Medea gaped. “You’re serious?”
Her features grim, Brogan nodded. “They call it the yewing. The mortal is randomly selected and his or her fate is up to whatever lot they draw from their skytel bag while they’re watching them. They think it entertaining.”
“I knew it!” Blaise growled. “I knew my life was nothing but a sick joke to the fey. And all of you said I was crazy.” When no one commented, he drew up sullenly. “Well, you did. And Iwasright.”
Falcyn snorted. “Anyway, let’s find this porch and see if we can locate the portal back home.”
Medea asked, “Can’t we just teleport to the portal?”
Brogan shook her head. “I wouldn’t advise it. Those powers tend to attract unwanted attention in this realm. The less magick used that they’re unfamiliar with, the safer you’ll be.”
As they walked, Brogan drifted back to Medea’s side. “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 as she explained it to the girl.
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.
“That’s horrible!” Brogan breathed as she finished the story.
“It is, indeed.”
All of them had been damned by the god’s anger for something they’d had no part in or any ability to stop.
“I’m so sorry, Medea.”
She shrugged. “I got over it. Besides, I was six when he cursed us. I barely remember life before that day.”
“You don’t eat food?”
She shook her head.
Brogan fell silent for a moment. “But if you were to die at twenty-seven and you’re not a Daimon now, how is it that you’re still alive?”
“A bargain my mother made for my life.”
Sadness turned her eyes a vivid purple. “Tell me of a mother who so loves her child. Is she beautiful? Wondrous?”
Medea nodded. “Beyond words.” She pulled the locket from her neck and held it out to Brogan so that she could see the picture she had of her mother. “Her name is Zephyra.”
“Like the wind?”
“Yes. Her eyes are black now, but when I was a girl, they were a most vivid green.”
Brogan fingered the photo with a sad smile tugging at the edges of her lips. “You admire her.”
