But I had a feeling things were not going to go as planned.
Chapter Nineteen
Merlin did not like it in the box. He did not like it with these rocks. He would not care to have his ears boxed, or be forced to eat dirty socks. He grimaced at the foolish rhyme, but the reality was he needed something to keep his mind busy.
A box like he was jammed into was meant to drive the occupant mad. It was meant to break your heart and soul, to strip you of your humanity so you could be used by your captors. To be fair, Marsum didn’t understand he was dealing with a man who’d survived several such torture techniques over the years, and as such, he’d prepared himself so if ever he faced it again, he would come out in better shape than before.
After all, he’d been the one to create the infinity box, just like the one he’d stuffed his father into, though that one was much larger. Marsum wasn’t strong enough to make anything larger than the box Merlin had been jammed into.
From where he sat with his head resting on his knees, he could see Flora next to Marsum at the high table. Their voices were foggy, but the words were clear enough.
“What do you mean he’s back without her?” Marsum slammed a hand on the table as a messenger, a low-level Jinn, bent into a full bow.
“He said she escaped. She used her own magic and they killed Bart with acid and escaped.” The Jinn dared to lift his head.
Marsum swung around to glare at Merlin. “You think Zamira could have unlocked the binds on her bloodlines on her own? I opened her to her grandfather’s magic so I can train her, and use it for my own. But not the rest.”
Merlin tried to shrug, but otherwise said nothing. There was nothing Marsum could do to make him speak, or at least nothing worse than this stupid box.
Marsum glared at him. “Tell me, Merlin!”
Merlin yawned and closed his eyes to mere slits. Marsum grabbed Flora by the neck and held her up. “It bothers me not one whit to kill a priestess of Zeus if it means I will find your obedience with her death.”
Merlin opened his eyes. “And then when she is dead, you’ll have nothing to threaten me with, you fool.”
Marsum snarled and then a slow smile wrapped across his face. “And how would you like a first-hand view of your woman enjoying my pleasures, then?” He let Flora go and Merlin’s eyes shot to hers.
The flicker of anger in them was all he needed to know that she would not back down either. “I’m sorry, Flora.”
“Not as sorry as this one will be,” she snapped, and a roll of thunder crashed through the room. Marsum turned as a bolt of lightning danced from her fingertips and blasted him across the hall, slamming him into the stone.
Merlin stared. “Why didn’t you do that sooner?”
Flora ran to him and a second blast of lightning hit the box, shattering it. He all but fell out, his limbs crying from the length of time he’d been forced into the unnatural position. Flora helped him up and then they ran through the main tower.
“To the Oasis,” Flora said. “Can you take us there?”
“I can, but my father—”
She snapped him around. “He’s awake, Merlin, and he knows you are here. There is no hiding now.”
He gave a single nod, still shocked that she could break the infinity box, then wrapped his arm around her and stepped through the ether, leaving the Jinn’s Dominion behind.
The boom and ruckus of the scrambling Jinn was gone in an instant.
He went to his knees in the sand around the water of the Oasis, breathing hard. “Sweet baby goddess, Flora. Marsum is stronger than the last time I met him.”
“So I gathered.” She dropped to her knees beside him. “But that was no infinity box, or I would not have been able to smash it. More to the question, why didn’t you stay with Zam? You were supposed to be helping her.”
He closed his eyes, unable to look her in the eye. “I couldn’t leave you. Not when I convinced you to come to this hellhole and help me. Not when it was my fault you were captured because I didn’t trust you with all the information. This was . . .”
“Not all your fault,” she said. “Merlin, thank you for trying to save me. Even if I had to save you in the end.”
He looked up to find her smiling at him, a distinct twinkle in her green eyes. “Are you sassing me already?”
Before he could understand what was happening, she leaned in and kissed him. Soft and sweet, spicy and full of fire, the kiss didn’t last nearly long enough.
She pulled back first. “We need to find Zamira. We know she is the key. We know she needs to take the Jinn’s stone, but there is so much at odds here, so much contradiction. Did you see Maks?”
“What?” He looked into her face, still more than a little stunned from her kiss. How long since a kiss had set him back on his heels? A hundred years? More?
She patted his cheek. “Pay attention. Maks stepped in the room right after the messenger. He was back with the Jinn. Though I doubted he wanted to be.”
“What did his eyes look like?” Merlin forced himself to pull it together.
“Like he was stoned on poppy juice.” Flora stood and walked to the water, knelt and rinsed her hands off and patted her face.
“Then he isn’t himself. Marsum has him in his control again.” He frowned. “That does not bode well for Zamira. She might go in to save him rather than take the stone, and she needs that stone to deal with my father.”
“All well and good, but if you’ll recall the last two stones were not on her radar either. She seems to find them whether she wants to or not.” Flora glanced back at him and her eyes widened.
A breath of warm air ghosted across the back of his neck, right before a pair of hairy lips nibbled at the base. He let out a yell and rolled forward, coming up with hands glowing, magic suffusing his skin.
The gray horse stared at him and bobbed his head once. Merlin frowned and stood. “You couldn’t have said there was a horse behind me?”
“Funnier to watch your reaction.” Flora chuckled.
He grimaced and drew his magic back into himself. “Wait,” he leaned over to see two horses tied in a long line behind the gray. Next to him was a black horse with a horse tied behind him. Five horses.
“That’s Zamira’s horse,” Flora whispered. “But she’s not here.”
He looked the horses over. They were ready to go, to bolt from danger. He turned slowly and faced the south. Searching the ground, he found what he was looking for.
Big lion paw prints sunk into the sand, and there beside them, a tiny set of paw prints far harder to see in the dark.
“She’s here all right, just farther south. Her pride is in there, Flora.” A chill whispered down his spine. “She’s walking right into a trap.”
“Then we have to help her!” Flora said.
“We can’t. You know that.” He turned to look at her. “Or at least, I can’t.” He moved to untie one of the horses, a chestnut with flaxen mane and tail. “Ride, you can get there. You can help her.”
“Aren’t you afraid of me being caught again?”
He shook his head. “No. I think you are done playing nice. And I . . . I have someone else I must face.”
She reached out for him. “Your father.”
He nodded. “I will do all I can to slow him down. Stay with Zamira, help her. Once the magic is unlocked, she will need the guidance of someone she can trust.”
“She won’t trust me.”
He grinned. “Not right away, but she will. She has to—she needs you to be the mentor she has never truly had.”
He dared to reach over and pull her into his arms, locking his mouth over hers for a brief moment before he pulled back. “I’ve waited my whole life to find a woman who matched me not only in strength, but in meddling.”
She burst out laughing. “Damn you, Merlin. Go, see if you can subdue your father. And I will save you once you get caught again.”
Flora swung onto the horse’s back and gave it her heels, sending it into a flat-out gallop. The other horses watched them go, as did Merlin.
“Be safe, Flora,” he whispered as he opened the ether and stepped through to a dark and dead land. Ahead of him was a temple, a pyramid made of bones and rock.