Maks was huddled against the wind and snow but he kept up. The horses were slowing too now, winter’s bite chewing on their limbs like a dog on a bone.
I squinted through the darkness and there it was, a flicker of light to match the smell of the wood smoke. I pulled on Balder harder and he did his best to hurry into a stumbling trot. The tiny shack came into view. Barely twelve feet across and a single door and window that were shuttered tightly. I stumbled up to it, realizing just how close we were to freezing as a sudden spurt of warmth trickled through me. False warmth, the kind that came right before you succumbed to the ice in your veins.
I banged on the door, unable to find my voice. There was no answer. I grabbed the handle and shoved the door open to find the place empty, a fire raging in a battle against the outside weather. I grabbed Lila from my hood and tossed her inside, then turned to find Maks gone.
“Around back,” he yelled.
I followed the sound of his voice to a three-sided shelter against the back of the house. He had Batman’s gear off and the wool blanket on him. I moved as fast as I could, doing the same for Balder. There was a thick bedding of straw underfoot and hay spilling out of the feeder. Like someone had been waiting for us.
“Here. We can block the wind for them with this.” Maks’s words shook with the cold as he pointed at a large old barn door propped against the shelter. Too good to be true, it was a straight up friggin’ miracle. We lifted it together and positioned it in front of the horses, essentially locking them in and sealing in whatever heat they provided for each other.
Maks grabbed my arm and all but dragged me to the front of the shack. We stumbled through the door and I kicked it shut behind me. The warmth in the room was instant and my face and hands began to hurt right away as they thawed too rapidly.
Lila was on the edge of the brick fireplace. “There’s a stew cooking too.”
“Is this a trap?” Maks shed the thick cloak and boots despite his words.
I did the same as I shook my head. “If it is, we’re dead. Because we can’t go back out there. Where, if you don’t realize it, we’d also be dead. That cold. It is not natural.”
We made our way to the fireplace and soaked up the heat, our limbs slowly gaining back the heat they’d lost.
“Fuck, that was close,” Maks whispered. “I was starting to not feel the cold.”
“I know, me too,” I said.
The room was no more than twelve by twelve, a single small table and one chair, a single small bed laid out in the corner covered with a bunch of blankets and then the fireplace. There was wood stacked high and I fed some into the flames.
“Here,” Maks grabbed a bowl off the table and handed it to me. “We should eat while we can.”
Except there wasn’t much more than a bowl’s worth of food left. I scooped it all out, ate a third, gave a few bites of meat to Lila and then handed the rest to Maks. There was no room for talking.
Or so I thought.
“There’s a bottle up there.” Lila leapt into the air and flew to a shelf above the table. “It looks like . . . oh, it is!” Her little claws wrapped around the bottle and she brought it down to me, swaying with it in a looping circle before she handed it off to me. I turned the three-quarters-full bottle around. No label, but Lila was dancing around as if it were something amazing.
“Open it!” She squealed the words.
A chill swept through me and I put the bottle down. “You sure it’s what you think it is, Lila?”
“It’s țuică, a fermented plum drink from my home. It’s amazing. Like a-ma-zing.” She made grabby hands with her little claws. I grabbed the cork, and while the liquid sloshed in it, I wasn’t fully certain it was liquor.
I looked at Maks who shrugged and smiled. “Unless there’s a genie in there, I think we’re good.” Maks’s words had almost stopped me right there.
The last thing I needed was a Jinn knowing I was still alive. While I was weak, I was also the daughter of the only lion shifter to truly stand against them, and there was value in my blood to them. As far as they knew, I’d died in the desert with Bryce and my father. I swallowed hard and the cork gave way with a pop. The smell of sweet plums flowed up my nose. I tipped it up and took a swig. Deep in flavor, the liquid slid down my throat and warmed me far better than the stew.
“Me too!” Lila grabbed at the bottle and I poured some into the bowl for her. She lapped it up like a dog, humming the whole time.
I offered it to Maks. He took it, and then I took it back and then suddenly we were finishing the bottle, laughing as Lila wobbled across the floor. How had we finished the bottle that fast? Maks stood and stumbled in front of me, I smacked him on the ass, laughing. Damn, even his ass was tight with muscle. “Out of the way, you’re blocking the heat, human.”
He grabbed a log and threw it onto the fire and then fell backward so he sat beside me. “I don’t want to like you, Zamira. You’re far too complicated for me. Too much baggage, too much sass, and too much of a mouth on you.”
I turned to face him. “Well, I don’t want to like you either, human man with the pretty blue eyes.” Wait. Stop. Did I say that out loud? Lila snorted softly and then let out a long rumbling snore by the fire.
He grinned. “You think my eyes are pretty?”
I grinned back because I was fucking sauced with plum liquor that had gone straight to my brain and shut off any cohesive thoughts. I leaned into him. “Yes, but don’t tell Maks.”
He laughed and that rumbly sound did something really bad to me. How long had it been since I’d let a man just hold me? Over a year, closer to two if I were being honest. Since Steve and I split.
I leaned into him more and took a deep breath. He smelled like . . . the heat of the sun burning off the edges of the sand in the morning on the desert dunes, all of that under the musk I associated with him. I closed my eyes and let myself bask for a moment.
“I have to tell you that I do like your ass,” he said softly, his voice right at my ear. “Like, a lot. Lots. Really lots.” He was slurring his words as much as I was, which was funny and made me smile again.
Our faces were cheek to cheek and the heat in the room had nothing to what was going on between us.
Warning, warning! This is a bad fucking idea! That was the little, still-sober voice that I’d essentially drowned out in plum juice. I probably should have listened to it. The edge of his mouth grazed mine, the brush of his unshaven skin made me shiver and I turned into the movement so our lips skimmed across each other. Carefully, testing the waters.
He moved slowly, and I don’t think it was inebriation so much as caution finally kicking in. I was a supe, he was a human. This did not bode well for either of us. But neither of us pulled back—thanks mostly to the alcohol flooding our brains.
What could I say? I obviously had a difficult time picking men if Steve was any indication, and now to move from him—to a human man? Jesus, my father would have had a heart attack. None of that registered though, not in that moment.
One of Maks’s hands slid into my hair and pulled me closer yet to him, his tongue sliding into my mouth and mine reciprocating the move. I think I groaned and he murmured something unintelligible but it sounded nice. His other hand went to the small of my back and then lower, grabbing one side of my ass and dragging me into his lap with ease.
I wrapped one arm around his neck and the other around his shoulders as if I could hold him to me and hang onto that sense of home that he somehow, impossibly, had on his skin.
Bad, this is bad! STOP. STOP! I forced myself to pull my lips from his, though our foreheads still touched, our breath going in and out, over and over in a nice tandem movement that made my heart pound faster yet.
He bit my lower lip and I let out another groan as he pulled me into a second kiss that scattered what was left of my cohesive thought. Heat, fire, desert, home, the images and feelings scrambled what was left of my brain. My one hand found the back of his head, my fingers sli
ding into the silken strands of his sandy hair. I tipped my head back, inviting him to my neck, a truly submissive move, an invitation to my most vulnerable spot. His breath ghosted across my skin, and I arched toward him anticipating the warmth of his mouth. He rubbed his cheek across my collarbone as if marking me and I whimpered, writhing in his lap.
And then he let go of me and stood, sending me to the floor with a crash. Shocked, I sat there and tried to figure out just what had happened. What . . . where had he gone?
“I’m sorry, I can’t. This was a bad idea.” Maks stumbled away from me to the far corner of the room, his hands on his hips even as he swayed where he was, obviously still drunk but pulling his shit together. I watched as he struggled to breathe in and out, his back lifting with each deep breath. “You take the bed.”
I sat there, stunned, doing what I could to pull my shit together. “You’re right. Bad idea. Too much drink.” And he liked Darcy . . . didn’t he? Was that why I was drawn to him, because I wanted to hurt her the way she’d hurt me?
No, I wasn’t like that. But a bed this close to a human I’d just been making out with would be too much. Too much temptation with my brain in the stupid state it was. Because even right then with him rebuffing me, I wanted to grab him and rip his clothes off and bite into him, and let him bite me. I sighed, a shudder running through me.
“You take the bed, I’ll sleep next to Lila.” I forced my body into a shift. My bones protested a second shift this close to the first, but they did it. I crept on four paws to where the dragon slept on the fire-heated tiles and curled up next to her, tucking my nose under my tail, hiding yet again.
I closed my eyes and tried not to be hurt by the fact that a human, a man that by rights should have been damn well overjoyed to have the interest of any supe woman, had just rejected me.
The morning came—or what passed for morning here in the northern clime. I woke with a shiver, and twisted to look at the fire dying. I shifted into my human form and stood far too fast. My head throbbed and my tongue was thick with the distant taste of plum liquor. I grabbed a few smaller pieces of wood and laid them on the glowing coals. I got the fire going hot again, building it up quickly. The least we could do for whoever this shack belonged to was leave it as we found it. Warm.
Maks lay on his belly, snoring lightly into the blankets of the bed. I stared at him, thinking hard. What happened last night? Had something gone on that I was not remembering?
The kiss came back to me in a flood of sensation that made me want to strip down and crawl into the bed with him and see if the sensations were real, or just a fantasy. I cringed and backed away, horrified at my own thoughts. I opened the door and went out to the horses, the cold air cooling my overheated skin. While it was still cold out, the temperature had risen to survivable instead of full-on killing.
Whatever magic had been driving it was gone. The horses were fine, toasty in their makeshift shed, their heads low as they slept soundly.
Which meant I had nothing to do but go back inside the shack. With Maks. Whose lap I’d sat in as I’d kissed him and he’d kissed back and I still wanted to kiss. A human who I’d pretty much invited to mark me as his. Shit, had I truly lost my mind? Just the day before, I’d been ready to run from him, leave him to the literal wolves. And now, here I was struggling with desires I had no reason to have. None at all. If my indecision had ever had a high point, this was it.
There was one upside, though, that I could see.
“We had a lot of liquor, maybe he won’t remember,” I whispered to myself, my hand on the door.
“He probably won’t,” a male voice said behind me.
I whipped around, drawing my kukri blades so fast, they sang against their sheaths.
The man behind me was dressed in proper winter gear, all lined with fur from the cloak and the edge of his pants to his boots and gloves. He held up his hands and swept the cloak back so I could see his face. He was younger than I’d have thought with a grin that spoke of trouble and magic. Brown hair, brown eyes, seemingly an average guy. Which set my alarm bells ringing.
“What are you?” I didn’t lower my blades.
“That’s rude. You’re not supposed to ask people what they are.” He tsked at me.
I let out a low growl. “Rude doesn’t even begin to cover me, buddy. What the fuck are you?”
I didn’t want him to get close enough that I would be able to tell myself. Something about him made my skin itch.
“Warlock.” He smiled. “And that’s my shack you-all shacked up in last night.”
Horror flushed through me and my cheeks blazed with heat. “We did not shack up.”
He winked. “It was close enough though to call it that, don’t you think?”
“We’re just leaving,” I said. “Thanks for the use of your home.” I would not call it a shack. I would not!
He smiled. “Wait, I wish to talk with you. I think perhaps we can help each other.”
I didn’t need to know what he wanted. I already had the answer to his request. He was a warlock and that meant only one reply. “No.” I had my hand on the lever of the door and was pushing it open, letting the cold in. “Maks, Lila, time to go,” I shouted but my eyes stayed on the warlock.
“Ah, of course, you distrust me. Being a warlock does not leave me in good standing with most super dupers—pardon me, supes as they are called here.” His smile hadn’t slipped. “But I can tell you two things. Darcy is alive, and the Jinn will arrive in two short days to take her. The Ice Witch, Maggi, also has Steve and his mate now too, and you need him. You will need him to tackle Dragon’s Ground and the Dominion of the Jinn, to take the jewels back to Ish.”
If I thought I was horrified before, it was nothing to what washed through me now. “How can you know that? I mean about . . . what we’re hunting for? Darcy. Steve. All of it.”
He swept a low bow from the waist. “Because I’m Merlin, creator of the wall that holds the supernaturals back from the humans.”
Chapter Eleven
I stared hard at the warlock in front of me who’d just claimed to be the Merlin. Not that he was named after the fool who’d made the walls that held us in, but the actual Merlin who’d made them over two hundred years before when the humans began to realize they were not alone.
For a moment, I thought about laughing in his face. But then I could see he was dead serious. That or a lunatic. Neither one was good for me and my companions.
“Then perhaps I should do us all a favor and just kill you right here.” I lifted the tip of a blade to point it at his face. I was bothered by the fact he didn’t seem bothered at all. He batted the blade away as if it were a fly.
“Here’s the thing. I’ve had an awakening, if you will. I realize now it was wrong what I did building this wall and the others, and I need to rectify that wrong.” He shrugged. “You do stupid things when you’re young. Like kissing the wrong species.” He winked at me and I wanted to punch him in the nose. He had to have been spying on us, the perv.
“What do you want from me?”
“A little of your time is all.” His smile was as greasy as any snake charmer’s.
Well, that was a damn lie if ever I heard one. I frowned at him and he held out his hand. “I wanted to show you this, a picture of your friend Darcy. As you know already, the Ice Witch has her the same as she has Steve. I thought perhaps this will help you continue on when things get tough, seeing the condition she is in.”
He held out a thick piece of paper—a photograph, something I’d seen before but not often. I reached out and snatched it away from him. There was Darcy chained to a stone wall, most of her clothing gone, her blond hair tangled and matted, but I knew her as well as I knew my own reflection. Her body was rail-thin, emaciated from lack of food and the cold. Sores were scattered over her limbs, open wounds that even in the picture looked painful.
While I didn’t give two flying fucks about Steve or Kiara, Darcy was another matter, and it was obvio
us she was in pain by the bend of her body. “Where is she?”
“I told you, the Ice Witch has her.” He tipped his head.
“I mean where in the castle?” I snapped. He went on as if I’d not questioned him at all.
“You’ll need to defeat her guardians first if you want a chance at actually saving your friend. Because if you get her out of the castle and they are still around, they will kill you all.” He stared hard at me. “Taking them out is, well, it’s going to be tough considering your . . . lack of size. But I have faith.”
The door behind me opened and heat flowed out around me. Lila landed on my shoulder and I clutched the photograph in my hand before throwing it back at Merlin. “Go flounce yourself, warlock. I’m not going to believe your lies. We don’t need to face anyone, certainly not her guardians. We’re just going to slip in and out and be gone before the Witch even knows we were there.”
Maks stepped out beside me and I watched Merlin’s eyebrows shoot up. “Well, isn’t that fascinating company you are keeping, little lion. I had no idea you would be willing to work with someone like him.”
His words were not for me by the way he stared at Maks. The energy around us seemed to tighten and shift, and for a moment, I thought Maks was going to launch himself at Merlin, which was insane. I put a hand on his arm, feeling him tremble with energy. “Let’s go. He’s just looking for trouble. That’s what warlocks do best.”
Only I was pretty damn sure that wasn’t all he was looking for.
Merlin wanted something from me, that was the only reason he would have shown up to speak exclusively to me and not Lila, or Maks.
We strode around to the back and tacked the horses up, silence between us. I pulled myself onto Balder’s back and he twisted in the snow, dancing, his energy high after a solid night’s rest, food, and warmth.
I blinked and stared at the shed and the three-sided stall. Still there, so no illusions. Smoke curled out of the chimney, faint, wisping away to nothing before it reached the top of the trees.
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