And Blaise had yet to set her back on her feet. In fact, he seemed reluctant to let her go.
“My lord?” Brogan blushed profusely.
Blaise hesitated. “Not sure I should let you down. You seem to keep finding trouble whenever I do.”
Medea looked away as a strange tenderness went through her at how adorable the two of them were. Especially when Brogan wrapped her arms around his neck and snuggled against his chest as if content to stay right where she was.
But Falcyn wasn’t so kind. “Blaise! Set her down! Now!”
Medea popped him on the arm as Brogan appeared stricken by his sharp tone. “What is your problem?”
Falcyn gestured at Brogan. “He doesn’t know where she’s been.”
Was he serious? “Oh my God, Falcyn! He’s not some two-year-old child and she’s not a piece of candy he found on the floor that he stuck in his mouth!”
“Well, that’s how he’s acting. He looks at her like he could eat her up.”
“And you’re acting like a baby. Get over it. He’s a grown dragon. He’s allowed to be nice to any woman he wants to. Without your permission or approval, you know?”
Falcyn’s nose actually twitched and flared. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” he groused like that two-year-old she’d just mentioned.
Blaise rolled his eyes and shook his head. “He always acts like an old woman. I’m used to it. He’s the same way with Illarion. Max is just as bad, if not worse. At least they no longer try to burp me after my feedings. Or check my nappy.”
Brogan laughed as Blaise finally set her back on her feet, but he kept her tucked by his side.
And yet there was a profound pain deep inside Falcyn’s eyes that Medea didn’t miss. What was that dark shadow that haunted him so?
Before she could ask about it, Brogan drew their attention to the stones that, when they stepped back, Medea realized formed a half-broken demonic face suspended on pedestals over a deep, fiery abyss.
“Well, that’s different.” And the dais was impossible to reach.…
Medea arched a brow. “I take it that’s the portal we’re looking for?”
Brogan nodded. Her mood now was subdued and quiet. Gone was any hint of the playful sprite she’d been a few seconds ago.
Medea cast a dry stare to Falcyn. “This is when having a flying dragon would come in handy.”
Falcyn snorted. “So would rope … and a gag.”
Before she could stop herself, Medea swept a hot, seductive glance over his long, lush body. “A rope and a gag come in handy for lots of things, princess,” she said suggestively.
“Ew! Hey, brother over here, and I do not approve of this entire line of conversation with my sister! Back to a G rating, folks.”
Laughing, albeit a bit nervously, Brogan started toward the platform.
She’d only taken a step before a light flashed and smoke exploded in front of them—this realm seemed to like that a lot. Apparently, the entire place seemed to be rigged for a heavy metal concert tour.
The peculiar portal in front of them churned into action, spinning and turning like a rusted nickelodeon. Light shot out from the demon’s mouth and eyes, with a blinding intensity. Symbols twisted around it in a frenetic ballet that was painful to watch.
And out of that madness came more smoke and mist. As if an angry beast snorted at them with a furious hatred. Spiraling up and dancing to a jerky beat, the mist solidified into the shape of a tall hooded beast.
No, not a beast.
A man.
At first, Medea thought the emerging figure was a wizard of some kind. Or shaman. Indeed, his flowing feathered robes and chains, along with the braided black hair and the huge elaborate raven skull headdress, would have lent themselves to that assumption. Especially since bells chimed as he moved and he held a bloodred torch staff in his left hand. One that belched more fire and smoke as it shot arcing balls of light upward around his head.
Yet there was something more to him than that. Something powerful and ancient.
Timeless.
As he turned to face them, she saw that he’d painted a thick black band over his golden eyes that made their unusual color more vibrant. He stepped down from the dais with the grace of a man half his age. And when he neared them, he flexed his dark gray gloved hand that held the staff, digging the wooden claws that were affixed to his fingertips into its leather-wrapped shaft. His gaze bored into them with the wisdom of the ages, and with the sharpness of daggers. As if he were cleaving secrets from their very souls.
“Kerling,” he growled in the gruffest of tones. “What is this?”
Brogan curtsied to him. “They were brought here against their wills, copián. They don’t belong in this realm. I seek to send them on their way.”
A deep, fierce scowl lined his brow. The red light of his torch flared again, and turned blue.
Confused, Medea leaned toward Falcyn. “What’s a copián?”
“Hard to explain, exactly. Lack of a better term, they’re time wardens and keepers of the portals.”
That only confused her more. “Why don’t we have one for the bolt-holes in Kalosis, then?”
“You do,” the copián said. “Braith, Verlyn, Cam, and Rezar were the first of our kind. They set the perimeters for the worlds and designed the portal gates between them. It’s how they trapped Apollymi in her realm—by her own blood and design. It’s why her son is the only one who can free her from her realm where she was imprisoned by her own sister and brother for crimes they imagined, that she never committed.”
Ah, finally she understood. Because Apollymi was the ancient goddess Braith. One of the very gods who’d first set the gates.
Medea gaped. Holy shit … literally. No wonder the ancient Atlantean goddess was so pissed off all the time.
Now it made sense. That was how Apollymi had been able to open the portal originally and bring Stryker through it. How she controlled it to allow the Daimons to come and go, while keeping everyone else out.
Apollymi was one of the creators of it.
Medea had always wondered about that. No wonder Apollymi spent hours in her garden at her mirror pool, watching the human realm.…
She was one of the first portal guardians.
Brogan gestured toward them. “As you can see, their presence disturbs the balance. This isn’t their world and they shouldn’t be here. We have to return them before they’re discovered by the others and chaos ensues.”
Two lights shot out of his torch. They streaked up like the stray magick blasts had done earlier, and circled around the old copián to land on each side of him. There they twisted up from the floor to create two tall, lean, linen-wrapped plague doctors. With wide-brimmed cavalier hats, they stared out from their long-beaked, black linen masks from shiny ebony eyes. Soulless eyes that appeared to be bleeding around the corners. Even the linen was stained with their blood.
It was an eerie, macabre sight that made the hair on the back of Medea’s neck rise. And given the creepy Charonte and gallu demons and Daimons who called her realm home, that said a lot.
“What are those?”
“Zeitjägers,” Falcyn whispered to her.
Another term she’d never heard before. “What do they do?”
“Guard time. But mostly they steal it.”
Was he serious?
“How do you steal time?”
Falcyn laughed. “You ever been doing something … look up and it’s hours later and you can’t figure out where the time went ’cause it feels like you just sat down?”
Yeah, of course. Everyone knew that feeling.
She nodded.
“Zeitjägers,” he said simply. “Insidious bastards. They took that time from you and bottled it for their own means.”
“Why?”
“So that we can sell it.” The copián glanced to his companions. “Time is the most precious commodity in the entire universe. The most sacred. And yet it is the most often squandered. From the moment of our births, we’re only allotted so much of it. And for even an hour more, there are those who are willing to give up anything for it.” An evil smile curled his lips. “Even their immortal souls.”