Hunted Warrior (22 page)

“Do you know what holding this bow reveals to me?”

“Magical fairies, crypt keepers, and a few Minotaur.”

Avyi stood to her full height. Mal blinked, reminding her how rarely she permitted her body to unclench from its crouched, defensive position. “No, my dear, deluded Giva,” she said, never looking away. “I saw through Cadmin's eyes the person responsible for the attempt on your life. She was aiming her arrow into the crowd, not at the Sath and Tigony Cage warriors charging at her in battle.
At
someone in the crowd. How she knew . . . I don't know. Dr. Aster was there, too, enjoying the bloodshed.” Again she swallowed back an unexpected flood of emotion. The killer's features were obscured, as were Cadmin's. Avyi only knew what it was like to see the world through her eyes. “Your would-be assassin will be at the Grievance. So will a cache of captured rebels who will be slaughtered.”

“The rebels? The ones who helped bring down Asters' labs?”

“Among them, yes.”

“Hark and Silence? Leto and Nynn?”

“I don't know who exactly. But those who gather will die.”

“Yet how and when and why—no clue. No picture of who will try to kill me. No reason why the rebels will be there.” He glared. Frustration shimmered off him in powerful waves Avyi could physically feel. He grabbed the wrought-iron gate with both hands and sent shock waves of electricity up to the sky. Light radiated out from spearlike points at the tops of each bar. “You don't know a Dragon-damned thing.”

“You speak of the Dragon, Giva. Be careful what you say.” She lifted her chin. “Because there at the Grievance, I saw a dragon, too.”

CHAPTER

M
al gripped the iron gate and squeezed until pain radiated up his arm in a slow burn. “A dragon.”

“Yes.”

“At the Grievance.”

“Four days from now.”

Avyi glanced away, toward where water flowed beneath a grate at the side of the cobblestone street. No traffic here. Few people. A residential area where human beings left for work in the morning and returned home at night. Ordinary lives. They would never have any idea that he stood there trying not to demolish the whole neighborhood in a flash of frustration.

Giva. He was the fucking Honorable Giva.

And it didn't matter what he did.
Never had?
Choices that weren't choices at all.

“I saw its shadow. The shape of wings and limbs—maybe a tail, a head. But it was a dragon and it was furious. Flames everywhere.”

“There aren't dragons, Avyi. Even if you buy into every myth and ancient tradition about the Great Dragon and the Chasm, you can't believe a random dragon will fly over the next Grievance. It's
insane
. Time's up. Adventure over. You need to come with me, back to Tigony lands.”

He grabbed her arms. She tried to fight, with her vicious weapons and her wildcat determination, but he was stronger and more resolved. A brief shock of electricity to her arms flared her eyelids wide, so wide that he could see the whites around bright green-gold irises.

So damn beautiful.

Why her?

Why some half-crazed woman who spoke about the future
and meant it
? A woman who might be so irreparably damaged by her years with Dr. Aster that every word she'd uttered to Mal was an unconscious falsehood—or an outright lie. She'd taken whatever scant certainty he possessed and pounded it beneath her killer boots.

“I'm not going back to your prison,” she said viciously. “I will not be held captive and interrogated. I will not be doubted when so much is at stake.” She stared at him with murderous accusations tinting her eyes nearly black. “I'm free now. Do you really believe you could get me back to Greece, let alone keep me there? You couldn't keep me there before, and you sure as hell won't keep me now.”

He realized how tightly he held her arms, and how many shocks rocketed between them. When he held Avyi, he wasn't immune to his own twisted, nerve-jolting power. It hurt. It was unnerving. But it also fueled the dangerous impulses that charged his body—not his gift, but his body. He'd been kissing Avyi. Now he was brawling. They twined together in a heady cocktail.

“You'll do exactly what I want,” he growled.

Avyi stilled. She touched his cheek, then lifted on her toes to kiss the corner of his lips. “Let me go. You know what I believe will happen. Do you really think your threats and bluster do a thing to dent my confidence?”

He exhaled heavily. “No.”

“You've seen how this works, even if you turn away from what I've lived with my entire life. After all that, do you finally believe me? Please, Malnefoley . . . I need you to believe me.”

Holding her waist, he rested his forehead against hers. It took more strength than he would've imagined to admit what had been building in him for days. But denying it now would be pure stubbornness in light of all that had happened. Turning away from the unknown wouldn't do anything to dissipate the gathering storm. If there was any chance that what Avyi predicted would come true, he needed to act.

“Yes,” he said in a whisper. “I believe you.”

She let out a cry and flung her arms around his neck. “Thank you. Oh, Mal, thank you.”

He held her as she shuddered and shook. “What is this?”

“I've never . . .” She looked up into his eyes. “Do you know what that feels like? Maybe not. Maybe you can't know what
this
feels like. I never would've doubted myself for a moment had I known this day would come.”

Mal was flooded with emotion he didn't know how to process. His only certainty was that Avyi clung to him with all of her considerable strength. She wasn't crying, but her body still trembled. His belief meant that much to her. In truth . . . it meant that much to him, too. A weight lifted from him as he held her petite body. When was the last time he had believed, truly believed, in another person?

“Come on,” he said against her hair. “Let's get out of sight.”

He used a quick zap of electricity to open the gate's lock, then ushered her inside. The private garden was even quieter and more secluded than their hiding place on the quiet residential street. Avyi angled her chin toward the vibrant sun of late afternoon. Summer in Italy. It wouldn't be dark for hours.

Once inside, he scrubbed his eyes with his palms, then ran his hands through his hair.

“Why did you stay in Greece for so long?”

“You. I needed you so I could be ready for all of this. You whisked me away from the tundra, taking me away from the labs. Even that small nod toward being rescued was enough to make me hope for a better future. And my prediction . . . about us . . . I didn't know when it would happen. It seemed more likely to come true if we were in the same vicinity, there in the stronghold. But then it was time for me to go. I felt compelled, or I'd miss my chance.”

“And how did you escape?”

She patted his cheek, grinning. “Wouldn't you like to know.”

He didn't want to ask, not after the moment of assurance and calm he'd felt, but one thing she said was too unimaginable to take on pure faith. “And the dragon? At the Grievance?”

“I don't know about that one either.” She stood in a shaft of sunlight. Her smile was bittersweet, almost chagrined. “I'll believe it when I see it.”

“It's a fixed point now? Like me and the doctor?”

“I hope so. For I'd dearly love to see a dragon in the flesh.”

Mal nodded slowly. “That would be something to see.”

*  *  *

Experiencing the relief of Mal's admission left Avyi both elated and exhausted. His belief wasn't something to be celebrated. She would never forget the heartbreaking pain in his eyes. He was a man whose world was blasting apart, and she was the cause. So instead of celebrating, she simply thanked the Dragon for giving her one ally—the first of her life.

Despite the contentious start to their journey, there in Crete, Avyi had put faith in the idea that, yes, one day their disagreements would be worth the reward of belonging—if not to him, then to the community she might return to at his behest.

She had wanted the sense of belonging she'd seen in the futures of the unborn. She had wanted what would never be given freely to a freakish foundling whose very gift was the source of her misery. Mal gave her that. No matter what happened now, she would always be grateful for the events that had brought them to that moment.

No matter what happened now . . .

Too many visions had come true, especially when they were so near to the conclusion of each successive prediction. She could walk, run, scream, fight, set them both on fire. Cadmin, the rebels, a dragon . . . She and Mal were deep into forces neither could control. All they had was each other, and that was a blessing she couldn't take for granted.

He was the leader of the Dragon Kings. He had been chosen by the Great Dragon to shepherd them through an undeniable crisis. She'd had faith, even when she was nothing but Dr. Aster's Pet. There was an Honorable Giva out there in the world, and he would save their people.

The backs of her legs tingled, as did the skin on her arm where Mal's anger had snapped and stung. He met her beneath the dappled shade of an olive tree and loosely held her hand between their bodies. His expression was quietly intense.

“I am not who you think I am. The good isn't as good, and the bad is worse. If you tell me no matter what I do, I'll still be your partner wrapped up in white sheets, what incentive does that give me to behave? I could slap you across the face. I could shave your head or steal that bow and arrow from you, never to be found again. We'd still wind up tangled in bed.”

She shook her head, squeezed his fingers. “But you won't—not any of that.”

“You can't be sure.”

“This has nothing to do with gifts and predictions.” She cupped his nape. “I deserve better. You've already given me that. You can give our
people
that. I've lived on hope most of my life. Let me have just this little bit more.”

Mal swept her into his arms with such force and speed that Avyi gasped. “If I'm going to be forced up against choices that aren't choices at all, I might as well bend the inevitable to my will. I'm not going to make love to you by accident, just because we wound up trapped in the same berth . . . or hole in the earth, for fuck's sake. I'm going to do it now, because I want to.”

“What are you talking about?”

He walked to the main door of the apartments. “Can you get through this gate?”

“The padlock is too big. And it's rusted. You could always conjure a light show.”

“I'm not in the mood to risk more attention. Buzz each one instead.”

“This is crazy.”

A chuckle wove from his chest into hers, unfurling the last of the tension between them, as easily as one of Mal's tornado tempers receding to the point of clear blue sky. “Don't start with me. Buzz something.”

Avyi pushed button after button, with Mal answering in perfect Italian. He lived in the building. The gate had been left open. There was a set of keys on the front step. “Are they yours?”

After the third such conversation, a young man grumbled and said he'd be right down.

“Your turn,” Mal said. He set her down. “You're looking for keys when he holds the door open for you.” He took the bow and was gone, secreting himself at the rear of the garden.

A minute later, Avyi was kneeling between the garden gate and the front door, rifling through the bushes and her hiker's backpack, muttering to herself in English.

“Hey,” the man said in Italian. The rest of his words were a jumble.

Standing, shrugging, she countered his hostility in English. “I don't know what you're saying. I'm living here with my roommate. Quit yelling at me. I'm tired and I want to go to bed.”