Dragon's Ground (The Desert Cursed Series Book 2) Read online

  I watched her leave, anger and frustration vying for the surface of my emotions until I finally exploded.

  “Bryce will die if he’s left out there alone!” I screamed the words at her retreating back, and she finally stopped, turned, and faced me.

  “He was dead the moment I pulled you two from the Oasis. It’s only that neither of you realized it.”

  Just like that, I was there again in the past, standing in front of the Oasis, the water lapping at my feet.

  I’d run back to the Oasis after trying to warn the rest of the pride. The Jinn hadn’t stopped with our pride though, but had swept the area, killing as many of the Bright Lions as they could.

  My father was dead; that was a truth I felt to the center of my bones. That he was no longer in this world. But Bryce . . . he’d been alive when I’d left him to warn the other prides. I’d been too late to save them.

  Perhaps I could save my brother, though. Maybe his injuries weren’t as bad as I’d thought. Though I knew in my heart if he wasn’t injured badly, he would have kept fighting.

  I raced across the sand in my cat form, leaping and bounding faster than I’d ever gone before. The sand was hot on the pads of my paws, but I didn’t slow. My eyes watered with tears and from the grit of the blowing wind sweeping across the dunes. Over the rise that preceded the Oasis, and then I was sliding down the slope toward the bodies strewn around. Bright gold fur stained with brighter red blood was everywhere I looked and the world swayed. I used a trick my father had taught me. On the field of battle, keep your eyes on your goal, nothing else.

  I narrowed my eyes, staring only at my brother, and the spear that still rose out of his lower back.

  I slowed as I approached him, fear taking me down more than a few notches. He wasn’t moving, and I wasn’t even sure he was breathing still. My ears flicked back and forth, but I didn’t dare scent the air too much for fear of all the death I would inhale.

  “Bryce?” I whispered. He couldn’t be gone. I couldn’t have lost him too. I shifted and wobbled on two legs, grief making me weak in the knees. Carefully I knelt next to him and put my shaking fingers to his neck.

  For a moment, I felt nothing, and then there it was, a heartbeat that, while it wasn’t strong, it was at least there. He wasn’t dead.

  Breathing hard, hope giving me a burst of energy, I twisted around to look at the spear. There would be no way he would heal with the weapon still in his spine. As a shifter, he should be able to heal once the spear was out.

  I stood and stepped over his back, straddling his wide hindquarters so I would have better balance. A clean jerk, that was what Father had always said about removing a weapon from a body. Clean, and as much at the same angle as the weapon went in. I let the spear rest in my hands, feeling the direction it needed to go. Toward me, toward Bryce’s head, which would be good for a clean pull. I could do this.

  I bit my lower lip and put my hands on the haft of the spear. The haft rested against my palms. “Hang on, Bryce. This will hurt but then it will be done.” I tightened my hold on the spear and then pulled it as hard and as cleanly as my thirteen-year-old self could.

  Bryce grunted, and for a moment, I thought he was going to get right back up. I tossed the spear to the side and knelt at his side again. “Bryce, come on, you have to get up.” I shook his shoulders. He didn’t move, and I wasn’t sure what was going on, but all the sound in the world singled down to just the breath in his chest moving in and out. “Bryce, get up!” Even my words echoed weirdly.

  “He can’t, child.” A woman’s voice cut through the strange white noise buzzing in my ears. I gazed up at the stately woman with the raven-dark hair and the crystalline-clear eyes. Sorrow was etched into her features as deep as my own. “You should not have pulled the spear out, Zamira. You have broken him. He will never heal now.”

  I put my hands to my mouth, the horror of her words bringing bile up the length of my throat. “No,” I managed and nothing else before I vomited to the side, unable to keep it back. I’d damned my brother.

  “You have lost so much, little lion. Will you come with me? Let me protect you and your brother from the Jinn.” Her hands were on my back, soothing me as I retched, as I sobbed for what I’d done to Bryce. He would hate me forever and I would never fault him for that.

  The offer from the woman was sincere. I believed her every word and the guilt that I’d hurt my brother rather than helped him overwhelmed any other sense I might have had in that moment.

  “Yes. Please, I don’t want him to die. I . . . was only trying to help him.” I looked up at her through the tears.

  “My name is Ish.” She held a hand out to me. “And your brother will not die, though there may be times he would wish he had.”

  She bent and smoothed her hands over his head. I watched in fascination as deep purple lines spilled out around his hair, matching the throb of purple that emanated from a dangling bracelet. Magic, she was using magic.

  “Are you a Jinn?” I’d never heard of a female Jinn, but there was a first time for everything.

  “I am not a Jinn, child. There is no such thing as a female Jinn, you know that.” She spoke gently with only the mildest of rebukes. I would do whatever she wanted if only she could heal Bryce. She could scold me all she wanted.

  “You can heal him, right?” I whispered. “You can fix him?”

  She turned to me then. “If you help me, Zamira, I can fix him. But you must be strong enough. You must listen to me and do my will.”

  I stared up at her. “I am yours.”

  I swallowed hard though I could not seem to push the lump down my throat. Yet again I’d failed Bryce. The only blood relation I had left, I’d failed him because that seemed to be my lot in life. My chin touched my chest as the pain of the past curled around me, tightening its hold on my heart.

  I’d never told Bryce I’d been the one to pull the spear, and as far as I knew, neither had Ish. How could I? He already hated me for being able to walk when he couldn’t, for being a thief for Ish and ruining our family’s honor as he saw it. But how could I not when she was the only hope he had of being healed? And now . . . he’d run off to Dragon’s Ground to find a cure on his own because it had taken too long.

  What a clusterfuck this was.

  I stood there, breathing hard, fighting the guilt and the sorrow doing its damnedest to choke the shit out of me. Finally, I lifted my head. Ish was gone, and I was alone in Balder’s stall, the past finally fading behind me.

  For all that it was, I could do nothing about it now. I had to move forward. There was no choice for me now but to find Bryce and . . . tell him the truth. Then maybe we could find a way to heal him together. I drew a big breath, filling my lungs fully before slowly letting the air out, and then nodded to myself.

  “I should have told him years ago, Balder. But I was too afraid to lose what family I had left,” I said softly. Which meant that now, I had to find a way out. I stared out into the desert, past the territory that was the Stockyards.

  Whatever barrier Ish had put up around the Stockyards to keep me in was powerful magic; she was growing stronger with each gemstone we brought back to her.

  Basically, I needed some powerful magic of my own to break through it. Because if she thought for one fucking second I would leave Bryce out there on his own, she had another think coming.

  The real question was where the hell did I find magic that would offset whatever spell she had going on?

  A cold spot centered on my chest and my hand shot to the sapphire dangling from my neck. The Ice Witch’s stone could have that kind of power, but I didn’t know how to use it. And if I did manage to use it, I would tip my hand to Ish, showing her I had the stone she so desperately wanted. That she wanted more than she wanted those in her charge to survive.

  A stone that would give her greater power yet.

  “You ain’t getting it,” I growled under my breath, my hand dropping from the stone hidden under my shirt. No, I co
uldn’t use it unless I could think of nothing else. In part because I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Throw it at the barrier and hope it did something was about all I had in mind.

  But what else was there? I paced the courtyard, wracking my brain. There was someone else who had power like Ish. But. . . he was less than reliable. He had, however, offered to help me out.

  “I feel stupid,” I muttered to myself. I took a breath. “Merlin, this would be a perfect time for you to show back up and help, you know,” I said out loud. I perked my ears, listening for a response. “Merlin? You said I could call on you. So. . . I’m calling you, you fickle bastard.”

  Nothing but the wind blowing across the winter desert. I crinkled up my nose and resumed my pacing. Not that I’d really expected him to show. He had said he’d wanted to help me get through the Witch’s Reign, nothing more. Damn it.

  As I strode past Balder’s stall, he stuck his head out and butted his nose against my back.

  Right against the flail.

  A flail made by a Jinn, a flail that soaked up blood. A magical weapon if ever there was one. And Maggi had delivered it back to me on the day I needed it. I did not think that was a coincidence now.

  I slowed my pacing, turned and looked at him. “My friend, you are surely not just a horse inside that head of yours, for you are far too smart.”

  I would only get one shot at this, that much I knew. I slipped into Balder’s stall and tacked him up faster than I’d ever done before, apologizing all the way, but he never flinched. Ish would not expect me to try to run this soon after being told I had to stay. At least, that was what I was banking on. The cover of night would be the smart time to try this, so obviously, I was going right now.

  I had Balder’s gear on in well under a minute, checked his girth, and then slid on his bridle.

  “Where are you going?”

  I cringed at the familiar voice. Fucking desert sand up my ass crack, this was not what I needed at all.

  Chapter 3

  Standing in Balder’s stall, I fought with the desire to swing around and punch Kiara in the face, but that was a no-no for a lot of reasons, least of all that I didn’t really blame her for what had happened. She’d been a pawn of Steve’s, and now she was likely checking on me for Ish. If I didn’t think fast, I had no doubt she would tattle on me. She could easily run to Ish now that I was all geared up and ready to get the fuck away from the Stockyards and whatever weirdness was taking hold of Ish.

  I slowly turned to face her. “Nowhere. I’m going nowhere but a ride around the Stockyards so Balder can stretch his legs. We’ve been cooped up for days, if you recall.”

  Her golden eyes fluttered closed to half-mast, making her look demure and even younger than her eighteen years. “I know you hate me.”

  “Yup.” No point in denying that shit. I might not blame her, but she’d betrayed me as much as Steve had.

  “And I know you hate Steve.”

  “Well, to be fair, I hate him more than I hate you,” I said. “You’re just. . . young. And dumb to the ways of a fucking manipulator like him. You can’t see what he’s done to all of us.” I didn’t take my eyes from her. “So maybe I don’t hate you. I hate what you’ve become, what you let him turn you into.”

  “I love him,” she said softly. “And he loves me. He’s not manipulating me.”

  I glared at her. “Yeah, well I loved him at one point too. Hell, I loved you too. But he doesn’t love either of us. He wants a fucking harem of women so he can have a new body under him every night because he’s a manwhore.”

  She cringed. “He told me that he loved me best. Out of all the women he’s been with.”

  I rolled my eyes, somehow not surprised that she was aware and okay with the fact that Steve was still sleeping around on her. “Okay, great, fine, he loves you best. I’ll give you that. Why are we having this conversation again?”

  She drew a big breath and it was only then that I saw she was dressed for travel and that Lacey, one of the other horses, was tied to a stall a few doors down. A speckled black and white paint horse that wouldn’t hide well on the wide plains, but in the snow, would be hard to spot. Too bad we were going through the plains.

  “I want to go with you. Something is wrong with Ish and. . . I’m afraid for my baby, Zam. And I know you might not care for me, but surely you would help me keep a cub safe?” she asked softly.

  My lips curled up with distaste, not so much for Kiara but for the words she spoke. Because there was a feel of truth to them I didn’t like. The same truth I’d been struggling with myself—that something was very wrong with our mentor. “Did Ish threaten you?”

  Kiara’s heart-shaped face fell, her eyes filling with tears, making her look like the little girl I’d rescued so long ago. “She said that if Steve didn’t come back with the jewel, that. . . something bad would happen. That she’d seen it in a dream that I’d lose the baby, that I’d die, that our pride would die with me.”

  A threat cloaked within a dream. I’d seen Ish pull that stunt once before, but it had been with an interloper who had been trying to worm his way into the Stockyards. A wolf shifter with no pack, and a disease we could smell on the wind.

  But that was then, this was now. Seriously, what the fuck was going on with Ish? In all the years I’d known her, she’d never been cruel. I frowned, thinking about when it had all started. When had she stopped being the woman I looked to for comfort, the mother of my heart? The steps had been slow in this new direction, but there had been a leap toward the cruel. . . with the stone that we’d brought from the giants. Icy fingers clenched my heart. They were just gemstones we were bringing back, gemstones to magnify her strength, weren’t they? Suddenly the sapphire against the skin of my chest seemed to cool, reminding me that it held power too. A hell of a lot of power.

  What if they were a power unto themselves? That would mean we weren’t just saving Ish’s life as she’d said we were, but we were giving her more power.

  I tapped my finger against the stall door, thinking fast, trying to outmaneuver whatever was happening here. Because suddenly the problems I faced weren’t just my missing brother, Kiara being threatened, or the dragons’ gemstone falling into the hands of Ish. The problem was Ish herself was a powerful mage who I didn’t want to cross for more reasons than I could count.

  That left us only one recourse. One I didn’t like all that much.

  “Something is wrong with Ish, that much I’d agree to.” I nodded, keeping my thoughts to myself for the moment. “But I can’t slow down for you, Kiara. And I can’t take you with me.”

  “As soon as we get to Steve, you won’t have to worry about me at all,” she said, her eyes full of hope. “And. . . I’m sorry I lied to Ish about what happened at the Ice Witch’s castle. I. . . just want Steve to see that I support him in every way. So that he would know how much he means to me.”

  “Even if he’s a camel’s pizzle?” I arched an eyebrow.

  Her lips wobbled. “Yes. He needs to know I stand with him. Even if he’s wrong, he’s our alpha and we need to support him.”

  Goddess of the Desert, that was bloody fucking messed up. A leader should be held more accountable than anyone else, not given a free pass just because he got handed the job. A mate was the same in my mind. But I wasn’t about to give her relationship advice to improve her partnership with my ex-husband so that he would see her as more than just a warm body at night.

  I sighed. “I don’t know if what I’m going to try will work. Did Ish tell you that you couldn’t leave the Stockyards too?”

  She nodded. “I think she knew I wanted to go with Steve.”

  Of course, she did. Kiara was no better at subterfuge than me in that regard. Which was how I’d caught her and Steve together.

  I rubbed a hand over my face. “Fine, you will keep watch while I try to break the. . . whatever it is keeping us both in here.”

  “You have magic?” Her eyes widened.

  My hand
went to the flail’s handle. “Not mine, the Jinn’s. But it should be strong enough to cut through the spell Ish has laid on the Stockyards.” That last bit was just speculation at this point. Ish had always avoided the Jinn, and I’d always thought it was because of us—the only lion shifters in the world were here.

  But maybe there were more reasons than that.

  Kiara’s mouth dropped open, and she stumbled back a few steps. We’d all been at the mercy of the Jinn’s magic more than once, so I wasn’t exactly surprised by her reaction. We’d all lost loved ones to their strength and their spells. And maybe I relished the reaction she had a little more than I should have. But come on, I’m not perfect.

  I smiled as I opened the stall door and handed her Balder’s reins. “You hang onto the horses and get ready to blast through when I say.”

  “Okay. What happens if you can’t break it?”

  My hand went to the sapphire, but I stopped myself from touching it, lifted my hand higher and rubbed the base of my neck. No need to tip my hand to her, just in case she was lying about wanting to get away. In case she was still somehow working for Ish. “I have a backup plan. I don’t want to use it if we don’t have to.”

  She nodded, trusting me, which was nuttier than a peanut bush in my eyes, and then she fell into step just behind me. Submissive to me. I was older, that was likely it more than anything else. That and I’d just told her that I had something of the Jinn’s magic.

  Though she was Steve’s mate, and he was playing the alpha right now, she was still so young and really, she was no alpha to begin with. Hell, she wasn’t even out of her teens. I drew a slow breath, knowing that no matter how old she got, she would never be an alpha. She just didn’t have the spine or the heart for it.

  Some were born alphas. Some weren’t. She was most certainly in the second category.

  “I remember when you found me,” she said softly as we walked. “You fought off the gorcs trying to kill me near that muddy watering hole.”