Page 73 of King of Knights

“Fuck,” he roars and tosses a chair across the room.

“Reilly,” I call calmly.

It’s not like him to throw tantrums like this. The consequences are too great. He is usually rational-minded.

He turns to me, his eyes glowing and his chest heaving. Taking a calming breath, he runs a hand through his hair. Pain comes over his face.

He bends at the waist and places his hands on his knees. I’m at a loss for what to do. I’ve never seen him like this.

“What is wrong, brother?”

“I’ve found her. I know my mate,” he says, his words pained.

“This is good. What has you so enraged?”

“I had her. I had her in my arms. She was mine to take. Then they came out of nowhere. It was like they were ready. They knew not to come close, and they… they used some sort of barrier to shield her from my reach, and now I can’t feel her, I can’t find her,” he says brokenly.

He shakes his head and continues. “She’s in danger. They are after her, not the ones who took her from me, but the hunters. I felt them coming for her. I should be the one there to protect her.It should beme,” he roars the last sentence in anguish.

“We will find her, my brother, but I need you to reel it in.”

“I can’t go through this again. Not this time, not with her,” he says brokenly.

Reilly has been through as much loss as I have. To have the power of life and death, but the one time you’re needed, you fail—that’s a heavy burden to bear.

“I don’t understand. Who are these people? How do they know how to hinderme?”

“I do not know, but I am sure we will find her.”

“I don’t even know her name. I felt she was in danger, and I went to her. She knew who I was, but I never got her name. Why does she keep slipping through my grasp? Why does love taunt me like this?”

“Is this the same mate you recognized before?”

“I do not know. I don’t see how that could be possible, but…. We only get one, so would it not have to be?

“I only felt her the first time. I caught her scent for but a moment in the past. It was a bit different this time. Gods, she’s beautiful. I have to find her,” he says and stumbles over to an overturned chair.

He rights it and flops down into it. It’s still not safe to get close, but I can feel him reeling it in. Aravos, our gate troll, enters the room.

I look up at him. He never leaves the caves. It is his job to guard the supers’ entrance on the lower level.

He drops to one knee, shaking the room with his size. Slow and cautiously, he bows his head to me, then Reilly. I nod for him to speak.

“Master Reilly, you have a visitor down at the gate,” Aravos says.

“Who is it?” Reilly says dejectedly.

Aravos holds up his hand and opens it. Reilly’s birth tags hang from Aravos’s thick, huge palm. Our birth tags are one of the only gifts we can say we have from our father. The other might as well be a curse.

They are chains with gemmed charms hanging from them. Within the gems are pieces of the blessed iron used to cut us from our mother’s womb.

We all have them and have worn them from the time we were boys. Reilly jumps from his seat and grabs the birth tags from Aravos.

“Where is she?”

“I asked her to wait at the gate when I was told you were in crisis.” Aravos doesn’t get his words out before Reilly vanishes from sight.

“You are all mated now. I will only allow coined entries. Make sure the brotherhood knows. You feel me?” Aravos says.

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