Dragon's Ground (The Desert Cursed Series Book 2)

by Shannon Mayer

  I turned Balder and gave him a gentle push into a fast walk. After that gallop through the dark, he needed a break. There was no stopping, though. We didn’t have time to dawdle any more than I had time to wonder if I’d made the right choice.

  The feeling of impending doom around us was only growing. The Jinn. The standing stones. Losing Kiara. Nearly losing Maks. Bryce in danger. Steve and Darcy looking for a stone that would make Ish more dangerous.

  I shook my head as if to dislodge the feeling, but it did no good.

  Something bad was coming for me, crawling across the plains like a spell I couldn’t escape. I glanced at Maks.

  “You can go. I’m not going to make you come with us to the Dragon’s Ground.”

  Lila let out a soft sigh. “We could use his help. I mean, if he really is a Jinn.”

  I shrugged, fatigue hitting me hard. “I’m not going to force him to come.” I urged Balder forward and couldn’t help but listen for the sound of Batman’s hooves following. But there was no sound.

  Despite everything that had just happened, despite the kiss and the fact that I’d save his life, Maks was not coming with me.

  Chapter 12

  Feeling Maks stay behind, not wanting to come with me, hurt my heart a hell of a lot more than I’d thought it would. Maybe it was because he said nothing. He’d not tried to argue why he should stay behind. He’d not even thanked me for saving his ass from his fellow Jinn. He’d just sat there, those blue eyes watching me, undeniably serious and lovely but giving me nothing in the way of what he might do.

  The rain pounding on my head, the empty plain ahead of me. . . it had never felt more like a slap in the face.

  Lila twisted around on my shoulder. “Thou art a boil! A toad! A horrible damn friend, Maks! Away, you three-inch fool! We saved you, and this is the thanks we get? Well, you aren’t going to be part of Zam’s pride at this rate! You don’t have the heart of a lion!”

  I didn’t turn around though I wanted to. I wanted to rail at him too, to call him names as Lila was, to claim he was a selfish bastard, but I couldn’t. The reason? I didn’t really believe he was those things. He was as torn between his choices as Lila had been.

  I probably would never know why he wasn’t coming with us. But if he wasn’t, I had to believe there was a strong reason. Maybe he thought the Jinn would come for him again. Maybe he thought we were safer without him. Both of those were possible.

  But I would never know.

  And I had to be okay with that lack of knowledge. I lifted my hand and touched Lila’s tail. “Ease off. You had a falling-out with your people, Lila. You know the pain of that loss.”

  “Oh.” Just that, and she crouched down. “Now I feel like a mushy little rabbit turd.”

  I smiled, but it was tired. “Don’t. Another time and I would have been screaming right alongside you. But the truth is, he has his path, and I have mine. He’s a Jinn, Lila. Nothing could have ever happened between us. Not really.”

  “Then why did you kiss him?”

  A slow breath escaped me, turning into a deep sigh as I spoke the truth much as I hated it. “Because I wanted to. And to say goodbye, I think.”

  “Oh.” She wrapped herself around my neck like a leathery warm scarf. “That makes me sad.”

  “Me too.” And it did. That was the worst part. There were a lot of things about Maks that made me like him, and none of them had a thing to do with what he was or wasn’t. He was a good guy. He was strong and smart, kind and thoughtful. That kind of man didn’t exist in my world as far as I’d been led to believe. And a good guy like that was fucking hard to find on this side of the wall.

  We rode through the night, passed by the Jinn’s now-silent encampment and slowed. The ropes that had held Maks down were still there, sprawled out along with a fair amount of gear. I made myself bring Balder to a halt. The fire was still burning, and there were bags of supplies, food, and blankets along with four horses the Jinn had left behind.

  “We should let them go, and then we can eat.” I slid off Balder’s back and went to the horses first, cutting off their halters as there were no buckles. The four of them took off, spinning northward toward the steppes. Which was good. They would be found by some herder and taken in.

  I moved as if on autopilot. I couldn’t help it. Everything that had happened in that short period of time had rocked me and my confidence.

  I kept replaying everything through my head, trying to see if I could come up with a different outcome to the night. But no matter how I looked at things, the outcome we had was actually the best with the most people still alive.

  Lila’s tail stuck out of one of the Jinn’s bags. “Lots of food here, Zam. What do you want?” She pulled something out and held it up for me to inspect. It was a hunk of meat of indeterminate origin. I tended to steer clear of mystery meat, no matter how hungry I was.

  “What kind of meat is it?”

  “Cow.”

  I nodded and took the heap of flesh and tossed it onto the grill over the fire. We scrounged until we found spices, and best of all, a bottle of țuică. The plum liquor made Lila giddy, and she made little grabby hands motions as she begged me to open it for her. I debated giving her any after the last time, but finally let her have a small amount. I poured a shot into the bottom of a clean plate and she lapped it up, humming happily to herself, her wingtips vibrating. I tipped the bottle back and took a sip. Rich and sweet, it slid down my throat a little too easily. I put the cork in and set it aside. “Not too much, you remember the hangover last time?”

  “I remember you and Maks getting it on last time you got into it.” She grinned and then the grin slid right off her face. “Sorry.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t have the energy to be angry with Maks or to care that she was teasing me.

  “We can rest here after we eat, but not too long. Dragon’s Ground is still a good four days away, and. . . it’s going to be a real bitch to find Bryce once we are there.” I flipped the meat over, cooking both sides evenly.

  Lila frowned. “The healer he seeks, she’s deep into the hold. The last I knew, she kept very near to the wall itself. She doesn’t like to be found, Zam. Even for another dragon to find her would be tough.”

  Awesome. That was just what I wanted to hear. “Are the dragons done with whelping then?”

  “Close. It’s actually a good time to try to sneak in. The females will be exhausted with the efforts of laying eggs, and the males will be hiding from their tempers. That and there is a contingent at the Ice Witch’s castle, spreading the numbers over a wider territory.”

  That all sounded a little too good to be true. I raised an eyebrow. “And what is the drawback to all that?”

  She grimaced and scratched at the dirt a few times with the tip of her claw, doodling designs. “Well, that means there will be more warning spells, and traps set up because of all those things. I can help you avoid them but. . . I don’t know about your brother, if he’d know what to look for. He could be already dead, Zam. You need to be ready for that.”

  I pulled the steak off the grill and onto a plate, cutting it in half. I put the smaller piece on Lila’s plate and picked up the remaining chunk in my hands and bit into it. Warm, but bloody.

  Perfect. I couldn’t help the purr that rumbled through me and it caught me off guard. Lions didn’t purr, and I didn’t like letting that side of me out because it labeled me for what I was clearly. A lesser cat. One that couldn’t roar, but I could damn well purr with the best of them. I grinned around a mouthful of meat and knew that the țuică was hitting me harder than I thought. It was the empty belly. Getting food into me would be the best cure for the țuică.

  I let the purr rumble; who the hell cared? Lila hummed, I purred, and we ate our blue rare steaks contentedly side by side. Nothing better to a couple carnivores than a steak that was so rare, you could barely see the grill marks.

  A horse nose bumped into my back. I growled and swatted a hand back at my hors
e. “Go away, Balder. You don’t like steak.” My hand hit something that was flat and hard. . . a man’s chest, not a horse’s nose.

  “But I do. Is there any left?” Maks asked as he stepped into the firelight. His eyes widened and his eyebrows shot up as he stared at me. I could only imagine what I looked like. I could feel the blood running down my chin, and my mouth was full, and I don’t mean a little full. I mean stuffed like a chipmunk going crazy to store nuts for the winter full, barely able to chew full.

  I had to work to swallow enough meat so I could respond and still ended up talking out the side of my mouth. “You want it cooked more?”

  He bobbed his head once. “Yeah, thanks.”

  I tossed what was left of my steak onto the grill. What the hell was happening? Was I asleep? Was this a dream? Maybe it was a drunken dream. That was a possibility. I looked at the bottle of liquor that was still half full. How potent was this stuff, anyway?

  Lila tapped the țuică bottle. “He came back for this, I think.” And then she giggled.

  Maks leaned around, saw the bottle, and then a small smile tripped over his mouth. “I think I’ll pass.”

  Smart. It was smart because Lila and I were laughing our asses off, already half cut from the liquor. Distantly, I knew it was partly the stress of the last twenty-four hours and the lack of food in my belly, the injury to my body, and then the alcohol just pushed me over the edge. Something had to give.

  “You aren’t going to ask me why I came back?” Maks interjected as our hyena-like laughter finally subsided.

  I blew out a breath, making a raspberry noise, and then shrugged. “I don’t know, lonely?”

  Lila bobbed her head and then shook it hard side to side so hard, I thought she would fall over. “Horny, I think,” she said.

  My smile slid, and I stared at her. “He did not come back here because he’s horny, Lila.” I turned to him, the țuică making me bold, forgetting that I should probably be as horrified as Maks by her assessment of his decision. “Did you?”

  He closed his eyes, and I watched in fascination as his skin pinked up in the firelight, my grin coming back full force. “Oh, we made him blush. That’s cute. You’re cute when you blush, Maks.”

  “I came to repay my debt, Zam. You saved my life. The least I can do is help you with finding the Dragon’s jewel.”

  Right, of course. He would be that guy who had the honor thing going for him. Wasn’t sure I liked that reason. So, I gave him an out. “We aren’t looking for the jewel, not really.”

  He frowned. “Then what are you doing out here?”

  “Bryce went into Dragon’s Ground to find a healer for his body,” I said. “But. . . Steve and Darcy have gone after the jewel, and if Steve-O finds my brother first—”

  “He’ll kill him,” Maks finished for me. I nodded and flipped the meat over. It was very nearly cooked right through. What a waste of a good steak.

  Maks took it and slid it onto a plate. “I’ll heal up by morning. Will you two lushes be ready to go?”

  I leaned back against one of Balder’s front legs and closed my eyes. “I’m always ready to ride, Maks. You should know that.”

  Lila screeched with laughter and I kept my eyes closed. “That’s not what I meant, Lila.”

  A small chuckle escaped Maks. “I missed you two. I wish I could stay longer,” he said. Or I thought he said it, or maybe I wanted him to say it because I missed him too, but it was all tangled up in my sleep-deprived body as I let myself drift off.

  My dreams were as messed up as my waking thoughts.

  I saw Kiara dragged off by the Jinn. They cut her belly open and took her cub. She screamed that it was all my fault. Maks pulled himself from the mud bog, his eyes dead as he crawled toward me, and then there was Bryce. That was the worst of the dreams. Bryce on his belly, his back punctured once more by a spear, his eyes finding mine. “This is your fault, Zamira. You did this to me, you condemned me to this life. Let me die.”

  I jerked awake, panting hard and startling Balder. My horse danced away from me and I fell backward, losing his support. I rolled to my knees, shaken from the dreams. Mostly because I felt like they were truths coming home to roost.

  Warnings of what was coming for me. I shivered even though I wasn’t that cold.

  The sun managed to peek through the thick black clouds in the east, signaling what would likely be another wet day on the plains. I wasn’t happy about that. And I let myself be grumpy because of the weather and not because of the dreams and how much they scared me.

  I hunched my back and saddled up Balder quickly, feeding him a bunch of the oat balls I had and a bucket of grain I found in the Jinn’s leftovers.

  “I’m surprised you would be willing to stay here.” Maks went to saddle Batman, his hands moving carefully over the horse. Damn it, why did his hands always draw my eyes? Because he was gentle and strong at the same time, and his hands were fucking magic when they slid over my skin.

  I looked away.

  “I’m not above taking advantage of the situation. I’d have felt worse taking over the campsite if I’d not known it was the Jinn’s.”

  He grunted. “You aren’t as afraid of them as you think you are.”

  I snorted. “You don’t count. As of yet, you haven’t tried to kill me or Bryce or Steve. Though if you want to kill Steve, have at him.”

  Lila groaned from near the fire and scooted closer to the dying embers. “Five more minutes.”

  Maks nodded. “I know you hate him, but I don’t think killing one of the few remaining lion shifters would do your pride any good.”

  “It’s not my pride. It’s Steve’s.” I said the words out loud, much as I wanted to choke on them. Steve’s pride. Ish had handed it to him, most likely because he’d knocked up Kiara.

  “That’s insane.” Maks breathed the words, the shock coming through loud and clear.

  “Yeah, well. A pride needs an alpha, and the only alpha who could truly challenge Steve would be Bryce. The other males are all naturally submissive.”

  “What about you?” Lila flew up and perched herself on Balder’s saddle so she was at eye height. “Could you not challenge him?”

  I shrugged. “I could, but the reality is he’d kill me. I know I’m outmanned there.”

  “I don’t think you are,” Maks said. “I think if you can take on a Jinn and catch him by surprise, mortally wounding him, you could take on Steve and win.”

  I snorted. “I did not mortally wound that Jinn. He got Kiara, remember?”

  “It’s why he was moving so fast. He needs to get back to the desert if he wants to survive.” Maks finished tightening the girth on his saddle and patted Batman’s neck. “I would know this, don’t you think?”

  He had a point even if I wasn’t entirely sure he was right about me taking on Steve. For all the times I’d fought with Steve, I knew he’d held back. He’d not given his full strength to the fights we did have. But then again, I’d held back too. I shrugged.

  “It’s not the time. We need to find Bryce. That’s step one.”

  “Actually, it’s about step four if we’re counting,” Lila pointed out. “Your journeys have a way of turning in on themselves if I recall.”

  I grunted and touched the necklace hanging on my chest holding the ring that kept my worst of the two curses at bay. The lion’s head ring allowed me to live without Marsum’s curse strangling the very life out of me. But the truth was, Maks had removed the ring from me once, and I’d learned to make the curse work in my favor.

  That did not mean I wanted to do that again.

  But the option was there if I needed it. Maybe if I had to face Steve, I could pull it off and use the curse to win.

  I frowned and dropped my hand. That felt like cheating somehow. And when it came to taking the alpha position of a pride, a cheater was the last thing we needed.

  I mounted onto the saddle. Balder flicked his head up and down once as if he knew we were in a hurry and he was
impatient too.

  Maks brought Batman into a trot beside us, though he was still favoring a leg, and we set out toward Dragon’s Ground.

  “Feels like déjà vu,” Maks said.

  I nodded but found myself at a loss for words. The last time we’d covered this path, I’d hated him because he was human. Now that I knew he was a Jinn, I should have hated him more, but it was the opposite. I sighed. Why did my emotions have to be so fucking complicated?

  “Except I’m here this time,” Lila said. “So, it can’t be that much the same unless you found another teeny tiny dragon to insult you prior to me.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “You are in a league of your own, Lila.”

  She flew off my shoulder and swooped around our heads, singing what sounded like a dirty limerick if the things the cobbler was doing with the sheep was any indication.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “How far—”

  Maks and I stumbled over our words and he pointed at me. “Go first.”

  “I’m sorry for embarrassing you last night.” I turned my face away. “That was the liquor talking again.”

  “Yeah, I figured. Don’t worry about it.” He paused. “How are we going to find your brother exactly?”

  Damn it, I’d kind of hoped he was going to expand on last night. A sigh slid from me before I answered his question.

  “He took the only horse that’s comfortable with his weight besides Batman. Ali is a big brute, and her hoof prints will be hard to miss.” I held up my hands about a foot apart to give him the idea of her hoof size, then I shrugged. “I’m hoping when we get to the marker, we’ll not have to go far to find his path.”

  “Better we find him on this side of that marker, though,” Maks said. No doubt he was recalling the mad flight we’d had along the border of Dragon’s Ground to get to the Ice Witch. We hadn’t even been trespassing, and we’d been attacked multiple times by the dragons guarding the border.