I climbed up to Maks’s shoulder once more, watching the dragon draw closer despite Balder’s speed. That big fucker—Prince, as Lila named him—was moving fast, and we were not going to make it. I could feel death hovering, laughing at me. Death had come more than once my way, and I’d always dodged him. Or her. Maybe it was a her; that would explain the grudge she held against me for escaping that first moment in life that should have ended me.
A memory tried to surge up through me and I pushed it away. Not now. The last thing I needed was a flashback to another time I’d been helpless to save those I cared about. I was not going there.
The brown dragon raced along the tree line, his body humping and undulating like a snake on legs. His eyes were locked on us and his mouth hung open, flashing a rather alarming number of teeth in row upon row.
“Hurry.” I breathed the word out and Maks put his boots to Balder. My horse leapt forward and bucked out and I cringed. “No boots, hiss at him.”
“Hiss?”
“Just do it!” I let out a hiss, drawing the sound out as hard as I could. Balder surged, and I could feel the panic in him and I felt bad for his mental state. But it was our only hope.
“You aren’t going to make it,” Lila said from above and then she was gone, shooting back the way we’d come.
The bigger dragon behind us laughed as I watched Lila fly straight up and over him. “Runt, what are you doing?”
“You leave them alone!” she screeched. My eyes locked on her above the brown dragon. Her body heaved and then a stream of sparkling green glitter poured from her mouth and landed right on his face, splashing across his eyes.
The reaction to the sparkle stuff she dropped was instantaneous. He flailed his head side to side with a roar that bent into the upper octaves until it was nothing but a shriek of pain that went on and on. Balder reacted, driving forward, plunging through the snow. He stumbled and went down on one knee and then was back up and racing forward again.
“Slow, some. He won’t be coming after us,” I said, sure I was right. Lila had saved us, but at what cost? Her people would know it was her.
Maks reached up and cupped my small body, but in doing so basically grabbed my ass. I let out a growl and he let go. “How do you know?”
“Lila just dropped acid on him,” I said.
As if my words had produced the little dragon, she appeared above us, and flew closer. The sparkling green clung to her lips. “You might want to roll in the snow or something, because I’ll be honest, I have mad respect for what you’ve got going on but I want none of it on me,” I said.
She nodded and dove into a snow bank and came out, sparkle free.
The thing was, I wasn’t surprised this journey was turning into a shit show of epic proportions. That had always been the way, right from that first moment at the Oasis. If not for the ring I carried, though, it would have been a thousand times worse, that much I knew.
Moments later, we crossed the border into the Ice Witch’s territory. How did I know? Because the trees went from being green with the occasional bit of snow, to nothing but a blanket of white with ice crystals hanging from the tips of the trees. Even the temperature dropped so rapidly, the hairs inside my nose crinkled with ice. I sneezed and pawed at my face. As long as we only had one horse, I would have to stay small. A shiver rippled through me.
“You need my second cloak.” I looked up at Maks.
“I’m bigger than you.”
“It will fit, put it on. Then Lila and I can curl inside the hood.” I blinked up at him, daring him to challenge me. “You need our warmth and we need yours. That’s the only way this is going to work as long as we’re riding together.”
Those blue eyes of his filled with uncertainty, but he did as I said and pulled out the thick black cloak lined with fur. He swung it over his shoulders and Lila swooped down and stuffed herself into the hood the second he had it up.
“And where are you going?” he asked and I heard the concern in his voice.
“In with Lila.” I jumped up and tucked myself into his hood, my hood I should say, and set myself on his left shoulder. “This way we can discuss just what we’re going to do, how we’re getting in and out of the castle, get Darcy, and escape back to the Stockyards.”
He grunted. “A devil on one shoulder, an angel on the other is the normal way of things. Here, I’ve got two devils, I think.”
I didn’t want to grin but it was kinda funny. Lila snickered. “Be nice, or I’ll spit on you.”
He laughed which caught me off guard. I didn’t think he had it in him to take a joke that well, after how he’d reacted to me earlier. I almost wondered if he’d taken offense on purpose, so he could show off that he was stronger than me.
A shiver ran through me. He wasn’t like that. Then again, I’d always been told that humans were smarter than they looked.
“What is the plan then?” Maks asked.
“We let Steve take the lead through the Witch’s territory but stay close. He’ll draw the big guns to him and nobody will even notice us.” I tucked my legs so they dropped into the back of the hood and I hung over his shoulder, peering out at the world. If I concentrated, I could still feel that dark spirit tracking me. Which meant the Witch knew I was on her turf now. “If we stay close to him, the Witch will know he’s coming. She’ll send her guardians to him and he’ll have to deal with them. We’ll slip by then.”
“Ish needs the jewel,” Maks said slowly. “You have a plan for that I’m assuming?”
I smiled to myself as my plan began to form. “We’re going to get Darcy back, and with her safe, I’ll slip in and we’ll get that jewel too. Steve won’t know what hit him.”
And neither would the Ice Witch.
Chapter Ten
Now as plans go, keeping up with Steve and Kiara was no real problem. We caught glimpses of movement ahead of us through the trees, the swish of a tail, the flash of Kiara’s bright yellow cloak. The bigger problem would be making sure the Witch’s guardians didn’t end up coming at us first. But we were headed north, and the Wolf, in theory, should be coming south. At least, that was the hope.
“The White Wolf, you want to tell me about this mythical creature? Weaknesses, strengths, that sort of thing,” Maks asked. I rocked on his shoulder, my claws digging into his thick coat for balance.
“He’s not a real wolf as far as I know,” Lila said from the right side of the hood. “His howl can freeze a person and he has some ability to sense when anyone comes into his territory.”
Maks twisted his head toward Lila. “Are the dragons afraid of him?”
“They respect him, I suppose,” she said. “They know he would be backed up by the Ice Witch and her other two guardians.”
“What are the other two guardians?” Maks asked.
I grimaced. “If all goes well, we won’t even see them. But . . . the White Bear and the White Raven are the others. Each worse than the previous, which is why we don’t want to tangle with them at all. We want to use stealth to slip by and into the castle. We’re thieves, Maks, not fighters. And Darcy needs us to be the best thieves of all so we can steal her away.”
“Oh, good, for a minute there, I thought you were going to tell me we were going to have to face them one at a time,” he grumbled.
I batted his nose with a paw. “Have you seen me? I wouldn’t go in swinging even if I were a real lion shifter. That’s about as close to suicidal as you could get, going after the guardians.” What I didn’t want to tell Maks was that when we’d started out after the jewels years ago, there had been three teams. The third team had started with the Ice Witch’s realm and had never come home. We’d put off trying for her jewel as long as we could.
My heart twanged and I wondered if we would see some sign of them. Rushton, Lars, Petra . . . two lion shifters and a young mage. Petra was my cousin from a pride adjacent to our own. I shook my head. No, they were gone, long gone, and I knew there would be no coming back for them, not like there was for Darcy.
There was still a chance we could save her.