He grinned. “Oh, I like the sass. I really do. I hope you keep it once I’m between your legs.”
I snarled and lunged at him, swinging the flail toward his legs. Marsum jumped into the air and the twin spiked balls passed through where he’d been.
The Jinn landed lightly. “Don’t think I’m going to go easy on you just because I want to fuck you. You need a lesson about who is in charge here.”
He flicked his fingers at me and the flail flew out of my hand, ripped away from my skin. I screamed as bits of my flesh went with it. There was a splash as it hit the water of the Oasis.
Marsum chuckled. “Yes, I think the flail likes you, but you are not its master.” He strode to me, spun the spear toward me, right at my head. I dove and rolled as the point of the spear slammed into the ground where my belly had been only a second before. I snapped up to my feet but stayed in a crouch.
My entire focus was on how to get to a weapon. Marsum, on the other hand, seemed only too happy to chatter on.
“Have you figured out yet who you are?” He quirked a brow and then swung the spear again, first at my left side and then to my right. I caught it with my hands, deflecting the blows some, but not enough to avoid them completely. The blows to my ribs sent shockwaves of pain through me, and I struggled to breathe around them.
“Fuck you,” I snarled as I stepped back toward my pride. Darcy and Kiara had my two blades. I would have to make do with them. They’d not failed me before.
“All in due time. Though I do think that’s going to make Maks very cranky to have you in my bed. As soon as I get a child in you, I’ll kill him. Put him out of his misery.” He grinned.
My foot bumped into a hand and I dared a glance down. Darcy was there, her eyes wide. She blinked once.
Not unconscious then, but unable to move. Unable to fight.
I looked back at Marsum who—fool that he was—had turned his back on me. I bent and scooped up the blade I’d given Darcy and sprinted at Marsum’s back.
At the last second, I leapt, aiming for his head. One clean cut, he’d be done.
But then Maks would be bound forever.
My wrist rolled, changing the trajectory of the blow to maim but not kill . . . and that was the mistake that cost me everything.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I was in midair when Marsum spun, not with his spear but with his hand coated in the black mist that was his Jinn magic. It wrapped around me, pinning my arms and legs together so fast and hard that my own blade sliced into my thigh.
I screamed both with the pain of the cut and with the knowledge that I’d lost. Just like that, because I couldn’t condemn Maks to the life that waited for him if his father died.
Marsum slowly turned, laughing. “You see, I knew you couldn’t do it. Not that. You’d lose your precious Maks.”
I used the only ace I had up my sleeve. “The Emperor wants you dead, limp dick.”
His smile slid only a little. “So, your grandfather has been chatting with you, has he?”
My whole body seized up, the air rushed out of me and I saw nothing but the vision of before. The vision of the kindly-looking old man I’d thought seemed like a grandfather. And he was.
“Oh, you really didn’t know?” He chuckled. “It doesn’t matter. As long as I have you, the falak will remain quiet. Once you give me a child, I’ll finish the Emperor with your help. As it was meant to be.” He drew me close with a crook of his finger. “You lose, pussy cat.”
I pulled my head back as he leaned in for a kiss. I snapped my head forward, slamming it into his nose. There was a satisfying crunch of cartilage shattering and then the sweetest sound to my ears as Marsum howled.
“Little bitch!” he roared.
“That’s queen to you!” I roared back. “I am a lion of the Bright Pride. I will not be held down. I will not bow to you. I am a queen in my own right!” The words were a flood, the power of my life and bloodline through my father singing through me. “I would rather die than give you anything, let alone a child.”
He snapped his head around to stare at me, blood dripping from his now seriously crooked nose. “That can be arranged.”
He flicked his fingers at me and I flew backward through the air until I was over the water. And then he let me go.
I dropped fast, hit the water, gulped a last breath of air, then sunk as though a stone were tied to me. My arms and legs still bound.
My eyes adjusted to the shadows in the water quickly as I sank to the bottom. I hit lightly, my lungs already protesting the lack of air.
I rolled to my belly and right in front of me was the flail, half sunk in the soft bottom. I wriggled forward, fighting with the water and the wound in my leg. I had no hands to touch the flail so I laid my head against it.
Take the magic around me. Please.
The flail warmed under my head and the bonds on my legs and arms released. I reached forward and grabbed the flail. It wouldn’t work for me against Marsum, but I had nothing else.
And if he thought I was done fighting, he was about to get the surprise of a lifetime.
With the flail in my left hand I fought to get to the surface of the water, my body demanding air. I broke the surface, gulped a breath and something shoved me back under.
Well, something being Marsum.
His laughter reached me even through the water. “So, you broke the spell on your limbs? That is interesting. Maybe you aren’t the weakling everyone has been telling me you are?”
I swam to the other side of the water and broke the surface again, only to be shoved under once more.
Over and over, I fought to get out of the water, would manage a breath and then be pushed deep again.
He was tiring me out.
Making it so I would be easier to deal with.
I don’t know which time he shoved me under when I let myself just float. My body was hungry for more than a gulp of air, and fighting through the water with the flail in my hand was exhausting me far faster than I wanted to admit. Even if I got out, I would not be able to fight him with any sort of skill or speed.
Marsum had won.
I would have groaned had I any air to escape me. I slowly pushed to the surface and this time there was no gulp of air. Marsum’s power pushed me back under the water.
I clenched my hand around the flail. What had I left to me to fight? My weapon wouldn’t hit the bastard. I couldn’t kill him because of Maks. My pride members were flat out.
I felt the darkness come for me, and in a blink, I was no longer in the water, but standing in the middle of a desert, my—fuck me—grandfather, the Emperor, in front of me.
His eyebrows were quirked upward. “Facing Marsum, are you?”
“Are you really my grandfather?” I realized I was dripping water all over the sand as if I were truly there. I knew I wasn’t, but the lines between reality and vision were nearly invisible to me.
He gave me a single nod. “I am. But perhaps now is not the time to discuss your genealogy, seeing as your heartbeat is slowing, and I doubt Marsum is smart enough to realize he’s actually killing you.”
I just stared at him.
He pointed at me with a single finger. “You have connected to your pride more than any other shifter. Use it, use their strength to feed you, to break the hold Marsum has on you. Use it to connect to the magic in the flail. Only then will it be yours when you face him.”
“It won’t fight him!” The words burst out of me as the scene began to fade.
“He threw it away, cast it aside. A master does not cast aside his protégé. Connect with your weapon, Zamira. And be stronger for it.” His voice faded and the water was in my mouth, up my nose, filling my body.
The darkness around me was not that of a vision now, but of death. I sunk into it, connecting with my pride. They were all there, including Maks and Lila. I stretched my senses further to the flail in my hand. Power rippled through it, the power of the Jinn who’d made it. I tightened my hand on the haft.
I will never throw you away. That was the only thought I had.
A sharp pang in my hand resonated outward and I stared as blood from my palm swirled around the weapon. The red bloom was there and then suddenly sucked into the weapon, gone.
My lungs ached and my muscles screamed for air. I could only hope I’d done enough to connect with my flail.