Medea took Falcyn’s arm. “Okay, I get that, like you, he’s older than shit and fought in the Primus Bellum. Whose side was he on?”
“His own. He started out with the demons, fighting for Noir and the Mavromino. For reasons unknown, he switched to fight with the Kalosum… until he helped Jared slaughter his army for Noir.”
“And no one knows why?”
Falcyn jerked his chin at Shadow as those words haunted him and he tried to understand them. Nothing in that war had been simple. Even less had made sense. Especially not the sides they’d each chosen to fight for. Or the reasons why. “I’m sure he knows his reasoning. Jared might know it, too.”
And yet as they walked, details of the past played through his mind. Things he’d forgotten completely.
Or perhaps the correct reality was that he’d chosen to bury them more than simply forget about them.
Shadow had come in early to speak to Caleb, who had led one of their largest bands of demons against the Mavromino. Falcyn and Adidiron, one of their Arel commanders, had stumbled into that meeting quite by accident.
To this day, he could see the sneer on Shadow’s face as he raked a cold look over Adidiron’s body, taking in his golden armor and wings.
“Watch your back, Caleb. Those who profess good too often practice evil in its name.”
“Why areyouhere?” Adidiron wore the same expression as someone who’d just stepped in a flaming pile of horseshit.
“Slumming.” Shadow stood slowly.
Adidiron rolled his eyes. “Go back to the whore shadows where you belong.”
Shadow had shaken his head. “Careful, Arel. Lest you learn one lesson too late.”
“And that is?”
“We are never punished for the sins we commit. Rather we are punishedbythem.”
Those wise words haunted Falcyn to this day. They’d never been far from his mind.
But then what had been his sin where Maddor was concerned? Seeking love? That was the only reason he’d allowed Igraine to lie and seduce him. He’d been so desperate for a kind touch that he’d ignored all common sense and reason.
And what of Medea? Her sin had been in trusting humans not to harm her child and husband.
Were those sins so great that they had to spend the rest of eternity paying for them? Seriously?
No one should have to bleed to the bone for loving or trusting another.
“Where are you, dragonfly?” Medea’s voice brought him back from the darkness of his thoughts.
Lost and cornered. At least that was what it felt like.
Still, he refused to let her know that. “I’m here.”
“You say that, but I can see in your eyes that you’re off somewhere else.”
He would tell her that he was thinking of the future. Yet why bother? He didn’t believe in a future. Didn’t believe in anything at this point. Other than misery and hell.
Betrayal. That was what the world had taught him.
Just how black the souls of the rest really were. And how often others condemned innocent people for their own misdeeds and rotten acts they couldn’t stand about themselves. Because it was easier to see them in someone else and hate them for it than it was to hate yourself and go to the effort of trying to fix it. After all, people were less likely to see it in you if their attention was being diverted by the guilty pointing the finger of distraction toward those who couldn’t defend themselves because they were innocent and couldn’t even contemplate the sins being cast upon them.
Sick, really.
But luckily, he was spared having to answer as Shadow slowed down. “We’re here.”
With his powers, he cut another hole through, into a small room from his shadow realm into that of Camelot. Shadow stayed back while they walked through. Then he joined them and sealed the rupture tightly closed.
