I hunched my back and saddled up Balder quickly, feeding him a bunch of the oat balls I had and a bucket of grain I found in the Jinn’s leftovers.
“I’m surprised you would be willing to stay here.” Maks went to saddle Batman, his hands moving carefully over the horse. Damn it, why did his hands always draw my eyes? Because he was gentle and strong at the same time, and his hands were fucking magic when they slid over my skin.
I looked away.
“I’m not above taking advantage of the situation. I’d have felt worse taking over the campsite if I’d not known it was the Jinn’s.”
He grunted. “You aren’t as afraid of them as you think you are.”
I snorted. “You don’t count. As of yet, you haven’t tried to kill me or Bryce or Steve. Though if you want to kill Steve, have at him.”
Lila groaned from near the fire and scooted closer to the dying embers. “Five more minutes.”
Maks nodded. “I know you hate him, but I don’t think killing one of the few remaining lion shifters would do your pride any good.”
“It’s not my pride. It’s Steve’s.” I said the words out loud, much as I wanted to choke on them. Steve’s pride. Ish had handed it to him, most likely because he’d knocked up Kiara.
“That’s insane.” Maks breathed the words, the shock coming through loud and clear.
“Yeah, well. A pride needs an alpha, and the only alpha who could truly challenge Steve would be Bryce. The other males are all naturally submissive.”
“What about you?” Lila flew up and perched herself on Balder’s saddle so she was at eye height. “Could you not challenge him?”
I shrugged. “I could, but the reality is he’d kill me. I know I’m outmanned there.”
“I don’t think you are,” Maks said. “I think if you can take on a Jinn and catch him by surprise, mortally wounding him, you could take on Steve and win.”
I snorted. “I did not mortally wound that Jinn. He got Kiara, remember?”
“It’s why he was moving so fast. He needs to get back to the desert if he wants to survive.” Maks finished tightening the girth on his saddle and patted Batman’s neck. “I would know this, don’t you think?”
He had a point even if I wasn’t entirely sure he was right about me taking on Steve. For all the times I’d fought with Steve, I knew he’d held back. He’d not given his full strength to the fights we did have. But then again, I’d held back too. I shrugged.
“It’s not the time. We need to find Bryce. That’s step one.”
“Actually, it’s about step four if we’re counting,” Lila pointed out. “Your journeys have a way of turning in on themselves if I recall.”
I grunted and touched the necklace hanging on my chest holding the ring that kept my worst of the two curses at bay. The lion’s head ring allowed me to live without Marsum’s curse strangling the very life out of me. But the truth was, Maks had removed the ring from me once, and I’d learned to make the curse work in my favor.
That did not mean I wanted to do that again.
But the option was there if I needed it. Maybe if I had to face Steve, I could pull it off and use the curse to win.
I frowned and dropped my hand. That felt like cheating somehow. And when it came to taking the alpha position of a pride, a cheater was the last thing we needed.
I mounted onto the saddle. Balder flicked his head up and down once as if he knew we were in a hurry and he was impatient too.
Maks brought Batman into a trot beside us, though he was still favoring a leg, and we set out toward Dragon’s Ground.
“Feels like déjà vu,” Maks said.
I nodded but found myself at a loss for words. The last time we’d covered this path, I’d hated him because he was human. Now that I knew he was a Jinn, I should have hated him more, but it was the opposite. I sighed. Why did my emotions have to be so fucking complicated?
“Except I’m here this time,” Lila said. “So, it can’t be that much the same unless you found another teeny tiny dragon to insult you prior to me.”
He smiled and shook his head. “You are in a league of your own, Lila.”
She flew off my shoulder and swooped around our heads, singing what sounded like a dirty limerick if the things the cobbler was doing with the sheep was any indication.
“I’m sorry—”
“How far—”
Maks and I stumbled over our words and he pointed at me. “Go first.”
“I’m sorry for embarrassing you last night.” I turned my face away. “That was the liquor talking again.”
“Yeah, I figured. Don’t worry about it.” He paused. “How are we going to find your brother exactly?”
Damn it, I’d kind of hoped he was going to expand on last night. A sigh slid from me before I answered his question.
“He took the only horse that’s comfortable with his weight besides Batman. Ali is a big brute, and her hoof prints will be hard to miss.” I held up my hands about a foot apart to give him the idea of her hoof size, then I shrugged. “I’m hoping when we get to the marker, we’ll not have to go far to find his path.”
“Better we find him on this side of that marker, though,” Maks said. No doubt he was recalling the mad flight we’d had along the border of Dragon’s Ground to get to the Ice Witch. We hadn’t even been trespassing, and we’d been attacked multiple times by the dragons guarding the border.
I grimaced. “Bryce can’t fight, Maks. What the fuck was he thinking leaving the Stockyards?”
Lila bobbed along beside us. “Didn’t you say Ish was losing her mind? Maybe he saw that and wanted to escape?”
Ish. . . something about Lila’s questions tickled memories I couldn’t quite grasp. Maks interrupted my musing.
“Maybe he didn’t want to be broken any more. That can drive people to do things they would otherwise avoid.”
There was something in his voice, more than the words themselves, that pulled my eyes to him. “What did you do, Maks?”
He shook his head and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Doesn’t matter, Zam. Doesn’t matter.”
After that, our discussions were nothing more than the necessary.
We covered good ground that day and the next. There was a constant sensation as though we were being watched and I didn’t like it, but I didn’t know how we would avoid it either. Different from when we’d been stalked by the Ice Witch’s shadow. This had a heavy menace bleeding through the sensation as though the watcher was enjoying our discomfort. Taking pleasure in the shiver it gave us as we rode.
And on the plains as we were, there was no cover, no way to hide.
If something decided to come after us, we would have no choice but to run for all we were worth.
Again.
That irritated me. How long would I have to run this time? Till Balder dropped and I was on foot? There were so many times in the past when it would’ve been nice to have stood my ground, to be the lion I was meant to be.
“Your face is an open book, you know that, right?” Maks’s words once more drew my eyes to him.
“What?”
“Your face. Your emotions are not hidden at all. I can see you’re pissed off about something and then you get this twist in your lips that tells me you’re determined. Why don’t you hide all that like the other supes?”
He was looking at my lips. I had to clamp them together to keep from smiling. “I don’t know. I never bothered. I don’t like games. They irritate me.”
He nodded. “That’s. . . the Jinn are like that. They like games.”
“I know they do,” I said.
Wow. As if I didn’t think it could get more awkward, I opened my mouth and spoke yet again, really putting my foot in it.
“I don’t regret any of it, Maks. I should, but I don’t.”
I looked at him and he was looking away, so I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t read his eyes. His one hand lifted, and for a split second I thought I saw a glimmer of gold around his neck before he answered.