38

Jason couldn’t help it. Strong or not, he panicked, yelped like a little girl and jumped to the side. He looked back at the scene early enough to see the wolf crash into Zemar while Muna kept that cocky smirk on her face. The wolf was clawing, biting and gnashing so fast, Jason’s eyes could barely follow the action. But what shocked him the most was that Zemar had no issue at all keeping up with the attacks. She swiped her attacker’s massive paws away like she was swatting mosquitoes and kept herself at a safe distance from the huge fangs desperately reaching out for her.
But Jason could see Zemar was getting angrier and angrier by the second. It was either the fight was irritating her or she was pissed that Muna was sic a beast on her. But for whatever reason it could be, Jason definitely knew he didn’t want to be the one on the receiving end of Zemar’s anger.
At the first chance she got, Zemar kicked the big black wolf hard in the belly and it went sliding back ten feet. It scrambled up and tried to lunge again, huge claws glinting in the sun but with a wave of Zemar’s hand, it was enclosed in a huge block of ice, suspended in the air and unable to move.
Muna’s eyes widened to the size of snowballs and when she looked at Zemar’s outraged expression, her eyes widened even more. For the first time since finding her, Jason saw real fear in her ice-grey eyes.
“How dare you, Muna?” Zemar asked in a deceptively calm voice, “How dare you make that beast attack me?” she pointed at the block of ice containing the wolf in the air and that’s when they all noticed that ice seemed to be suffocating the wolf in some way.
“Stop,” Muna asked weakly.
Zemar squeezed her fist and the wolf gasped harder, “Did you really think this thing would be able to kill me? Have you forgotten who I am? I do not rule over a vicinity like you do. I rule over the whole of Erogon. My ancestor gave your family their powers. You do NOT measure up to me. Do. You. Understand?”
Muna nodded weakly, her eyes filling with tears. She couldn’t look Zemar on the eye but Jason could understand why. Zemar’s eyes were flashing so brightly in her anger that they made him squint even from a distance. After examining Muna’s face a little bit, she let her fist loose and the ice cracked bit by bit until it eventually exploded in a burst of ice and smoke and the orca dived back into the icy water with a huge bellow. Muna let out a small sigh but the fear on her face wasn’t eradicated completely.
“Now that that’s settled,” Zemar said when the smoke was gone, “are you ready to drink?”
In one last act of defiance, Muna raised her head to Zemar, “I don’t have a choice, do I?”
Zemar grinned, her eyes still flashing mildly, “I’m glad you know that, Muna.”
She held out her hand and Jaye placed a small knife in it without missing a beat. Zemar cut a small incision in her palm and held it out to Muna while the golden blood oozed out slowly. Muna held Zemar’s hand and licked tentatively before fully latching her mouth onto the incision completely. She lapped and sucked until the wound was licked clean and Jason saw the same thing that had happened when Zemar had been bound; the trembling, moaning and at last, the loden flash of her eyes before the settled back into an icy grey.
When Muna was done, Zemar nodded and turned back, “I will be able to transport us to the edge of the Frozen Islands after which the responsibility of transportation will rest on Muna and Barine. Do it safely and do it well, please.”
“Yes, my queen,” Muna and Barine said in unison, which really weirded Jason out. Was that the kind of robot he was going to become when he Binded himself to be a part of Zemar’s court? Creepy.
Deep in his thoughts, Jason almost didn’t notice that they were now at the wall that separated the Frozen Islands from the rest of the world.
“That was fast,” Jason breathed.
“No,” Barine corrected, “that was teleportation.” Jason would never stop being wowed. But with the experience of finding Muna, he didn’t know how he felt about the next court member they were on the search for.he could only hope this particular one wouldn’t kill him.