I kept replaying everything through my head, trying to see if I could come up with a different outcome to the night. But no matter how I looked at things, the outcome we had was actually the best with the most people still alive.
Lila’s tail stuck out of one of the Jinn’s bags. “Lots of food here, Zam. What do you want?” She pulled something out and held it up for me to inspect. It was a hunk of meat of indeterminate origin. I tended to steer clear of mystery meat, no matter how hungry I was.
“What kind of meat is it?”
“Cow.”
I nodded and took the heap of flesh and tossed it onto the grill over the fire. We scrounged until we found spices, and best of all, a bottle of țuică. The plum liquor made Lila giddy, and she made little grabby hands motions as she begged me to open it for her. I debated giving her any after the last time, but finally let her have a small amount. I poured a shot into the bottom of a clean plate and she lapped it up, humming happily to herself, her wingtips vibrating. I tipped the bottle back and took a sip. Rich and sweet, it slid down my throat a little too easily. I put the cork in and set it aside. “Not too much, you remember the hangover last time?”
“I remember you and Maks getting it on last time you got into it.” She grinned and then the grin slid right off her face. “Sorry.”
I shrugged. I didn’t have the energy to be angry with Maks or to care that she was teasing me.
“We can rest here after we eat, but not too long. Dragon’s Ground is still a good four days away, and. . . it’s going to be a real bitch to find Bryce once we are there.” I flipped the meat over, cooking both sides evenly.
Lila frowned. “The healer he seeks, she’s deep into the hold. The last I knew, she kept very near to the wall itself. She doesn’t like to be found, Zam. Even for another dragon to find her would be tough.”
Awesome. That was just what I wanted to hear. “Are the dragons done with whelping then?”
“Close. It’s actually a good time to try to sneak in. The females will be exhausted with the efforts of laying eggs, and the males will be hiding from their tempers. That and there is a contingent at the Ice Witch’s castle, spreading the numbers over a wider territory.”
That all sounded a little too good to be true. I raised an eyebrow. “And what is the drawback to all that?”
She grimaced and scratched at the dirt a few times with the tip of her claw, doodling designs. “Well, that means there will be more warning spells, and traps set up because of all those things. I can help you avoid them but. . . I don’t know about your brother, if he’d know what to look for. He could be already dead, Zam. You need to be ready for that.”
I pulled the steak off the grill and onto a plate, cutting it in half. I put the smaller piece on Lila’s plate and picked up the remaining chunk in my hands and bit into it. Warm, but bloody.
Perfect. I couldn’t help the purr that rumbled through me and it caught me off guard. Lions didn’t purr, and I didn’t like letting that side of me out because it labeled me for what I was clearly. A lesser cat. One that couldn’t roar, but I could damn well purr with the best of them. I grinned around a mouthful of meat and knew that the țuică was hitting me harder than I thought. It was the empty belly. Getting food into me would be the best cure for the țuică.
I let the purr rumble; who the hell cared? Lila hummed, I purred, and we ate our blue rare steaks contentedly side by side. Nothing better to a couple carnivores than a steak that was so rare, you could barely see the grill marks.
A horse nose bumped into my back. I growled and swatted a hand back at my horse. “Go away, Balder. You don’t like steak.” My hand hit something that was flat and hard. . . a man’s chest, not a horse’s nose.
“But I do. Is there any left?” Maks asked as he stepped into the firelight. His eyes widened and his eyebrows shot up as he stared at me. I could only imagine what I looked like. I could feel the blood running down my chin, and my mouth was full, and I don’t mean a little full. I mean stuffed like a chipmunk going crazy to store nuts for the winter full, barely able to chew full.
I had to work to swallow enough meat so I could respond and still ended up talking out the side of my mouth. “You want it cooked more?”
He bobbed his head once. “Yeah, thanks.”
I tossed what was left of my steak onto the grill. What the hell was happening? Was I asleep? Was this a dream? Maybe it was a drunken dream. That was a possibility. I looked at the bottle of liquor that was still half full. How potent was this stuff, anyway?
Lila tapped the țuică bottle. “He came back for this, I think.” And then she giggled.
Maks leaned around, saw the bottle, and then a small smile tripped over his mouth. “I think I’ll pass.”
Smart. It was smart because Lila and I were laughing our asses off, already half cut from the liquor. Distantly, I knew it was partly the stress of the last twenty-four hours and the lack of food in my belly, the injury to my body, and then the alcohol just pushed me over the edge. Something had to give.
“You aren’t going to ask me why I came back?” Maks interjected as our hyena-like laughter finally subsided.
I blew out a breath, making a raspberry noise, and then shrugged. “I don’t know, lonely?”
Lila bobbed her head and then shook it hard side to side so hard, I thought she would fall over. “Horny, I think,” she said.
My smile slid, and I stared at her. “He did not come back here because he’s horny, Lila.” I turned to him, the țuică making me bold, forgetting that I should probably be as horrified as Maks by her assessment of his decision. “Did you?”
He closed his eyes, and I watched in fascination as his skin pinked up in the firelight, my grin coming back full force. “Oh, we made him blush. That’s cute. You’re cute when you blush, Maks.”
“I came to repay my debt, Zam. You saved my life. The least I can do is help you with finding the Dragon’s jewel.”
Right, of course. He would be that guy who had the honor thing going for him. Wasn’t sure I liked that reason. So, I gave him an out. “We aren’t looking for the jewel, not really.”
He frowned. “Then what are you doing out here?”
“Bryce went into Dragon’s Ground to find a healer for his body,” I said. “But. . . Steve and Darcy have gone after the jewel, and if Steve-O finds my brother first—”
“He’ll kill him,” Maks finished for me. I nodded and flipped the meat over. It was very nearly cooked right through. What a waste of a good steak.
Maks took it and slid it onto a plate. “I’ll heal up by morning. Will you two lushes be ready to go?”
I leaned back against one of Balder’s front legs and closed my eyes. “I’m always ready to ride, Maks. You should know that.”
Lila screeched with laughter and I kept my eyes closed. “That’s not what I meant, Lila.”
A small chuckle escaped Maks. “I missed you two. I wish I could stay longer,” he said. Or I thought he said it, or maybe I wanted him to say it because I missed him too, but it was all tangled up in my sleep-deprived body as I let myself drift off.
My dreams were as messed up as my waking thoughts.
I saw Kiara dragged off by the Jinn. They cut her belly open and took her cub. She screamed that it was all my fault. Maks pulled himself from the mud bog, his eyes dead as he crawled toward me, and then there was Bryce. That was the worst of the dreams. Bryce on his belly, his back punctured once more by a spear, his eyes finding mine. “This is your fault, Zamira. You did this to me, you condemned me to this life. Let me die.”
I jerked awake, panting hard and startling Balder. My horse danced away from me and I fell backward, losing his support. I rolled to my knees, shaken from the dreams. Mostly because I felt like they were truths coming home to roost.
Warnings of what was coming for me. I shivered even though I wasn’t that cold.
The sun managed to peek through the thick black clouds in the east, signaling what would likely be another wet day on the plains. I wasn’t happy about that. And I let myself be grumpy because of the weather and not because of the dreams and how much they scared me.