“You and me both,” I said.
Before I could ask any other questions, I was jerked awake by a boot thumping into my head. I opened my eyes in the real world and found myself staring up at a gnome. His long white beard tickled my forehead and gray worried eyes stared down at me.
“We found the jewels in your bags,” he whispered. “We must give them to her, but we don’t want to.”
I stared at what he held in his hands.
The emerald from Dragon’s Ground. The diamond that Bryce had stolen from Ish, and the sapphire we’d taken from Maggi herself.
I rolled, throwing Lila from me as I reached for the jewels, snagging them from the gnome. But not before Maggi saw, her eyes blinking wide, and then narrowing. Confusion and then desire swept over her features.
“My jewel. You . . . did not give it to my sister?”
I tucked them into my shirt, but again, not before she saw all three. Her eyes widened as they landed on the other two jewels.
Inside my shirt they dug into my skin and were super uncomfortable, but I needed them out of sight for what I was going to do.
“You should free the Raven,” I said, changing directions entirely.
“No, I need her help yet.” Maggi’s eyes narrowed. “What are you going to do with those jewels? You have no power to tap into them.”
I shrugged. “Trade them for some food, maybe a new saddle.”
Her eyes narrowed farther, and the visage of the Ice Witch and all her anger rolled through her. Shit, I did not want to go head to head with her again. I’d beaten her last time, but I wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t a fluke.
She stood slowly, her skirts billowing out around her and she held out a hand, palm up. “Give me my jewel back, Zamira. It is the least you can do for what I have shown you. Your mother and her love for you. The knowledge of what will happen to your lover if you kill his master. The knowledge that you will face the Emperor. Surely you see the value in those things?”
I took a step back. “Yeah, that’s all fine and dandy, but there was no deal ahead of time. There was no contract that I would owe you. You offered to help. We took it and now Lila and I really have to go. We’ve got werehyenas on our asses, and a Jinn tracking us.”
The sunlight coming through the window told me we’d slept the night away while Maggi had taken us into la-la land. Balder would be, should be, rested.
Assuming the gnomes were as good as their word.
The gnome tugged on my hand. “Your horse is fed, tacked, and ready to ride, my lady.”
Maggi growled at him. “You are my servant. Do not offer her anything.”
He bowed to her, his hands clasped in prayer in front of his face. “And I do not want you to have the gem, lady of ours. You are not kind when you hold that power. And we love you. We wish to be with you always, but not like that.” The words tumbled out of his mouth and her eyes locked on him.
But she spoke to me, and the strain in her eyes was clear. “You may go. Do not come back with any of the jewels or I will take them all.”
That was enough for me.
I spun and bolted, Lila with me. Down the spiral stairs we went, leaping three and four at a time as I scrambled to get the fuck away from the Witch. Maggi had given me some help, and I assumed that was why she’d taken Lila.
“Her addiction to the gem, that’s what tipped her,” Lila said as we burst into the courtyard. Balder stood quietly waiting, and the Raven sat up on the parapet high above, her head and black eyes swiveling to watch us.
I ran as fast as I could across the stone paved yard and leapt at the last second, vaulting onto Balder’s back. He plunged forward and I raised a hand to the Raven. There was nothing I could do for the big bird, at least not now. But a promise in my mind formed, stupid as it was. I would do what I could to free her. Just not right then. Right then, I had to make a run for it before a certain Witch changed her mind about letting us go.
Balder galloped across the courtyard and into the snow. We all but flew across the flat plain, and he stumbled a little when we transitioned back to the rocky firm ground. I let him run as fast as he wished, taking us straight south.
Lila clung to my shoulders. “That was . . . weird. She was so nice before you came, and so nice until she saw the gems.”
“Like a split personality,” I said. As soon as the words slipped from me I knew they were true. Not unlike her sister, Maggi had multiple sides to her, dependent on the power she held.
“Do you think she really wanted to help us?” Lila asked.
I thought about it a minute. “Yes, I do. I’m not sure, though, that she told us everything she’d planned on. The arrival of the jewels kind of busted up that party.”
We rode hard for half an hour before I felt comfortable pulling Balder up. He snorted and danced. Refreshed even though he’d only had . . . “Wait . . . it was morning when we got here. We were out for almost twenty-four hours!”
“Does that matter?” Lila asked.
Something about it tugged on me like an itch in the middle of my back I couldn’t quite reach. “Maybe? Maks had to have been looking for us, and the werehyenas as well . . . and the Raven said that the Witch’s home,” I refused to use her name if she was going to be a camel’s asshole, “she said her home was hidden from the world.”
There was a moment in there when I realized that was what the Witch was up to—she had helped us. She’d hidden the three of us for twenty-four hours, which meant we were behind Maks and Ishtar’s hunters now. She’d given me a chance to get to the Jinn’s Dominion without having to face Maks, without having my hand forced. I still didn’t know why she’d help me. There had to be something in this for her. What, though?
That question in and of itself made me nervous.
We had a chance to get the pride back now, thanks to her, and maybe . . . maybe we could save Maks at the same time.
I didn’t have it in me to hope, to be honest. There were too many factors at play.
The best I could do was a small thing. “THANK YOU!” I yelled the words into the wind and hoped the Witch would hear them. Maybe she wasn’t the camel’s asshole I thought. Maybe she was doing the best she could, just like the rest of us, stumbling along, making mistakes and trying to right them where she could, like she said.
I slipped off Balder’s back and walked beside him. He didn’t need the rest, but I needed the movement and I wanted to think.
Lila scurried up his neck so she sat about halfway, her wings outstretched for balance, the wound from the crossbow bolt scarred but fully healed. “We still don’t know how we are going to save the others. Unless you’ve come up with a plan I don’t know about?”
“I know the layout of the Jinn’s Dominion,” I said as I scrambled over a pile of rocks. “Our father drilled it into us, so if we were ever taken, we’d be able to find a way out.” Of course, now that I’d learned that Marsum had wanted to take me to raise me as his own, it made sense why we’d been taught the layout.
The training, the understanding of how the Jinn’s lands were set up, none of it had been for Bryce to rescue people once he became alpha. We’d never gone in after someone if they’d been taken, never.
The training had been so I’d be able to escape if I were taken.
“Sweet baby desert god, this is a fucking mess. My whole life is nothing but lies.” I grimaced.
Lila grunted. “You and me both.”
She had a point.
There was a brush of air to my left and I turned to see Bryce walking beside me. He was indistinct, but he was there. I shook a fist at him.
“You got something you want to tell me?” I barked. “Like how much Dad knew about Marsum wanting to take me as some sort of freaky-assed adopted child?”
Bryce’s image wavered, and he turned his head to me, his eyes more golden than I’d ever seen, his voice deeper, resonating in his belly. “He didn’t want you as a child, Zamira. He wanted you as a mate.”
It too
k a moment for the words to sink in. When they did, my stomach rolled hard over itself as if it would scramble to get away from me. I pushed a hand into my belly as if I could hold it together. “What?”
His image wobbled and for a space of a heartbeat, I thought he was someone else, an old man in sand-colored clothes, but no, it was just Bryce. “Do not go to him. He will not kill you. He will bind you to him forever.”
I couldn’t help the way I sucked air as if I’d been running, but I forced myself to talk through the panic. “Not possible. He could have taken me when I was a child!”
Bryce shrugged. “Except he swore he would not. Maggi didn’t show you that part. That he swore he would not take you until you were older. That was the deal he made—your mother’s life for a semblance of a life for yourself.”
I stared hard at him. “Why are you telling me this now? Why did you not say something before?”
I blinked and Bryce was gone. “Damn it! You could be a little more helpful than that!”
I could have sworn I heard a heavy sigh, but it could have been the way the wind whipped through the rush grass too. And then his final warning. “Do not go to the Jinn’s Dominion, Zamira. Not if you wish to remain free.”
Lila landed on Balder’s saddle. “Who were you talking to?”
I struggled to swallow, my mouth suddenly dry. I grabbed a water flask and spun the top off, then sucked down several long gulps before I answered her.
“Bryce. He just showed up.” I screwed the lid back on the flask and tucked it into my saddlebags. “He confirmed what Maggi said about Marsum.” I filled her in quickly on the exchange.
She was quiet for a beat and then the questions spilled out of her. “What are we going to do? What about the others? What about Maks? We can’t leave them there.”
I shook my head. “We aren’t going to leave them there. Lila, my skills lie in sneaking in and stealing what I want and sneaking back out. This is the same as any jewel heist, only the jewels are our pride.” I looked at her. “We aren’t turning back.”
She grinned. “Good.”
We were quiet a few minutes before we hit something that made us both stop in our tracks. Paw prints in the loose soil, easily the size of both my hands side by side.
“That’s the hyenas?” she gasped.
“Yeah.” I bent and touched one, seeing how degraded the edges were. “Yesterday. We’re behind the full pack too.” I looked up at her. “This is good unless they turn back.”
“Let’s go to the water,” she said. “They are following Maks, staying west. If they turn back they might pass right by us.”
I nodded, mounted, and turned Balder east, going straight across. When the waves came into view, I saw a few sirens swimming, waving at us. I waved back. They were ineffective on me and Lila, and Balder was gelded so we would be fine.
Along the edge of the water, we traveled in relative ease for the next few days. There were no witches, no Jinn, no dragons, no werehyenas.
No Maks.
No Bryce.
No Shem.
More than once I found myself thinking about the three of them, and how they’d turned things around on me in different ways. How each of them had impacted my life and in some cases turned it on its head.
I shouldn’t have missed Shem at all, but I found myself wishing he’d been able to stay closer, that he’d been able to give me a little more insight into what I was supposed to be doing. Because while I was the alpha of my pride, and I felt that truth all the way to my bones, there were pieces of my life I didn’t understand. Bits that didn’t quite fit. And I suspected my crazy uncle had more information than he let on. A thought formed . . . the dream walking the Ice Witch had done, what if I could do that and reach Shem? “Hey, Lila.”
“Yup?” She looked at me from where she coasted on an updraft, rolling to her back as if in water and not air.
I opened my mouth to tell her what I was thinking about trying and then shut it again. That was ridiculous. I was no mage. “Nothing.”
She squinted one eye at me but didn’t press. I probably couldn’t even do it without the Ice Witch helping me. My hand went to the pouch where I kept the clear diamond . . . and I wondered if maybe there was something else I could do to try to reach Shem.
To ask him the questions I had. But each night I lay down, I told myself I would do it the next day.
By day four on our own, we’d settled into an easy pattern that consisted of food, movement, and trying to stump one another with obscure Shakespeare quotes. That easy rhythm was the only reason I have to explain why we didn’t notice the trap until it was too late.
Way too late.
Chapter Fourteen
To be fair, the trap that we sprung wasn’t meant for us specifically; at least, I don’t think it was, despite who set it. We settled down for the night, later than usual, meaning I didn’t check out the area very well. My bad.
I stripped Balder of his tack and set up a small fire. Lila brought back two birds for our dinner and I gutted and cleaned them with speed.
“What do you think Maks is doing?” she asked me softly as I worked. “Do you think he’s okay?”
I shrugged as I pulled the last of the feathers out of the birds. “No idea. He’s more likely only a day ahead of us now. Batman could not keep up that breakneck pace for long. He’ll reach the edge of the Jinn’s Dominion in a week, the werehyenas right behind him, and I imagine he’ll be just fine.”
“Really? After the Jinn left him to die in the mud?” Lila waddled close to the fire, her belly full of the bird innards. She ran her tongue around the edge of her mouth.
I ran a spit through the two birds and set them over the flames to cook. “Lila, I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m supposed to save him when even the Ice Witch says I can’t. She’s powerful. I’m not, remember? And what if what he said was the truth? What if he was fooling us all along? We don’t know, and maybe we never really knew him.” Maybe I never really knew him.
Ahh, that bit hurt the most because I’d yet again let my squishy weak heart follow its own path right into Maks’s arms. A path that my head had told me was dangerous and stupid, and I’d followed it even after I learned he was a Jinn. Shit, I would have been better to let Steve keep cheating on me and stayed married to that dumb ass.
“No, I don’t think that’s true,” Lila said softly. “I think you’re afraid to embrace what you really are. I think . . . you aren’t all shifter. That’s what Maggi said. Or was that Merlin? Ishtar, maybe?”
I hunched my back a little. “I know that’s what you think. But that doesn’t mean it’s right.”
“What do you feel? Do you think it’s possible, though? ’Cause, let’s be honest, if you have any sort of hidden powers, now would be the time for them to come to light.” Lila moved so she was close to the fire and staring up at me with those big eyes of hers. The weather here was slowly warming and the fire was almost too hot on some nights. And yes, I was avoiding her question by thinking about the weather and the fire in front of me.
“I don’t know,” I finally said. “I . . . I’ve always been weak, Lila. As far as anyone else is concerned, at least.”
She put her two front claws on my knee and gave my leg a squeeze. “Well, maybe now is the time to try, then. I won’t laugh if you can’t do anything but squeeze out a fart.”
I laughed and shook my head, then lifted both hands covered in blood and a few feathers. “Try what? What am I supposed to try, Lila?”
She frowned. “Yeah, I don’t know. I guess you have a point.”
I went on, still laughing. “Meditation? Chanting? Singing to the stars? Dance naked under the moon?”
“Not funny,” she grumbled. “This could save us one day, you know. You should take it at least a little bit serious.”
I rolled my eyes, not so much at her but at the world. At Maggi for putting these thoughts in Lila’s head that I was someone special, because the reality was I already knew that
my abilities had to do with hard work and a spine of steel, not natural talent.
“Look, I’ll close my eyes and do like a . . .” I flipped my hands around and a few feathers floated off, “soul-searching thing. Like when I look for my pride, but instead of looking for them, I’ll search me, okay?” I didn’t even know if it was a thing, what I was talking about. But by the way Lila’s eyes lit up, it would do. And it would settle this hope she had.
“Good. At least try. The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope.” She pushed off my legs and curled up next to the fire again. “That’s from Measure by Measure.”
“I know.” I rubbed my hands in the loose sand, working the worst of the blood off, then dipped them in the pot we had for cleaning.
Sweet fucking goddess, this was stupid. Dumb. A waste of time. But then again, it wasn’t like we were going anywhere until morning.
I sat on the ground, folded my hands in my lap and closed my eyes. I took a big breath in through my nose and out my mouth. I turned my thoughts inward as if I was going to search for my pride, but instead of sending energy outward, I kept it all to myself.
The energy rumbled around in me, pushing to get out, to search for those who were attached to me. I couldn’t help it as a flare of energy tugged on me, the color a deep, pulsing green wrapped in threads of black, as if it were sickly. I frowned and let my own energy flow toward it.
My stomach clenched as I realized who was calling to me, to my energy.
“Maks.” I whispered his name and Lila grabbed at me.
“What do you see?”
I swallowed hard, understanding now that Maks was part of my pride, as was Lila. He’d sworn his fealty to me as one of my seconds.
And he was sick.
Dying.
How was that possible?
I pressed my fingers into my eyes as if I could block out the sight, except I wasn’t seeing his energy with my eyes, not really. My muscles shook and trembled. Dying, how could he be dying?
Jinn's Dominion (Desert Cursed Series Book 3) Page 14