“Please let me have the same gift as my father,” I whispered to . . . the desert goddess? No, never to Ishtar. Maybe to someone, or something that might hear my plea. I don’t even know who I was praying to anymore, only that I needed to say something, that I needed help from a power far higher than myself.
I’d found Bryce with this technique, but he was my brother. My blood. And I was afraid I would fail my pride before they ever even knew I was their alpha.
I tightened my arms around my middle and kept the blanket snug around me as I slowed my breath. I focused on the intake and exhale of air in my lungs, the slowing of my heart as I let my senses open to the world. Minutes blended as the meditation tugged me deeper and deeper, as the cold left me and I found myself in a space of quiet.
The changes around me were subtle at first, barely there if I hadn’t been in such an aware state. The ground below me embraced my legs and ass, drawing me into the stone the same as the forest in Dragon’s Ground had done, but this was far more disturbing. This was stone melding around me, not moss and loose soil.
I pushed the fear back and kept at the meditation, sending my senses out farther and farther, deeper into the south as I fought to find those I was charged with protecting.
I focused on their names first. Kiara, Darcy, Steve . . . fuck, I really didn’t want to find Steve, and the process hiccupped. Hatred was not something that would help me find them.
I snorted softly to myself and refocused on the girls. Kiara and Darcy. They might not be the friends I once thought, but they were mine to protect and they needed me to be strong enough to find them and bring them home. Wherever home would end up being after this was done.
That thought settled deeply into my bones, and as I accepted it, the light around me shifted behind my closed eyes. The threads of energy were different than Bryce’s. His had been a deep gold like his lion’s fur. Darcy’s thread was a lighter gold, almost pale yellow and twisted, and Kiara’s two threads wrapped around each other. A coppery thread woven with the palest of yellows that was feminine, for lack of a better word. She was carrying a girl.
Funny, I knew Kiara was pregnant, but feeling it was strange . . . like the unborn cub was already part of our pride. Even stranger, there was no gut twist on my part.
I opened my eyes and turned my head to the south, feeling them there, seeing their threads as surely as if they had attached skeins of yarn between us.
A slow grin crept over my mouth and I leapt up, blinking the vision away for now. “I can find them!” I ran from the back of the cave, past the horses and slid to a stop by the fire to see Maks staring up at me. I looked down. “Shit, I dropped the blanket.”
“Yeah, you don’t need it,” he said.
I turned, blushing furiously yet again, went back to the blanket and scooped it up, wrapping it around my shoulders. I plopped myself down next to him, and my stomach rumbled, reminding me it was empty.
“How long was I . . . gone?” There was no other word for it. When I’d searched for Bryce, Lila told me later that I’d been out for an hour.
“A little over two hours,” Maks said. He adjusted his seat. “Shem hasn’t moved an inch either. He’s alive, but so silent, I’m not sure he’ll come out of this.”
Lila and Maks shared a look. “What?”
Lila touched my leg. “We might have to leave him, Zam. If he won’t snap out of this, that is.”
Outside the storm still raged, battering and whistling through the crack that led into the cave. “We’ll give him until the storm eases then.”
I dug through my saddlebags and found dry clothes while my mind ticked over this problem. Ish had taken me in spirit to speak to her. Who knew what she had said to Shem.
Then there was the Emperor’s booming voice . . . there was a chance he had snagged my uncle.
“Damn,” I muttered. I was no closer to an answer.
I pulled my clothes on, then went to where my uncle lay. Dropping to my knees, I reached inside the blankets. “He’s warm, that’s better than the alternative.”
“Yes, but out cold.” Lila landed next to his head. “So now what?”
I frowned. None of us were healers, and far as I knew, there weren’t many who could help him. If Ish hadn’t lost her mind, I would suggest taking him to her. I rubbed a hand over my face. “If he doesn’t wake up, I’ll have to leave him here. There is no other choice I can see. We can’t pack him like this into the desert.”
Neither Maks nor Lila argued. Because they knew the same thing I did. There was only one option, as shitty as it was.
I didn’t want to leave Shem behind. But Kiara, Darcy, and even Steve were in far more immediate danger than Shem, who had no apparent wounds other than whatever that voice in the storm had done inside his head. That was triage in a pride. Those who were most critical were saved first.
I sighed. “We’ll stay the night and hope the storm and this spell on him drop at the same time.”
Under his eyelids, his eyes moved back and forth at a rapid pace. Nothing short of disturbing.
I cringed and brushed a hand over his forehead in an attempt to soothe whatever demons clawed at him.
His eyes popped wide, pupils dilated, mouth open in a silent scream as he shot both fists straight up into the air, barely missing me.
“Shitfuckdamn!” I yelled as I scooted back, fell on my ass and rolled to my belly. “Not funny, Shem!”
My heart was in the back of my throat. I was sure of it, and I struggled to swallow or breathe around the heavy beating.
Maks grinned at me from the other side of Shem. “How do you like that? Being scared for no apparent reason?”
I tipped my head and narrowed my eyes as I pointed a finger at him. “I was saving us from walking into another trap, if you’ll recall.” We’d been underground, making an attempt to steal the Dragon’s emerald gem, and a weird fog had started to come over me. I’d broken it by leaping into the air and screaming. Mind you, I’d also just about died laughing after I scared Maks so badly, I thought his heart would stop.
Shem let out a low groan and rolled to his side. I went to him, helped him sit up.
“Shem, back with the land of the living,” I said. “Welcome. We were just discussing leaving you behind.”
His hand wobbled as he lifted it to his mouth. “Goddess save us. Zamira, that was not Ishtar chasing us.”
I looked at Maks and he shook his head and shrugged.
“Yeah, it was, Shem. Ishtar has completely lost it. I . . . saw her in a vision. She threatened me and has taken the hyenas as hunters.” I moved closer to him and held out a hand. He took it and gripped it tightly. I tried to catch his eye, but he kept them closed, so I kept on talking. “She tried to kill me before, on our way to Dragon’s Ground. I should have known, even without your warning that she was going to try for us again. For me.” I patted his hand, albeit awkwardly. I didn’t really know how to comfort a man who’d been my crazy uncle and tried to kidnap me when I’d been a little girl.
He put a hand to his head and tapped the side of it with his fingers. “Did you hear the voice, though?”
“The other voice? The one in the storm?”
Lila crawled onto my shoulder and leaned over to look at him. “Shem, if it wasn’t Ishtar, who do you think it was?”
The Emperor. His eyes met mine and I looked away. My secrets dug at me. But I still couldn’t speak them. The Emperor hadn’t been trying to kill me.
He’d been trying to kill Shem.
“The Emperor. He is seeking out those who know of him, those who might know how to kill him.” I turned back to him and his eyes slowly lifted to mine. Maks crouched behind me.
“Shem, you don’t know that,” he said.
Shem glared at him. “You, half-Jinn that you are, should be able to feel the Emperor wake. Do you not?”
Maks slowly shook his head. “As best I could, I cut myself off from the Jinn and their head games when I left the Dominion. It’s the only way to escape them.”
He said the words, but the tone was off. Like maybe he wasn’t entirely sure that he’d severed the tie. “Then how can they find you? Wait, that’s why you don’t use your magic or whatever, right?”