Medea gaped. “How do you do that?”
“That’s like asking me how I breathe. I don’t know. I just think it and it happens.” Shadow gave her a sarcastic grin. “It’s magick.”
Rolling her eyes at his sarcasm, she shook her head at him. “You’re a sick bastard.”
“Always.”
Urian stepped around them to scowl at the smear of blood on the floor. Even though there was no color in this room where they were—everything appeared as shades of black and white, like an old movie—he knew the looks ofthat.The smell of it.
“You’re wounded?”
Shadow paused at Medea’s question but didn’t answer.
Then they all saw it. The huge, gaping wound in Shadow’s side that was partially concealed by his cape.
Urian took a step toward him. “Shadow?”
His eyes rolled back into his head as his legs buckled. He would have hit the ground hard had Falcyn not caught him and lowered him slowly to the floor.
Yet no sooner did he pull back than the door opened to show a small group of fey. The rasping of metal filled the air as the Adoni unsheathed their swords. An instant later, they attacked.
Urian manifested his sword and shield and charged them before he attacked. With his skills honed by thousands of battles, he drove the fey back to cover them.
Brogan stayed by Shadow’s side to defend him as they dealt with this newest assault.
Of course the fey sounded an alarm. ’Cause keeping quiet would just be too much to ask. Wouldn’t it? Damn villains.
Urian glanced to Falcyn. “Well, this wasn’t how I saw these events unfolding.”
Falcyn snorted at his sarcasm. “I knew better than to get involved with Daimons and Dark-Hunters. This is what I get for coming out of my hole.”
With a grimace, Medea lopped the head off her fey opponent, then turned toward Falcyn before she engaged another enemy. “Stop whining, dragonfly! Why don’t you shift and set fire to them? Make this a little easier on us? Eh?”
“Simple spatial awareness. If either Blaise or I changed right now, we’d kill the lot of you, as we’d take up this entire room and you’d be crushed beneath us. Still want me to shift, love?”
Medea flashed him a grin as she kicked her opponent back. “Please, don’t.”
“Thought you might feel that way.”
Just as they finished off their Adoni and began to make sure there weren’t more, the door flew open.
They turned as one solid group to face this new onslaught.
As tall as Urian, the newcomer was swathed in the gold and green armor of a fey guard. A thick leather hood covered his head. Muscled and fierce, he stood with the cocksure stance of a warrior who knew how to fight to the bitter end.
Yet he didn’t draw his sword.
Rather he held his hands out to his sides as if amused by them and their predicament.
Urian lifted his shield and prepared for a psychic attack.
Instead, laughter greeted them. “Bet if I sneezed right now, I’d send the lot of you jumping straight to the ceiling like a glaring of cats.”
Falcyn growled deep in his throat. “Varian, you worthless bastard! Get in here. Shadow’s down.”
The humor died instantly while the man shut the door, then lowered his hood to expose his long dark hair.
“What happened?” Varian knelt by Shadow’s side.
