving. Her reflexes and speed, sapped from Leto,
outmatched Nynn at every turn.

“Dragon damn you, Nynn,” Leto bellowed. “Use your gift!”

She spewed curses of her own. The warriors surrounding the Cage laughed and hooted.
He’d seen her practically explode with concussive force—the promise of undeniable
victory.

Then it was too late. The collars reactivated.

Leto growled his frustration. He always felt bereft when his gift was curtailed. His
energy, potency, even confidence took a dip. He shrugged off that split second of
weakness, knowing the others felt it, too—the cruel switch from gods to the pitiful
equivalent of humans.

He hauled the mace’s grip back and away from his body. The chain snapped taut. A quick
yank spun Fam onto his back. The ball of the weapon swung in an arc that Leto controlled
with long practice. He twirled in a sharp circle. The spiked spherical head slammed
dead center of Silence’s shield. She staggered back.

At the corner of his vision, Leto saw Nynn grapple with Fam. The latter was bleeding
from his shins and calves. He’d dropped his sickle after Leto’s attack, while Nynn
still held her dagger. She didn’t need it now that the collars put her on equal footing.
She was quick. Observant. Graceful. The softer, older Indranan man didn’t stand a
chance.