It was as if she were part siren or miren. And it captured him fully, pulling him away from the haunt’s lure.
She held his head against her thigh. “Her voice finds hope and diamonds and fables all around and I’m taken over now, by the soul of a taste of a sound … when I’m lost in the darkness … when I’m cut at the knees … she says ‘you can give your soul to the city … you just bring your heart home to me’ … she says ‘I know ’bout your problems … take a rest for a while,’ and every sign on the highway says I’ll be home again soon.”
Closing his eyes, he savored the sensation of her hand in his hair while she sang and held him against her body. No one had ever held him with such affection.
Like he mattered.
Like I’m human.
As if he were hers to hold and keep …
Words failed him utterly as inexplicable emotions assailed him. An unknown wave of tenderness rose up and swallowed him whole. No words could describe this … inner warmth. It tasted like honey on his tongue and left him even more helpless than the haunt’s crooning.
And still she sang while she gently swayed. Never once in his life had he ever wanted to belong to anyone. He’d always prided himself on standing alone. On being the sinister, solitary beast.
I am drakomai.
Yet in this moment, he surrendered himself to her completely.
Then, in a single heartbeat, the haunts were gone. And so was any resistance to her that he might have ever had …
Urian was the first to recover himself. “Damn, big sister. Had no idea you could sing like that.”
Clearing her throat, she appeared embarrassed as she stepped away from Falcyn. “I don’t do it often.”
He caught her hand before she could leave him entirely. Falcyn wanted to say something to her. To tell her what that had meant to him. How much she’d touched him in a way no one had before.
But words failed him completely. He didn’t want to cheapen it with something so trivial as empty words people spoke to each other without meaning.
All he could do was stare up into those dark eyes, hard and aching, unsure and lost. In that moment, he realized exactly how inhuman he was.
How human he wanted to be.
For her. That realization terrified him to a level he’d never dreamed of.
She’s a Daimon.
No, not a Daimon. An Apollite. Technically, she’d never converted over into the parasitic beast that had to prey on human souls in order to live. Her mother had saved her from that nightmare fate.
Thus the true tragedy of her life. The humans had attacked her and her family when they hadn’t been Daimons. Neither Medea nor her husband or child had ever harmed a human being. According to Urian, they’d been dedicated members of the Cult of Pollux—Apollites who took oaths whereby they swore to harm no human and to die as Apollo intended, peacefully on their twenty-seventh birthdays.
Innocent victims to man’s inhumanity and fear.
At the time of her death, Medea hadn’t known how to fight or protect herself. Had never tasted human blood or violence of that nature. She’d been wholly unprepared for what they’d done to her. What they’d done to her child.
It wasn’t fair. But then nothing in life ever was. He of all beings knew that.
Life preyed on the weak. It preyed on the strong. But at least the strong could fight back. They could weather the hell that rained down on them. The weak were seldom so fortunate.
In one heartbeat everything had changed for Medea. Her innocence had died a most brutal death. And she’d been baptized in the blood of her family.
Life made victims of everyone. Without mercy. Or compassion. It spared none.
Rising to his feet, he enveloped her in his arms, wanting to shelter her there. To keep her safe from any harm, as she’d done him. That was what his kind did. It was how they showed affection.
Not with words.
With action.
“Um … Falcyn?”
Blaise laughed at Medea’s tone. “What’s my brother doing?”
“Holding me in an awkwardly tight manner. It’s very strange.”
“But is he sitting on you?”
“No…” Medea stretched the word out. “Why? Should I be worried?”
“Well, it means he’s not trying to hatch you. Yet. That’s always a bonus.”
“Stop,” Falcyn growled. “Both of you.” He tightened his arms around her an instant before he let go. “I was only saying thank you for helping me.”
Medea smiled in spite of herself. “You’re welcome.” Biting her lip, she watched as he ambled back toward her brother. Whom he summarily took a playful swipe at.
Damn, he was exceptionally handsome.
And she despised the fact that she noticed. Hated how edible his ass was in those tight black jeans.
Normally, she didn’t really pay attention to such things, except in passing. Yet the longer she was around Falcyn, the more she was seeing how gorgeous he was and the harder it was getting to dismiss it.
Worse? She liked the way he’d held her. It’d been way too long since anyone touched her like he did.
Like she mattered.
She’d forgotten what it felt like to be part of a couple—to have a man stare at her as if he hung on her every word. But Falcyn made her remember things she’d done her damnedest to forget.
More than that, he made her crave it again.
Don’t! She didn’t want to be hurt. Not like that. Not after what she’d gone through with Evander. It’d almost killed her to lose him, and she never wanted to hurt that way again.
And yet …
This was different.
He was different.
And it wasn’t just because Falcyn was a dragon. Though that was a large part of it, there was a lot more.
Something in her reached out for him against her will. She didn’t understand it.
And she hated that weakness with every part of herself. You’re stronger than this.
She didn’t need anyone. Ever. Not for anything. On her own two feet. That was how she lived. It was what she knew best. What she liked. Nothing could hurt her unless she allowed it and she refused to be vulnerable.
No connections. She had her brother and Davyn. Two warriors who were virtually incapable of falling. They were the only ones she was attached to.
And her parents, who would fall to no one.
Not even the gods.
That was all she’d allow herself. I will stand below no more pyres to watch my loved ones burn. She refused to be Urian. To live in absolute grief. A shadow of her former self. A shade lost in the anguish of heartbreak. She’d been there for too many centuries and it’d taken her too long to get over the death of her baby and husband.
Medea couldn’t go back.
She wouldn’t go back.
Not even for Falcyn.
Heartache was for fools. Love was for the weak. She had no use for either. I’m stronger alone, always.
No matter what, she had to make herself believe that and remember that. To live it.
And as they walked, Brogan drifted back to Medea’s side and cocked her head in a very birdlike manner. “They called you a Daimon?”
“Sort of.”
“I don’t know your species. Are you like the fey?”
“My people were created by the Greek god Apollo and then cursed by him.”
“Why?”
Why indeed. That had been the question that had galled her the whole of her exceptionally long life.
Medea sighed as she was driven against her will to remember the tragedy of her mother’s mortal fate. Head over heels in love as a girl, she’d married Apollo’s son without hesitation. And then, pregnant with her, her mother had been forced to divorce Medea’s father or see herself raped and murdered by the vengeful god.
Leaving her father had emotionally destroyed her mother. Had killed something deep inside her that hadn’t come alive again until the day they’d reunited.
Centuries after Stryker had married and raised another family with another wife—Urian’s surrogate mother.
And thus had begun the curse of her people, as Stryker had made a bargain with an Atlantean goddess to save his family from his father’s curse.
“Apollo had a Greek mistress that caused his Apollite lover-queen to become jealous, as she felt betrayed by him because her own son had died. Or so she thought … The queen didn’t know that her son had lived because Apollo had spared him. That Stryker had been taken from her womb so that he could be safely raised by his father in Greece, with a surrogate mother. So when Apollo fathered another son with his Greek whore, she sent out her soldiers to murder Apollo’s mistress and child. Only the Apollite queen didn’t have the backbone to stand by her decree. Rather, she told them to make it appear as if an animal had ravaged them—as if a god couldn’t figure out the truth. Tells you exactly what kind of moron my grandmother was, and I shudder over the fact that I share genes with that brainiac.”