“Yes,” Marsum said, only it wasn’t Marsum’s voice. It was Maks. “You might have saved her, but you tied her to me. That’s not nice in the state I’m in.”
“Merlin’s idea,” she said softly, “but I agreed, not nice, but necessary. Because you will eventually face my sister, and I cannot, and you need the power of the Jinn on your side. Also, I know something even Merlin does not.” She put the bottle on the ground and stared at it. “You want to know what I know? Do you want to have the secret that is tearing its way out of me?”
We leaned toward her, all three of us, quiet, straining to hear what it was she had to say.
“Well, you can’t!” she snapped, anger flashing through her so brightly that even the horses startled with her explosion.
Lila snickered and even I had to cover my mouth. It all shouldn’t have been funny, but it was. Gods, it was funny. “Another secret? Like a secret baby?” I offered.
Maggi grimaced. “No babies.”
I opened my mouth and Balder whinnied. Maggi laughed. “It looked like you were the one neighing!”
I turned to look at my horse who frantically pawed at the ground. I stumbled to him and he did it again, then dropped his head and touched his leg where he’d been bitten. Where the ophidians had gotten him.
“Mount up.” I spat the two words out, grateful we hadn’t taken the gear off the two horses and Maggi’s camel. “Ophidians!”
That got Maggi and Marsum moving. Lila was passed out on the ground and I scooped her up into my arms. The night had fallen and we were going to be riding hard in the dark with no real idea of where we were going. No, that wasn’t right.
“Marsum. Lead the way,” I yelled as I scrambled into my saddle. As soon as I sat my ass down, Balder took off, partially unseating me. I took a moment to get myself together, then looked at Maggi and Marsum. The camel took a hard left, avoiding the ophidians as he took his rider up onto a rocky outcropping. Marsum and I, though, we were in the softer sand. Shit, this was going in the wrong direction, and fast. My head spun with the liquor, which wasn’t helping at all.
“This way!” he yelled, turning Batman to the right. Balder kept up easily and I kept looking back for signs of the ophidians cutting through the sand. Here and there in the darkness the ground behind us shifted, shimmering in the starlight. “Thirty feet behind,” I yelled.
“We’ll make it. There’s hard ground up there,” he threw back. My head was fuzzy, and I just let him lead. A few moments later, the sound of the horses’ hooves changed from the dull thud of running on sand to the sharp clang of iron shoes on hard rock. We slowed our pace and I twisted around to see the head of an ophidian watching me. Resting its lower jaw on the first part of the hard rock, it yawned, showing off its fangs and forked tongue before sliding back into the sand.
“Are they even trying to catch us?” I asked. Because they’d moved much faster before, I was sure of it. Then again, I was drunk this time so I could be wrong. Marsum slowed Batman to a walk and Balder easily caught up.
“Of course they are. Why wouldn’t they be?” He frowned at me like I was a fool.
I cradled Lila close to me and she farted in her sleep, then smiled like she damn well knew it. Crap, the țuică was playing havoc with my ability to think straight. Marsum seemed less bothered by it. To be fair, Maks had been the same way.
“Ophidian queen. Never has been one, so this is a new player, and someone fucking strong if they can control those goddamned monsters.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“You’ve tried?”
“And failed. They can’t be controlled. Or at least, I didn’t think they could be.” He pointed at a chunk of rock ahead that made up a bit of shelter. “We can wait here. It’ll take Maggi half the night to reach us, staying off the sand.”
I sighed, slid off Balder’s back and loosened his girth. “Good boy.” If he hadn’t warned us, those damn sand snakes would have had us for sure. Especially more than half cut that we were. Was. Is. I squinted as if that would help my brain function.
Things were fuzzy and I watched in amusement as Maks loosened the horses’ tack, fed them, and then set about putting a fire together. “Maggi will find us easier that way.”
“Thought you didn’t like her with the whole cuff thing.” I held Lila in my arms, partially wrapped in my cloak as she snored. He lifted his head, took one look at me and turned away. But not before I saw the way he swallowed, and how his eyes had widened. “What?”
“I don’t like her. But maybe she’ll come in handy.”
I put a hand to my head and a sharp pang coursed through me from the roots of my hair down through my body. “Ouch.” I went to my knees, still hanging onto Lila. Hands wrapped around my arms, pinning them to my sides.
“What is it? The drink or the magic?” He was grimacing, feeling the pain too but unable to pinpoint it any more than I could.
“I don’t know.” I tried to look up at him, but it was hard, and the world swam. Most likely the drink, but I kinda liked how worried he was about me, so I wasn’t saying that. Even if it was just to keep me alive so he didn’t die. I tried to smile, but my lips were tight and it came out like a grimace.
His hands slid up to my face, cupping it as he tried to flip my eyelids with his thumbs. “Knock that off,” I grumbled. But again, he had me at a disadvantage because I couldn’t put Lila down. I mean, I was on my knees. I could have but didn’t.
A teeny tiny part of me knew that if I put her down it would be like taking off a chastity belt. Hanging onto her reminded me I couldn’t throw myself at him. Him. Maks.
“Hi.” I blinked up at him, into those oh-so-blue eyes.
His lips quirked. “You are so smashed.”
My grin widened and his fingers softened on my face. “What’s my name?”
“Maks.” I leaned toward him and he dropped his head so that we were touching foreheads.
“No. That’s not my name.”
He couldn’t have sobered me up faster if he’d thrown another bucket of ice water on me. A flush of hot and cold rushed through my veins, and my damn eyes prickled with tears. “Yes, it is.”
His lips quirked up to one side. “You can keep telling yourself that, but he’s not strong enough to be in charge.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “He just has more to lose than you.” As soon as I said it, I knew those words were exactly the issue. I could be used against Maks, always me, always his heart. In my still somewhat inebriated state, I came up with the only solution that would work. I carefully laid Lila on the ground, feeling Marsum’s—no, Maks’s—eyes on me.
“What are you doing?”
“Proving a point.” I slid out of my cloak and laid it on Lila. She cooed in her sleep and burrowed into the borrowed warmth.
I turned on my knees to face him, grabbed him by the ears and dragged him to me. If I had magic, I was damn well going to try and use it to my advantage.
14
I can express no kinder sign of love, than this kind kiss.
That was all I could think as I clung to Maks for all I was worth. Maks, not Marsum. With my lips locked on his, I reached for whatever strange magic I had in me. Maggi had said the cuffs dampened my power too, but I had to try something. Maybe I could work around them?
Like the doorway I saw in my mind when I shifted shapes, there was another doorway next to it now, one that seemed to glitter and beckon to me. I opened it and the magic poured through me and into Maks.
Score one for the girl who didn’t know a thing about her own magic.
He grunted, maybe surprised, and then his arms were around me, the magic humming between us like the drone of a honey bee hive and about as lazy as a summer day. Curling through us, wrapping us in warmth and with all the love I had in me, I opened myself to it like never before.
Partly the alcohol was to blame, I’m sure, but also partly to blame was Maks. With him at my side, I was braver, bolder, and I believed in more than I could possibl
y have considered without him.
I couldn’t get enough of him. I couldn’t kiss him deeply enough, long enough. Like I was hungry for him in a way that couldn’t be satisfied. He groaned, or maybe I did. I’m not sure. His hands slid over my waist, under my shirt and along my ribs.
“You’re too skinny,” he mumbled as his lips left mine to trace a line of heat along my jaw and down my neck. The magic went with him and every touch tingled and danced. Yeah, that next groan was mine, for sure. I mimicked him, running my hands under his shirt and over skin that was flushed with heat and desire, muscles tensed and flickering with each brush of my fingertips. The need to pull clothes off and roll around naked on the bare ground was growing wildly out of control.
He bit at my collarbone, then lower, to the top of my breasts. I arched upward, his hands slid to the waist of my jeans and he yanked me forward so I was sitting on his lap, my legs around his waist.
“We’ve been here before,” I whispered right before I bit the side of his neck. He grunted, grabbed my ass and ground me against him.
“I know, and we never did get to see where this would lead.”
Maks, this was all Maks. The magic was doing something. I knew it was. Could I free him from the other Jinn? I slid my hands around his face and into his hair, holding his mouth to mine as if I were under water and he were my only way to breathe. Time slowed, but the magic didn’t. I’d opened that door again and I didn’t know what I was doing with it, only that it was giving me this moment with Maks.
“Fight him,” I whispered against his mouth. “Fight for me, Maks, for us.”
“He’ll hurt you,” he whispered back, following the words with another kiss that left me struggling to think straight.
“No, he won’t.” I rubbed my cheek against his, marking him as any good big cat would do to her mate. “He won’t hurt me.”
Maks’s lips brushed mine, fluttering kisses that were sweet and spicy and in every corner of me I knew him. “You don’t know that.”
The thing was, I did. The more I thought about it, about Marsum and all his interactions with me, I was almost certain of one thing. He wouldn’t hurt me if he could avoid it.
“He loves me.”
Well, that shouldn’t have slid out, or at least, not when I was enjoying Maks being with me, holding me. Maks pushed me back and stared at me. “What?”
Now was my turn to swallow hard. “As much as he can, I think he loves me.”
“No.”
Maks slid away and it was just me and Marsum once more. His hands tightened on me and he pulled me close, anger flashing in his eyes. “I don’t love you.”
You know when you look back on a moment and think, maybe I shouldn’t have done that? Yeah, this was one of those moments.
I lifted a hand, slowly, to his face. Without hesitation, he pushed his face against it, rubbing the stubble against my palm. “Liar.”
He froze as if he didn’t realize what he’d been doing, like he’d done it by accident. He all but threw me off his lap despite the rather obvious arousal he had going on, stood, and without another word, turned and stalked away into the darkness. Even knowing he couldn’t go far before being drawn back to me, a pang of worry slid through me. Because what if he could get away? What if that meant I would lose my last chance to bring Maks to the front of his mind to fight for me?
“Shit, you’re a fucking moron.” I put a fist to my head, seeing that glittering doorway in my mind’s eye. I slammed it shut and the magic in me turned off. Well, at least there was that now, a way to access the magic even if I didn’t know what the hell I was doing with it.
I scooped Lila up and went to lie between Balder and Batman. Curling around my little sister, I closed my eyes and begged the gods of sleep to bestow on me dreamless, safe dreams.
Sleep rushed over me too fast, and again, I could have blamed the țuică, but I doubted that was it.
I lay on the sand, still curled around Lila when I opened my eyes to the dreamscape.
“Fuck me,” I whispered. Maybe if I just stayed where I was, the Emperor wouldn’t notice me. I mean, who in their right mind would willingly go back to sleep so damn fast when they’d just had a run-in with that asshole in the dreamscape? No one. Except me.
Because I was a damned drunk fool.
What if I pretended to sleep? Maybe that would do the trick. I scrunched my eyes shut, thinking about Maks, and thinking about Marsum’s reaction to my words. I mean, Lila had pointed it out first, so maybe I could blame her, but I didn’t think so. Not with how he had looked at me.
Shock, but more like his own lightbulb had gone off, like he realized that I was right, and he was in love with me, and that meant I had the upper hand.
Thoughts in my head kept racing and the sound of sand crunching under feet made me want to tense. But I just lay there, trying to breathe normally, wanting everyone and everything to just go the fuck away and let me sleep.
“You think she’s still asleep?”
“Could be.”
That first one was Merlin. I almost rolled over to give him shit and tell him what I thought about all his damn schemes. But the other voice, I knew that one too.
Ishtar.
“I see your father finally convinced you to behave. How did he do it?” Ishtar asked.
“You get your brain rattled enough, you listen,” Merlin said. “What are we doing here exactly? And since when are you working with the Emperor?”
Her laughter tinkled through the air and my skin broke out in tiny pinpricks of sweat made of fear coursing through me. “Oh, you never guessed, did you?”
“Guessed what?” Merlin asked, and it was the question I was dying to know the answer to as well. What was she talking about?
Another step closer and a hand I knew brushed over my cheek. “I loved her like a daughter, because I lost mine. I loved her too because I knew she would be integral to my husband being freed one day. I saw it in every line of seers’ prophecy that she was tied to the Emperor and his freedom.”
Merlin gasped and I nearly echoed him. Fuck shit fuckity fuck holy shit on a camel goddess of the desert, was she saying what I thought she was saying?
Merlin stuttered enough for the both of us. “He . . . you . . . are you . . . working with the Emperor?”
“I never really stopped. I gave you my power all those years ago because I had to. You’d aligned too many of the strongest powers against us. Against him. I knew that I would have to bide my time to find those who could bring the jewels back to me. Someone who resonated with my power but couldn’t be seduced by the darkness.” She sighed and her hand brushed my head, petting my hair back. “Zamira was the only one who could bring the jewels to me.”
I wanted to recoil from her, to grab her hand and yell at her that she was one twisted bitch. How many lives had she ruined over the years?
“I almost had her mother,” she said softly. “Almost. But she slid from my grasp. Someone who loved her very much killed her to protect her from me. But Zamira, she has been mine from the beginning.”
Maks, Maks, Maks. In my head I called to him, begging him to wake me. Lila stirred in my arms but didn’t wake. I clung to her, knowing that if she woke now, we were both screwed.
“And what now with her? You cannot mean to harm her here.”
“No. She has tasks ahead of her that I need her to complete. You think I don’t know, but I know.” That hand I’d never thought would be raised to me in anger or malice pulled away from me. What tasks? I wasn’t working for her. I wasn’t doing what she wanted.
“And that is?” Merlin prompted.
“Never mind. You have your tasks. I have mine. Not that you’ll remember yours when you wake.” She laughed. “You are broken, Merlin, and you don’t even know it. Pity, I always thought you were smarter than this. But you threw your lot in with the wrong crowd as so often you have done before.”
“I did not,” he grumbled, but the effort seemed half-hearted as if he knew sh
e was right.
And all I could think was that I needed to wake up.
“I’m going to give her a nudge in the right direction,” Ishtar said. “My husband’s power does not seem to work on her mind, but she cannot deny me. She could never truly deny me.”
A nudge. I needed to wake now.
If Maks couldn’t hear me, maybe Marsum could.
Marsum! In my head, I shouted his name and held my breath.
Ishtar put her hand to my head and a fire lit inside my skull. A fire to obey her no matter the cost. A fire that wanted to burn away who I was and make me hers in truth.
Words cut through me, started to solidify—
And then I was being yanked awake, shaken hard enough that my teeth rattled.
“Is she in my head?” I yelled the words before my eyes were even open. “Marsum, is she in my head?” Panic laced my body and I scrambled to my feet, grabbing at his hands and shoving them against my head.
His fingers tightened and the fire cooled as though water was once more being poured over me.
“You’re fine,” he said. “Stop it, you’re fine.”
I was crying, I think, at least that was what the shaking felt like. “She was burning me away. She was taking away who I am. Is it me? Am I me?”
Panic like I’d never known left me shaking, broken out in a wild sweat that was hot and cold at the same time.
“I won’t let that happen.” His mouth was against the side of my head and he breathed those words into my hair. “I won’t let her take you.”
Those words, damn it, and then he pulled me into his arms, tightened them around me. I clung to him, knowing that for the moment, he had me and wouldn’t let Ishtar’s power into my head.
“Shouldn’t the flail have sucked her energy in?” I dug my hands into the back of his shirt, hanging onto him and the power running through the two of us. Again, he was the solid rock in the wild waters bashing into me.
“If it wasn’t a direct attack, it might not have been triggered.” He blew out a breath and went to push me away. I held on, though, and after a moment, he sighed and gave in, kept his arms around me, his hands splayed on a hip and shoulder as if to touch as much of me as possible. What would it mean to make Marsum love me? Would he give Maks back?
Wyvern's Lair (Desert Cursed Series Book 5) Page 13
