Home > Jinn's Dominion (Desert Cursed #3)(17)

Jinn's Dominion (Desert Cursed #3)(17)
Author: Shannon Mayer

After four hours, I couldn’t stand it a second longer. “Maks, are you angry with me?”

He shook his head. “No, you are doing the right thing for the pride. I . . . didn’t think about what your next step would be when you named me your second. I should have.”

I frowned and moved Balder beside him. “Why does it matter?”

His shoulders tightened. “We are going into the Jinn’s Dominion. Is that not enough for me to be concerned about both your safety and the others?”

I reached out and grabbed his arm. “I know you, Maks. You don’t run from a fight, but back there you not only wanted to run, you wanted me to run too. Why?”

His jaw ticked, but he didn’t pull his arm from me. “Because I love you, Zam. And that . . . is a dangerous thing in the world of the Jinn.”

Holy shit, had he just said what I thought he said? “You love me?” Okay, that came out like a needy whisper, but who cared? Lila was asleep.

He looked at me, those blue eyes of his piercing even in the darkness. “I don’t know if I can protect you once we are there, Zam. I don’t know if I can protect you as we travel there. And that guts me like nothing else. I know you have to go. I know your pride is there, but Marsum . . . he has a long memory. Has it not occurred to you once that since you’ve removed the necklace that kept his curse from you, nothing terribly bad has happened?”

His words made me blink. “You don’t think a hurricane that almost sunk me and Shem was something bad?”

“Yes, that’s bad. But nothing little has gone wrong. You’ve not had your saddle strap break, or lost a weapon, or gotten unexpectedly sick. Nothing out of the ordinary for what we are doing. And you are driven to get to the desert as if a madness has taken hold of you. You didn’t for one second think of waiting on Shem to get better. You agreed to leave him. That’s not you.” He shook his head as if he could shake something free. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I think this is Marsum again. He’s changed the curse. We know that. What if it is no longer about making your life miserable? What if he’s done something else? What if he’s drawing you to him?”

I sat deep in the saddle, thinking. “Can he do that? I don’t know Jinn magic.” And to be fair, my mind was still stuck on the fact that he’d so casually thrown out that he loved me. How could he know that? How could he love me?

Did I love him?

Yeah, you do. Say it! My inner voice screamed at me and I kept my mouth shut. Much as I trusted Maks, the last man I’d loved had broken my heart into a million pieces. I wasn’t ready to throw myself at the next man with as much abandon.

“Zam, are you listening to me?” Maks said. “Before we go into the Jinn’s Dominion, you have to know what I know. Okay?”

“Sorry, say it again.” I smiled, but he didn’t smile back. Which made my smile slip off my stupid face. Shit, how bad was it, whatever he had to say?

“When Marsum put his hands on you, as a child, he made a connection with you that can’t be broken until one of you dies. He made you . . . like his familiar, is the best word I can come up with. He’s connected to you, the same way he’s connected to me. And his magic is such that if he takes note of you being alive—which we know he has—he can change his hold on the curse. He could remove it completely if he wanted.” Maks stared hard at me. “Do you understand? He has a hold on you, Zam.”

Lila yawned and stretched. “What am I missing?”

“Marsum can change the curse on me,” I said softly. “But that doesn’t explain why he would suddenly make my life easier.”

Lila crawled up Balder’s neck. “Maybe because he wants something you have? If he knows you would come and rescue your pride, they are perfect bait, aren’t they?”

“He wants the jewels,” I breathed out the words. “He wants the jewels. Maks, do you think that’s it?”

I turned to see Maks staring at me. “Maks?”

“The jewels are secondary, Zam. I think he wants you, and he will do whatever he has to do to get you into his hands.” His eyes tightened and narrowed suddenly, flashing a blue so bright that it seemed they glowed for a moment.

I reached over for him, touching his arm. “Maks?”

He pulled away from me and shook his head. “Sorry, what?”

My eyebrows shot up. “You said he wants me.”

Maks closed his eyes. “No, I want you. Marsum wants to kill you.”

Except . . . I didn’t think that was what he meant at all. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from speaking. Lila looked at me with her eyes scrunched up as if she were trying to figure out what the fuck was going on too.

Maks held his hand out and I took it, weaving our fingers together. Balder and Batman rode happily side by side through the night, content.

But I was not content. Something was wrong with Maks. Something was very wrong.

And I had no idea what it could possibly be.

Chapter Eight

The next few days passed so quietly, it was almost pleasant, and I could almost forget that Maks was acting strange, not letting me far out of his sight, or that Shem had fucked off on us, or that the Emperor was reaching for all of us, or that we had werehyenas on our asses. Lila didn’t stray far, not even to hunt. But I suspected her reasons were the same as mine. Shit was weird. We did not need to be split up. At the same time, I needed to speak to her without worrying about Maks overhearing.

We kept our pace up, steady, never resting for long.

The second day, I managed to get Maks to talk, but he would only speak about things long past. Sort of.

“You didn’t know your mother at all?” I asked, prying as carefully as I could.

He shook his head. “Marsum told me she sold me to him when I was a child. I don’t remember anything about her.” There was something in his voice though that made me think otherwise.

“No siblings?” I tried a different tactic.

He shook his head again. “No. I dreamt once I had a brother.” His eyes slid to me, sadness filling them. “He was an unusual-colored lion. But that was just a dream. I don’t recall my childhood, Zam. I dream sometimes, but that’s all they are. Dreams.”

After that he shut down completely and I got nothing more out of him.

On the third day, near dusk I called an earlier than normal halt, which had me looking over my shoulder more than once. “Maks, do you think you could snag something for dinner? I’m exhausted.” I slumped in the saddle for good measure. Goddess, I was a bad actor.

He nodded and pulled out a small crossbow from his pack. He put it together quickly and then helped me with the two horses, and even got me set up with the fire. As if I were helpless. I let him, closing my eyes as I slid under a blanket he gave me.

His footsteps receded, and I opened my eyes. “Lila!” I hissed her name and she crawled across the saddles.

“Yeah, this is fucking weird, Zam. What’s going on with him?” She craned her neck, watching the foothills for his return. “He’s barely talking to us, and he’s treating you like a freaking glass egg.”

“His eyes, have you seen the flashes of blue?”

She nodded. “I thought it was just me.” She let out a little whimper. “What are we going to do?”

“I tried talking to him. I tried to get him to tell me what was wrong and in the middle of it, his eyes flashed blue and he forgot what he’d said before. Or he changed it to sound less ominous. He said that Marsum wanted me. And I don’t think he meant to kill me.” I realized as we spoke that we were whispering even though Maks was nowhere to be seen. “And now he could have gone hunting as a caracal, far easier than with the bow. Why the bow, Lila?”

Her tiny claws reached up and she put them on my cheeks. “The Jinn are master manipulators, Zam. What if . . . Marsum has his hooks back in Maks? What if it’s not Maks anymore?”

She said exactly what I was terrified of—Maks was being drawn back into being the kind of Jinn I thought were the only kind before I met him. My heart thumped hard because I knew what I had to do.

We had to leave him behind. This was why I hadn’t told him I loved him. Maybe I’d known no matter how we felt, it could never be. He was Jinn. I was a lion. The idea of star-crossed lovers had never been so fucking poignant.

   
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