Maks stared up at me as sweat rose all over his face. “Zam. I would never hurt you. Either of you.”
“Except that you shot Lila and threatened me,” I said softly. “And you said everything was a manipulation, that you were sent to take me back to the desert. That was the goal all along.”
He closed his eyes, but not before I saw what crossed them. Pain and embarrassment.
I scrambled back. “You were sent to find me?”
“I was sent to find the last lions,” he said softly. “The children of Dirk in particular, though I wasn’t told why.”
“Witch’s Reign?”
His throat bobbed. “Initially, yes, I was to take you back to the desert, but that changed! I realized that the farther I was from the Jinn, the less hold Marsum had on me. The more I could block him.” He opened his eyes. “Zam, it wasn’t all a manipulation. I stayed because . . . I’d never loved anyone before. I didn’t know . . .”
His back arched suddenly and the leather bands creaked.
I scrambled away. “Lila. Back up.”
But it wasn’t Lila who answered me. Maks did. “Oh, little cat. You love him, don’t you?”
“Marsum.” I snarled his name and my skin crawled.
“You can’t kill him, can you? This is too rich. You make this too easy.” He laughed, only it wasn’t Maks’s laugh. It was deeper, uglier, and I knew it even though I hadn’t heard it in years.
Marsum had full control of Maks.
He rolled to his belly, his hands and feet lifted behind him as he pulled on the leather. “The cave, if he hadn’t taken you to shelter in the cave, I would never have found his mind. But it is one of my places. Now, the more important question. Do you know why he is so connected to me? Have you guessed yet?”
I took a step back, bent and grabbed my bag of gear and gave a low whistle for Balder. Engaging Marsum was not smart. I’d seen how that played out for my family before.
The barking howl of hyenas lit the air.
Well, wasn’t that just fucking peachy. I cocked my head and counted the beats between the howls. At best we had fifteen minutes before they showed up.
“He’s not just a Jinn,” I said. Damn it, I couldn’t help myself.
“No, he is not. I found his mother fetching and couldn’t help myself despite the fact she was a mere shifter,” he said.
Lila gasped and I froze in place. His mother . . . was a shifter. I chose to focus on that instead of the rest of what he’d said. Marsum’s son. Maks was Marsum’s son.
“He’ll never truly escape me. His blood is mine.”
I made myself turn to face Maks as one of the leather wraps on his wrists snapped. He quickly untied himself and stood. He tipped his head to one side. “Why aren’t you running?”
I dropped my bag of gear while Lila tugged at me. “You have Kiara, Darcy, and dumb ass. You want me to come to the desert, and you have the bait. Why the fuck are you doing this to him? You don’t need to do this to make me show up on your doorstep.”
He smiled slowly and took a step toward me. I refused to back down. “Lila, on Balder,” I half threw her toward my horse as Maks stopped right in front of me. Not Maks. It wasn’t, yet I couldn’t stop seeing him as the man I loved. Damn my heart.
“I do this to remind him who his master is,” he said. “He was away too long and has a sense of freedom that is false. You are not for him, Zamira of the Bright Lions. He is a mutt.” He lifted a hand and brushed it across my cheek. The same hand had touched me before, but this time was different.
A ripple of unease followed it, but I refused to back down. I would not run. I would not.
“Let him have his mind back. I’m coming to the desert, you dumb fuck. You don’t need Maks like this.”
He grinned. “No. This is my insurance policy. You would come for your friends, but . . . For Maks? To see if you can save him . . . I believe you would go to the ends of this world and back. That is what love does to you mortals; it makes you foolish and stupid.”
Anger flared brightly within me and it took all I had not to punch him in the balls. Because it wasn’t Marsum who would be hurt, but Maks.
He grinned and a low laugh rolled from his mouth. “Oh, the look on your face is precious. You want to kill me but can’t because that would hurt your precious Maks. I should have done this years ago.” He grabbed either side of my face and yanked me to him, kissing me hard enough that our teeth clinked together. Skilled, he was not.
I pushed hard against his chest as he plundered my mouth. This was not Maks, and I was not about to let it happen. Heat snaked from his mouth into mine—not desire, but the heat of the desert sands lighting within me, setting off something in my blood I didn’t understand.
Power.
Magic.
Fire.
I screamed and he swallowed the noise down as I pushed at his chest, finally snapping a fist up between us, slamming into his jaw despite knowing I was going to feel it too.
He bit my lip as his teeth snapped together and I stumbled backward, free of his hands and mouth, the coppery tang of blood on my lips. My mind whirled with that heat he’d shoved into me as it coursed through my limbs with a tingling not unlike bugs crawling over my skin.
“What did you do to me?” I flinched and twitched like a horse covered in flies.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I lit a fire in you, cat. You are not only a shifter any more than Maks is only a Jinn. For now, I will give part of him back to you—not the part you want, likely. But at least you will know it’s him and not me.”
He grinned and his body sagged where he stood as if something left him, and then he shook his head and looked at me. Blue eyes, just blue eyes. But they were hard, and there wasn’t an ounce of laughter in them.
The heat in my limbs wasn’t slowing and I didn’t know what to do with it. I clenched my hands into tight fists. “Maks?” I wasn’t really hoping it was him. Not really.
“I am your escort to the desert, cat,” he growled and turned his back to me. “Nothing more.”
The hyenas cackled again.
Lila launched from Balder to me, a whoosh of air across my face, drying tears I’d not even noticed.
“What do we do?” she whispered as Maks sat with his back to us, his face turned to the south.
My body felt as though it were on fire and my heart was breaking into a million little pieces of glass that cut me from the inside out.
I didn’t have it in me to be brave in that moment.
“We run.”
Chapter Nine
Merlin stood next to Marsum while the Jinn came back to his own body. “Goddess, that was the most fun I’ve had in a long time, old man. You were right! Taking Maks away from her will drive her right to me.”
“That’s not what I suggested doing at all,” Merlin said, fighting not to snap at the powerful Jinn. They were on par with one another in strength, which was the only reason Merlin hadn’t just barged his way in to rescue Flora. That, and Marsum had a gaggle of Jinn following him.
There was not a day that went by that Merlin didn’t regret giving the Jinn the sunstone, the strongest of the gems. It had made the Jinn’s leader sadistic in a way he could never have known possible.
“No,” Marsum opened his eyes and grinned wide, wild lights flickering in his eyes. “No, you said that I should try and gain her trust. Do you see what I did? I told her the truth about him. He didn’t really love her.” He snorted and turned to Flora who sat on the floor at his feet. “What say you, priestess of Zeus? Did the cat love my wayward son?”
Flora was dressed in a long white slave gown split up both sides, her hair twisted into intricate braids on either side of her face. Beautiful, if not for the look she was giving Marsum that said she’d like to put his balls in a stew pot.
Electricity danced in her eyes. “Unchain me, and I’ll show you exactly what I think.”
Merlin shook his head ever so slightly.
She pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you shake your head at me! This is all your fault!”
“That’s not true—” Merlin said but she cut him off.