“If the Raven is hunting, then we need to keep moving. Giving me the flail back means nothing as far as I’m concerned.”
I turned and headed the way we’d come. I couldn’t even bring myself to care that much about the Raven or the Ice Witch. She wasn’t the power she’d been without her jewel, and the Raven had returned my flail to me as Lila said, so . . . they weren’t out to get us. That being said, I wasn’t going to just sit by and hang out in their territory if I didn’t have to. Just because we’d escaped them once didn’t mean we could do it again.
“Let’s hope the Raven likes to eat werehyenas,” I said. Lila bobbed her head in agreement.
Still clear of the camp, I stopped, moving on autopilot as I gutted the birds and threw the warm innards to Lila. Even with the situation as it was, she hummed happily as she gulped her dinner down.
Her belly swelled with the amount of guts she slurped back and she ended up walking back with me the last distance, waddling side to side. Much as this was a total clusterfuck with Maks, Lila, just as she was, made me smile.
It was good to have a friend I could depend on.
As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I banished it. Because I didn’t want to jinx myself.
I’d lost enough friends in the last few years to know that nothing was forever.
Firelight flickered in front of me as I slid down the last dune to the camp. Maks faced the fire and was eating something off a plate. Dried jerky, by the look of it.
I tossed both birds into the fire. The smell of burning feathers cut through the air with a sharp tang. “You can have one if you want.”
“I don’t,” he said.
Lila bumped into my leg and I looked down at her. She had the edge of my pack and had opened it to show me something.
The top of a bottle peeked out at me. Țuică.
She shrugged as if to say it couldn’t hurt. She had a point. How much worse could it be? At least if I were buzzed, the pain might not be so sharp.
I grabbed the bottle and sat, poured Lila a cup, and then sat back against one of the saddles and stared into the flames.
“You think you are safe enough with me to get drunk?” Maks asked, his voice a deadly soft reverberation.
I shrugged and found that mean streak that resided somewhere along the edge of my spine. “You’re controlled by Marsum, and he wants me alive. Which means your job is to keep me alive, as evidenced by the fight back there. You better keep me alive or you’ll face your daddy’s wrath.” I tipped the bottle at him in a mock salute and then put the opening to my lips and chugged back a swig.
The sweet, far-too-strong plum liquor burned a pleasant trail all the way to my toes. Empty stomach, right, that was something to remember when drinking.
I closed my eyes and held onto the bottle. I wasn’t afraid of Maks hurting me. Him hurting Lila, yes, I was concerned about that. She snuggled against my side and put her head on my thigh, her breathing coming in slow, long draws. Healing her wing with the hacka paste would still draw on her energy, and sleep and food were the best things for her.
Maks broke the silence, surprising me. “Why would I . . . care about you at all?”
I opened my eyes and looked across the fire at him. The buzz of the liquor wasn’t doing what I wanted. I wasn’t getting numb at all.
“Because I’m fucking amazing.” I grinned, but it was hard to smile because my lips wobbled. “Because you’re like me, outcast and looking for a place in the world. Because . . . I have a great ass.”
I raised the bottle again, then leaned forward and dragged one of the birds out of the fire by a foot. I felt the heat but didn’t care as I bit into the flesh. Not quite cooked. What did it matter what he thought of me?
It didn’t.
I ate my bird and that helped to settle my stomach and the buzzing of the țuică in my veins. I should have made a sleep schedule to wake Lila and watch for a bit, but somewhere between my last two chugs of țuică, I finally stopped caring about everything.
Hallelujah.
Not what I’d call my finest moments, but there you go. I was as broken as the rest of the world and handled it about as well when the chips were down. At some point, I managed to cap the bottle and stuff it back in my bag and then curled around Lila, my head on the ground, my face turned to the fire. I couldn’t stop the shivering, though; the daytime temperature was cold and the only spot of warmth was Lila and the fire. My back twitched and spasmed but I didn’t have it in me to get up and find a blanket.
Distantly, I heard Maks moving around the fire, and then something settled over me and I remembered nothing else.
The afternoon came around with a dull rumble of a distant storm. I groaned and pulled the blanket up over my head. “Lila, tell the storm to go away.” I whispered the words.
She mimicked my noises of discomfort as she shifted beside me. “Oh, my head. I drank too much.”
I managed to push to a sitting position. My hair was wild, tangled and sticking out in every direction.
The fire was gone, the bird I’d thrown in for Maks was gone, and he sat across from me, as still as if he’d never moved.
The blanket slid to my waist, pooling in my lap and over Lila.
I frowned, my fingers on it. I didn’t remember picking up a blanket, but then again, the hours between dawn and now were somewhat fuzzy, to be fair.
Maks said nothing to me as he stood and went to Batman. The horse shied from him, his ears flicking back and his eyes rolling.
I just watched, saying nothing as Maks stopped and held out a hand. Batman shook his head as if he knew something was off with his friend. The horses were always the first to see someone for who they really were.
Maks spoke softly to the horse. Batman slowly approached and then shoved his nose in Maks’s chest, shoving him hard. A reprimand.
Lila crawled partway up my leg and I reached down for her. “No flying today,” I said.
“Agreed. Even if not for my wing, my head is throbbing,” she whispered, her eyes locked on the scene in front of us, just as mine were.
Maks made his way around Batman, saddling his horse.
I wrapped my blanket and stuffed it into my bag, then went to Balder. I fed him, gave him a quick brush, and then tacked him up. Every movement soothing to my battered emotions because it kept my mind busy and away from the previous day’s events.
We mounted and Maks led the way now.
I held Balder back, farther and farther, until there was a good forty feet between us and Maks. He looked back but didn’t drop to ride with me. Lila curled around my neck, half hidden in the hood of my cloak.
“What are we going to do?”
“Question of the day,” I muttered. “I’m not sure, but I’m trying to figure it out.”
“You think Marsum really has a hold on him?”
I rested my hands on the pommel of the saddle, thinking. “Yes, but Maks is still in there too. I’m sure of it. He put a blanket over us, after we were out.”
“He did?” she whispered again, as though she thought he might be able to hear us. Hell if I knew, he might be able to.
I nodded. “Yeah, he did. That’s Maks. Not the Jinn Marsum has a hold on.”
She flicked her tail back and forth, like an irritated cat. “Then we have to find a way to fix this. We can’t lose him. The others . . . I know they are important, but isn’t Maks . . . more important?”
To me, yes, he was more important. But . . . he also wasn’t in mortal danger, and I was the alpha of the pride, which meant I was stuck with the shitty fucking choices like the one in front of me.
“Yes, he’s the most important to me, Lila. You know that.”
“But he can’t come first. Can he?”
I shook my head. “No. Which means we need to lose him somewhere along here. He’ll take us straight to Marsum and hand us over. We have to find a way to outrun him and his magic without hurting him.”
“Just how in the world are we going to do that? I know Balder can outrun Batman, but his magic could catch us easily if he’s any sort of a Jinn. And if we make a break for it and screw it up, he’ll be watching us close from here on out.”
“Yeah, I know. If I thought it wouldn’t hurt you, I’d suggest sizing you up again and having you carry me and Balder, but I don’t want to chance you getting trapped,” I said. She’d used my necklace that for years had held my own curse back, and when she’d put it on, she’d no longer been the tiny dragon that could rest on my shoulder. Her body had grown, and with it, she’d fought for her place in the Dragon’s Ground as I’d fought to save my brother.