Except for touch. He would never get enough of touch.

So he lingered. This was her first Cage fight. He wanted her to help him show up the Old Man. Not that he’d dare say it. Too petty. Even petulant. All he knew was that the head of the Aster cartel had reservations about Leto’s successes. With Nynn at his side, he would prove those reservations ridiculous.

He adjusted her armor and cinched the straps across her back. He lingered. Just as she’d traced his tattoo, he also needed to touch. Her back was a mess of cuts and whip marks. Most had healed, even if the skin still appeared puffy and red. He placed two fingers on either side of a long, angry slash and traced it down—from shoulder to where her skin disappeared beneath layers of metal and leather.

Hellix. The bastard. And Dr. Aster as his puppeteer.

Leto needed purpose. He found the fruition of that purpose staring up at him when Nynn turned. An untested warrior. A resilient woman. Her potent femininity collided with his body’s repressed needs. They were trainer and neophyte, but the fire in her icy eyes said she wanted more. A rough sort of want, no more gentle than the armor they wore.

Any gentler touch had no place between them.

Yet he’d held her while Ulia probed Nynn’s mind. He’d felt every tremble and each unconscious twist of her fingers against his skin. He’d smelled her hair and the sharp stench of dried blood. He just kept holding, as if in penance for the pain he could not save her from on that whipping post.

Or in the labs.

Or when her family was destroyed.

She’d come out of that session a different woman—apparently one who could stare him down. A woman who could touch him. Study him. Make him feel something very new. For a warrior who’d honed his reflexes and his senses for two decades, feeling anything new was both novel and unsettling.

Of course he remembered the continuous burning bite of the tattoo needle after his first victory in a Grievance. He’d been only sixteen—too young to receive an official initiation. But the Old Man had made an exception, because no sixteen-year-old had ever been invited to fight in a Grievance. No one had expected him to live. Possibly not even his father.

Leto had triumphed.

When he’d bowed his head to receive his tattoo, adrenaline yet pumped in his veins. Celebratory cups of golish had softened his brain. He’d been lucky that his heightened senses were damped. Back then, he hadn’t been able to carry over as much of his gift once the collar was reactivated. Otherwise the prick, prick, prick of the tattoo needle might have been too much to handle.

After a lifetime of practice, he’d learned to control all of it. When to feel. When to cut off feeling. Yet he still felt her nail trailing along the serpent’s undulating body. Over and over. A tickle across the back of his skull. And he still felt the skin of her back where he’d traced his fingers.

All he could do was keep her safe now. They would conquer all comers.

“I’ll wait for you outside the gate,” he said roughly.

He left her cell—which wouldn’t be her cell much longer. Victory in that evening’s match would see her established in a warrior’s dorm. She would have privacy and small luxuries. In other words, she would not be his to control so completely.

Frustrated, edgy, he waited outside the locked gate for Nynn to emerge.

A shiver crept up his back like a spider’s eight legs. The neophyte who’d insisted on being called Audrey had defied him at every turn. Only the goal of saving her son had given her strength and purpose. That goal had helped him justify why he pushed her so hard. That their goals were so compatible only eased the process.

This woman . . . This was Nynn of Tigony.

She wore her perfectly fitted armor with confidence as she strode into the light. Blond hair glimmered and cast spiky shadows across her forehead and cheeks. Those freckles gave her features extra depth. Texture, even. Something untenable and unique to her.

Any woman could move with poise when wrapped in flowing silk. It took a warrior to move with the same grace when outfitted for battle.

Underneath it all, she still bore the red slashes of punishment for having tried to escape. And she didn’t seem to recall any of it.

Leto smashed his doubts into pieces. If he tried hard enough, he wouldn’t remember them by the time they reached the Cage. The workings of her mind were not his to ponder. He couldn’t afford to care, not with Pell’s future at stake.

The guards let her out of the cell and secured her hands with manacles. Leto held his hands out as well. She angled him an arch look. “You, too? Why?”

“Because we’re leaving the complex. The Old Man never hosts visitors down here. We’re escorted to where the guests assemble around the full-size Cage.”

“Ah, so you have been outside. You’ve seen the sun.”

He kept from curling his hands into fists. No show of limitation. The simple recitation of fact. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“What would you think of such a thing if you lived your whole life belowground?”

Her lower lip rubbed over the upper, which plumped them both. He hated his gifts for cluttering his mind with distracting details.

“I’d see it as an enemy,” she said. “A disadvantage.”

“And the Old Man knows it. We travel in buses and wear blindfolds between.”

“Safer.”

“Necessary. Any visiting warrior would be at a serious disadvantage.”

“But if we looked?” She shook her head.

“What?”

“If we didn’t wear the blindfolds, we could see where we are? Cities. Mountains. Rural Dragon-knows-where. That could be important.”

She sounded as if she were speaking through a long, long tube of glass. Distant, even to herself. Whatever Ulia had done, Nynn had come out with her powers—and no apparent memory of fighting to free her son. He didn’t want to mention her little boy again, for fear of reversing her real potential. Or splitting her mind in two.

So he maneuvered her. He didn’t like it. It felt more like the sort of games the Tigony would play. Tricksters.

“Glory is only found in the Cages. Why would it matter where they are?”

She nodded firmly. The clouds of confusion ebbed from her eyes. “Then let’s do this.”

Leto had proven honest about all matters pertaining to combat, and to Nynn’s survival in his world. Why wouldn’t he? Arming her with information was as much of an advantage as arming her with skills and weapons.

So when human guards blindfolded her, she acquiesced. Every advantage. She would face genuine opponents. None of the contests between Dragon Kings would be to the death. Her pride, however, was on the line. She wanted to prove herself to those she served, and to Leto.

She was led outside. Two guards held her elbows. Guiding. Restraining. They didn’t need to bother. She was as eager as she’d ever been. Only when the rush of cold, fresh air, hit her face did she flinch. She hesitated enough for the guards to jerk her forward.

The smell of snow.

It’s been more than a year. Free air.

The cold tingled in her nostrils and spread goose bumps across her exposed left shoulder. Her nape prickled. She’d had long hair the last time she walked in the cold. Like a soft blanket draping down her back.

When was that? Where was I?

A headache gathered between her brows. The guards prodded her lower back. More force. Less patience for whatever fit had taken hold of her mind. Soon she had climbed three steps onto an idling vehicle that stank of diesel. One of the buses Leto had mentioned. Old and new collided in her mind, no matter how she tried to focus on the next few hours. A sort of panic made her heart speed.

The darkness of the blindfold. The pressure of the guards’ hands. The biting manacles. Her pulse raced and her headache intensified. Panic. She couldn’t breathe. Cold snow. Diesel. Long hair. She struggled, fell, groped for purchase.