“Ah, fuck. You want me to hurt you?” he growled and promptly threw me off. I slammed into the stone wall, my head cracking against it, the flail’s handle digging into my spine. I groaned and slid to the floor. The flail . . . the handle was wooden. I pulled it from my back and the vamp laughed at me. I was going to take a chance that using the wrong end wouldn’t hurt me as much.
“Fancy weapon, but we’re in too small of a space to use it. But by all means, go ahead and try.” He grinned and I realized he’d not even bothered to take the two knives out of his back. Either he was supremely lazy, or he was truly not affected by them. Which was impressive considering the fact they were supposed to work only on supes.
He took a step and I rolled the flail once, twisting it so the spiked balls clicked against one another. His eyes flicked to them and then back to me. “You don’t have the balls.”
“Actually,” I spun it harder, feeling the momentum build, “I believe I do. I have two metal ones with spikes on them.”
He snarled and lunged forward which made sense. The closer he was to me, the safer he’d be from the metal end of the flail.
I dropped to one knee and braced with my foot against the wall behind me. I used the momentum of the spiked balls to spin the handle around, pointed end up, spiked balls jammed into the ground for bracing as the vamp ended his jump on top of me.
“Ah, fuck!” he roared as the wooden handle slid through his chest, heart, and out his back.
Blood poured around the weapon and down over my face. I closed my eyes and turned my head as I threw his body to the side. He slid off the handle with a sucking pop that made me turn up my lips.
There was no time to be squeamish though. Not here.
Not now. The handle warmed against my skin.
I braced myself, but the blood didn’t soak into the wood. The handle was not cursed like the metal spikes. I grinned. “Hell, yeah.”
I bent over the vamp, getting a good whiff of him as I frisked him, looking for the keys. That was the scent that I’d caught earlier and couldn’t quite pin down. I snorted to clear my nostrils just as my fingers touched the cool metal of the keys attached to the back of his belt. I pulled the large ring with a single key on it up, but it was snagged on the belt. Using one of my knives I pulled from his back, I cut the leather strap he’d tied it on with. With both blades in their sheaths, flail covered in vamp blood and key in hand, I headed deeper into the dungeon.
My nose was coated with the scent of blood and I couldn’t smell anything beyond it. I was going to have to settle for old-fashioned detective work.
“Darcy, where the fuck are you?” I called out.
There was a groan at the far end of the dungeon and then a voice I could have done without hearing.
“Zam, thank the goddess you’re here! Get us out!” Steve struggled against chains by the sounds of things. I passed by his cell—well, his and Kiara’s—gave them a shrug and kept on walking.
“What the actual fuck? You can’t leave us here!” he roared and the chains rattled again. He was right, I wouldn’t leave him there, nor would I leave Kiara, but I’d let them think I would for a minute or two. That was the least they deserved, fuckers.
There was no fourth lion, though I could still smell him. A fourth lion I didn’t know? But he’d escaped, that much had to be true, because there was no body.
I reached Darcy’s cell. Her body was pinned to the wall and her head hung low, her blond hair dirty and tangled. “Hang on, Darcy,” I whispered as I put the key in the lock.
“I’m so sorry for everything. For Steve,” she whispered.
“Water under the bridge.” I grinned at her and she shook her head.
“Trap, it’s a trap. The queen wants you for Marsum.” She spoke as though she had done a fair amount of screaming. I hurried to her and lifted her head. Bite marks were scattered around her neck and chest from the vamp. Anger burned bright in my belly. This was why she was so weak, she’d been fed on.
“I should have made him suffer,” I said. “Burned him alive.” I got the key into her manacles. They popped open and she slid to her knees. I swept my thick cloak off and put it over her shoulders. She needed the warmth more than I did right then. “Come on, let’s get you out.”
I helped her to the door and she kept on muttering about a trap. But that could mean anything. Especially when she was this far gone. I chose to ignore the fact she knew the Jinn were on their way.
I went to Steve and Kiara’s cell next and opened the door, then flipped the key to them. “Hurry up, I’m not waiting for you.” I helped Darcy along the hall, heading toward the southern side as Maks had said.
I ran my hands over the wall, looking for an edge, a lip, anything.
The longer I looked, the more the panic set in. If we couldn’t find the door, we’d have to go back the way I’d come, and I wasn’t sure that was the best idea I’d ever had.
Steve and Kiara caught up to me. “What are you doing?” she asked first.
“There’s a door here. It leads to the cliff and you can shimmy down. Cross the river and wait with the horses.”
Kiara blinked at me, those big gold eyes of hers so uncertain. “What about you?”
“I have a friend I can’t leave behind,” I said.
A moment later, Steve gave a grunt. “Here. I found it.”
The door slid open, and only because he had the muscles to push it. A burst of fresh winter wind cut through the dungeon and it was only then I realized just how stifling the air was. I breathed it in as did the other three.
“Kiara, help Darcy.” I handed my friend off to the younger lion shifter.
Darcy shook her head and her eyes finally focused on mine. “Don’t go. Come with us. It’s a trap, the Jinn . . .”
“Then it will buy you time, my friend.” I gave her a quick hug. “I’m not much good for anything else but doing that. When you get home . . . tell Bryce I’m sorry I’ve been such a fuck-up. And he loves you. So . . . don’t tell him I told you.”
Her arm was weak around me, her sob deep. “No.” But Kiara was stronger and she pulled her away. Steve stood on the edge of the doorway.
“I still hate you. But thanks,” he said.
I turned my back on him, because really, what was I supposed to say to shit like that?
“Get them home safe, Steve.”
“What about the jewel?” he growled. “Ish needs it.”
I bobbed my head. “I’ll get it if I can.”
Fuck, I was putting only a little strain on myself. Save Maks, find the sapphire in the Ice Witch’s crown. No problem, right?
Right.
I ran back the way I’d come, once more taking the stairs several at a time as I fought to think of another way to get my curse to work for me. How was I going to spin this?
“The last thing I need is to find Maks,” I whispered as I ran. “Don’t find Maks. He’s trouble and that means it’s going to be a trap, just like Darcy said.”
There was a moment, a pause where I could almost feel the Jinn’s power on my skin, like the heat of the desert sun as it cut through the sky and then it clicked into place, pushing me up and to the left. Toward Maks.
I might be a weak-ass kitty cat, but I had a weapon no one ever expected.
A curse that was turning out to be a fucking magic genie that only obeyed me.
Chapter Twenty
Merlin tapped the crystal ball in front of him, a smile on his lips. “Flora, look. She’s going back up to get that little shit, Maks.”
“Why are you grinning then?” Flora leaned over him and he dared to slip an arm around her waist. She didn’t stiffen or pull away from him, which was a decided improvement over the last time he tried to touch her. He rubbed his other hand along his jaw—Flora had a mean left hook.
“She’s using the curse to help her, and we know it will take two creatures of the desert to take the wall down. That’s what the oracle said. I thought it would be Steve and Zamira
, but perhaps . . . perhaps, it will be Maks the oracle meant.” He leaned closer so he could see the details in Zamira’s face—the fierce determination that lined her mouth and the fire in her eyes that blazed with green light. As a lion, she would have conquered the Jinn on her own . . . it was no wonder they cursed her. Not once but twice. The first curse had come at her birth . . . but she didn’t know about that one. Her brother did.
He wondered if Bryce would ever tell her the truth.
Zamira paused at the top of the steps and plastered herself to the wall as a troop of ice goblins raced by.
“You mean she’s actually using the curse to help her? Oh, goddess, that is going to piss Marsum off.” Flora frowned and gave a shiver. “That we don’t need. He’s already trying to wake the emperor.”
“No, we don’t need that at all.” Merlin glanced at her and tightened his arm a very small amount. As if giving comfort. Which he was, of course. “But I don’t think Maks will be reporting to anyone any time soon. He’s trying to escape.”
“Any idea who or what he really is?” Flora tapped the crystal ball and it shifted to show Maks facing off with the Ice Witch.
Merlin let out a slow breath. “I have my suspicions, but they don’t fit with what I know of his kind. Assuming his kind is even what he is.”
“Riddles, you know I hate them,” Flora grumped and, merciful heavens, she leaned into him a little, a sigh slipping past those luscious lips of hers. “Just like I hate games, Merlin.”
She pushed his arm off her waist. “What are we going to do?”
“At this point, there is nothing we can do,” he said. “She’s on her own now. If she can take down the Ice Witch, or at least dethrone her, then there is a chance the wall will begin to crumble.”
Flora gave a nod and turned her attention back to the crystal ball. The real issue was far larger than Merlin was letting on. Flora would be pissed as a wet hen if she figured out that taking the Ice Witch on was only the first part of breaking the wall. The first part and the least dangerous.
He sighed. “You can do this, little cat. You have to or we’re all doomed and the emperor will wake.”
The minute the emperor woke and found the world he’d built between the Western and Eastern Walls was crumbling, there would be hell to pay in the most literal of senses.
Chapter Twenty-One
I crouched in the shadows of the hall. The Ice Witch’s castle was about as cold as her name, and without my thick cloak, the sweat had begun to freeze on my skin even though I was burning energy at a rapid pace.
For a moment, I wished Lila was with me. Stupid, but true. I’d let the little dragon become part of my circle and I missed her weight on my shoulder and her voice above me. The speed at which I’d let her and Maks into my life told me everything. I wanted to trust those around me. But it wasn’t a good idea and this was not the time to be missing Lila, I needed to focus. Maks had come to find me and that was worth something more than a friendship cast aside. The thing was, I kept looking around for her, as if she would show up and announce she’d been kidding. That she had been wrong to leave.
Straight across from me was a pair of double doors that had been locked from the outside with a bar, and when I say a bar I mean a big fucking bar. The chunk of wood probably weighed three hundred pounds and was easily twelve feet long. And I had to get through it to reach Maks.
To get to the Ice Witch.
Merlin’s words came back to me about getting the jewel. Steve’s words about getting the jewel. There’s still time to get the stone while you’re at it.
I sucked the inside of my lower lip and bit down on the skin. “Don’t get cocky,” I whispered as I skulked across the hallway, looking each direction for more goblins. They seemed to have all buggered off. Which seemed strange considering the attack was coming from the inside.
A woman’s scream of absolute fury ripped through the air, making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
I ran toward the doors and got the bar on my shoulder. I was not a lion shifter, and I didn’t have their strength. But Maks was in trouble. I drew a big breath, put my hands under the bar and lifted with my legs and arms. The bar shifted upward not quite to the top of the hook holding it in.
“Come on, you fucker!” I growled the words as I fought with the three-hundred-pound chunk of wood. My legs began to shake, my arms were already there, vibrating as the weight pressed down on me.
“Little help?” a voice called from the open window across from me.
I dropped the wooden bar with a boom back into the hooks.
Lila sat in the window, right on the ledge.
I didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “Don’t just sit there, Maks is in trouble.”
Lila shot over to the bar and I set myself up again. “On three,” I said. “One, two—”
Another scream echoed from inside the room, only this time it was Maks, his voice torn with pain.
We pushed together, lifting the bar high enough to slip it over the bars that held it on. It fell to the floor with a crash and before I could even catch my breath I pushed on the big door, shoving it open.
I needn’t have worried about catching my breath. The scene in front of me did it all on its own. Maks was on his knees, his dirty blond head bowed, hands flat on the stone, blood pooling around him as it dripped from his face. The Ice Witch stood over him, a long staff in her hand. The top of the staff glowed with a blue sapphire that drew my eyes even over the blood on the floor. I knew . . . that was the stone we needed. But not unless I could get Maks out first.
“Hey, bitch witch, we need to have a chat. Woman to woman, as it were.” I snapped the words out as I grabbed the flail from my back, my decision made. I would use it, and that would be that. My skin crawled with anticipation as she turned her gaze on me.
“Ah, so the littlest lion arrives at last.” She smiled as she spoke and turned fully toward me, ignoring Maks. He didn’t move from his position as though perhaps he was frozen there.
I made myself smile. “Listen. Here’s the deal. Me and my friends are going to leave, and you’re going to let us.”
Her tall form swayed with her laughter. “And what makes you think I would do that?”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t.” I continued to smile and it became a real smile the more I spoke. “Because I’ve already killed your Wolf and your Bear, so really, how bad can you be if a little old me could do that? Perhaps you’re just full of shit, not all that ice power everyone seems to think you’re full of.” The words were unstoppable and I could see the rage lighting up her features which only pushed me harder. “I mean, come on. Ice? Cold? Easily defensible. Get a coat. Light a fire. Wolf? Kill it with a cat. Bear? Push it over on its fat ass like a turtle on its back. I mean even your White Raven was easy to avoid by merely staying close to a tree, and your ice goblins were fucking pitiful. Like little children scared of the dark.”
From above me Lila was whispering fast. “No, don’t make her angry, that’s not a good idea.”
But it was the only idea I had. “You see, the thing is, I don’t want to leave. I like it here. I’m never leaving. I’m going to stay here and you’re going to let me. This is going to be my home, and you’re going to allow it.”
Her eyes slid to a narrow slit. “You are cursed.”
“Well, yes, that’s fairly common knowledge.” I began spinning the flail, feeling the sparse weight of it, feeling the handle warm against my skin. Using the metal spikes was going to suck the life right out of me.
Her grin caught me off guard. “And if I remove the curse from you? What then?”
Oh shit. Time to think fast.
“You can’t. Only a Jinn could remove this curse,” I said.
She waved a hand at Maks. “Excellent, then, that I have a Jinn in my thrall.”
Nothing else could have stopped me in my tracks like those words. I railed against them internally while I spoke like a normal supe not breaking inside. Not
thinking of the man who’d held me against the cold, the man my heart had stumbled for.
“No, Maks is not a Jinn.” He’d kissed me goodbye, he cared for me, he fought to help me survive. No Jinn would have helped a lion shifter like that.
“He is. He was trying to escape, but he needed my permission. The dragons already denied him, and, of course, his own father would never let him go.” She slid back to him and ran a hand into his hair, grabbing a handful of it. “Isn’t that right, Maks?”
His eyes swept to mine. “Zamira, this isn’t how it looks.”
The urge to vomit rolled through me so strong, I could barely hang onto standing upright. “I swore I’d help you escape this wall,” I said softly. “And I, at least, keep to my word.” He hadn’t come back for me at all. He’d come to speak to the witch, to beg her for safe passage.
“Remove the curse from her, Jinn.”
“I can’t,” he said. “It would kill her to remove it now.”
The Ice Witch laughed. “Perfect then. I said remove it, slave!”
Maks’s head bowed to the ground and he shook all over, fighting whatever spell held him. Lila shot forward but the Ice Witch flicked her fingers at the tiny dragon and a shot of ice slammed into her form, sending her tumbling over and over through the air until she hammered against the wall.
I had to do something and fast, or we were all going to die. “You’re a fucking coward.”
The Ice Witch spun to face me. “You are a fool.”
“A coward and a weak-willed witch who has others do her dirty work. You can’t even kill me by yourself. You have to use a Jinn to do it? What kind of witch are you? A weak, silly girl who found a spell book, I bet. I bet you didn’t even come from a long line of witches. At least, I’ve got that going for me. I might not look like a lion, but I’ve got the blood in my veins to prove it.”
“Then we shall see that blood,” she screeched like a fucking banshee and came at me, the air around us icing over so fast, it took my breath away. I would only get one shot at this, of that I was sure. I ran toward her, spinning the flail fast and hard, prepping to spin it into her.
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