by Marie Hall
Licking his wet lips, Robin nodded and handed John the empty canteen.
With a final deep breath, he attacked the ditch with vigor and less than ten minutes later hit pay dirt.
The sharp clang of metal striking metal reverberated.
No one made a sound as Robin set the shovel aside and knelt, digging the dirt out from around the lamp with his fingers. Only when the bronze-etched item revealed itself did anyone say a word.
“Sweet Mother of the Gods.” Thrane’s voice rolled with awe. “Is that what I think it is?”
Robin grabbed hold of the handle and gave it a delicate tug. The item was cold in his palm. Dirt stained. And worn looking. And yet there could be no doubt that this was what he’d been searching for. The waves of potent energy roiling off it caused all the fine hairs on his body—even the ones on the back of his neck—to stand at attention.
“Give it here,” John said.
And Robin almost handed it over, until he caught the wild look of undisguised lust in his man’s eyes.
“No.” He hugged it tight to his body. “Give me your hand.”
Clenching his jaw loud enough that Robin could hear John’s molars grind, the big man swallowed his words and gave Robin his hand instead. Taking it, Robin kept a death grip on his prize once he exited the deep hole.
All three men kept their eyes glued to the lamp.
Robin had always trusted his men, but he was no fool either. Great wealth and power made fools of even the most kind-hearted. Lifting his chin, he rubbed his fingers just once across the length of his prize.
A hiss of glittering purple fog curled out from the narrow opening. The wind kicked up then, knocking dirt and debris into all four of them. Causing them to shield themselves to protect against the tiny cuts and nicks to their faces and necks.
An image formed within the smoke.
A woman. A beautiful, dark-skinned woman with eyes that gleamed like cut obsidian, lips—full and plump and a rich coral hue—and hair a vibrant, inky black that trailed to her slim waist.
Dressed in silks of indigo and turquoise threaded through with veins of gold. This was the dark genie in all her glorious splendor.
She opened her mouth and he smiled, ready to claim her as his, when the genie had the most unexpected of reactions.
She screamed.
Chapter 5
Chaos rolled. The winds shook the heavens. The land trembled beneath them.
Bodies were blasted up into the air, rolling and tumbling, and all of it—all of the anarchy—it was caused by her.
Nixie’s spine bowed as a surge of fearsome power poured out of her, making her bones feel as though they might snap. Her blood might boil. She didn’t know what she was doing. Didn’t know how to stop it. All she knew was that she had to get it out.
She screamed, not just in fear, but for help. To be put out of her misery. To be released of the agony she now felt.
Then something hard and powerful rocked into her temple, blacking her out, and she fell to the ground.
It took two buckets of water to the face before she could finally rouse herself enough to sit up.
Bleary-eyed, she rubbed her aching head and asked, “What’s going on? Who are you?”
This was a dream.
It had to be a dream.
She would wake up soon.
She would blink and they would be gone.
And there would be no sky above her.
No ground beneath her.
But the grizzled men did not vanish and they did not move. Like mannequins they gazed at her without blinking and she was so terrified to even twitch, afraid they might disappear on her if she did, that all she could do was sit there in stunned silence.
Then the one who’d rubbed her lamp smiled and her mind went blank. Again the winds took her, but not just her, it took him too.
Lifted them high into the air, and this time she knew she wasn’t causing it. She screamed, reaching out for him, terrified at the loss of ground beneath her.
His eyes were wide and the most electric blue that it suddenly felt as though she’d been pierced, not just through her body, but her soul.
The winds lifted them even higher then, above the clouds, and she could no longer see or hear the men below.
The blond-haired man reached for her. “Give me your hands,” he commanded.
And somehow she managed to grab hold of him. But the moment their hands touched, it was like a rope had suddenly settled between them, wrapping around her and him.
She looked at him with mouth gone wide and he did too.
And they were falling, at a dizzying speed back toward land. They’d never make it. But she couldn’t release him.
“Who are you?” she whispered a second before they crashed…
“Robin!” The biggest of the men snapped, slapping a fist between them.
Making Nixie stumble backward and land on her butt once again.
“I was falling and…” She frowned. What was going on?
They’d been falling, hadn’t they?
The man named Robin stared at his hands with a quizzical frown marring his brows. “What is this dark magic?” he murmured, then his hypnotic blue eyes locked on hers.
And she thought that maybe they could have stared at one another forever, locked in each other’s gazes, but for the men that suddenly tackled her to the ground.
“Get off me!” she screamed, bucking and writhing beneath their absolute hold.
Confused, terrified by everything that had happened and was happening, Nixie tried to turn to mist, tried to escape back into the safety of her lamp, but Robin held up his hand.
“Stay!” he said, and instantly the order locked her limbs in place.
“John, Maurice, Thane,” he snarled at the three men, “get off her now.”
The one named John shoved his hand harder into her neck, making her gasp and claw at him. She could not leave, and so she tried in vain to suck in air, but his grip was too strong for her to overcome.
Her vision began to fade to black and just before she passed out, she saw Robin reach down for the big man’s shoulders, saw him toss him to the ground, and then he was reaching out a hand to her, looking as if he couldn’t understand his own actions.
Throat a sore mess, she grimaced as she took his hand and was lifted gently to her feet.
His touch was so warm, so…safe?
She rubbed her head. What was going on with her?
Robin looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to join in with his friends or shield her.
“You saw that demon, Robin, to defend it!” John spat, jumping to his feet.
But Robin ignored his friend and turned to her still wearing the same quizzical look of before. “Were you trying to kill us?”
Only now was she starting to try and piece together the last few minutes.
The men looked as though they’d just survived a sandstorm. Their flesh was rubbed raw, their hair poking up in every direction. There were open cuts below John’s eyes, causing trails of blood to go toward his mouth.
The other two men looked just as bad.
Only Robin looked unscathed. Sort of.
His cheeks were muddied and dirt-smeared, but he didn’t look cut open. Had she done that on purpose?
She didn’t think so. In fact, she hadn’t thought of much of anything when she’d been released. There’d been a flash of panic so swift and violent that she’d simply reacted.
Shaking her head, she rubbed her aching throat. “No. I didn’t. I was just—”
“Liar!” John came forward, raising his hands.
“No.” Robin held out his arm, blocking the big man’s way back to her. “She speaks truth.”
Nixie shivered under the brutality of his gaze. John and Robin… Robin and John… Those two names kept playing around in her head, so familiar, so…
She gasped, looking at them both as if for the first time. “Robin Hood and Little John?”
But this time R
obin wasn’t quick enough to stop John; he came at her, his hands clenching on to her shoulders so hard and tight she thought he’d break the bones.
“We must send this devil back to Hell, Robin.” John shook her so hard her teeth rattled.
“Enough!” Robin snapped. “Genie, come to me!”
The magic of ownership, of his mastery over her, engulfed her body, moving like a living flame through her blood. With an inarticulate cry of pain, joy, terror, and uncertainty, she shoved John off her as though he weighed nothing and then flung herself into Robin’s arms, wrapping her own around his neck in a powerful vise-like hold. To think she’d never know the joy of freedom again, only to have it suddenly thrust upon her, her mind was at a total loss on how to handle itself.
“You are real,” she gasped, “you’re real. Oh dear God, you’re real.”
And then like a light switch flipping off, Nixie’s head went blank and she sank to the ground like a rock for the second time.
~*~
“What in the blue blazes just happened?” John growled, and glanced at the women very clearly passed out on top of Robin’s feet.
In disbelief, Robin could only stare, at a total loss as to what had just happened. He’d rubbed the lamp, she’d come out and attacked them, and then they’d locked eyes and the entire world had floated away.
Blinking, he turned on John in a daze. “Did she and I fly off the ground?”
Jaw clenched, John gave him a confused frown. “Fly? No. But you’ve been acting possessed ever since she grabbed your hands. I say you put her back in that cursed lamp and toss her into the deepest pit.”
Maurice and Thane both nodded. “Aye,” they said in unison.
Robin turned toward them only to note their eyes zeroing in on the lamp he’d tied to his belt, and when he looked back at John, so were his.
Undoing the knot, he shoved the lamp beneath his shirt. “I’ll not be tossing her back, and you’ll do well to leave her be. All of you. She is the key to bringing about Crispin’s ruin, now I believe her when she says she didn’t—”
John snorted. “You’ve been enthralled, my prince. And if you can’t see it…” He stepped toward the genie.
“Stop!” Robin snapped, and shoved John aside.
For reasons he couldn’t fathom, the thought of seeing John manhandle her again made him feel murderous. If he were being manipulated by the genie, he’d figure that out, but for now, she was his.
Giving all his men a final withering glare, he bit out, “Step away from her immediately.”
Only years worth of following his every order made them reluctantly step back.
Never taking his eyes off them, he knelt by her side, overcome by the very sudden and desperate desire to trace the length of her cheek with his thumb.
She moaned softly, finally coming to.
“Genie, get up,” he said roughly, curling his hands into his pant legs.
Scarlet crawled up her neck, and settled in her cheeks. This time he didn’t help her up. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he wanted to too much.
Resting on his heels, he studied the creature; there was a wild look to her eyes, and her pupils were dilated.
The dark genie was a trickster, a creature never to be trusted—it was why she’d been banished as she’d been, or so went the stories. But there was a look in her eyes, one of fear and uncertainty that pulled at his heartstrings despite his misgivings.
But it was those misgivings that lent an edge of steel to his words. “Do not think to escape from me. I am your master now. Get up.”
Then standing, he turned on his heel and walked away from her, needing to put some distance between them, needing a moment to breathe, to try and understand what in the world had just happened.
~*~
Every step he took away from her carried her lamp farther and farther away, squeezing the air from her lungs, making her gasp and cry out in pain. Forcing her body to stand, she stumbled blindly forward. The light of the world almost blinding her after such a long period of absolute darkness.
One of the men she didn’t know—a big, burly one with a wild mane of black on his head and a beard that trailed down to his oversized belly—glanced back at her.
“Are ye all right, miss?”
Hanging on to her midsection, she nodded several times. “I…I think so. The sun’s so bright, though.” She squinted, shielding her eyes as best she could.
Nixie wasn’t sure whether to trust the man or not; she’d never encountered a master with friends. All of her masters had been secretive, keeping her locked up and away from the prying eyes of others. But she’d been without company for so long she felt almost mad for want of it now. Anything to keep the intense loneliness of solitude away, even if she was also terrified of what they’d do to her.
Everything was still crazy hazy, and as much as she wanted time to try and understand just what in the hell was going on, Robin was determined not to give her any. He was moving at a frantic speed, as if he were running away from the hounds of Hell nipping at his feet. Maybe that’s what he saw her as.
She rubbed her head.
The big man licked his front teeth, one of which was badly chipped. “You don’t look so evil.”
“What?” She frowned, wincing when her left foot struck a protruding bit of rock. Her thoughts were so muddy and disjointed right now. To go from believing herself cursed to that lamp for the next one hundred years to suddenly seeing faces, smelling the god awful stench of sulfur on the breeze, and seeing colors so intense they made her retinas want to bleed, Nixie’s senses were overwhelmed.
“She don’t look evil,” the other man with the long vertical scar and skin that resembled cured leather sneered, “‘cause that’s what she wants you to believe. Why are you talking to this witch, Thrane?”
“I’m not evil.” She denied it, jogging a little quicker to try and catch up to the blond-haired man who’d declared himself her master—hypnotizing her as he walked with a briskness of pace that let her know he had no intention of staying any longer than necessary in this wasteland of Kingdom.
“So says you. But I sees you, I do. You with your pretty, pretty charms. Charms that hide a wicked soul. Everyone kens what ye did, lassie, and make no bones about it.” Scar face said, moving so close into her side, that she could smell the sourness of his breath.
Cringing, she turned her head to the side.
“Although”—he trailed a finger up her bicep, breaking her out in a wash of goosebumps—“there be ways to tame even the wildest of beasts.”
“If there’s to be any taming”—Thrane shoved his brother aside roughly—“then it is to be me.”
“Both of you, mind where we’re going!” John snapped the second they stepped out of the dead zone of the sulfur pools and into a forest.
Feeling grateful for the interruption, she rubbed at her arm and looked around, trying to reacquaint herself with her surroundings.
But Nix was completely turned around. She really had no clue what part of Kingdom she’d been tossed to. Cyrus hadn’t exactly been forthcoming when he’d banished her. She knew the pools only because of their scent, but where this forest was in relation to the rest of Kingdom, she hadn’t a clue.
Trying to shake off the soreness of her body, she forced herself to jog just a little bit faster, attempting to catch up to the blond and away from the men who’d made her skin prickle with instant dislike.
“Hey you,” she finally snapped when she got to within a stone’s throw of the blond. The muscles of his back tightened when he stopped and twirled on her and for just a tiny second, a fraction of an instant really, her heart skipped a beat.
In her initial shock of being released she’d failed to note the brilliant blond of his hair, so unlike her own. She’d always been a freaking sucker for blonds, but it was more than just his hair and eyes that had her riveted.
The man was breathtaking.
Covered in grime, it didn’t take away fro
m the fact that he was Kingdom’s version of a young Brad Pitt—like Fight Club Brad Pitt. Super chiseled, a little scruff, some scars, rippling abs—
“Are you speaking with me, creature?” His upper lip curled into a snarl.
And...wait, did he really just call me a creature?
Glaring, she crossed her arms, feeling suddenly defensive and offended. “Does it look like I’m talking to somebody else?”
Nixie blamed her temper on her mother’s side of the family. Latin blood was highly volatile.
His lips twitched, but not like he found her amusing, rather that he didn’t believe what he was hearing.
She notched her chin. “If you haven’t noticed,” she proceeded, taking the opportunity to speak in his silence, “I just woke up. It would hurt nothing to give me a moment to collect my thoughts.”
The men behind her were unnaturally silent, one of them—Thrane, she believed he’d been called—was even glancing off to his right with an embarrassed sort of turn to his lips.
“You would speak to me thus?”
“Ugh.” She rolled her eyes; there were no words, seriously. “At least let me get through my spiel—”
“Creature,” his deep voice growled.
Slicing a hand through the air, it was all she could do not to stomp her foot in irritation at him. “The name is Nixie or Nix, not ‘creature,’ not ‘demon,’ not ‘dark genie.’ Nix. Got it?” She tapped her chest.
This time when his lips twitched, she didn’t think it was out of annoyance; there was a sudden glimmer in his blue eyes that made her blood spark. The man was such an asshole, why couldn’t he have at least looked like a troll?
Clenching her fists, she took a deep breath.
“Then speak, genie.”
She opened her mouth and it was his turn to cock a brow.
“Or am I not allowed to call you that, either? For you are a genie, are you not?”
Infuriating bastard.
Her teeth clicked.
“Aye, I thought so. So let’s get one thing straight, girl.” He stepped toward her, so close she could smell the sweat and soap of his body, so close she could make out the fine lines around his eyes and mouth. A very kissable looking pair of lips they were, too. Soft and plump, slightly fuller on the bottom than the top.
