Emperor’s Throne: Desert Cursed Series, Book 6

by Mayer, Shannon

  He closed his fist and the smoke slid off his fingers, caught up in the wind all around us. “Shit, I hadn’t thought about that.”

  I had. It had been almost all I’d been thinking about since we’d found the horses in the narrow cut. They’d been chased down, stuffed into a corner, and I had no doubt they would have eventually been overrun. Maybe Balder could have done something, given Batman a gift that would have allowed them to both escape, but I wasn’t sure.

  The easiest way to take whatever stone he had would be to kill him and rip it from his chest.

  Lila flew with both horses held in her talons, gripped as carefully as she could. “I’m going to need a break soon.”

  I looked over her side, taking in just where we were and actually recognizing it. “We aren’t far from the Blackened Market. Let’s land near there.”

  Yes, I knew it was a dangerous place, but they would have food and it wasn’t like I was dealing with Davin again.

  At the speed we were traveling, we were well within our time frame, and would make it to Ollianna’s lair by sunrise the next day.

  Lila flew down until she was just north of the market. “Why do you want to stop here?”

  “I want to see if it’s still thriving,” I said. More than that was a promise I’d made months before, a promise to find the missing dragon babies. I was no Tracker, but I was a damn good thief, and if anyone could find something that had been stolen, it was me.

  As soon as we landed, Lila shifted and I tucked her inside my shirt where she could sleep. A quick mount up on the horses—all right, one horse and one unicorn—and we were off at a quick pace. The two boys were fresh and they danced forward.

  Or maybe they were remembering being here, chased by ophidians, fighting for our lives.

  We passed by the edge of the Blackened Market, and there was no movement. Maks shaded his eyes. “It’ll still be up and running, just not here.”

  The buildings that had lined the strip of trading in goods, weapons, foods, slaves, and baby dragons were decrepit, as if they’d been left empty for years and not a week. Had it only been a week?

  I blew out a breath. “We have to come back here, Maks. We have to find them.” I loved that I didn’t have to spell it out. Maks knew exactly what I was talking about.

  “We survive these next few days, and I’ll follow you anywhere you want to go,” he said. “Let’s survive the week first.”

  “Fair enough. Though I must say your belief that we might not all survive this is somewhat disturbing.” I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back, and that made my own mirth slip away from me. “Maks?”

  “I don’t think we’ll all survive.” He closed his eyes a moment as if he were listening to a memory he had that was not his own. “The last time the falak was destroyed . . . those who faced it were all killed, all except the one we know as the Emperor. He was the last man standing and he rewrote history to make himself the hero. But he didn’t do it on his own. He’d needed four others.”

  Four.

  I swallowed hard. “You, me, Lila . . . and Balder. We could be the four this time that he sacrificed in order to survive.” A shiver that didn’t fit in with the desert heat slid down my spine and settled in the pit of my belly. “Are you sure?”

  He looked over at me. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. It only just came to me.”

  “Maybe Davin’s memories are fucking with you,” I said. “Let’s say that’s the case for right now. How about that?”

  Maks did smile then, though it was as fake as smiles came. “Do you have a plan?”

  I considered what we were up against. “What do you think about taking the amber stone again?”

  His face was thoughtful as the horses jogged along under us. Balder gave a low snort and bobbed his head up and down. Agreement from the unicorn. Maks held out his hand and I slipped him the amber stone. The one the Jinn had used to keep their hold on the desert.

  “What does it do?” I asked.

  “It amps up my abilities, making them stronger,” he said, a grimace on his face. “But I can feel it worming its way into me already, urging me to be violent.” He dropped the stone into his own pouch and his face relaxed. “That’s better.”

  “No wonder Davin lost his marbles,” I said. “If he was already power hungry, adding that to the mix would have just pushed him over the edge.”

  Maks nodded. “What about Lila?”

  “I doubt she’ll take the sapphire stone,” I said, brushing my hand over the pouch. “I can use it. The cold will be good with reptiles.” Only I found myself thinking about the stone the Wyvern had given me and how I’d used it to wipe out all the frogs, stopping their hearts. Could I do that again? Fuck, it had almost killed me last time, and that had been frogs. Simple creatures that didn’t fight back all that much.

  “Good call.” He looked ahead of us. “You think Ollianna will send ophidians toward us again?”

  The thing was I didn’t think she would. I closed my eyes, letting the movement of Balder lull me into a doze. I pushed myself into the dreamscape, opened my eyes and let out a low hiss.

  “Balder! Do you see this?”

  He gave a sharp snort. I couldn’t believe what was in front of me. The entire dreamscape looked as though it had been lit on fire. The mirror of our world was breaking into pieces.

  “This cannot be good,” I said, then urged Balder into a gallop, knowing it was not in the real world. We raced over the short distance between where we were and where Ollianna was.

  Before we even arrived at her seaside villa, her cries filled the air. Screams.

  She was in labor.

  I bit down on the inside of my mouth and snapped myself out of the dreamscape. “We have a chance,” I said.

  Maks looked at me nothing but trust in his eyes. “What’s happening?”

  “She’s in labor. I don’t know for how long but . . .” I swallowed hard. “If we go now, we could take her by surprise. Her witches will side with us.”

  He reached over, took my hand and brought it to his lips, kissing the back of it. “Then let’s kick some lizard ass.”

  We leaned into the horses and they took off, running flat out, their legs and necks stretched as if they were truly racing for a prize. Lila dozed off and on inside my shirt, which was good. I could feel her exhaustion even through our bond. The miles slid by and I fed my magic into Balder, and saw Maks do the same for Batman, giving them the energy and stamina to keep going.

  To keep running.

  The hours slid by and the day turned into night. Midnight came rolling around and with it the smell of the ocean.

  We eased the horses back to a trot. I slid off with my hand supporting Lila, groaning as my legs tingled from the sudden impact on the bottom of my feet, body sore from the full-speed gallop we’d been riding. I jogged beside Balder as I pulled out not only the water but the oat and camel fat balls I kept for them. I shoved the energy balls into his mouth, then held the water skin up so he could drink while we jogged along.

  A distinct sense of gratitude flowed between him and me. I patted him on the neck. “Least I can do.”

  Lila crawled up to the top of my cloak and gave a jaw-cracking yawn. “I thought we weren’t going to get here until the morning?”

  A scream cut through the air; a scream that made the hair stand all along the back of my neck.

  Lila stiffened, her head snaking out and twisting around. “Is that Ollianna? It sounds like her.”

  “Yes, still in labor, I’d guess,” I said. “Do you three trust me?”

  Lila squeezed my shoulder with her claws. “Of course.”

  “Always,” Maks said. “What are you thinking?”

  I blew out a slow breath as the plan formed fully in my head. “I think I can get in there on my own, I can get to her, I can . . . I can kill her before the child is born. She’ll be very weak, and very focused on the baby. Etheral and the witches will help. We had a plan for them to help me get into
her sanctuary.”

  Goddess, even as I said the words, I cringed inside, my guts twisting. Even knowing that the child was a monster that would be bent on destroying the world, even knowing that this moment could give us the best chance at stopping them both, I could see all too clearly in my head my flail crashing down on the body of small child. Knowing it was a monster didn’t take away from the image and my bile kept rising.

  We were at the top of a cliff overlooking the structure built into the rock wall. I’d traced my steps through it, and I knew exactly where Ollianna’s room was, knew exactly where she’d be giving birth.

  I knew where I was going and I knew I could get there faster on my own without worrying about Lila, Maks, or Balder.

  “Can you do it, though? It won’t be a single blow,” Maks said softly without recrimination in his voice. “A blow for her, and one for the child.”

  Before I could answer, the decision was answered for me. A woman’s cry of joy split the air followed by the first cry of a child.

  The child that would change everything.

  31

  “Well, shit,” I muttered, standing on the cliffs above Ollianna’s seaside hideaway, listening to not only the sound of the ocean, but the newborn wail of a monster that would eat the world whole. Just fucking fantastic.

  The falak had been born if that cry was what I thought it was. A child of a witch and the Emperor himself, a monster invoked. I rubbed my face with one hand, frustrated.

  The plan I’d had wasn’t terrible, but a very small part of me was glad that the choice had been taken from me.

  I didn’t want to kill a child, even if that child was a monster. Did it look like a monster? Somehow I doubted it. Call me cynical, but if I were a betting woman, I’d bet the child would look like an angel with pink cheeks and huge eyes that would beg me to spare it while it stabbed me with some long venomous tentacle attached to its ass. I shook my head. My imagination was getting the better of me.

  “We wait then?” Lila asked.

  It was my turn to nod. “We rest here, and we wait on the Emperor.”

  There was no fire for us, no țuică to ease our worries, and nothing to say as the night crept over us. We faced our greatest battle on the morrow. Part of me thought it was stupid to wait, we should go in now when Ollianna was exhausted from giving birth and just lay waste while we could, but the other part . . . the other part didn’t want to kill her.

  “If you see any reptile around, kill it,” I said. “We don’t need her eyes on us.”

  Balder stomped a foot and blew out a low snort. He flipped his nose, pointing at the cliff and the structure built into it. I stood and went to his side, ran my hands over his neck. “You got an idea?”

  He shook his head and a sensation of calm flowed over me followed by the warm tingling I recognized now as magic.

  A gift, he was bestowing on me a gift.

  I licked my lips and held a hand up, palm to the sky, not understanding what he’d given me. No magic pooled around my hand, no flame or lightning bolt danced over my fingertips. I raised my eyebrows at a him. “You going to tell me what it is?”

  He gave a low nicker, the sound rumbling under my hand still on his warm hide and he shook his head, a sensation flowing from him to me that I would know when I needed to know. The only other image he gave me was one of my flail. The flail I’d given to the Emperor.

  Basically, it was a surprise then.

  “More effective if I know,” I muttered. He bunted me with his nose and snorted as if laughing. I loosened his girth, took his bridle off and then did the same for Batman.

  Balder lay down with a grunt, tucking his long legs under him. Batman followed his lead. Maks and I sat next to them, leaning against their warmth, Lila curled up on my lap.

  “It’s not really that cold out,” she said.

  “No, but imminent death does bring its own special kind of chill,” Maks drawled. He draped an arm around my shoulders and stared up at the sky. “‘Cowards die many times before their deaths.’” Lila snorted.

  “Try again. Julius Caesar.”

  He smiled as he stared upward, his profile calm despite what we were facing. “‘The sudden hand of Death close up mine eye!’”

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” I murmured, looking up to the stars with him. “Lila, you know it?”

  “Give me a minute,” she whispered, then repeated the verse over and over. I leaned my head on Maks’s shoulder, letting the moment wash over me while Lila struggled with the lines.

  “Damn it!”

  “Does that mean I win?” he asked.

  “No, it means that you win only if I can’t stump you on the next one.” She scrambled from my shoulder to fly a loop around us. “But where is that one from?”

  “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” I said, feeling the title had more meaning than just a play’s title, at least to us. Love . . . we’d all fought for it so hard. What if we lost tomorrow? What if we didn’t all come out of this? I pushed to my feet, my guts twisting with the possibilities and I didn’t like most of them. “I’m going to circle around,” I said. “You see if you can stump him.”

  Lila grunted. “Already on it. I fight for the honor of my people against this man who thinks he can out-Shakespeare me.”

  Maks laughed, even though I could feel his eyes on my back. “Did you just use Shakespeare as a verb?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Lila said to him, but her eyes were on me too. They knew me too well, enough to let me have my space even while they both worried.

  I should have been tired, exhausted by the hurried run to the south. I should have been resting, should have, should have, should have. I walked until I was a solid mile from camp. The sounds and smell of the ocean filled my senses, and I drew them in. I could die tomorrow. I could lose Lila, or Maks, or Balder, or Batman, or all of them, and I wasn’t sure I could survive and not lose my own self if one of them greeted death.

  I closed my eyes and imagined the doorway in my mind between one shape and another. Only it was not how it had always been.

  I could see the two forms offered to me, my house cat form, my jungle cat form, and now a third. A third that made my heart pound, and I couldn’t help but wonder just why it was being offered. What had I done to deserve this?

  Was this the gift from Balder?

  “No, it is a gift from me. My last gift to you. Again, it won’t last long once you use it, but use it you can.”

  I spun on my knees, yanking the knife I carried free of its sheath. The Emperor stood about twenty feet off to my left. “What? Why?”

  He approached slowly, and I didn’t lower my knife. He motioned for me to put it away.

  I did not.

  A smile creased his face. “So you have seen there are times I am a right bastard, and times like now that I am not?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  His smile seemed genuine, if tired. “It is the problem with Ishtar working her magic on me, to make me more powerful. To make me a mate worthy of her own power, only it backfired on her.” He sighed and sat on a large flat rock across from me. “It split my mind. Shax is my name, the one that I was born with. The Emperor is the asshole who craves power above all others.”

  I stared hard at him, still not lowering the knife. Just in case. “So? I still can’t trust you.”

  “For now, you have an agreement, and even that dark side of me recognizes it.”

  For now. That could mean five minutes or thirty seconds after the battle, he could turn on us. His eyes were on mine and he gave me a slow nod as if he could see that I understood.

  “Right now, we can discuss what will happen tomorrow,” he said. “I can take Ollianna. I’ve no doubt about that.”

  I frowned. “How do you know that?”

  “She tied herself to me in a way that . . . was foolish.” He frowned.

  In my head, I could see the two of them in the dreamscape, her demanding a child, a child of power even if meant spreading her legs for h
er own father.

  “You mean because you fucked her?”

  His head shot up and his brows furrowed. “How do you know?”

  I finally lowered my knife. “The dreamscape is a funny place. But that doesn’t answer why you think you can take her down.”

  “When those with strong magic fuck, as you so delicately put it, the stronger one can draw on the life-force of the weaker. It’s about trust, but Ollianna does not understand. Very few people do.” He looked at me. “It is why we must keep the stones from Ishtar.”

  I blinked a few times, seeing Merlin’s face as he’d told me Ish had drained his life-force. “That’s how Ishtar took him.”

  “Took who?”

  “Merlin,” I said, seeing the injuries in my mind’s eye. “She nearly killed him.”

  The Emperor snorted. “She isn’t the stronger one. Not with so many of her stones missing. His mother was . . . well, let’s just say that she was stronger even than Ishtar.”

  I’ll admit, my jaw dropped, implications slamming into my brain. “But I thought he was dying. Shit, I thought he would have died after I left him behind.”

  “Doubtful.” Shax scratched at his chin. “He has learned to manipulate people to an extent that I’m not sure he would even recognize if he was lying or not. He breathes his twists out past his lips without thinking.”

  Trust, that was what this all came down to. “So I can’t trust him, either, that’s what you’re saying?” I wasn’t sure that I would even trust Shax’s determination of not trusting Merlin. Talk about getting all twisted.

  “Probably best to keep him on a short leash. The same with me. The same with any powerhouse around you.” He sat looking at me, and I at him.

  “So you take Ollianna. And me, Maks, and Lila take the falak?”

  His jaw worked side to side. “The falak will be monstrous. You cannot hesitate.”

  “You didn’t answer me,” I said. “That’s how we will split our forces?”

  I could see in his eyes that there was something he didn’t want to tell me and that sent my fear into a sharp spike that made my own mouth dry. “Spit it out. Just spit it the fuck out.”