We rode around the front to see that Merlin was gone, most likely inside his house. Fine by me.
I urged Balder forward, away from whatever it was we were leaving behind. The thing was, I almost believed him, the warlock that is. The photograph could have been faked, but how could he have known about Darcy in the first place?
Or about me kissing Maks? I snuck a glance sideways at the human with pretty blue eyes riding beside me. A frown still sat on his lips as his eyes scanned the area in front of us. Maybe he had forgotten, maybe the alcohol had burned away his memory. That would be good, the best thing really in the scheme of things. I sighed and Lila tapped the side of my neck with a single claw.
“What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “Nothing really. I just . . . we need to get to Darcy and get her home as fast as we can.” Because what if Merlin was not lying and we were going to face the three guardians? That was not going to go well. Darcy would have no one to rescue her then. What if we got her out and the guardians came after us? I could tell by the picture, she was not well, the cold and captivity eating at her, tearing her down and stealing her strength.
Never mind the fact that the Jinn were on their way here, or at least one of them was on his way to fetch the daughter of an alpha.
Maks looked at me. “What next?”
“Kiara was sent to help Steve, which means she would have had gear and maybe even maps in her saddlebags. Those maps could pinpoint where we are going to find Darcy.”
“Not that those would have been good to grab before we left,” he said with more than a hint of sarcasm biting through the words. “I mean really, let’s dive into this completely blind, that’ll improve our chances.”
I gritted my teeth, the tips of my canines pressing against the inside of my lips. I took a breath before I answered. “Because we aren’t supposed to be going to the Witch’s Reign. We’re supposed to be watching the dragons. Ish never would have handed over the maps.” I frowned. “So, if we can find the maps, we might have a better idea of where inside the castle Darcy and the others are.”
“Wait, what others?” Maks spluttered.
“Merlin said that Steve and Kiara were taken too,” I said. “I don’t like them, hell, I don’t like them enough to put my life in danger for them, but if they are there, then we’ll get them out too.”
Lila frowned. “Merlin? As in THE Merlin?”
“So he says,” I said softly. “I don’t know if he’s to be believed, but the reality is it makes sense.”
Maks was quiet a moment before he blew out a heavy breath. “Well, if we’re going to find where Batman and Steve parted ways, and where Kiara’s horse was killed, we should split up to cover more ground. All that snow last night is going to make it hard to track them.”
I nodded. “Lila, go with Maks. If he gets into trouble, come get me.”
She bobbed her head, all the laughter from the drunken night before gone. Something had shifted with Merlin’s visit. The reality of where we were and how dangerous it was had sunk in further as if the near-death experience in the snow hadn’t done its job. The night would fall again, and we would need shelter or end up frozen on our path once more. And Darcy would be handed off to the Jinn if she didn’t die of exposure in that dungeon.
Maks, Lila, and Batman peeled away at the first hint of a path branching in two directions. I followed the trail to the left, my mind occupied with what had happened. The kiss. The warlock. The picture of Darcy. The Jinn headed our way. I shook my head, trying to clear it of thoughts that were doing nothing but distracting me.
Balder trotted along slowly, eating up the path until it came an abrupt end. Or maybe more like it ended at the backside of a warlock.
Merlin turned around with his eyebrows high. “Wait, are you following me?”
I frowned. “No, of course not. I thought you went into your house.” He had to have been moving fast to have gotten this far ahead of us. In fact, there was sweat sliding down the side of his face.
“You don’t have magic at all, do you?” I laughed at him. “No warlock worth his grandfather’s beard would allow himself to be caught on foot, sweating.”
He grimaced. “I have a fair number of enemies here as you can imagine. If I use my magic, I’ll draw their attention. Not only do I not want that, you do not want that.”
“Enemies?” I arched an eyebrow at him, still laughing softly.
“The emperor for one,” Merlin said. “I cannot beat him, and so I must stay rather quiet if I am to do anything here. Now, let us get to the important bits of this conversation.”
I stared at him, feeling that same sense of power that I’d picked up on before. Every instinct in me was screaming that this really was the true Merlin.
“No, let’s not.” I steered Balder as if to go around him but he grabbed the reins.
“Zamira Reckless Wilson. I knew your father. I know that flail you carry and the power in it and in you. You need to stop thinking of yourself as too small, as too weak. You are neither of those things. The flail will work for you, but it will draw on your strength; until you are trained to use it properly, it could kill you. Marsum built it to kill those who wielded it.” His words wove around me, and in part of my brain, I knew it was a spell, but it felt good. Like he was telling me things I’d known but forgotten and desperately needed to hear.
He stared up at me. “You must face your fears and learn to trust again. Fight what seems impossible. Take your place in your pride as the alpha you are. Be the warrior your father raised you to be, Zamira of the Bright Pride. Zamira, the queen of the lions.”
The words echoed and reverberated through me like a gong. I couldn’t even come up with a response, though I could think of one. I blinked and I was sitting there on Balder all by myself, shivering, staring at nothing.
A scream of a single word echoed through the air. My name on Maks’s lips.
“Zamira!”
“Shit!” The warlock was forgotten as I spun Balder and drove him forward.
I might as well have booted him with all my strength while screaming at the top of my lungs. He plunged forward, snow spraying up around us as he dug in for traction, racing toward the sounds of cries and the snarl of a much larger, predatory animal.
Please don’t let it be the Wolf, please let it just be some forest brown bear, an oversized rabbit with sharp teeth . . . anything but the White Wolf.
My seat came loose, and for just a second, I thought I was going to go flying backward over Balder’s ass. I grabbed at his mane, tangling my fingers through the long steel-gray threads, catching myself before I tumbled to the snow. I was off balance for more than the powerful animal under me. The warlock and now Maks screaming my name had unglued some sense of self-preservation I held to.
Lila swept toward us, her eyes wide. “The Wolf! It’s on Maks!”
I grimaced and settled into the saddle as the horse beneath me plowed through the snow like it was nothing. His long legs ate up the ground, and Maks’s shouts grew louder with each step we took.
The pitiful light of morning broke through the evergreen tops as we rounded a copse of trees. The scene in front of me was hard to comprehend at first. Maks was standing, and he held a short knife out in front of him, pointing it at his attacker. Where the hell was his gun?
They were two hundred yards from us, far enough out that anyone else wouldn’t be able to see the details on Maks. But with my eyes, I could see him clearly. The wound in his leg, the wide blue eyes, the sweat as it rolled down his face.
“I’ll be honest, I thought we’d dodged him since he took out Steve,” I growled.
The White Wolf approached Maks snarling, his belly dragging in the snow. He was stalking him, ramping up the fear. That was the only reason he was taking his time. He was so focused on Maks, he’d not even noticed us yet.
Balder dug at the ground with one hoof.
“Easy.” I put a hand on his neck but he was having none of it. He plunged f
orward and whinnied at the Wolf, drawing the big canine’s attention to us. The Wolf lifted his head and narrowed his eyes in our direction.
As if to prove his point, Balder went up on his back legs and pawed at the air, screaming as horses do before they fight one another. His call was a challenge if I ever heard one.
Something in that sound pierced the fear that had started to claw its way up my spine. Smaller I might be, weaker I might be, but I was not alone in this. I was from the Bright Pride, and I was going to save Maks’s ass from the White Wolf. I had to, no one else was here to save any of us.
Merlin’s words echoed through my head over and over.
Take your place in your pride as the alpha you are. Be the warrior your father raised you to be, Zamira of the Bright Pride. Zamira, the queen of the lions.
Queen of the Lions . . . I straightened in the saddle, confidence like I’d not felt in years tripping along my spine.
The Wolf still hadn’t moved from his stance other than to swivel his head in our direction, waiting to see what we would do.
Maks took a few more steps backward, using the distraction to give himself distance between himself and his attacker.
I grabbed the flail from its place in my back loop and let it out until I held only the end of the handle; the wood heated my palm immediately. Merlin had said it was more than it seemed, just like me, and that it was dangerous, but something told me that I would need a magical weapon if I was to face a magical White Wolf.
I drew a deep breath and let it out before I spoke. There was a twist in my gut. I was going to die, but at least I’d die doing something my dad would be proud of. I was going to die with some sort of honor as I fought to protect someone else. The only question was, would it be the flail that killed me, or the Wolf?
“Lila, get Maks out of here, and help him get Darcy,” I said. So much for Maks being the one to not make it. That thought made my lips twist upward, the irony not lost on me.
She snapped her wings in the air, cracking it. “You need me here, to back you up.”
I dropped Balder’s reins, but touched his neck, signaling him to wait on my command and he calmed. “He needs you more. Get him out of here.” I couldn’t say goodbye because I had a feeling Lila wouldn’t leave me if she understood what was really happening.
The little dragon was loyal to me as if we’d been riding together for years.
Balder pawed at the ground with one front foot, and then the other, churning up the snow and ice. More than once he flicked his head at the Wolf. Still challenging him. Why he would be so damn insistent on fighting a wolf was beyond me.
Time to take the plunge.
“Wolf, how you feeling? Like dying today? I’ve always wanted a wolf skin cloak to lie on the floor at home,” I called out to him. If I didn’t have his attention before, I had it now. Insults, I was good at those at the very least. “Come, come, you forward and unable worms.” I smiled to myself. Taming of the Shrew, that was always a good one for insults.
“You . . . fucking cat. You dare come into my territory and challenge me?” A deep growl rumbled past those big teeth. He turned his attention from Maks fully, and started toward us. Shit, he was big. With him slunk down in the snow in stalking mode, I didn’t realize he was taller than Balder. Which meant he was over six feet at the shoulder.
“Dare? I mean, I can’t help it. You’re obviously dumb as they come, even for a canine. Shitting in your own backyard. Wait, do you eat shit? I hear dogs do that. Disgusting. Your breath is no doubt bad enough to kill me on its own.” I fired the words off at him, keeping his eyes trained on us as Lila swooped low over Maks and got him moving to safety. He tried to turn around and I caught his eyes. I shook my head and mouthed a single word.
Darcy.
“I’m going to rip you apart,” the Wolf snarled.
“Big talk for a Chihuahua.” I smiled at him and started to swing the flail in a loop, twisting my wrist for a snap of speed at the end. I’d used one once before in a training session, but it had been forty pounds and a bitch to get going. This flail whipped around faster and faster, almost like the momentum fed itself. That was what I got for using a magic weapon. The heat emanating from it curled tighter around my fingers, clamping them to the handle.
This was about to get ugly.
There was a moment where the world seemed to pause, where the sun stopped moving above the trees, where the Wolf tensed and the horse under me did the same. My heart slowed, and then we launched at one another.
The Wolf drove toward us, and the horse under me matched his movement without any cue from me. We were going in for a head-on collision, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I needed Balder to move to the left at the last second so I could use the flail as a lance.
Our only hope was that the combined speed of the horse, the power of the weapon, and the sheer force of the blow would knock the Wolf on his ass. I wasn’t holding my breath.
I held myself upright as I swung the flail faster and faster, breathing through the motion as I tried to time things. Impossible, this was impossible and stupid but I couldn’t stop. I could still see Maks’s eyes, the blue of them full of the determination not to back down.
A human worth saving, who would have thought it?
The distance between us closed. A part of my brain said my father would be ecstatic that I was living out his fantasy of being like one of the knights of the Round Table. That I was jousting with a fucking wolf the size of my horse.
The other part knew he would have wanted to protect me, thinking I was not capable because of my size.
The Wolf crouched in his next stride, muscles bunching and mouth gaping, canines dripping with saliva. This was it, the moment of impact. I drove my right heel into the Balder’s side, sending him to the left. The Wolf was already in the air, leaping for us in a space that we had been only a second before. With a yell, I swung the flail upward, into the Wolf’s belly with every ounce of strength I had.
This was a literal flail of hope if ever there was one.
The snow churned up around us as the impact of the flail’s two spiked metal balls drove into the White Wolf’s belly. The crunch of multiple bones and the tear of flesh as it opened, ripping wide, shocked me. Blood sprayed outward, coating the snow in a perfect slash of red. I stared, stunned at the damage the weapon had done. The moment slowed and I saw the blood on the spiked balls disappear, soaked into the metal still attached to the white pelt. Oh, that could not be good.
What the hell just happened there?
Time sped back up.
Balder plunged forward in the snow, then kicked out with both back feet and a flick of his tail. I saw the flash of the hooves as they connected with the Wolf’s jaw, heard the snap of bone for a second time, and hope flared inside my chest. We were going to do this, we were going to take this big dumb dog down and then we’d all go home and have tea and crumpets in front of a nice warm fire while we recounted the heroic tale to all our friends.
Yeah, I wasn’t that big of a fool.
The spikes of the flail stuck deep in the Wolf’s hide, and I tried to let go. I really did. But the weapon was having none of it. The spikes stuck in the Wolf’s skin and I was yanked from the saddle as the carnivore rolled away from us, away from Balder’s hooves. I flew through the air, pulled by my grip on the handle of my weapon, or rather its grip on me.
The Wolf rolled away, landing on his side with me falling to the snow in front of his belly, my hand still tight on the wooden handle. I yanked it hard and nothing happened. I finally dared to dive in, put my boot against the Wolf’s belly and jerked the handle for all I was worth. The spikes came free with a popping sound of flesh letting go of the silver tips. Once more the blood on them soaked into the metal and this time the heat coursed through my arm at rapid speed.
The Wolf groaned and I stumbled back more than a few feet. He turned his head toward me, blood coating his teeth as he snarled.
“You can’t kill me, pussy.”
“I’m sure as shit going to try,” I said as I took another step back and then another and another. I made myself spin the flail again, turning it ’round and ’round. Thank the goddess it was light in my hands or I’d have been done in already by the weight of it.
“Balder, go to Maks!”
He kept on running, heading straight for where Lila struggled with Maks. He slid to a stop, dropped to his knees and Maks pulled himself into the saddle.
The three of them would survive. The three of them would get to Darcy.
I spun back to face the Wolf as the sound of hoof beats faded into the forest.
“You’re a fool. That man you think is human played you.” The Wolf spit the words at me, the snow flecking with his blood.
I blew out a breath, not liking that he was right. “Nah, he’s going to meet up with me later. Laugh as we talk about you losing control of your bladder.” I pointed at the yellow stain in the snow behind him.
His ears flattened to his skull and the bare skin on the one side of his face tightened, pulling at the edge of his eye. At some point, his face had been burned clean of the white fur that covered the rest of his body, and the scars were red, new and very angry. Darcy had done the burning of his face. I was sure of it, and I would finish what she’d started as best I could.
“You know, that’s really not a good look for you. I’m betting a golden lion did that, a girl a little bigger than me with a thing for fire bombs and amazing accuracy?” I grinned at him, giddy with the knowledge that I wasn’t making it out of here. There was a freedom in knowing you were going to die.
Prepare yourself, my father’s voice trickled through me.
I slowly lowered the flail, laying it in the snow. My father had prepared me for this moment, as he’d done with Bryce. I felt with a surety I couldn’t deny that I would not walk away from this battle.
I reached for the two kukris I carried. “I raise the blades of my father.”
“What are you doing? You cannot kill me with those tiny blades. They are nothing.” The Wolf clawed at the snow, worming his body toward me.
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