“I haven’t seen this one either,” the Pet said without inflection.

As if caught stealing, Nynn blushed. Her skin flared hot, then frigid cold. She met the gaze of each person in that blasted corridor. Mal and the dark-haired stranger. The Dragon Kings who’d come to their aid. Even the Pet and the Sath couple. That didn’t take into account the men and women—the children—who’d suffered at Aster’s hands.

She wasn’t a soothsayer, but Nynn saw her future.

She nuzzled her son’s hair and drew in a breath, then kissed him. “Take him. Keep him safe, as I know you would’ve kept me safe for the rest of my days.”

Mal stepped forward in the wake of Leto’s confused silence. “Nynn, what is this?”

“You know what I can do. I take the energy from the air and make it mine. I own it. This detonation will be no different.”

She said it with the confidence of a woman who knew her place in the world. She’d always envied that confidence when watching Leto in his element. Now it was hers—not the serpent she’d imagined when filled with Ulia’s twisted intentions. No, this was a destiny she’d never imagined. She would save her new family and these precious few Dragon Kings.

“I won’t let you do it.” Leto’s rough, battered features bunched around an expression of fury.

She touched his cheek. “You know there’s no other way.”

“I’ll stay, too,” Mal said. “I can help absorb the energy.”

“The Honorable Giva? No way.” She quickly kissed his cheek. “Our people need you. I understand that now.”

Mal’s head bowed. She’d never seen him humbled, but maybe her awkward forgiveness held that power. If for no other reason, she was glad to have said it.

Hark was the first to move. He and Silence lifted Pell between them. “Twenty minutes isn’t much time, people.”

“Out.” Mal’s voice held all the authority of his station, plus that added punch of charisma and assurance he’d possessed even as a child. “All of us. We need to escape the blast radius and take as many of the prisoners with us as we can.”

The group mobilized. Nynn slipped through the hole in the cinder block wall. She wanted to take Leto’s hand, but he held his crude weapons at the ready. His profile was grim as they ran side by side. She cradled Jack’s head instead. She remembered his weight, the cadence of his breathing, his shivers of fear—and she held on tighter. The time she had to hold him close was coming to an end.

She sobbed against the side of his head.

She’d been mistaken all along. She held her boy—the child she had conceived in love with her dear, murdered Caleb—and she was still fighting for him. That didn’t mean she would be the one to raise him. The realization shot spikes through her chest and pierced her heart.

Leto growled at her side. “I know what you’re thinking, Nynn, and you’re wrong. He’ll never be alone. And neither will we.”

I have to do this,” Nynn said, her throat pinching shut. “You know there’s no other way. If the worst happens—”

Leto’s expression was black with fury. “No.”

“—then Jack will still be safe. Dozens of lives in exchange for one Dragon King? Our people are so scarce. This is taking advantage of the odds. Other warriors like Weil may still be alive down underground, too. And what if I can save this place from the worst of the destruction? No matter how he acquired the information, or what he did with it, we need to learn what Dr. Aster knew. Tell me I’m wrong. Deny me any of this.”

Leto stopped with a sudden jerk, took her by the shoulders. “You made me see you and hear you and feel you because you were so Dragon-damned stubborn. Now you want to leave me.”

“I don’t want to!”

“I’ve seen the snow and the sun now, but without you, I’ll live in the dark forever.”

She inhaled sharply.

His every hardened feature was pleading—pain-filled eyes, a compressed mouth, nostrils flaring in that way she knew, when he was trying to hold on to his temper. “I need you, Nynn.”

Never, not ever, had she expected to hear such a thing from him. Her stoic teacher and her tender lover. But those words spoke of a desire for forever. She would’ve honored him in a heartbeat had she trusted any promise she could make in return.

They were close enough to a hallway that she remembered. Small doors. Small chambers to trap the most powerful beings on the planet and keep them meek. She heard pitiful sounds and whispered, fearful words, which meant Leto heard them, too.

She released the back of Jack’s head and twined her fingers with Leto’s. “They need us and they need you,” she said, huddled into Leto’s waiting embrace. “I need you . . .” Her voice clogged with tears in her throat. “I need you to be with me on this. I can’t do it any other way. I can’t leave you and leave Jack without knowing you were proud of me. I’ll go down fighting, Leto. Nothing you’ve ever taught me will have been wasted.”

That got to him. She could see it take hold behind the eyes she’d taken so long to read. He swallowed tightly, and she was oddly gratified to be able to see his Adam’s apple bob. Such a small gift: his bare throat.

She touched it with fingertips still shaking, although her resolve didn’t waver. A strange calm had overtaken her, even as her heart shattered. So much of life she would never know.

One for the many.

“They still wear collars, Leto. They deserve to survive and know what it is to have their gifts returned and to feel that beautiful pain for the first time.”

Leto leaned close and brushed his lips against hers. “This, my brave girl. This is beautiful pain.”

My brave girl.

His words became her new mantra. She could save Jack but she could not keep Leto—only his quiet, stoic benediction. With one more kiss, when she gathered his taste on her tongue, he stood upright. He still wore the ceremonial onyx-tipped armor that made him larger than life. A god. The warrior who would raise her son.

As Leto turned to lead the others in their tasks, she trailed her fingers across the back of her son’s hand. Then his softness was no longer hers to touch. Jack began to call for her, reaching back from over Leto’s shoulder. Against her son’s frightened, suddenly incoherent sobs—sobs that nearly shook her to cowardice—she watched them go.

I’ll come back for you.

She wanted to protest the words Leto whispered in her mind, but he and Jack slipped completely out of view.

♦   ♦   ♦

Leto scooped up two thin, unresisting patients and slung them over his shoulders. He raced into the vast cold, cursing the disappearing sun and the snow he’d quietly longed to see. None of it mattered now. Just the people he ran to safety. He could move fast enough. He could get them all out. He could save Nynn, too.

Then they’d be together—a real family he could hold and watch grow and love.

He banked his thoughts and kept them tucked in the dark, where he had once been held captive. He delivered the two he carried to the makeshift meeting area the Giva had established two miles away from the arena, where Jack waited with the shivering, shocked patients. The snowmobiles ran circuits, too, and the Sath stole little chunks of Leto’s speed to do what they could. By last count, they had under three minutes and fifteen people to save. Leto cursed the Dragon for tipping the odds so heavily against Nynn.

His neophyte. His lover. The woman he’d hoped would be his for the rest of his life as a free man.

Two more test subjects reached the checkpoint. Although the number they’d pulled to safety was growing, huddled together in the snow, blinking even in the twilight, the remaining number was a weight on his chest.

“Silence, Hark—no more. Stay with Jack and Pell. Let me do this at full speed.”

“I’m going with you,” said the man named Tallis. Even Leto had heard of the Heretic, although his knowledge went no further than a sense of foreboding and distrust. “I’ll do what I can to dismantle the detonator. Two gone in exchange for these people. Not so bad.”