Electricity seemed to dance between us and I welcomed the feeling on my skin, the draw to Maks stronger than ever before. “They would kill me, anyway.”
“Not like they would if they knew how I feel.” His hands tightened in a most pleasant way on my arms, reminding me that he could easily throw me down and have his way with me. Not that I would have fought him.
“I don’t want to walk away from this, Maks.”
“Then I will. For both of us.” He pushed me away, but his hands lingered, as if they had a mind of their own. He took a step back, then reached over to his saddle and pulled the flail down. “Here, you might need this.”
I took it. And then he bent and pulled a kukri blade—my blades—from each boot. “And these.”
I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.
“No, this can’t be how it ends.” Lila shot between us. “This is not a Romeo and Juliet story. Your two families might hate each other but they don’t give two figs about either of you. So, do what you want. Make cute little cubs I can play with.”
“Lila, don’t.” I closed my eyes as if that would stop what I was seeing inside my head. Because the image was all too strong. A life with Maks? I could see it, easier than I wanted to admit. In the time I’d known him, he’d shown himself to be true to a fault, strong, even though the blood coursing through his veins would make him a monster to me.
He blew out a breath. “We need to find your brother.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “We do.” I turned away from him, hurt more than I thought possible, because I knew he was right. But I needed to find Bryce now. That was what I had to focus on.
I lifted my head and drew in a deep breath, searching for a scent that would pull us forward. I caught the smells of a typical forest in winter, things decaying, small mouse nests, the sharp bite of the wind up my nose.
“Lila, I don’t suppose Pret had any indication of where Bryce might have come through?” I asked.
She snorted and flicked her tail at me and then Maks. I could see she didn’t want us changing the subject quite so easily, but I was done with that discussion.
“What a pair of idiots,” she said.
A half-grin turned up my lips. “Agreed. Now, where should we start looking for Bryce?”
Lila flew up to the tree branches ahead of us. “That’s up to you. My job is to let you know about the booby traps before they hit us.”
Again, she was right. I suddenly had an urge for a bottle of țuică, wishing I could drown myself in the rich plum liquor.
If I dared shift back to my smaller form, I’d heighten my sense of smell. That could be a huge help, but I wasn’t sure I could even shift if my life depended on it.
My father had always known where every lion in his pride was, at any moment in time, and if they were well, sick, hurt, or hale and hearty. It had been a gift of his, a sixth sense if you will. And occasionally, we’d been able to reciprocate with him, connecting our energies with his. He’d made it a game when I’d been a little cub, like a form of hide and seek. But it had been years since I’d thought of it, and years longer since I’d done anything like it. If there was any time I needed the lessons of my father to stick, it was now. “Let me try something.” I stopped where I was and closed my eyes.
“What are you doing?” whispered Maks so close, my heart skipped a beat.
“Searching for Bryce,” I whispered back.
Maks’s presence was too distracting. I turned and handed him Balder’s reins. “Stay here. I need to be alone to do this.”
Lila snickered from ahead. “Idiots. Both of you.”
I clenched my mouth shut to keep from telling her off, because she was right in some ways, wrong in others.
I walked about thirty feet from Maks and the horses to a large evergreen tree. The base had to have been fifty feet around and in between the roots were several depressions that would make perfect seats.
I settled myself into one of the groves and put my hands on my thighs. The trick, as Dad had always said, was to allow the flow of the world to guide you, to find the ripples that showed another’s passing.
I felt as though I sunk deeper into the earth though I knew it was just my mind opening to the flow of the world. The lines of passage began to flicker, teasing two of my senses. I could “see” them with both my eyes and my nose. A rabbit, a fox, a dragon the night before, birds and small rodents. The lines lit up in front of my closed eyelids all different colors against the blackness. Carefully I opened my eyes.
The streaks of the other creatures’ passages were still there, though they wavered a moment. I stood slowly, and started forward, letting my eyes light where they would. On a tree, on the ground, ahead, to the side.
There was no sign of Bryce or his big horse, Ali. “Stick close,” I said. “Lila, on my shoulder.”
She flew to me and settled on my right shoulder.
Besides her weight, I felt Maks’s eyes on my back, trying to figure out what I was doing.
The passage of creatures was sparse here though it was a forest and should have been teeming with life.
We walked north, slowly, and I could feel Maks’s frustration mounting. I ignored it and him as best I could.
Ahead of me came a flicker between the trees, half-buried on the ground. Gold, as gold as my brother’s eyes. I picked up my pace, ignoring Lila as she begged me to slow down.
I stepped around a tree and there it was. Bryce’s passage.
“Fuck yeah!” I shouted, unable to contain my joy. There was no other word for it. I was overjoyed at having found his trail. Because it meant that at least for the moment, he was still alive. I stared down at the golden thread, again ignoring Lila whispering in my ear.
Something about being quiet.
I bent down and touched the strand. It wrapped around my wrist, warming me to the core. In it I felt his heart beat and how much he loved me.
Tears bloomed and trickled down my cheeks. Maks was at my side in an instant. “Zam, what’s wrong?”
“My brother loves me,” I whispered.
He startled. “You doubted it?”
I made myself look at him. “I pulled the spear out of his back. I made it worse, Maks. I crippled him.”
His eyes softened. “No, you didn’t. Those spears are designed to maim, Zam. I remember it all too clearly. It was not your fault.”
He. . . remembered it? I stared up at him, my heart beating hard for a different reason. “You were there? At the massacre?”
Maks’s jaw tightened. “I was.”
Maks was there with the Jinn when my family had been slaughtered. “And you killed lions from my pride?”
He looked away. “Zam, I didn’t have a choice whether or not I could be there.”
I shoved him hard. “There is always a choice, Jinn!”
That last bit came out apparently too loud. A low grumbling snarl echoed through the woods.
Lila groaned. “Now you’ve done it.”
I snatched Balder’s reins from Maks’s hand and leapt up onto my horse. “Try to keep up.”
There was nothing else to do but put distance between us and whatever dragon we’d woken. Check that, that I’d woken.
Anger cut through me, but the connection I’d found to Bryce was solid and I followed it unerringly. Right through three more dragons’ territories if the bellows meant anything.
Lila clung to the front of my saddle, shaking her head. “You know, I can’t talk them all out of killing us.”
“We’ll think of something,” I said because I’d stepped in it good this time. Like the idiot she’d been claiming I was. I was an idiot for thinking Maks, a Jinn, wasn’t like the others. Hell, he’d even tried to tell me that it wasn’t a good idea. That he was a Jinn just like the others, no good to be around, not trustworthy. And I, foolishly, had thought he was different.
But my stupid heart didn’t care. And that was what twisted me up so much. I should have hated him so damn hard, and I just couldn
’t.
We wove between the trees, and that was probably about all that saved us from the direct fire of the dragons. Three followed us, pissed off as they crashed through the trees, unable to get a good bead on us. One shot off a current of electricity that danced to my right, exploding against the ground, tearing up roots. Balder grunted and dove to the left, crashing us into Batman and Maks.
“What’s the plan?” Maks asked.
“Get to Bryce,” I said.
“That’s it?” he barked. “Seriously, how are we getting away from the dragons?”
I shook my head and shrugged. “No idea. I’m actually hoping it will come to me in a flash of inspiration.”
His jaw drooped. I raised an eyebrow. “You’ll catch bugs that way, Jinn.”
His jaw snapped shut. Yeah, it wasn’t nice to use that word for him, not when it was obvious he wasn’t happy with the fact he was a Jinn.
But I wasn’t sure I could forgive the fact that he’d been part of the attack that had wiped out my family. He’d been there at the Oasis itself. He’d seen Bryce get taken down. What if he’d been the one to do it? Goddess of the desert and gods of the sky, I wasn’t sure what I would do if Maks had been that one. Bad enough that he’d been there, bad enough that he’d killed members of my pride, but there would be no coming back if he’d wielded the spear that had taken Bryce down. I could never forgive him that.
We galloped around the trees, the horses working hard to make the sharp turns, to dodge the incoming fire and electricity from the dragons behind us.
I looked back once and that was when I realized Lila was no longer on my shoulder. We burst out into a clearing that was huge, big enough for several dragons with room to spare.
And there, as if he’d been waiting for us, sat Bryce.
Chapter 19
My brother’s eyes lifted and took us in, heading toward him at a full gallop in the clearing, the dragons whose territories we trampled through not yet visible.
“What did you do, Zamira?” he growled.
I lifted both hands, palms up, suddenly feeling ten years old again. “Nothing! I mean, not really.”
Behind us the three dragons cleared the trees with a tiny fourth dragon darting between them. She still wore the sapphire.
I wasn’t sure freezing and killing the dragons was the best idea. “Lila, don’t hurt them!” I yelled up at her.
The three dragons, so different in color, dropped from the sky, laughter rolling through them. That was not the effect I was going for, but I’d take it.
One was pale gray, his whole body looking like he’d been made of smoke and clouds, and his eyes danced with the electricity that had been chasing us. The second was a deep green, a sap sucker if my guess was right, only he had wings, so maybe he was a hybrid of some sort. His scales shimmered, almost glowing. The third was bright red with smoke curling out of his nose. The fire breather.
Awesome. Electricity, acid, and fire. Just the combination we needed to deal with.
“Lila hurt us?” The green sap sucker wheezed the words out. “Lila the Gnat? Please. That’s a crock of shit if I ever heard it.”
Lila let out a snarl, but it sounded like a squeaky toy compared to the deeper rumble of the big dragons. It only made them laugh harder and my heart hurt for her. This was why she and I got each other. Our own kind treated us as though we were worth nothing, as if we were losers.
We were the same even though we had totally different bodies; the hurt in our lives was the same. They didn’t take her seriously, and a part of me wanted to tell her to let them have it. But that wouldn’t help us in the long run and I restrained myself.
I held up both hands, turning to the dragons. “We just came to get my brother, then we will be leaving right away. We didn’t mean to trespass, but there was no one to ask for permission to come on in.”
I felt more than saw Bryce stiffen. I knew he wanted to deny my words, but if he did, we’d for sure be dead.
“How did you get past the border guards, shifter? There was a report of a pair of riders that outpaced Prince a few weeks ago. Said it was a gray horse and a woman in a red cloak.” The red dragon stepped forward, his feet sending a rumble through the earth that made the horses dance with nerves. I kept my hands where they were, away from any weapons. I did not want to set them off. Thank the desert gods I’d lost my red cloak with the gorcs. Currently I wore a dark green one that blended into the forest better, pulled from my stash of gear.
I shot a look at Bryce. “I don’t know anything about that. Red is a common cloak color. As you can see, I’m wearing green. And I don’t know how my brother made it by, but we were able to slip past while the border guard was dealing with two other riders.” Fuck, that countered my previous statement of not getting permission. I was a terrible liar, always stepping in it. But for the moment the red dragon didn’t seem to notice.
The red dragon squinted at me. “More of your party coming then.”
I looked back the way we’d come, and then to the dragon again. “No, the border dragon drove the others off and we slipped by. We weren’t with them.” Kind of a truth. Close enough that I hoped the red dragon wouldn’t sniff out the piss-poorly laced lies.
The red dragon turned his head to Bryce. “And you?”
He shrugged. “I’m a cripple in search of your healer. I’ve heard she is the greatest of all healers and I have need of a great healer.”
The red dragon snorted. “Even if you reached her, which you won’t, what are you going to pay her with? She only takes the highest quality treasures, you know that.”
“Actually, Fink,” Lila shot in front of them, still wearing the sapphire. She touched it with a claw tip. “We do. And you’d best let us pass to reach Amalia.”
The red dragon, Fink apparently, turned to her. “You have no say here, Gnat.”
She barrel rolled and came to a stop in midair right in front of his face. “I do have a say. I may have been cast out, but that does not change who I am.”
“It does,” Fink said, and there was a heavy sadness in his voice. “Much as it pains me to say it, you’d have done better to lead our people. If you’d been a boy.”
“Hey, she’d have made a fucking fine leader regardless of her gender,” I snapped. “She’s got more heart than anyone else I know. Do you know she rushed a band of gorcs to save me?”
The dragons all turned to look at me in unison and I felt my blood quiver in my veins. There was no way I could survive a dragon attack. I had to keep my hand clenched into the edge of my cloak so it wouldn’t go for the handle to the flail that seemed to call to me.
“She saved you?” Fink raised a scaled brow. “I find that hard to believe.”
Lila flew down to me, landing on my shoulder. “We saved each other.”
Fink made a motion with his head and the gray dragon leapt up into the air and flew back the way we’d come.
“We shall see. If you truly killed the gorcs, then perhaps we will let you pass. Such bravery is worth rewarding.” He flopped down on the ground and Balder danced backward, tossing his head. I soothed him with one hand.
The green dragon, the acid spitter, snorted and a fine mist sprayed everywhere. I backed Balder up fast, the mist falling where we’d stood only a moment before. “Hey, man,” I said, “watch that shit, would you?”
Lila laughed. “That’s Draken. He forgets what he’s got in his guts.”
My curiosity got the better of me. “Are you two related?”
She shook her head. “Not really, not any more than any other dragons are related to me.”
Fink snorted and lifted a back leg to scratch at his head like a giant dog. “She’s related to everyone. That’s the blood line of royalty for you.”
I kept my eyes on him while I fought to keep my thoughts off my face. Royalty. So, Merlin was right about that.
Maks moved Batman a little closer, and I moved Balder away. I couldn’t deal with him, not right then. Not when I was stari
ng up at a rather large dragon that could literally wipe us all out with a single puff of flame. We were close enough that there would be no escape.
Fink squinted his eyes as though he was thinking hard. Or constipated, that was another possibility. “Lila is an anomaly, not only in size, but in her abilities. She looks like her mother’s side, which is not surprising being a female.” He winked at Lila and she stiffened on my shoulder.
“Piss off, Fink,” she snapped.
I had to say, I was impressed. She was giving as good as she ever did even though she was clearly outsized, outweighed, and out-dragoned.
He laughed, the chuckle a deep baritone. “Yeah, yeah. You know not everyone agrees with what your father and brother did. But there weren’t enough of us.”
I frowned. “And which one of you stood up for her then?”
His head tipped to the side. “You don’t understand dragon politics.”
“I understand loyalty,” I said. Behind me Maks and Bryce groaned in unison. “I understand what it means to stand with someone in their darkest hour.”
The acid spitter, Draken, snorted again. “You’re a shifter. Shifters aren’t loyal.”
Every instinct in me reared up and yet I knew I could say nothing. Because I wasn’t strong enough. The shaking in me had Balder dancing sideways.
“You’re a fool” was about all I could muster.
Above the trees, the gray dragon swept back into view and landed in the clearing next to Fink. “Gorcs, dead, fifty of them or so, some killed flat, others frozen, though some were thawing.”
Lila lashed her tail. “Damn it.”
The pale gray dragon shrugged. “I took care of it. Easy when they aren’t running around.” He grinned at Lila. “Good job, Princess.”
Her tail lashing slowed. “You see that we were telling the truth. Will you let us go to Amalia then?”
Fink shrugged. “You know the dangers between here and there?”
Lila nodded. “Yes.”
“You know you all won’t make it without help?” He shifted his body so he stood on four legs, stretching and arching his back like nothing more than a giant red, scaled cat. His tail lashed the air and then slammed into the ground. “We will take you as close to the wall as we can. You’ll be on your own from there, and I won’t help you back through the forest.”
Dragon's Ground (The Desert Cursed Series Book 2) Page 16
