Stryker grunted at the pain that simple move caused. But to be fair, she held her temper.
"At least this sword doesn't disappoint. I don't have to worry about it going soft on me."
"I never went soft on you."
She rolled her eyes as she blocked his slice. "Trust me, baby, you weren't that good. I was just a better actress than you were actor."
"Ew!" her daughter groaned as she gave them more room to fight. "No offense, Mum, I don't want to know who you've slept with. Kill the sexual bantering and him before I go deaf from it."
Zephyra's eyes darkened as one side of her mouth quirked up into an evil smile. "You shouldn't be so prudish, Medea. After all, you've always wanted to meet your father. Happy Birthday, baby. Sorry the reunion's so short. But trust me, he's no loss."
Stryker staggered under the weight of the news. His attention deflected from the fight, he glanced at his daughter and her startled expression to take in the subtle differences in her features from her mother's. That lapse cost him, as Zephyra stabbed him straight in his chest, narrowly missing his Daimon's mark. . . . Had she been a single millimeter up, he would have burst into dust.
As it was, it hurt like hell.
"Stop!" Medea cried as she ran at her mother and pulled her back.
Stryker cursed as he covered the wound with his hand and tensed against the pain.
Zephyra shoved Medea away, moving back toward him. He brought the sword up, ready to fight. Medea shot between them again and forced her mother back.
"Is he really my father?"
Zephyra threw the sword at him. Stryker quickly moved out of the way. He felt the heat of the blade as it skimmed his cheek to bury itself in the wall behind him.
Furious, he went at her.
Medea turned on him with an expression so purely Urian that it stunned him completely.
Urian. His most trea sured child. The one son who'd meant everything to him, and in that moment he knew that Zephyra wasn't lying.
Medea was his.
That one reality slammed into him and almost drove him to his knees. He had a daughter and she was alive. . . .
Medea swallowed as she studied him. "Are you Strykerius? The son of Apollo?"
Stryker nodded.
She started for him only to have her mother grab her arm and pull her to a stop. "Don't you dare embrace him. Not after he left us for dead."
"I never!" he snarled. "You're the one who lied and told me you'd lost the baby."
"Because I didn't want to tie you to me. I wanted you to stay because you loved me. But I alone wasn't good enough for you, was I? You went belly-crawling to your father and for what? So he could curse everyone who held a drop of Apollite blood in their veins? I told you then your father didn't give a damn about you. You should have listened to me."
She'd been right, but that didn't excuse her lie. Her betrayal was every bit as great as his father's.
"You kicked me out."
She rolled her eyes. "You were always such an idiot."
Kessar laughed out loud. "Finally, someone who agrees with me."
Stryker glared at the demon, whose presence he'd completely forgotten about. "Why are you still here?"
"The entertainment value of this is beyond mea sure. I've never seen a man get his ass kicked so badly by a mere woman." He'd barely finished the words before Medea slung her arm out. Something black flew from her hand and it wasn't until it wrapped itself around Kessar's throat and dropped him to the floor that Stryker realized what it was.
Asfyxen. Reminiscent of a bolo, it was much smaller and much deadlier.