Lila let out a roar, and I looked to her. She gave me a nod, and I yanked the flail from his head. We were spiraling down to the ground rapidly.
“You got this?” I said.
She grinned as the acid dripped from her mouth. “I’ve got it.”
Holding the flail, I back flipped off Corvalis and fell the final fifty feet to the ground. Fifty feet, part of my brain said I would break my legs, my spine. As a shifter I was not strong enough to take the fall.
No. I am strong enough. I am the alpha of the Bright Lion Pride.
The ground swept up, and I relaxed into the fall, loosening my muscles and joints. I hit the ground hard, dropping into a crouch, the flail still in one hand. The shock of the landing reverberated through my bones, but nothing snapped. Nothing gave.
I slowly stood to find half the dragons on one side of me, and half on the other.
I looked for Pret, Fink, and Trick. Above us, Corvalis and Lila battled. I’d done what I could for her.
The moment I took a step forward, Balder was there, galloping for me. I grabbed his mane and swung into the saddle as I raced between the two lines of dragons.
“You heard my second, his words are truth. The Emperor wakes, and we have a choice. Will you stand with us as you once did? Side by side, brothers and sisters in the battle for our freedom?” I held up the hand still holding the flail. “Or will you hide away and let your children be stolen by the Jinn?”
Snarls and roars met my ears. Above us, Lila screeched and I looked up. Corvalis had her neck in his mouth. I had to help her, and there was nothing I could do. But there were dragons here who could help her.
I pointed at her as she wrestled with her father. “She is your queen. Would you let her be taken by a dragon who will never see you free? He holds a thousand dragons’ power. If that is not cheating, I don’t know what the fuck is.”
Trick shot into the air, lightning coursing around him as he went straight for the battle. Fink and Pret were close behind him.
“That is not how this is done!” a blue dragon screeched from my left. He was bunched to launch into the air—at me and Balder. He shot toward us, his eyes narrowed, mouth open as his power roared up his throat. Blue, ice, water, I could see it coming as he gathered it around him. He slammed into me and Balder, sending us flying to one side. Balder hit the ground, rolled, but I heard no snap of his legs, thank the goddess.
I came up from the hit, rolling back to my feet, my adrenaline raging through me as the dragon’s mouth came at me. Too close, he was too close, I could never stop him in time. I held my breath.
I was going to die.
There was a flash of gold along the ground, and then the mouth around me was gone.
I stared up at Bryce as he hung from the blue dragon’s neck, his massive claws and teeth tearing huge chunks of scale and flesh. The blue dragon’s mouth was open as he struggled to breathe through a shredded throat.
“I got this, Alpha!” he snarled.
There was a moment, just a moment where I saw Bryce as my hero as he’d been all those years ago. He’d saved me. He’d saved my life. My heart swelled with pride. That was my brother. It didn’t matter to me that we didn’t share the same mother. He was the brother of my heart as Lila was the sister of my heart. I took a step toward him, toward the battle.
A pale pink dragon that was more snake than dragon raced in from the other side, big fangs hanging past his thin lips, dripping black liquid. Poison.
I locked eyes with the pale pink dragon. He grinned. I dug in and ran, spinning the flail. “Come on, you big girly fucker!”
He didn’t come for me, though. The pale pink dragon caught Bryce with his mouth, clamped down and shook him like a dog with a rag doll toy as his fangs dug in deeply. The snap of bone echoed through the air and I was back again in the Oasis, I was watching him die in front of me. He roared, pain-filled and guttural, but still triumphant. I knew it through my whole body.
This was the death Amalia had warned him about, and he’d embraced it.
To save me.
“NO!” I screamed as I swung the flail upward, slamming it into the belly of the pale pink dragon. “His heart, go for his heart!”
The flail obeyed me, digging in, and I let go of the handle as it pushed itself past the dragon’s scales. A worm, a snake under the skin, a parasite that sought only the heart’s blood, the flail was alive with its lust for death and blood. The pink dragon froze, and his tail swept around to pull the flail out, but it was too late.
The weapon had drilled in and was gone. I pulled my kukri blades and stood over my brother as the dragons circled around us. We would die together.
“Bryce. This was not how I planned today would go,” I said.
He gave a weak laugh, and I dared a glance at him. He was back to two legs, naked, his body. . . twisted from the shaking, black poison flowing from a half-dozen bite marks. “Me neither. But it’s a good day to die. With my alpha at my side. My sister standing with me.”
Behind me the pale pink dragon fell to the side, twitched once and I felt the flail absorb its life. Payment was made.
“Don’t count us out yet,” I said.
I held my hand out and for lack of a better way to explain it, I called it to me. My weapon, it no longer belonged to Marsum but to me. The flail blasted out of the dragon’s chest and straight to my hand. I took hold of it, the warm blood of the dragons cementing my hold on it, my fingers pulsing with its strength. To my other side the blue dragon fell over, gasping out his last.
There was a thump behind us and I held my ground as the dragons circling us slowly backed away. Hot breath whispered around me and I turned. “Lila.”
She lowered her head to me, blood dripping from around her mouth and off a gash over one eye. “Corvalis fled.”
The gathered dragons gasped. “Not possible.” The whispers came as they backed up and raced from the battleground.
Lila was injured, the wounds were deep and bleeding, and as much as I was worried about her, it was nothing to my fear for Bryce.
I dropped to my knees beside him and slid the emerald stone off my hand and pressed it against his flesh. “Bryce, stay with me.”
“Not this time,” he whispered. I yanked my cloak off and laid it over him, trying not to notice the way his body was broken. One arm was nearly torn off, both legs were shattered, but it was his hips, turned at an impossible angle. His back broken in truth.
I scooped his head up onto my knees as I fought to hold the tears back.
“No. I won’t let you, Bryce. You are my second. That will not change.” I ran a hand over his face and the first of the tears dropped. “Please, please don’t leave me, brother.”
He lifted one hand and caught a tear off the edge of my chin. “You are not a little girl any more, Zam. And there is something I must tell you before I. . .” He groaned, the air whispering from him.
“No, no, stay.” I wanted nothing more than to give him my strength. To heal him, but I had nothing like that.
His eyelids fluttered, and he took a slow breath, his chest barely lifting. “Your mother. . . was cursed. Like you.”
I sniffed. “Bryce, you can tell me later.”
“Now, I have to say it now.” His face twisted with pain and I leaned forward, pressing my head against his.
“Bryce.”
“You. . . the curse will help you. Don’t let them take what you are away from you, Zam. You have everything you would ever need just as you are.” His hand dropped from my chin and I caught his fingers.
“Bryce?” I whimpered his name.
“Maks, he’s good for you. You have my blessing,” he whispered.
The tears flooded my eyes. I could see nothing. I could only feel as he slipped from me in truth.
“I love you,” I tried to say those three words, goddess how I tried, but they came out a sobbing mess of syllables.
“I see Dad—” The words breathed out of him with a last whoosh of air.
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I gasped as he slumped. I clutched him to me, rocking back and forth as the sobs rippled past my lips and turned into screams I couldn’t hold back.
The screams were echoed by a roar behind me, Lila adding her voice to my pain. Only it was more than that.
“Zam!” She screamed my name and I twisted to see her on the ground, her eyes rolling back, foam at her mouth. Trick had a front foot on her, holding her down.
“Something is wrong.”
I let Bryce go, tears still staining my face as I ran to Lila. “Talk to me!”
“The necklace burns!” she roared.
I clambered up her side and slid down to her neck where the necklace was burrowing into her flesh. I caught the edge of it and yanked it up. Only it didn’t give but snapped away from me and dug deeper into her flesh. I grabbed a kukri blade and dug it under her scale. “I’m sorry!”
I drove the blade in deep and under the necklace, like digging out a sliver. The blood flowed around my hand as I caught the chain on the tip of the blade. I yanked it up, pulling the ring talisman from her flesh, popping it high into the air.
I caught it with one hand and immediately threw it away, the burn of the metal too much to hang onto. Below me, Lila thrashed as her body slid back to the size she’d always been. I scooped her up and held her in my arms as she shivered and whimpered. “I’ve got you, Lila.”
Trick leaned over my shoulder. “They will come back. You need to go. They won’t accept that Lila defeated her father. Even though they saw it.”
I nodded and looked at my brother’s body. Not him, he wasn’t there anymore. “Will you make a pyre for him?”
The words, the words should not have been spoken for years, not until we were old and gray, until Bryce had children and his children’s children to mourn his loss. I clutched Lila closer and her tiny claws reached around my neck.
“Siblings aren’t always blood,” she whispered to me. “Sometimes they find you when your heart needs them the most.”
I had no words; the pain was too much. A nose bumped into my back and I wrapped an arm around Balder, hugging him to me as the sound of flames crackled around us. I made myself look, made myself watch as the cloak caught fire and for just a moment, I thought I saw Bryce’s lion form standing with his broken body.
And then it was gone, and it was time for us to leave. I turned away, walking, limping my way south.
Chapter 30
The desert called to me, and I followed it south, knowing that my destiny was drawing me forward now. Whatever Marsum had done to my curse, I would fight it without the use of any block.
I stopped after what could have been hours or days, I’m not sure, and quietly used the hacka paste on Lila’s wounds and the bruises Balder had caught from his tumble. Lila did the same for me, patching me up while the tears flowed. It was like a river had started and I didn’t know how to stop it, a waterfall with no ending.
We walked until we found Shem and Maks. They were coming back for us at a hard gallop and they slid to a stop when they saw us.
Maks jumped from Batman and ran to me, catching me up in his arms. I didn’t have to say anything, he knew—somehow he knew. He held me while I cried, both Lila and me, holding us while we leaned into him.
A bellow of a lion snapped my head up. Shem stood with his back to me, the roar, one of honoring a fallen family member, the acknowledgment that a hero had been lost.
I lifted a hand to Maks’s face. “Are you hurt?”
He put his hand over mine. “Small wounds. The Jinn were not expecting me to fight with an experienced lion shifter at my side. We killed them both.”
I nodded but couldn’t bring myself to say “good.”
Lila shivered and peered up between us.
“What are we going to do now?” she asked as Maks pulled a second cloak from the saddlebags and swept it over my shoulders. Was I cold? I didn’t even know.
I drew a slow breath and made myself put my pain aside, just for a moment.
“I am the alpha of the Bright Lion Pride,” I said softly. “And three of my pride are in mortal danger.” I looked up at Maks. “I name you my second, Maks. Will you take that title?”
He stood a little straighter, and his arms tightened around me. “I will always have your back, Zam, no matter how dark the days that come shadow us.”
Lila curled into me and I lifted her. “Lila, will you be my second?”
Her head snapped up. “You can have two?”
“I can do whatever the fuck I want. I am the alpha.” I made myself wink at her. “I couldn’t do this without the two of you—I won’t do it without either of you.”
Her smile wobbled. “I’ve got your back, Zam. Sister of my heart, the one I knew from the second I met that you would change my world.”
I leaned in and kissed the top of her head. “Sister. You are part of my pride now.”
Maks leaned over and kissed her noggin as well. “I want her as my sister too.”
Lila snickered. “I don’t think Zam wants to be your sister.”
I laughed through the tears, laughter and tears flowed between us. Shem dared to come close.
“You three will change this world, I think.”
I looked at him, still uneasy but seeing his strengths for what they were. I needed him too. “Will you be my seer, Uncle Shem? As you were for my father.”
He bowed at the waist. “It would be my honor, Alpha.”
I looked to the south. “Then we go. To the south.”
Maks kissed the side of my head. “To the south.”
Lila climbed to my shoulder and stared. “You think it will be warmer?”
I laughed softly. “Yeah, I think it’ll be warmer.”
“Good, ‘cause I’m tired of all this ice and rain shit.” She flicked her wings and then stretched them out.
We mounted our horses and pointed them south.
I let them get ahead of me, holding Balder back as I stared at the world, a sensation of eyes following me. Not like a shadow, but eyes that I’d felt when I was a child.
Marsum was watching me.
I tipped my chin up. “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not avenge? I’m coming for you, asshole. You’d better be ready to die.”
Chapter 31
Merlin felt the shift in the world. It was subtle, and if he hadn’t been straining so hard to pick up a sign that Flora might have left behind, he would have missed it.
Bryce was dead.
The Emperor’s hold on the dragons was broken.
And Zamira was coming into her own. Her power was not what the world would think of for a hero, but she was what they needed.
Heart of a lion. Soul of a dragon. Power of a Jinn.
He lowered his head, knowing what would come for Zamira now that she’d set herself on this path. “Hurry, Wall Breaker, Zamira Reckless Wilson. The world needs your heart more than ever.”
Afterword
Thanks for coming along for another story! I hope if you haven’t checked out my other books you’ll take a minute, go to my website and see what else I might have that will tickle your fancy. There’s a LOT of books, in several sub-genres which is why I don’t put a list here.
Dragon's Ground (The Desert Cursed Series Book 2) Page 24
