“It’s the truth,” he said as the horses started forward, slowly. “We might not like it, but we face odds that are very much not in our favor. With little to no allies.”
That drew silence from her, but she didn’t take her hand out of his. A smile quirked his lips. “Who knew it would take this,” he waved at his head, tapping it with one finger, “to get you to hold my hand.”
She gave him a little tug. “Don’t think I won’t push you out of the saddle if you irritate me.”
“That was a pull actually,” he pointed out. Flora huffed and let go of his hand with a flick of her wrist.
He sighed. “I think you should leave me, Flora. I think you should go—”
“Where, where would I go?” she threw at him. “There is nowhere else, Merlin. Your father, when he is freed, will make sure that we are dealt with. We stop him, put him to sleep again, or whatever we have to do, or this world is done for.”
“I know,” he said. “I know.” But in his head, all he could see were the things those visions had shown him. The same thing over and over.
Of Zamira freeing the Emperor and standing at his side.
He swallowed hard, his heart tearing into pieces as the obvious decision stood in front of them. They either rode after Shara, saved her, and tried to stop Ishtar, or they rode to Zamira and tried to keep her from freeing the Emperor.
But which was the right path?
He looked at Flora and sighed. “We have a decision to make.”
That was what was needed . . . but the world around him blinked out and he was in the dreamscape without meaning to be there.
Ishtar stood in front of him, her face bruised and battered, her body wounded, but she stood there with a wicked gleam in her eyes and the stones she’d gathered glowing from within her body.
“You are mine now, Merlin.”
Only one thing to say.
“Shit.”
And then his world went dark.
18
Zamira
The clumping along of Maggi’s camel, Demon, below me was jarring, jolting, horrific, and more than once, I thought about puking over the side of the beast. But really, there wasn’t a lot in my belly, not much left of me at all.
In letting Marsum go and setting him free from the cuffs, I’d condemned myself to death. I was an idiot thinking that whatever conglomeration of Maks was left in there had meshed sufficiently to convince Marsum that he loved me enough to save me. I wanted to believe it too badly, enough that I’d gambled my life on that belief.
Gambled and lost.
“You just had to do it, didn’t you? Why, why, when I gave most of my magic to create those cuffs?” Maggi muttered as she whacked Demon with a quirt.
“Yes,” I said. “You said it, we need Marsum to make it through this, and if he’s here by force then we can never trust him. And we have to be able to trust him. The market—”
“I know. But I thought if he had more time with you, with us, that I would be able to convince him . . .”
She mumbled something, but my head was fuzzy with all the pain rocketing through me and the nausea so close on its heels. I probably should have been more worried, or upset, or afraid, but the thing was I was almost looking forward to dying.
No more pain, no more hurt. No more worrying about anyone else. No more wondering if the world would be saved, or the Emperor freed. Someone else could do the job, someone else could put the lives of those they loved on the line.
I closed my eyes as Maggi pulled Demon to a stop. “Zam, I need you awake, and I need you awake now.”
I opened my eyes. “I wasn’t asleep.”
“You’ve been out for the last nearly two hours and I don’t believe we have much time left in you.” She slid off Demon first and then pulled me down.
I could barely stand, but using Demon, I could keep my balance. “What?”
“We have to cross the sand to get to the Wyvern.”
I looked around. Ahead was a rolling body of water that could have been the ocean the way the waves crashed over sand. The sound of waves on the sand, the distant smell of salt and fresh air, the call of a sea bird. But between us and that was a hell of a lot of sand.
And ophidians, a hell of a lot of them too.
The sand writhed with the fuckers, their bodies humping up and down, tails flicking out with a burst of sand here and there like the spray of a whale. There was no telling how many of them there were, only that every inch of ground ahead of us moved. “What am I supposed to do?”
“We’ll send Demon in one direction. The snakes will chase him down, and then we will cross. Your horse, at least, kept up, and we can double on him.” Maggi hefted one of my arms over her much higher shoulders so the tips of my toes dragged in the sand to where Balder stood, breathing hard. Sure, he’d kept up, but barely.
“We won’t make it. Not double. Soon as they hear his hoofbeats, a single camel won’t save us,” I said.
“It is your only chance, so we will take it!” she snapped, shaking me.
“I should have trusted you more,” I said. “Sorry about that.” My words were slurred as I slumped. “Hard to trust in this world, hard to know who is on your side. I think Merlin is trapped by Ishtar.”
She jerked as if I’d slapped her.
A whoosh of wings cut through the air and then Lila was there as if she’d never left, sitting on my shoulder and breathing hard. “Wait, just wait.” She grabbed me tightly around my head, squeezing me. “There is a better chance than the Wyvern.”
Maggi gasped and turned to look behind us. I wobbled and turned my head, not sure that what I was seeing was correct.
Batman raced toward me, his coat slick with sweat and foam from trying to keep up with the damn camel. His rider pulled him to a stop, slid off, and stalked toward me. Lightning danced in those pretty blue eyes. The closer he got, the more the air charged around us, his magic swirling up and around his lower limbs in a black mist I knew too damn well.
“Damn us both,” he snapped as he grabbed me and pulled me away from Maggi. She gasped again but let me go.
His fingers burrowed into my hair, and that was all that held me up as he kissed me. I caught some of my weight, hanging onto his biceps, digging my fingers in for traction. His mouth was hot and demanding and the magic that shot through me felt like I was being swallowed whole by the desert sand, the individual grains branding me as theirs, calling me home.
Desert born, desert cursed, desert loved.
No matter what else happened in my life, this was who I was, and who I would always be—a queen of a lion pride, an alpha, a fighter for justice. The fire in me burned, hot, hotter, till the power of the stone was pushed down and away, pinned beneath the magic that was the Jinn and their jewel.
My mind swirled with magic that was not my own, and he was there, holding me together, taking my pain into himself, spreading out the power of the gemstone so I could function—again. Only this time there were no cuffs, no one was forcing him. He did this on his own.
Maks had done this. Maks was still fighting for me. And maybe Marsum was fighting for me too.
I wrapped my arms around him and held onto him as though he were the life raft in a boiling ocean storm. My own magic opened and I let it flood me, let it go where it wanted. And it wanted him.
The two magics twined about one another, and I saw them in my mind’s eye, wrapping the tendrils tighter and tighter until they were totally merged. The black mist of the Jinn, and my magic that glittered silver and gold. The tighter the magic wove, the tighter his arms locked around me, until he was crushing me to his chest. Mind you, my arms were around him too, and I was not about to let go. Maks had done this, and I would hold onto him as long as I could.
Slowly, ever so slowly the world came back into focus, though not that well, I’ll admit. I was still a bit wobbly, but that could be because of the raging lust rushing through my veins. Marsum pulled back enough that we weren’t kissing, but our lips to
uched as he spoke. “We are tied. You can’t die.”
“Um, thanks?” I tipped my head back so I could look at him. “I mean, I could still die.”
His lips twitched. “Fair enough. But I will do what I can to keep you alive.”
“Very sweet,” Maggi drawled, breaking the moment into tiny pieces. “But we have an ocean of ophidians to cross. Regardless of how we look at this, we cannot move farther south without dealing with them.”
Marsum let me go, but there was reluctance in every movement of his body, in every flick of his muscles. To be fair, I was not in a hurry to release him either. The feel of him in my arms and his mouth on mine were too good, too right to just let it go without any lingering.
I turned back to the ophidians and cleared my throat. That much magic, that much lust and undercurrent of my heart and Maks’s was no small thing to just act like it hadn’t happened. But I was going to try. I cleared my throat again. “Are you sure the Wyvern is there, on the other side? In the water?” It looked like what I’d seen in the dreamscape, but I saw no eyes peering out of the water at me.
“Yes.” Maggi and Marsum spoke in tandem.
“Maybe we can just use the edge of his territory to keep the ophidians at bay?” I said, because there was no energy left in me for another fight. Almost dying did that to a girl.
“We can try,” Marsum said. “But remember the territorial part? He makes dragons look like pussy cats.”
“Shit,” Lila and I whispered together.
I didn’t want to sacrifice any of us to get across the sand to the water, but the water was our only hope. In large part because there was no guarantee that once near the water the ophidians would fuck off. I mean, I hoped because the sand would be wet, thick, and full of water that they would, but there was no way of knowing.
On my back, the flail pulsed, sending a flush of warmth through me. I reached for it before I could stop myself. My fingers brushed the handle, and I paused there, my mind clicking into overdrive, working to find a way through this obstacle. Sure, the flail was a powerful weapon, but only if I was alive. Only if I was still able to stand and not being flooded with poison.
If only we could fight our way through this, hell, even gorcs would be more acceptable than this clusterfuck. I blinked a few times and drummed my fingers on the handle as an idea took root and grew at a rapid rate. Maybe there was a way through this. What were the chances, though, that my idea would work?
“You got a pull on any gorcs around here?” I turned my head to Marsum.
His eyes narrowed and he turned his head from me to look to the north. “There’s a band not far from here. They aren’t mine, though. Wild gorcs are not easily tamed.”
I let go of the flail. “Well, don’t you worry about it. I just need to piss them off and they’ll come a-running.” I grinned. Tried not to think about ripping his clothes off and—
Lila tapped me on the head, and it was only then I realized she had been there the whole time, even when I’d kissed him and all that power had run through the two of us. “You piss off gorcs? There is no way sweet, soft little you could do that.”
Marsum snorted. “They do like her, don’t they?”
“Oh, I think they’d like to roast her on a spit.” Lila shook her head. “But of course, they have to catch her first.”
Marsum went to Batman and mounted. “Let’s go find them then. I assume you want them for bait?”
I nodded and pulled myself onto Balder. My arms and legs were still wobbly, but I wasn’t falling over so that was a massive improvement. Marsum led the way, and I followed on Balder, Lila clinging to me.
“You convinced him?” I asked her.
“Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel,” she said softly. “Hamlet.” She smiled. “You are my family, Zam. That was a risk what you did, and I was not about to let you go without a fight. And he isn’t either.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” I grimaced. “I thought he’d—”
“Make a grand gesture? Maks would throw him off and come to the front of his head and you’d be together again?” Her words were not sharp, but I felt them like blows, whether she meant them to be or not. “I’m not sure how much of Maks is in there. It was Marsum I appealed to.”
She hunched her back and tucked her head down. “Maybe Maks is gone. I hate that I am even saying it, but it is a possibility and I would be a shit friend if I just let you keep on believing in him when maybe you shouldn’t. Marsum was the one who agreed to come back and save you.”
I wondered what she’d said, but then realized I already knew.
A child.
Marsum wanted a child from me.
I gritted my teeth and leaned over Balder as he loped after Marsum and Batman. “I won’t give up.” Not yet, I wasn’t done. There were the crossroads and a curse to be broken there. Maybe the curse would be the curse of the Jinn.
“I know. I wouldn’t give up on Trick either if something happened to him like this.” She butted me with her head. “Then again, if he turned into my father, I might not say that. I might kill him myself to put him out of his misery.” I blew out a breath and she grabbed at me. “Sorry, I didn’t think before I said that. I know you would have taken Marsum’s head yourself if you could have.”
Ahead of us, Marsum and Batman disappeared over a hill. A throaty rumble and the stomp of big flat feet reached me, a sound I knew all too well. “What do you want to bet that he found more than a single band of gorcs?”
“Well, more are better, right? They’ll keep the snake things busy. Right?” Lila didn’t sound any more convinced than I felt.
I urged Balder up the hill and he took it in a few strides. At the top, looking down, the scene that spread out wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Three bands of gorcs looked up at me. I waved at them.
Marsum stood in the middle of them, his magic reaching out like the tendrils of a fabled sea monster, each one touching a gorc. Within minutes, they all stood quietly with their heads down and their breathing slow as if they were sleeping. Marsum stood there, snapped his fingers and barked at them in gorc.
“Fravorsh. Grlort blashk.”
“Say that ten times fast,” Lila said.
I watched carefully, waiting for the gorcs to break rank, waiting for them to turn and attack me. But they didn’t, they just marched up the stone hill, past me, and toward the sand of the ophidians.
Marsum and Batman were the last ones up the hill. “A number of the gorcs were mine, so easy enough to turn them and convince the others,” he said casually, but he was sweating and his mouth was tight.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
I didn’t like the way he wouldn’t look at me. What was his game? Was he going to turn on me in the middle of all this? I couldn’t help but tense my hands on the reins. As long as Marsum was there, in Maks’s body, and as much as it killed a part of me, I would never fully trust him.
The only problem with that was I needed to trust him to get us through this. Crap on a camel’s ass, this was a sticky situation if there ever was one.
Lila snickered. “I’m stealing that. Also, you know you mutter a lot when you’re all wound up?”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said.
We were drawing close to the sand, and Marsum had the gorcs lined up along the edge between stone and loose ground. The ophidians were quiet and the sand was still, but I had no doubt they were there waiting for us to take a single step onto the soft sand.
“When you get to the water, ride in,” Marsum said. “The ophidians can’t handle the water through the ground so we should be okay. Hang a hard right, keep the water on your left.”
I twisted in my saddle to look at him. “Should be?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never faced them before in these numbers.” He winked at me. “But just think, at least you and your precious Maks would die together then.”
That was a new jab.
He barked a sudden order at the gorcs and they launched into action, running onto the sand right along the edge of the stone. Their big flat fleet made a thunderous staccato, enough that it should pull the ophidians away and mask our own footsteps. They were a quarter mile away and running hard when the first of them went down onto the sand. The other gorcs didn’t notice they’d lost someone. That was the power of Marsum and the Jinn riding them, making them do as he wanted. I shuddered.
We watched as the plan began to unfold, and just as we’d hoped, the ophidians went for the bait. The gorcs went down, one after another, and then they began to fight back, making even more noise.
“Now!” Marsum yelled as the gorcs and ophidians tangled up a half a mile away from us. It had to be enough.
I hissed at Balder and he leapt forward, plunging across the line between solid ground and soft, and I held my breath, waiting for a strike to happen. But it didn’t come, and I urged him even more.
A quick glance to my right, though, showed me what I feared. Not all of the ophidians had been fooled.
A swarm of them swept through the sand, straight for us. Ten, I could see ten of them in the waving lines of their bodies. “Faster!” I yelled.
Demon stumbled and threw Maggi off his back. She hit hard, her head bouncing against the ground. She didn’t get back up. Shit.
She’d tried to save me from myself.
Tried to help me bring Maks back.
Fought to keep Ishtar away from me.
She was not my enemy.
I did the only thing I could.
I leapt off Balder, pulled my flail, and put myself between Maggi and the ophidians.
19
The ophidians didn’t slow now that I was on the ground; their armored bodies whipped through the sand faster, if I were to guess. “Lila, take the high ground, call it out for me!”
“Zam, don’t you dare get bit!” she yelled as she shot into the air, spun and stared down at me. “Three in the lead, the one to your right is going to circle you.”
Wyvern's Lair (Desert Cursed Series Book 5) Page 16
