The ground where it had been flattened by something, or many somethings.
“This happened after we left.” I reached out to touch a charred piece of wood, feeling the chunk where a blade had bit fully into it.
Balder slowed and I hopped off before he had completely come to a standstill. Lila was there in a flash of blue and silvery scales, doing her trademark loops through the air. A sure sign of her own tension.
The ground had the strangest tracks on it, or maybe they weren’t tracks at all. I bent low over one close to the edge of the remnants of a building. It was a wide foot, super flat, and two-toed. I spread my fingers over it and wasn’t able to span the width of the foot. Whatever it was attached to was a big boy.
But it was no dragon.
“This wasn’t Corvalis, was it?” I said as I walked onto what had been the main thoroughfare of the market. Corvalis was Lila’s father, the nut-job, power-hungry ex-leader of the dragons. Lila had killed him and proven her worth as his successor. We’d assumed that he’d been the one to set fire to the market after we’d left it at a dead gallop.
Lila swept over a few of the charred buildings, inspecting what was left of the destruction. “No, this was no dragon. Though I think it was done to make it look that way to anyone who doesn’t know much. Hence the burning of the buildings to a crisp.”
I made my way east on the strip, poking the toe of my boot into a few bits and pieces, pausing at the place that had been the weapons stall. A half-dozen timbers were down, and the leftover mud that had held the buildings together was crumbled everywhere.
My hand went over my shoulder to where the handle of my flail had been. A flail that had saved my life more than once, but that I’d had to give up to save the world and all that jazz. That being said, I needed a new weapon. One that wouldn’t break under the first blow. I had a couple of knives, but they would only do so much. I wiggled my nose, drawing in a deep breath to see if I could pick up the smell of any iron under the burned-out rubble.
Nothing.
I curled my nose up and crouched by the debris, breathing deep. Still nothing. Not even a hint of something. Maks crouched beside me. “Anything useable?”
Without a doubt, he knew what I was looking for. More likely he’d seen me reach for the weapon that was no longer on my back. I pushed a chunk of rubble out of the way. “Nope.”
“We’ll find you something. Besides, you can shift to your jungle cat form, and you and Balder have all this magic mojo going on. Lila can be two sizes of dragon, and I still have my Jinn abilities. We’ll be okay without another weapon for a bit.” He gave me a wink.
Lila buzzed down over our heads, a bottle in her claws. “And țuică! I found a bottle!”
Before she could fly away, I leapt up and grabbed the bottle of liquor made from plums that we all liked a little too much, and promptly threw it onto the ground. “Are you crazy?”
Spluttering and pointing, her tail flipping in serious agitation, she sliced through the air with a sharp whistle. “Me? You’re the one who broke that bottle of amazing-ness!” She tucked her wings and flew for the ground, heading straight for the rapidly dissipating liquid. I kicked sand over the wet spot, just in case she decided she was desperate enough to try lapping it up.
By the violet-eyed glare she gave me, that was exactly what she was thinking of doing.
“You remember the last time you drank it? It knocked you out for three days and stole your ability to shift sizes.” I pointed at her. “People know you’re a closet kleptomaniac when it comes to this plum juice. So enough. Find something new to drink.”
Grumbling, she turned her back on me and strode down the street in a huff, kicking dirt behind her, each step creating a tiny dust cloud. A smile crept over my face as I watched her go. Every once in a while she punctuated her grumbles with a claw, or a flick of her tail. Maybe if she’d been in her larger form, her movements would have been intimidating instead of funny.
Maks looped an arm around my waist. “What do you want to bet she finds a bottle of something else before sundown?”
I smiled up at him. “Counting on it. She has a nose for booze; it’s crazy.”
His eyes met mine, and he bent his head, kissing me. Soft and sweet with a layer of heat underneath that made every bone in my body turn to jelly. I held onto him to keep my legs under me. I didn’t take this for granted—him, this love, the life we had—even if it was wandering a desert and looking for dragon eggs.
The last few weeks had been as close to perfect as I could have hoped. He pulled back a bit, our foreheads touching as we both fought to keep our breath. “Zam.”
“Yes?”
“Just wanted to say your name.” Maks closed the distance to kiss me again. “To taste it in my mouth.”
Damn it, he said all the right things. I slid my arms around his neck. My lips had barely touched his when a small body slammed into us, grabbing at our shoulders, blue and silver scales all I could see for a split second.
“Lila, what the hell?” I grabbed her, irritation fleeing as her panic slid through me, the trembling in her body running the length of her. “Lila, what’s wrong?”
“I swear I didn’t drink any of the țuică! But I can’t shift,” she whispered. “I’m stuck again.”
3
The remainder of the Blackened Market let my words echo out across the air. Or maybe I was yelling more than I wanted. “You drank the țuică, didn’t you?” I tried to keep my voice even, honest. I’d literally just broken the bottle of țuică, and Lila had gone and found another and drank it already? Damn it. I mean, they couldn’t all be poisoned with magical spells, but then, what did I know?
“No, no, I didn’t! I swear I didn’t!” She whipped around our heads, frantic. “I . . . I walked to the end of the market strip and when I got to the end, I thought I’d shift and come back and . . . take you for a flight.”
I doubted that. More likely she’d have tried to scare us for breaking her țuică, but whatever. That wasn’t the point. “Okay, show us where you were. Maybe there is something you tripped, like a spell? Maybe it’s something Maks can fix.”
Balder and Batman followed the three of us down the length of the Blackened Market strip. Lila zipped in loops in front of us. “I was just walking down here, talking to myself and thinking maybe I could scare you two,” I glanced at Maks and he gave a subtle nod, “and I was feeling kind of excited, right, like right before a hunt. And then I got to the end of the strip and turned around and tried to shift and there was nothing.” She shot to my shoulder, knocking me back a half-step. Her tiny claws dug into me as she gripped harder than normal.
“Easy, Lila. We will figure this out.” I slowed as we approached the end of the market strip.
Maks lifted one hand, palm down, and did a slow circle. I scanned the area with my eyes, waiting on him to find something first. We both had Jinn magic, but he was far more trained in the use of it. I’d only just discovered the magic running through my veins, and mine was wilder, unpredictable and powerful, as per being a female Jinn. Training didn’t seem to want to work with me when it came to my magic; it mostly seemed to run on need for me.