She stood there. Blank. Frozen. Colorless and bereft. When tightening her fists, she could still feel the old breaks where her knuckles had been crushed. Escape was not the same as safety for their loved ones. And as much as she loved Leto of Garnis, having lost sight of him amid a cloud of powder white, she didn’t need him for exacting revenge.

Leto was part of the world rather than trapped beneath it. Tiny shards of ice as small as grit scored his face and his gloriously bare throat. Inhaling the air stung his nostrils with pure cold, and he could’ve sworn he could still smell Nynn—her sweet, feminine scent on the wind. Every time he’d stepped into a Cage, he’d thought his gift was in full force. Not even close.

This was what it was to be a Dragon King.

Even with Silence and Hark gathering some of his power for their own, he processed details at a pace that should’ve made his mind spin. He put each in correct places: environment, velocity, potential threats, and the effect his run was having on his body.

That was an unknown. After all, he didn’t know his limits now.

But he realized that his limits didn’t matter. He would do what he’d always done. He would fight until he emerged victorious. These stakes were the highest of his life.

As the outpost gained shape and size, he signaled to his unlikely companions. They responded as they would have in the Cages. Instantly. Efficiently. They split away from Leto to flank the building to his left and right. As long as their goals overlapped with rescuing Pell and Jack, they would be welcome allies.

The lab was more like a fortress. He circled but could find no way in. He was on the verge of returning for Nynn—her gift would’ve made fast work of this hellish place—when his senses sizzled. He sniffed the air. The hair at the base of his skull prickled. Without diverting power to his conscious mind, he ran based on instinct, following the path Silence had taken. Around a sharp corner. Down a long stretch of marble and ice and iron.

The low building they’d assumed to be the laboratory was menacing. It was an eerie blight on the white landscape, even more pronounced than the hole Nynn and the Sath had punched out from the ground. This place radiated with screams. Leto couldn’t tell if he heard the screams with his ears or his brain. His newly freed Indranan powers almost overwhelmed the senses he’d trusted for a lifetime.

The arena that housed the battle Cage was huge. It looked even more impressive in its stone housing than from his usual vantage in the center of the action. He veered away from it, intent on finding the source of his sizzling awareness. The sensation was hot and sputtering, pressing out from his forehead and temples. Something was coming. Violence.

The moment he realized Silence’s footprints had gone missing was the moment he glimpsed the source of that sizzling crackle. A small device on top of a generator at the rear of the squat building was blinking red, red, red. For all his training, he had no idea what it was. He wanted to strip his armor and beat it against the marble wall. Useless. Being out in the world was as new as a being born.

Yet he wouldn’t let himself retreat into maudlin. Whether scent or sound, something gave Silence away. He wasn’t surprised to find her crouched on one of the slim eaves, two stories up. Any warrior who didn’t admire her elegant balance was a fool. She was looking down at the explosive device that had skittered cold up Leto’s spine—a cold very different from the newfound snow and ice.

“What is it?”

Silence shook her head, cracked the knuckle of her right thumb, and mouthed, “Boom.”

♦   ♦   ♦

Tallis of Pendray leaned lower over the handlebars of his snowmobile. Dark goggles protected his eyes. He left no skin exposed to the elements. Riding three vehicles deep on either side of him were the Honorable Giva and five members of the nameless underground. Tallis wasn’t a member of that secret network. He didn’t want to be. His missions were personal. Perhaps that’s why he pursued them so doggedly.

For more than a year, he’d suffered guilt so strong and potent that sleep was nearly impossible. The strength to hold back his rage—the berserker rage he’d suppressed when living among the humans—was beginning to ebb.

He’d killed and he’d done worse. And he regretted none of it.

Except for what he’d let happen to Nynn.

She’d been just another step toward the Sun’s prophecy of uniting the Five Clans—steps he’d taken since murdering a Pendray priest. Only after leading the Asters’ guards to Nynn’s home had Tallis realized her identity, and that some means were too sickening to stomach, no matter the noble ends.

He needed his conscience washed clean of her pain. And he needed revenge against the Sun, the living goddess whose dreamtime deceptions had guided his life for too long.

The snow was beginning to blend into dreamtime. Predictions and prophecies were streaked by each new spray of crystals. He shook free of those dreams’ seductive hold, only to find himself back in the light of a waning sun and surrounded by his own kind. Despite his appearance at the Council, rumors insisted he was dead or some crazed myth. That was for the best.

He tightened his mouth. His resolve was unshakable; his course was set as if by the Dragon. He still had work to do on this earth.

Tallis could barely see the massive complex on the horizon. They had no Garnis among their number, but that was no surprise. Leto and his siblings were the only ones of the Lost that Tallis had known, even in his far-ranging travels. They could’ve used the amplified senses and speed of a Garnis warrior. The elements conspired with the gathering dusk to obscure even the defined outline of the huge arena’s walls, let alone potential threats.

The Giva sped to the front of the triangular formation and motioned toward another distant spot. Not the outpost.

Smoke.

They had no need to signal one another to converge there first. The seven snowmobiles turned in a wide arc to cover the last few miles of the loud, chilly trek. Through what must’ve constituted years of work, the rebels had located this desolate Canadian stronghold. A thousand miles of tundra seemed appropriate when tasked with hiding the secret of conception.

Dark clouds rising into the snow blue sky reminded him of the day, months earlier, when Nynn had inadvertently revealed the outpost’s exact location. Nynn had destroyed part of Dr. Aster’s lab. That had been the proof the rebels had needed to convince Tallis, and the proof he’d taken to the Giva.

Throttling down his vehicle, Tallis pulled alongside Malnefoley. The man’s hatred for Tallis had been banked only long enough to rescue Nynn. But they were both caught up in bigger events than the Giva realized.

A female rebel lifted the visor of her helmet. “What is that?”

They looked at a smoking, blackened swath of earth. Falling snow melted even before it touched the surface that radiated waves of heat.

“GPS says that we’re above part of the complex,” said another.

He was Pendray, although he claimed no association with any of the Five Clans. It was the nature of their loose network that those who wished to remain unaffiliated were allowed that right.

“I recognize this.” The Giva’s words were strong, although blunted by the wind. He wiped his mouth with the tail of a scarf pulled from his parka. “This is my cousin’s work. I haven’t seen it in . . . Dragon be, I haven’t seen it since the day Leoki died.”

“Should we look for an entrance?” Another rebel. Another nameless face. “We know the Cage warriors live and train in a secret facility. They won’t be at the outpost.”

“But Nynn will be,” said the Giva. “Or else she was killed in creating this. Either way, the lab is my first priority.”