“Not close by. That would be too easy.”
Of course it would.
Urian growled. “You think if I called for Acheron he might hear me and come to the rescue?”
“You can try.” Falcyn waited.
After a few seconds, Urian growled again. “It was worth a shot.”
“Anyone know a dark elf?” Falcyn glanced to Blaise, who made it his habit to party with them.
“None that I want to call. Thank you very much. Want to knock up Narishka?”
Falcyn glared at him. “I knocked up her sister. It’s what got us into this, remember?”
“Ha, ha, ha, American slang. You suck so much,” Blaise whimpered.
“Yeah, well, not real big on your slang either, Yobo.”
Blaise shook his head irritably. “Bloody Yank.”
Falcyn lit the cave with his fireballs. “Too bad we don’t have Cadegan here. A dark hole like this is right up his alley.”
“Illarion’s, too,” Urian reminded him.
Falcyn nodded. He was right about that. They’d both lived in drab caves for centuries.
Medea gave him an arch stare. “I would have thought you were at home here, too.”
He grimaced at the ex-Daimon. “Stop with the stereotypes. Not all dragons hibernate in closed quarters. I lived on an island, on top of ruins. In the open and quite happy not to be penned in. My brother Max lives in a bar.”
“Aye to that,” Blaise chimed in. “My home was a castle in Camelot. Usually under the Pendragon’s feet, but we won’t talk about that, as it’s just a dismal memory. Retrospect, don’t know why I brought it up.”
Brogan cocked her head. “Most of the dragons here are cave-dwellers. They fire our forges. The rest hide so as not to be enslaved.”
“How many reside here?”
She scowled at Blaise’s question. “A few dozen that I know of. Not counting the orms. They were bred once the dragon numbers began to thin.”
“Makes sense.” Falcyn passed a sad look at Blaise. “We don’t do well in captivity.”
“Is that why you’re blind?” Brogan asked.
“No. My father blinded me, hoping I’d die in the wild when I was a babe.… At least that’s what I was told.”
Brogan paled. “Pardon? Why would he do such a terrible thing to his own child?”
“My mother had me to be a tool to control my father, but when he rejected me because of my albinism, my mother abandoned me to him and he took me out into the woods and left me there to die. I was to be an offering to the gods. Luckily, they rejected me, too.”
With every word he spoke, fury rode hard on Falcyn, and he crossed the room to Blaise’s side. His features turning dark and deadly, Falcyn fisted his hand in Blaise’s hair and jerked him close. “You wereneverrejected by me. Never!”
Raw sadness hovered in his sightless eyes. “I know.”
With a gruff growl, Falcyn released him and stepped back.
Medea felt a strange lump in her throat as she saw the moisture Falcyn blinked away from his eyes and the way Blaise licked his lips and cleared his throat as if biting back his own round of tears. That was love in its purest, gruffest masculine form.
Now she knew why Falcyn protected him so zealously.
