She turned to go, then paused at the door. “You really think Ish doesn’t care about us?”
I made myself lock eyes with her as I nodded because I didn’t dare speak. Her question was too close to the truth that bubbled to the surface of my mouth.
I closed my eyes for all of two heartbeats, and when I opened them, she was gone, and I was alone in my room. My saddlebags and bedroll were already packed, of course. Ready to go at the drop of a hat. I grabbed them from beside my bed and set them on top.
I ran my hands over them, lightly touching the most important pieces of my gear. My weapons—two kukri blades that I wore strapped to my outer thighs, a shotgun with limited ammo and a grenade launcher under the barrel, multiple smaller blades, and the big bad of them all, the flail. I reached out, drawn to the flail more than I wanted to admit.
“You’re a right fucker, aren’t you?” I muttered.
Magical, it was made by the Jinn, but even more than that, it had been forged by Marsum, the Jinn who’d killed my father. He’d made the flail to be a killing machine of epic proportions.
Two long chains hung from the shaft’s end. At the bottom of each chain, a spiked ball clanked against the other as I picked up the weapon. Light in my hand, it felt as though it weighed nothing at all—another of its perks as a traditional flail was heavy, usually forty or fifty pounds. This flail, though light as a feather, hit with the power of hundreds of pounds, and drank up the blood of my enemies as payment.
Nice, right? In theory, it was a grand weapon. One that any smart person would want to have on their side rather than in the hands of their enemies.
Except there was a downside as mentioned. That whole drawing on my life force when I used it to kill. Or maybe it was just geared to take the life of anyone who used it that was not its master, or not a Jinn. That could be it too.
“Maybe I should leave you behind,” I said. Sweet baby goddess, I was talking to the thing now. But . . . I could take it and use it only if I had no other recourse. A last resort, and until that last resort happened, the weapon would stay strapped to my back. Satisfied with my decision, I let my fingers trace the weapon.
It made me think of the Jinn which led me to thinking of a Jinn I didn’t hate as much as I would have liked to.
Maks. I tightened my hand on the weapon as I thought of the blue eyes of the man who’d claimed to be human, but was in truth a Jinn masquerading as a weak creature to get close to us. He’d told me he’d been sent to kill Steve and Bryce. He never tried to hurt me, and I’d put myself in a vulnerable position with him more than once.
Zam is mine. His whispered, sleep-laden words still sent shivers down my spine that I couldn’t deny made my skin hot and my heart pick up its usually steady pace.
I put the flail down with a sigh and pulled on my long deep-hooded cloak over my riding pants and simple short-sleeved cotton top. The hood hid my face from anyone trying to get a good look at me and blocked the worst of the weather. I reached up, thinking I could almost feel Lila there, curled up against the cold and wind, huddling close to me.
Lila, the little dragon who’d wormed her way into my heart in record time. Lila who’d helped me get to Darcy. Lila who was now on the run from her own kind because she believed they would come for her, and if she stayed with me, I would be killed too. She was the friend of my heart, and even though Darcy would say it was stupid to trust someone not in our pride, Lila was different. She got me, and I got her.
If I believed in past lives, I would have said she and I had been sisters in another life, another world.
I rubbed a hand over my face. So many people . . . so many lives on the line, and so many lives destroyed, all for a fucking jewel.
If it were up to me, we’d stop hunting for them completely. How many of us had been lost looking for them already? Previously, I’d thought the cost was worth it.
But now, I wasn’t sure at all.
Ish had told us the jewels were tied to her life force and that she couldn’t survive long without them. But from what I could see, that wasn’t entirely true—if I were being honest, and that was something I was doing my best to be, at least with myself. If anything, the jewels seemed to hurt her more than help her. Or they were changing her. Yes, that was a better assessment.
I shook it all off. We were leaving soon, and that made me . . . well, happy wasn’t the right word. Determined, maybe, eager to go. As soon as we were out of the Stockyards, I’d track Bryce and split off from Darcy and Steve.
That would make Steve happy.
I frowned and rolled my neck, shocked at my own thoughts. I assumed Darcy wouldn’t come with me to save Bryce, an assumption I hated even while I felt it in my gut to be true. She would follow our new alpha as much a slave to our old ways as any other female in our pride.
“Well, fuck that misogynistic shit,” I muttered.
I grabbed my gear and shooed Balder back from the window so I could crawl through and end up inside his stall. I’d avoided Ish for the last three days. I wasn’t about to face her now as we left. The last thing I wanted was for her to try to make me stay behind, or worse, have the truth of my thoughts spill out my mouth.
Horror flickered through me and I froze, crouched on the sill of the window. She wouldn’t dare stop me from leaving, would she? Even as I considered it, I realized it was a distinct possibility. She knew me well. She knew I would leave Steve and Darcy to go after Bryce. Unless I made a convincing act. I snorted and shook my head. I was no actress. I couldn’t so much as keep my thoughts off my face for a second.
I dropped into Balder’s stall and put my gear on the straw-covered floor. I ran a hand over his steel gray hide, scratching him here and there where he liked it most. “You ready to go, my friend?”
He snorted and bobbed his head, butting it against my chest, shoving me a little. I had him brushed clean of the loose straw and saddled up in a matter of minutes, my gear attached to the back of the saddle along with my bedroll and additional bags. I slid his bridle on and did up the throat latch and chin strap, then took him by the reins and led him out the stall door into the central courtyard. Steve was there on . . . Batman? I couldn’t help the gasp.
“How is that possible?” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and I knew my jaw was gaping in absolute shock. Batman had been with Maks. The horse had chosen the Jinn over me. So, what the hell was he doing here? I hurried to the horse and put my hand out. He nuzzled my palm, looking for a mint, so I fished one out of my pocket.
His muzzle felt different, more prickly and whisker-covered. I stared harder. No, it wasn’t Batman after all. But a big boy who was almost identical in color and body shape. The only thing different was this horse’s left hind leg had a snippet of white on it. Otherwise, the two horses could have been twins. A strange sense of relief flowed through me. If Batman really had shown up, then Maks . . . he would have been in trouble.
And I didn’t like the fear that induced in me. Obviously, I was not the only one who noticed my strong reaction.
Steve smirked. “Missing your human? Maybe you shouldn’t have let him die then, Zamira.”
I spat at him, yes, literally, hitting him right in the face with a great gob of saliva. He roared and flailed backward with his arms windmilling as though I’d punched him in the nose. For that kind of reaction, I wished I had.
“Enough.” Ish’s voice rang through the courtyard, power curling through her words and freezing me in place. A tremor shook through me, not fear, but the magic that Ish was spreading across us. The flail on my back heated, dispersing the cold touch Ish had given me.
I flicked my eyes to see her approach me and Steve. Darcy stepped out from the other side of Steve. Her horse, Pig, gave a soft nicker when she saw Balder.
Ish was tall, slender, and elegant as always as she swept toward us, and I was reminded of the Ice Witch. The Ice Witch who’d implied that Ish was her sister. The Ice Witch who’d said she’d thought we were of value to Ish, that Ish would have come to save us. And when she hadn’t, the Ice Witch had fucked off because . . . well, because we were not the trap for Ish that her sister had thought.
That said all sorts of things about our value to our mentor. You didn’t rescue tools that could be replaced.