“We won.”

“Yes.”

She swallowed. She inhaled. She prepared to ask the next question as if swords and shields would be drawn. “What did you say to the Old Man? You looked . . . defiant.”

“I will not be chained again.”

That didn’t answer her question. It was a statement, as if he’d made a decision.

Keep him away from her.

What had he meant?

She dared reach up to touch his collar, although she risked her hand in doing so. Danger pulsed off him like the explosive potential of gasoline. He might combust at any moment, and she had no idea what would set him off. Were his sexual promises in the Cage truthful? At the moment, those promises were the best she could hope for.

That made her situation sound passive. She wanted him to honor those blunt, hard-edged promises. Her body was keyed up, desperate, starved in ways she’d never know.

For now, she only touched his collar. “You’ve been chained for a very long time. I would’ve thought your senses acute enough to know that. To feel the weight on your neck. To recognize the satisfaction of walking into a Cage and feeling these monstrous devices set us free.” The metal was warmed by the heat that pulsed from his majestic body. Her fingertips prickled. She didn’t touch skin, but she touched the one thing that had been with him nearly as long. “Leto of Garnis, what would you be without this?”

His eyes blanked. No emotion there. No connection. “I’d be a better Cage warrior.”

♦   ♦   ♦

Leto had hoped that returning home would erase how unsettling the match had been—before, during, and after. The return should’ve been simple. Drink golish. Pick a woman from among the selection kept by the Asters for just that purpose. Release this grinding tension.

He could rely on none of those easy routines. First, he had Nynn’s initiation ceremony to attend. Then . . . he had Nynn. He’d boasted that she would come to him, but he didn’t trust his judgment regarding the woman. After all, he’d never spoken to the Old Man as he had after the match. Yet what he’d said was vital. Whatever Ulia had done to Nynn’s mind would not last if Dr. Aster continued to test the boundaries of the telepathic block. Instinct alone had caused Nynn to draw her weapon against the man. Any further contact might snap her mind in two.

That prospect shouldn’t bother Leto on a personal level. He had been tasked with helping Nynn survive for three matches. This was one down. Two more to go. The thought of Nynn’s sanity fracturing in the process added weight to his burdens.

Their return to the dorms was heralded with raucous shouts and congratulations. Leto accepted the well-wishes of his fellow warriors, and from those who hadn’t been chosen for the evening’s contest. Silence and Hark had won their match, as had Hellix and Fam. Their gloating made Leto’s teeth clench together.

Through the narrow corridor leading to the dorms, they filed into a common area where the golish was already flowing freely. Leto hadn’t shed his armor. He wouldn’t until he stripped naked that evening and cleaned himself in his quarters. Some of the men washed each other in the communal baths, a practice that held no interest for Leto.

Wearing his armor was a sound choice, rather than habit. He was uncomfortably aware of his body’s reaction to the thought of Nynn, let alone seeing her enter the common room. The lights were softer here, more inviting—less like the industrial wing inhabited by the humans. This was a space for lounging in the few moments when warriors were free to relax.

She had cleaned and changed into a clean set of her silk-lined, leather training clothes. Her short blond hair gleamed, and tiny droplets of water clung to individual strands. He tried to remember the feel of her long tresses between his fingers—the beautiful hair he’d cut out of necessity—but his blasted senses failed him.

That she had washed and found a spare set of clothes meant someone had shown her to her newly appointed dorm. She would still be his responsibility, but not to the same degree. She would be a Cage warrior who determined her own regimen and sparred with whom she chose. He would no longer dictate every waking and sleeping hour.

Leto sat up from the bench and tunneled his fingers across his freshly buzzed scalp. He shouldn’t care, shouldn’t want, shouldn’t be so Dragon-damned tormented.

This had to stop.

“Congratulations, Nynn of Tigony,” he said.

The room quieted at the sound of his voice. He had enjoyed that influence for nearly two decades. Only now, when faced with the one person who should’ve ranked lowest of their group, did he feel his power slip. Nynn was looking at him, with eyes so pale that her irises were more like light than color. Her freckles added depth and beauty to golden skin, while the confidence she wore across her shoulders and up her spine said what no words needed to express.

She had won.

“I think we’re all eager to get on with your initiation. Not since Hark’s arrival have we welcomed one into our own.”

Nynn’s expression was placid, despite the fierce burn in her eyes. She was practically laughing at him. He could tell. The power he had taken for granted was being stolen, minute by minute, by a fierce woman who made him feel. He hadn’t felt for years.

“Be careful what you wish for.” Hark sat hip to hip with Silence. He wore a short-sleeved shirt—some holdover from the clothes he’d brought with him upon volunteering to fight. Silence absently stroked her thumb over a crescent-shaped scar on Hark’s inner arm. Leto had never given much thought as to why the man served the Asters, but now he knew. The crescent was evidence of the Sath bonding tradition known as the Ritual of Thorns. Not to pay debts or to earn favors, Hark had come belowground to be with his wife.

“Why is that?” Nynn asked, jarring Leto’s thoughts.

“Initiation is no pretty process,” Hark said. “My screams may have been a tad less than manly. Maybe just a bit. I try to be as studly as the rest of these meatheads, but of course, there’s no keeping up with so much testosterone. I have to taunt them with the fact I’m getting laid more than once a month.”

Silence sighed softly, as if vexed by his chatter.

“I haven’t wished for any of this.” Nynn lifted her chin and stared the jester down. “But now it is my privilege. My right.”

“This is never going to work,” Hark muttered to Silence. He played with two shards of black rock as if they were three-dimensional puzzle pieces. “You know that, right? It’s impossible.” Only when she rolled her eyes and took the pieces did Hark return to Nynn. “Anyway, wanting it or not doesn’t mean it won’t hurt. ’Cuz that thing is a bloody bitch.”

Lamot, another elder who’d retired from the Cages in the good grace of the Asters, arrived with his equipment. Nynn’s confident expression wavered only once, as she glanced toward Leto. He met her where Lamot prepared the needle and ink.

“I have a tattoo.” Leto could not remember the feel of her silken hair in his hands, but he would never forget her fingertips along his scalp. “Now you’ll have one, too. The emblem of the Asters.”

“Where?”

“Your choice.”

She raised her brows to his shorn hair. “Didn’t that hurt?”

Her eyes added to that unfinished sentence. Didn’t that hurt . . . considering your gift?

“Hark didn’t lie. It will hurt. Our physiology means it’s a more aggressive process than with humans. More like scarification, infused with ink.”

“And this is the reward I get for having flattened Weil?”

“Lucky shot, neophyte,” came Weil’s reply.

Nynn turned deadly cold eyes on her. “A win’s a win.”

The woman cleared her throat and returned to a conversation she may or may not have been having with Fam.

“Choose.” Lamot motioned to his special chair, which was outfitted with various restraints and clasps. “Then sit.”