She stopped at the gate and turned. Blue fire sparked in her eyes—a quiet imitation of the gift she couldn’t use. “I hate so much of my life and so many people, but you’re the only one here to hate in person. Thank you for making it easier to do.”

“I’m tired of you.”

“You should’ve made the most of your chance,” she ground out. “Turning a blind eye is easy. Let me show you.”

She presented him with her back and the guards with her wrists. One fumbled to find the right key.

There, so close to where he would sleep that night, where the other warriors took their meals and, in their own uneasy ways, socialized—Leto could almost imagine her becoming part of his world. But she never would. Her escape attempts would continue. Her barbs and insults. Hatred, no matter how justified, was blinding her to the value of playing along.

The Old Man wanted them paired in matches, and Leto had never fought with a partner. What a farce. It was hard enough to win without keeping a muzzle and chains on Nynn, knowing she would knife him in the back at first chance.

“Well, now,” came a voice Leto couldn’t place.

Not at first.

Nynn whirled. Her eyes bulged. She tried to dart. Only Leto’s quick reflexes kept her from bolting back down the corridor. He held on with all his strength, because she’d gained the ferocity of a lioness. Vicious. Manic. A perfectly placed kick to the back of his thigh gave her the opening she needed to break free.

Only, her features were contorted by abject fear.

“No,” she gasped. “No!”

She moved too fast for her own limbs. Spun away from Leto. Slipped. Fell backward onto her ass, scrambling away. The manacle chains draped in a noisy clank around her abdomen.

“Lovely to see you again, Mrs. MacLaren.”

Dr. Heath Aster.

Leto’s gaze was quick. He couldn’t keep both Nynn and the doctor in sight at the same time, but he came very close. One placid smile. One expression of surprised fear morphing into the most powerful anger he’d never seen.

Nynn surged to her feet. She grabbed the practice knife from Leto’s waist belt, spun, and snatched the guards’ set of keys. He’d never seen her move so swiftly, with precision and grace despite the fury warping her pixie features. Stance wide, she edged away from the wall in a tight, controlled circled. Her attention on the doctor. Knife in one fist. One key thrust between the knuckles of the other.

“Where the fuck is my son?”

“Where you should be, my dear,” the doctor said. “No matter what my father insists. Leto, restrain her.”

Leto might have hesitated. He might have. A pause waited in the space between one breath coming in and another going out. Nynn forced his hand by lunging at the doctor.

Leto lashed out and wrapped an arm around her stomach. Her makeshift weapons hit the floor in quick succession. He caught her manacles and wrapped his inner elbow around her neck. She shrieked as if he’d captured a Pendray animal rather than a woman raised among Tigony royalty and lowly humans.

Sweat formed along Leto’s brow as he held her thrashing body for the second time that night. Both times fighting. But this was a moment outside of his control. His neophyte was his to command only as long as he was alone to make the decisions. Those decisions were no longer his.

That knowledge grated up his spine.

“And silence her.”

Leto dropped from champion to slave in the span of three words.

He adjusted his grip to keep her immobilized and silent. Sharp teeth grazed the inside of his palm—her tongue, her lips, her vicious snarls. When Nynn tried to kick, he looped one thigh around both of hers. She still tried. He’d known that about her from the first moment she’d stabbed his cheek with a piece of concrete. She would still try. That didn’t mean she would win. Not against him and not against the Asters.

Why did that make his stomach lurch?

The doctor stepped closer, his chin lifted, inspecting.

Likely mid-fifties, Dr. Aster was glossy as a photograph. His suit was immaculate. Light brown hair was carefully combed back from a face that greatly resembled that of his father. Hawkish. Predatory. With the same jester’s smile. Only, the doctor seemed able to keep his smile just shy of unsettling. More contained. Nothing about him said sadist. Madness. Brilliance. Just a well-ordered sense of competence.

His eyes, however, gave Leto pause. Dull gray. Slow to move. He took his time to linger over every surface, especially Nynn’s face. Collecting details? Leto didn’t know how to do that without racing at high speed, when he could suck up information as quickly as slurping water from a glass. To move so slowly worked against every instinct he had ever honed. It actually bothered him to watch the doctor’s careful, slothful movements.

He’d met the man only once or twice. With nothing between them other than a connection to the Old Man, they’d had little to say. In fact, in his twenty years as a Cage warrior, he couldn’t remember having spoken with the doctor. Now Leto’s skin was itching as if bugs were crawling beneath.

“Cutting your hair hadn’t occurred to me,” he said. “Do you miss it, Mrs. MacLaren? I suppose your husband must have enjoyed its beauty a great deal.”

Aster was tempting fate by taunting her. Leto caught her renewed blitz of venom as if holding back lightning. At first he couldn’t identify the wetness along the outside of his hand, but it was her tears. Two blinks of salt water trailed down her cheeks and settled in the crevice between his skin and hers.

That lazy gray gaze returned to Nynn. “Greatly changed.” Aster wiped one of her tears, then touched his finger to his tongue. “But still broken. I like to see even our champion hasn’t been able to change that. Although you have tried, haven’t you, Leto?”

“Yes, sir. She’s a good fighter.”

Dr. Aster stared directly into Nynn’s eyes. Leto could almost feel the earthquake her hatred was going to rip open beneath their feet. Had she been free of the collar, she would have done just that. “True. But alas, her son . . .”

She shrieked. Leto’s arms were beginning to burn. They’d both have bruises from how roughly he needed to keep her contained. And all the while, his anger lifted to new heights. Nynn was his neophyte. This mental and emotional torture would set their training back by weeks. Possibly longer. He’d only just determined that her anger stood in the way of greatness. Now the personification of that anger was playing marionette with nightmare thoughts of her son.

“Maybe that isn’t such a welcome topic,” the doctor said. “I’ll leave talk of young Jack for another time.”

More salt water against Leto’s hand. This was a torture he’d never experienced.

What was right? Dragon be, he couldn’t tell.

Dr. Aster smiled. “And you remember my companion, I assume?”

He turned to beckon a young woman forward. She walked with slinking grace, moving with a cat’s animal ease. Only when she reached Aster’s side and he snapped his fingers did she squat by his side. Her twisting elegance was unnatural, if only because she retained an air of dignity even when kneeling. She curled against the doctor’s upper leg, as if a part of his anatomy, not a separate being.

Leto shivered.

The Pet.

Leto’s interactions with Dr. Aster had been limited, but his contact with the Pet was entirely new. He only ever saw her from a distance. She was the doctor’s constant companion. No one knew who she was or how she’d come to be more animal than woman.

A beautiful woman.

“Up, Pet.”

Dr. Aster’s voice was as deliberate as his slothful gaze.

She stood. An agile unfurling. Leto thought of petals opening—something his mother had described. A blossom went from tight and closed to radiant and ready to receive. In this case, to receive instruction from her master. She eyed Leto, then Nynn, but everything about her posture said that her true attention was riveted to the doctor.