Hunted Warrior (38 page)

“No, I won't say.” She slid her hands up to hold his cheeks. Mal struggled to open his eyes. He found her green-on-gold waiting for him, with that raven-dark hair haloed by the bright lights circling Battersea. “I won't tell you a thing until you come back to me. That means paying attention to other people, for once, and doing your job. That means using your Dragon-damned gift to save yourself!”

Kavya slipped into his mind again. She found him like a child and held his hand, until he was able to actually see himself from above. It wasn't imagination. He could see through her eyes. He understood that through her, he was to communicate where to place their fingers—and his.

Mal cried out as the powerful women converged on him. Nynn's firecracker electric shock slid into the base of his brain like a knife, but Kavya was there to defend conscious thought from the pain. He smelled the sizzle of his flesh. He felt the tremble of his legs. There was no controlling this. He was as helpless as a baby being born, pulled through into the unknown, shrieking as the comforts of his old life were ripped away, one by one.

He lost Kavya. Her reassuring calm slipped away until he was left with his own panicking thoughts. Avyi screamed and pressed harder, but her fingers slipped in the blood. Kavya wrapped bloody hands around her head in obvious pain. “He's going. I can't stay with him. I'm sorry.”

“You can't go, you stubborn
lonayíp
bastard,” Avyi shouted, her lips brushing his with humid sweetness. “I've seen us in love. Do you know that? That's why it wasn't right before. We were lovers, but we weren't in love. I love you, and you're not leaving me until you can say it back and
stay
with me.”

Across what must've been a hundred miles, he found his cousin's face. “Light it up, firecracker. I want to go out in a blaze . . . like our creator.”

CHAPTER

A
vyi had never felt anything like the power Nynn could summon. She and Mal had to be the two most powerful Dragon Kings on the planet.

Only, Avyi hated Nynn in that moment, when the woman began to conjure a ball of kinetic fireworks between her hands. Her partner, Leto, held her by the waist. Whether it was to ground Nynn for what was to come, or to protect her from Avyi's mounting anger—who knew?

But the hatred in Avyi's heart was as real as any gift, and so much more real than the Dragon that had failed her so completely. What manner of creature tempted her with a life beyond pain and torture, only to let her feel Mal's lifeblood flowing like a river between her fingers? Even their combined efforts hadn't been enough to repair severed bone, arteries, veins, and delicate nerves. Tallis wrenched Avyi's hands away from Mal's increasingly cold skin. She cried out, thrashing, swinging her brass-encased knuckles, trying everything to get back to his side.

She was practically useless when held captive by a Pendray and his Indranan lover. Tallis's arms, crisscrossed around her torso, were like bands of the thickest, most immutable steel. Kavya touched her mind, so subtly, trying to calm Avyi with a feeling of sunshine and hope.

She pushed past Kavya's ministrations. Her anguish overflowed. She was insensate with grief like she'd never known. Even seeing the painful destinies of the unborn she helped bring into the world couldn't compare. She couldn't take her eyes off Mal's mangled throat and, worse still, his expression that so resembled peace that she almost believed he was destined to be accepted back into the Great Dragon's fold, a soul forgiven no matter its sins. But that was the expression of a man who'd stopped fighting. He was her warrior, her Giva, her only love.

He couldn't stop fighting, and neither did she when she snarled and kicked Tallis. A few of her desperate swings connected with skin and bone. He grunted, cursing as ferociously as she did—a different kind of comfort than what Kavya offered.

Every Dragon King who remained in that crumbling power station was mourning. They all knew what Mal's death would mean.

She was heartsick as Nynn's bubble of energy grew and grew. For the first time, Avyi knew one of her surest predictions was not going to come true. It was betrayal upon betrayal. Her heart was cracking open for more than the death of Malnefoley. What would become of their people?

And who would she be after he was gone? There was nothing about herself she could ever trust again. She'd be a madwoman possessed by visions she couldn't trust. They might as well throw her in a fathomless pit and seal it with a metal lid to block out the sun. There, she wouldn't be able to spread her poisonous hope to anyone else.

Slowly, as Nynn began to lose reality in favor of a trancelike swaying, the others backed away from Mal's motionless body.

Tallis pulled Kavya to a distant corner, holding her with his chin tucked against her crown. The other rebels and the freed Dragon Kings took shelter.

With the lethargy of a nightmare, Avyi stood and walked around Malnefoley. She touched two fingers to her lips and reached them toward his forehead, as if she could press that kiss to his sheet-white flesh. From there she walked to where the Dragon-forged sword had fallen during their contest against Dr. Aster. She gripped it with sticky fingers, the color of which turned her stomach to acid. Mal's blood.

He wanted to go out in a blaze, burned like the Great Dragon after it had given birth to the Five Clans before diving back into the fiery Chasm of its own birth. But fire wouldn't kill Mal. He was still a Dragon King, after all. Only beheading him—charred and bloodless—would finish the job. Only beheading him would put him out of abject misery.

Avyi would be the one to do it.

Nynn moaned. Leto waved Avyi away. “Go! You can't survive this!”

“And you?”

He kissed Nynn's neck and whispered something in her ear, something Avyi would never know. Nynn's eyes rolled shut. Leto let her go, then grabbed Avyi's free hand. He pulled her into a crevice along the arena wall. “I hated you once,” he said roughly. “And I sure as fuck didn't trust you. Now . . . I'm sorry. This is an end for us. But you can't believe it's
the end
. None of us can, or we might as well drop to the ground and wait for time or the humans to take us. I won't believe that. I won't let that happen to me or Nynn or our baby.”

“Baby?” Avyi whispered, chilled to her marrow.

“Nynn is expecting.” Whatever joy he possessed was tempered by the solemnity of the moment. “I don't know . . .” He swallowed thickly. He smelled of sweat and blood—that of the Cage warrior he'd been raised from birth to become, only to be freed by Nynn's love and devotion. “I don't know what this will do to her or the babe. But she's doing it for him. Any of us would if we could.”

The light surrounding Nynn was overwhelming, until the women disappeared in the glaze of their gifts. Nynn screamed in release as the bubble burst with a blaze of blinding color. She obliterated what remained of the deeply recessed arena. Leto used his armor to protect Avyi, but she refused the arm that he tried to use to cover her eyes. She was not missing a second of this, no matter how it burned her eyes.

The Dragon.

The
dragon from her prophecy.

The heat of the explosion Nynn conjured paled compared to the spectacle. Great wings pushed a wash of steaming flame into the arena. It circled like a whirlwind above the power station. Fire ripped across the makeshift bleachers until they were hewn of sparks and cinders. Massive teeth bared in a grimace that looked like a parody of a smile. A snakelike tongue lolled just before an unearthly roar mixed with a banshee's screech split Avyi's ears. Leto collapsed at her feet, holding his ears and moaning, his senses overloaded.

Avyi had nearly forgotten that particular vision, where the Grievance wouldn't simply be the last ever held, where Cadmin needed her bow and arrows, and where a dragon flew across the night sky and breathed the fire of legend.

On his knees, Leto murmured something in the ancient language of the Dragon Kings, the language that predated what had developed uniquely among each of the Five Clans. In human myths, it would be their language before the fall of Babel. Only, Avyi heard the words and knew, deep in her heart, what Leto said.

“The Great Dragon. It is risen. It lives.”

Avyi watched in fascinated horror as the dragon assumed the five shapes known to the clans. It circled the power station with another magnificent screech of bone-shaking ferocity. Dragon Kings dropped in reverence when, finally, it assumed its true form. Elements of each of the Five Clans' interpretations could be seen. It had a forked tongue that jutted out from a sharp, angular face that was lined with overlapping scales. Each scale shimmered with color that moved and bent depending on the glint of the light.

Four powerful wings gave its flight a staggering grace. It could've been swimming rather than flying, so easily did it move through the skies.

Awed, Avyi stepped past Leto and walked to where Nynn lay dazed on her back. Leto joined them both within seconds. Together they pulled the woman out of harm's way, although instinctively, Avyi knew none of them would be harmed by the Great Dragon—because, oh, it truly was the Great Dragon risen.

She still held the sword that she'd intended to use on Malnefoley, to put his body and mind out of the prolonged misery that would hold a Dragon King until he or she was beheaded. But her eyes were playing tricks on her. Her mind was failing her. Because as the Dragon flew overhead, she looked for Mal's body.

He should've been a charred mass of writhing flesh, bloodless now, and waiting for death.

Instead, his body was gone.

Avyi looked up. Her head spun with promises of prophecy.

The man she loved circled Battersea with a glorious flick of his three-pronged tail and serpentine body. The man she loved had become the most powerful being in all creation.

He raged and twisted and burned.

He breathed out and felt the stinging delight of fire ripping free of his mouth.

And apparently, he had chores to attend to.

Watching Mal fly free was the most excruciatingly beautiful thing she'd ever see. He was the elements and eternity. With another twist, he spun over the makeshift arena.

Swooping down, he grazed the topmost edge of the seating reserved for the audience. Avyi scanned the line of seating and with an amazing clarity of sight, saw Mal's target. The Old Man. She would know that grizzled face anywhere, with evil that shone from unrepentant eyes. An easy, gorgeous flap of wings made flicking shadows of the bright arena lights, but then there were no more shadows. With a gusting exhalation, fire and smoke burst from between bared teeth. Old Man Aster shrieked, but his was nothing to the screaming anger of the Dragon.

“What's happening?” shouted Orla, the woman once known as Silence. Now she had the strongest voice among the dozens assembled. “Avyi!”

“I don't know!”

She had cursed her gift as often as she'd valued it. Only now did she realize how much she had depended on its presence in her life. This moment was unprecedented. She genuinely didn't know what was going on, which was made all the more terrifying because Mal was at the heart of the confusion.

The Heretic, Tallis of Pendray, appeared at her side. His expression was stony. Only his eyes moved, following the skyward path of the dragon. “The Dragon is supposed to die in the fires of the Chasm. He has a long way to fly to reach Nepal.”

A shiver wracked Avyi's body. The Chasm wasn't fixed, and perhaps it wouldn't be until the most powerful Giva in centuries asserted the full extent of his strength and leadership. Nestled high in the Himalayas, the Chasm was thousands of miles away. She could imagine this beautiful creature strong enough to make such a journey—and die upon its completion. Was that what their people needed? Did they need Mal to die in order for their kind to endure?

Her stomach pinched.

The Dragon roared. Rippling grace surged through his muscled, serpentine body. Three forked tails balanced through every banking turn as he sailed through the air. He breathed out another gust of fire.