Page 11 of Killian
Castle Leolinnia
With a new melancholy resting in his soul, Killian walked into a bedchamber where two men were poised to wake soon. Behind him, Chander—and the two sentinels who were tied to his soul thanks to a spell cast nearly fifteen hundred years ago by one of the Arch Lich’s predecessors—stalked in and closed the door.
“Why did you rush us in here before the others?” Chander asked, his pewter eyes alight with curiosity.
“You have perfected a poisoned dagger to allow our former Emperors to seal their matebond?” Killian asked.
Chander nodded. “Yes, it took some work, but I tested it on their skin, and it cuts them. It is the only thing that will.”
With a bit of magick, Killian plucked a dagger from home and held it out for Chander. “Use the spell on the blade.”
“What will you do with it?” asked Benton, one of the blond sentinels who guarded Chander.
“According to Dravyn, they were never apart,” Killian said, pain squeezing his heart at the thought of his mate. There had been no word from the dragon since Killian had teleported him to the garden at Castle Draconis. Killian was left with enormous regret that he’d frightened the man and a growing longing to see him again. “If their memories are to return, they deserve to wake with them, no matter how painful their last moments were. They can rely upon each other for comfort as they face their deaths and the potential need for vengeance.”
Chander’s sorcery turned the knife as black as the necromancer’s clothing. “Let us hope we are not led into a war.”
“You will be safe if we are,” Baxter boasted, and his mate nodded in agreement. The sentinels were elite assassins with no match, and Chander was rarely without them.
However, they had a fateful weakness—they could not refuse the orders of the necromancer whose soul was tethered to their own. Chander rarely used that ability, but he had issued an unequivocal demand that the sentinels never return to their home.
The former Arch Liches had crafted a separate realm for the sentinels because their people feared them and did not want them around. Chander used to alternate between having Benton and Baxter guarding him until the moment he’d learned thattheir home was nothing more than locked cages where they suffered all the hours of the day alone. Chander blamed their leader—a mysterious man called Lich Sentinel Alaric—and had barred his sentinels from ever returning to their former gray world.
Once they were both summoned together, Baxter and Benton had learned they were mates and, upon swapping blood, had gained the ability to speak to each other telepathically and feel each other’s emotions when they were in the same room. Killian longed for such a talent so he could peek into Dravyn’s thoughts and calm his fears.
With a shake of his head at the messy state of his own new matebond, Killian strode to the side of the taller sleeping man and made a slight cut on his hand.
“Aid me please,” Killian requested, holding the dagger out for one of the three men to take.
Baxter rushed forward and took the blade. He cut the other former dragon, and with some effort Killian and Baxter crossed their arms over the pair to match up the wounds. Their resurrections had cleared the fulfilled matebond the former Emperors had clearly shared in life, and Killian had wanted it restored immediately. He smiled as his senses registered that the dragons were now a mated pair again.
“Well done,” Benton said, joy in his blue eyes as Baxter returned to his side and took his hand. The couple was dressed in nearly unrelieved gray—the lone color they ever donned. It was the almost-eerie glow of the poisoned curved daggers hovering an inch from their hips that broke up the monotony of their ensembles. They trained several times a day, which was why Killian assumed the pair was never seen without messy hair.
“It may be the only thing they thank us for,” Chander muttered.
“Do you regret granting them life?” Killian asked. Chander’s magick dissipated around the dagger Killian had summoned, so he sent it to a resting spot on a trunk at his home.
“No, but I worry about the consequences,” Chander replied. “We know little of dragons, and I like not what we have gleaned.”
“At least you are not ordering us to stay in our bedchamber as you did on your trip to attain these Emperors,” Benton stated bitterly.
“You were against my traveling to the dragon castle,” Chander stated without an ounce of trepidation despite being glared at by a man resurrected for the sole purpose of murdering enemies. “I did not want to hear another lecture or worry about the scene you would make at the castle if you believed I was being insulted or my life was in danger.”
“Our very purpose is to protect you,” Baxter snarled. “How can we do so if you insist on leaving us home whenever you encounter danger?”
Chander shoved a rather unruly fuzzy chunk of his curly brown hair from his forehead. “I am a man grown. I will decide when I need defense.”
“You are seventeen years of age,” Benton cried. “Barely more than a babe.”
“Your memory starts the day I was born,” Chander argued. “You have no life experience beyond my own.”
“We were grown men at your birth,” Baxter roared. “How can you compare your years with ours?”
“Stop yelling,” Chander retorted. “You will wake the fallen knights.”
Killian smiled and eagerly latched on to the opportunity to change the subject. Chander and his sentinels were family, and none of the three would back down from a fight. Their argument could last for days since stubbornness was a trait thetrio shared as well. “Fallen knights. Is that the name you have come up with for this new race?”
“It is. Kolsten proclaimed them warriors, so I thought knight would serve them. Fallen obviously refers to their untimely deaths.”
