Home > Dragon's Ground (Desert Cursed #2)(16)

Dragon's Ground (Desert Cursed #2)(16)
Author: Shannon Mayer

Blue and silver scales, and seemingly giant violet eyes came into view, then a familiar weight settled on my chest. Lila grabbed at my face with her tiny claws, squishing my cheeks. “You’re alive! Look, she’s alive!”

I groaned and tried to sit up. But between Lila’s weight, as little as it was, and the spinning inside my skull, the attempt ended with me puking to one side. The sounds of strangled goats continued, and I made myself look at the chaos around me.

Kiara had shifted and stood between me and the two satyrs who were arguing violently. Shit, who knew that female satyrs were so damn big? She was easily eight feet tall and three hundred pounds of pissed off half-goat woman.

I lifted a hand to my skull and my fingers came away sticky with blood. “What did she hit me with? A spiked club?”

“Wooden spoon,” Lila said.

A wooden spoon. Who the hell used a wooden spoon as a weapon? I groaned and pushed to my knees. Lila swept into the air, giving me room. I wobbled and leaned against Balder who’d not left my side. I clung to the saddle, the shouting between the two satyrs and the roaring of Kiara making me want to pull my own head off.

“ENOUGH!” I shouted the word and instantly regretted it, swaying with the force of my gorge as it climbed my throat. I clutched at the side of my head, but blessedly there was silence after that. I looked up to see all three of the noise makers staring at me. “Kiara, shift back. I need your help.”

The words would have been difficult to say another time, but not then. My head hurt too much to let my pride get in the way of help. Kiara shifted, and I pinned a look at Marcel. “I’ve saved your ass twice now; get your friend to help us.”

“You, I will not help you!” Rev’s wife screeched, and she came at me with the wooden spoon. Before I could do anything, Lila shot between us and let out a miniature roar.

“Damn it, Stella, these are my friends and I will pour my guts out on you if you don’t let them come in out of the rain.” Lila held her ground even while Stella held her wooden spoon high. Rain, was it still raining? I barely felt it through the throb of my head and the horrid taste of bile on my tongue.

This was where Lila had been hiding? With the female satyr?

This was quite the standoff if I ever saw one. Something like a laugh slid out of me and then Kiara was there, helping me stand, and we were being hustled out of the rain and through a door big enough for Stella to stand upright to pass with plenty of clearance.

“Horses, someone take care of the horses.” I handed the reins to Marcel and then I was out in the black night of unconsciousness again. I knew I’d heal, that wasn’t the concern. The concern was how fast I’d manage to heal. Because there were gorcs behind, and dragons ahead. And Bryce needed me to find him somewhere in between.

If Steve got to him first, the dragons would be the least of my brother’s worries. I didn’t doubt what Steve had said before I left—that he thought my brother and I should have been left to die.

And with Bryce on his own, I had no doubt Steve would take advantage of that fact.

Speaking of dragons. . . Lila curled up in the crook of my neck as I came to. I was on the floor, and my clothes had been stripped off me, but at least I was dry and warm.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. I turned my head slowly, her words confusing me.

“What for? You got us out of the rain. You kept Stella from smashing me with a wooden spoon again. What a psycho that one is.” I reached up and laid a hand on her back.

“I’m sorry for leaving, for betraying you at the very end. There was no other choice for me, you must know that. I was still not in control of myself.”

Right, there was that. Maybe I was finally gaining some wisdom in my later years, but I understood her better than she probably realized. I patted her back. “You thought you were doing the right thing. I get it. I really do. Besides, it’s turned out. . . ” I wanted to say it had turned out okay, but I wasn’t so sure about that. At the moment, things were looking pretty ugly, but that had little enough to do with Lila leaving my side.

She buried her face under my hair, tiny sobs wracking her body. “They cut me off, Zam. They cut me off. I’m no longer a dragon. I can’t feel them. I’m no longer bound to them at all. They cast me out like I’m worthless.”

I kept my face as neutral as I could as I tried to absorb this new information. She went on, the words bubbling out of her. “I was coming to find you when the rainstorm hit, and I was blown off course. I saw the Jinn, and I think. . . I think they have Maks.”

Of course, she didn’t know the truth about that bastard. I put a hand to the back of my head, feeling the lump there, wincing as my fingers slid over it. “He’s one of them, Lila. Maks is a Jinn.”

She flicked her tail violently from side to side, thrashing the air. “No, they had him staked out, face-down in the mud. You don’t do that to your own unless you hate them.” She lifted her head so we were nose to nose. “I know you care for him. I know he cares for you. Maybe we could go get him. We could be like before, just the three of us.”

Just the three of us against the world. It would have been simpler if Maks had really been a human.

I knew she was in part trying to keep me from asking too much about being cut off from the other dragons. But her words forced me to consider what she was saying. “Even so, he doesn’t want us in his life. He left, Lila. He’s trying to escape the wall.”

Those big eyes of hers blinked a few times. “Maybe he’s got a good reason for trying to get away, Zam. I left because I was trying to protect you; what if he was doing the same? We need to save him. We need to give him that chance.”

I sat up, holding the blanket to me. There was no wave of nausea, so score one for me. “We do not need to save him, Lila. He chose to leave.”

“So did I,” she whispered. I looked at her, sitting beside me.

“You also chose to come back,” I pointed out.

It was at that moment Marcel decided to chime in. “He can’t come back if he’s tied down in the mud.”

I rolled my eyes, but Kiara’s voice made me cringe.

“Maks is a Jinn?”

Well, shit, that wouldn’t go well once we were back at the Stockyards. Everyone thought Maks was a human, and he’d let it slip that he’d been sent to the Stockyards to kill Steve and Bryce. But in the six months he’d lived with us, he’d been nothing but a model servant and human. There hadn’t been a single “accident” in all that time that would’ve left me suspicious of his behavior. Had he been telling the truth or just lying once more.

“Kiara, hand me my clothes.” I pointed at my drying garments by the gigantic fire.

“Not until you tell me the truth. Were we living with a Jinn?” The horror and fear that laced her words was not surprising. The fatigue it gave me, though, was.

“Yes. As far as I know,” I said. “I think he was on the run from his own kind.”

She sucked in a sharp breath as she made her way to the clothing stretched out to dry, picking up my pants and shirt. She tossed them to me and I caught them in midair, pulling my shirt on with only a low wolf whistle from Marcel.

“Nice rack.”

“Shut up,” I growled.

“I thought shifters liked being nude.” Marcel grinned at me from across the way.

Kiara nodded. “We do, but she’s not really a shifter. Not like the rest of us.”

She might as well have slapped me across the face. Even Marcel’s eyebrows shot up. “Miss Preggars a friend of yours?”

I shrugged. “A child whose mouth runs away with her.”

Kiara blushed, and I pushed to my feet, yanking my pants on. They were mostly dry, which meant I’d been out a few hours. The house we were in was made of mud and straw, and through the shuttered window, I heard the rain still pounding down.

I frowned. Pounding. . . the rain didn’t fall like that, like the sounds of galloping hooves.

“Fuck, the horses are loose.” Something had to be chasing them to send them into a gallop in the rainstorm that still thundered around us. I ran out of the house barefoot. No one followed.

   
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