I drew my pride’s strength to me, their energy flooding my limbs like light cutting through a storm cloud.
It filled me, and in it I saw their hearts. Strong, wild hearts that were meant for freedom and love and loyalty to their pride and packs. A roar of affirmation bubbled up in me, but I held it back as I pushed for the surface, lifting the flail above my head with both hands.
I broke through the water and Marsum’s magic so hard I shot out so my upper body was free from the water before I sunk back. The power of Marsum on me rolled off my shoulders and I swam to the shoreline. My fatigue was gone. The flail was light in my hand.
And I’d never been so angry in my entire life.
I stood and turned to see Marsum on the other side of the water. His eyes were wide, and he was staring at me with a grin plastered on his face. A grin that said it all. He thought he’d beaten me.
“Are you done fighting me?” He started around the edge of the water, the mist wrapping from his fingers and shooting toward me. I twisted the flail, spinning it so the two balls whipped through the ribbon of mist.
Like watching a spinning wheel weave wool, the flail snagged the mist and spun it all on its own, and it sucked the magic into the metal and wood. I smiled back at Marsum. “No, I think we’re just starting.”
I ran around the edge of the Oasis, straight for him. I already knew what I had to do. Bind him. The way he’d bound me. Which meant I needed someone with magic.
I diverted some of the energy coming into me into Lila through the threads of energy that connected us. “Lila, wakey wakey!” A little bit of freezing all around his body should do the trick. At least until I could come up with something better.
Goddess of the desert, let me come up with something better.
The flail hummed under my fingers as it sucked Marsum’s magic deep into it. Marsum just stared at me as I slid to a stop in front of him. A moment passed where we just stood and then all hell broke loose. I pushed enough of the pride’s energy back to them that they all woke. And they were as pissed as me.
I snapped the flail forward, going for his belly—and the twin balls smashed into him, sending him to the side. From the ground, he spun the spear, the blade nicking my left arm. I flinched and Marsum used the advantage to his fullest, running flat out at me.
I backed up as fast as I could, keeping him in front of me.
“You can’t kill me,” he snarled as he swept his spear at me. “And I will have you one way or another.”
He drove the point of the spear to the left of my legs and then swept it outward, slamming me onto the ground. The wound in my leg and arm were slowing me down, even with the strength of the pride running through my veins. Those veins were running out of blood.
Marsum dropped his weapon and leapt onto me, his body pinning me to the ground.
He clamped his hands on my wrists and lifted them above my head. “You stopped fighting me.” He tipped his head to one side. “Why?”
I smiled as Lila swept by and touched the middle of his back. The cold shot through him and into me but didn’t freeze me.
He roared and the ice on his back shattered, his magic ghosting around us. “Nice try, but the fire of the desert will always save me.”
Before I could move, he slammed his mouth over mine and kissed me. Well, kissed maybe on his part. I writhed and fought to get away from him, driving my knees into his side, twisting and fighting to get him off me.
Heat, fire, the desert, roared inside me in answer to the magic he shoved into my belly. Fire I didn’t understand, yet instinctively knew came from my mother’s side.
He was lighting the fire of my Jinn blood. That was what he’d been trying to do before, using Maks.
Marsum wanted me to connect with him, to make me want him, which would never happen. I managed to shove him off. “What did you do to my curse? Why is it not trying to kill me?”
He grinned at me and ran a tongue over his lips. “It was never meant to kill you. The curse was meant to send you back to me to have it removed. Assuming you were alive. And once I realized you were alive, I changed it. I made it so you would be drawn to the desert, that everything in your life would bring you here. To me.”
I stared at him, my jaw hanging open as I saw the last leg of my journey replay in fast forward. How everything and everyone seemed to be sending me to Marsum, albeit for different reasons.
I stood there too long.
His magic wrapped around me and I screamed as he pulled me toward him once more.
My arms were pinned again. He took advantage of it and slammed his mouth over mine, his magic shoved deep into my body, lighting things I never knew were there.
My blood boiled under the heat, under the power we held together.
I started to sink into myself. To feel I could change things for the better if I but embraced what Marsum offered.
His fingers slid into my hair, holding me to him.
As suddenly as Marsum was on me, he was yanked off. My eyes remained closed as I struggled to understand what was happening. I opened my eyes and blinked up at Maks standing over me, one of my own kukri blades in his hand. Blood dripped down the side of his face and those blue eyes held all the sorrow in the world.
“Goodbye, Zam,” he said softly.
Without another word, he rammed the blade into Marsum’s throat, cut through his spine and took his head. Just like that, my heart shattered.
“NO!” I screamed the word as an explosion of magic sent me flying through the air. I tumbled head over ass, and a tiny pair of claws dug into my arm. I shifted as I fell and Lila took the weight of my smaller form easily.
“To the horses!” Lila yelled to the rest of the pride and they scrambled, mounting and following Lila as she flew us out of the Oasis to the east, deeper into the desert. Away from the power that flattened the trees and sent up a sandstorm that swirled out of nowhere.
I stared back at the Oasis where Maks stood, his body disappearing under the black of Marsum’s magic and soul as it moved into him. His head tipped back and he roared to the sky, deep and guttural as the Jinn around him went to their knees. A new power had been born.
And I’d lost the one man whose soul matched my own.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lila flew with me until we could no longer see the Oasis. She lowered me to the ground and I shifted and mounted on Balder. It took all I had not to break down in front of those I was meant to care for.
I drew a breath and forced the words from my mouth. “We need space between us and the Jinn.” I looked to Flora. “Any suggestions, fairy godmother?”
She smiled but there was pain in it. “No.”
Ford cleared his throat. “There’s a watering hole about a day and a half from here. That would be closest.”
I tipped my head at him. “Lead the way, Ford.”
No one argued, no one suggested going back to Ish and the Stockyards, not even Steve. I watched them all. Five horses were not enough, but we made do. Kiara, Darcy, Flora, and Nell rode the four remaining horses. The cub—Frankie was his name—rode with Kiara. Steve, Ford, Benji and the cheetah—Asuga—stayed in their four-legged forms and ranged around us.
Asuga was happy to lead the way with bursts of speed, then waited for us well ahead. Ford traveled next to me and Balder, quietly at first. But Ford, being who he was, couldn’t contain himself.
“Maks isn’t coming back to us, is he?” he asked.
I glanced down at him. “I don’t know.”
His eyebrows dug deep. “You think there is a chance?”
Lila looked back at me from her perch between Balder’s ears. I let myself follow the energy of my pride.
I found them all easier than I ever had before. Lila, Ford, Steve, Kiara, Darcy, Benji, Shem way to the north, and even the cub Frankie . . . the others were there on the periphery, and it would be up to them if they joined us or not.
My lower lip trembled as I realized there was no connection pulling me to the west. There was no connection to Maks at all anymore, though my desire to ride to the desert was there, at my back. The curse of Marsum still in play maybe? A tremor stumbled through me. Flora rode on my right and she reached out and touched a hand to my arm.
“If you love him, he’s not lost. Love is the only power that can truly save a soul,” she said.