Sentinel Of Khoth

by Brenda Trim

  The metal looked like what they had on Khoth and seemed just as strong. Earth met­als were easy for drag­ons to bend, while met­als from their realm had more re­sis­tance. That was odd. How would they have got­ten their pre­cious met­als on Earth?

  He had no knowl­edge of weapons from the Tehrex Realm and hoped the King would have more an­swers about them. In the mean­time, he turned to­ward the prince to find out where Troy was, and why he wasn’t with them.

  “Hey, Blaze.” Finn called out.

  “Yeah,” The Cuele­bre Prince replied as he crossed the un­even sand to his side.

  “Talysia told me Troy wasn’t with you when the bomb went off. Where was he?”

  Blaze’s head jerked and his eye­brows fur­rowed. “Who is Talysia?”

  “She’s the em­ployee of Medure Eats. She said she saw Izzy and you, but not Troy.”

  “Oh,” Blaze said as he looked at the food shack then back at him. “Yeah. Troy went to the bath­room. That fe­male helped us right af­ter the ex­plo­sion. She thought Troy was an en­emy and called out a warn­ing.”

  “Thanks. Now, why don’t you and the oth­ers head back to the cas­tle? Your par­ents are wor­ried sick and need to see you,” Finn in­formed the Prince.

  “Sure thing. Do you need more Maa­hes sent back?”

  “No, but let the King know we will have a full re­port for him when we are done in­ves­ti­gat­ing,” Finn replied then got back to work try­ing to de­ter­mine who at­tacked their most pop­u­lar beach.

  * * *

  Chap­ter 2

  “Dam­mit. These fuck­ing pieces are too small,” Finn com­plained as he pieced to­gether the metal frag­ments of the bomb.

  The realm was reel­ing from the ex­plo­sion. Khoth was used to bat­tles and fight­ing the Un­seelie, but that usu­ally in­volved magic, nat­u­ral weapons or swords.

  Au­to­matic guns and de­vices that ex­ploded were com­pletely for­eign to their lands. Part of the rea­son was un­til the past cou­ple of decades, Khoth por­tals were closed and iso­lated from other realms. The in­flux of new vis­i­tors cou­pled with the re­turn of King An­gus gave the realm much needed new life.

  The Cuele­bre drag­ons were on the brink of ex­tinc­tion dur­ing the thou­sand years their king was ab­sent. The Bug­gane were slowly de­stroy­ing the land and An­gus wasn’t there to nour­ish the des­o­late earth. If Kyran, a Vam­pire Prince from the Tehrex Realm, hadn’t been ac­ci­den­tally trans­ported to their land Finn was cer­tain the Bug­gane would’ve suc­ceeded in tak­ing over the dragon realm com­pletely.

  And now, the Un­seelie King, Cyril, was up­ping his game and seemed to be gear­ing up to shift the sit­u­a­tion in his fa­vor once more. Not that the bas­tard was quiet over the last decade. Finn re­called when Cyril tar­geted Cam­bree af­ter she was ap­pointed Tuya. Finn was her body­guard at the time, and the Un­seelie King al­most suc­ceeded in lur­ing her to his evil lair. Even now, Finn saw red when he thought about Cyril. More than any­thing, he wanted to find Cyril and make the male pay for what he’d done to Khoth and its peo­ple.

  “Do you think Cyril was be­hind the ex­plo­sion?” Blaine asked as he helped sort through the shrap­nel.

  “Who else would it be? This de­vice was built here, but it’s based on a de­sign from Earth,” Finn replied as he took a deep breath try­ing to cool his in­ner fire. It had been about three hun­dred years since Finn lost con­trol of his flames and torched ev­ery­thing around him.

  If his par­ents were still alive, he could imag­ine his mother chastis­ing him about al­low­ing the evil Un­seelie King to get un­der his skin. His mother was the calm, col­lected one in the fam­ily while he and his fa­ther were far more hot­headed.

  “Och, I agree,” King An­gus added from across the throne room. His thick Scot­tish Brogue was for­eign in their realm. An­gus ac­quired the ac­cent dur­ing his thou­sand years on Earth and hadn’t shed it yet.

  Finn thought about how dif­fer­ent things were long ago be­fore An­gus went miss­ing. Then, the throne room was used for the king to hear com­plaints from cit­i­zens. Even Leg­ette used the throne room for that same pur­pose.

  An­gus still used the throne room for those pur­poses, but it was a ca­sual af­fair rather than the pomp and cir­cum­stance of be­fore. The throne sat on the dais, but it was rarely used. Most of­ten An­gus was on the floor with the knights and cit­i­zens. It had be­come an un­of­fi­cial meet­ing place for the Maa­hes. Leg­ette, An­gus’s sec­ond in com­mand, was usu­ally found there with An­gus, so the knights rarely ven­tured down to the rooms where their quar­ters were.

  “We have en­e­mies, but none as vig­i­lant as Cyril. Who­ever did this had to have knowl­edge of Earth weapons and ac­cess to met­als on Khoth. None of our al­lies from the Tehrex Realm would take such ac­tion against us,” the King con­tin­ued.

  “You’re right. There is no way any­one from the Dark War­rior Al­liance would do this. Be­sides the fact that no one from the realm has come through in the past few months,” Isis added as she watched her four-year-old son, Cal­lum, play with Lorne and Cam­bree’s three-year-old son, Dayne.

  Finn liked Isis. The red-haired witch brought her chil­dren to the realm years ago to keep them safe and never hes­i­tated to jump in and help when­ever pos­si­ble. She was one-third of the pow­er­ful witch triplets from the Tehrex Realm. Finn didn’t know the en­tire story, but he was grate­ful for Isis and her sis­ter Pema’s help in de­vel­op­ing bet­ter bar­ri­ers around the city.

  It was thanks to them that no Un­seelie was able to sneak into the city lim­its of Du­a­mutef. Af­ter hav­ing their largest open-air mar­ket at­tacked by Un­seelie, it was a re­lief to of­fer their cit­i­zens some sense of se­cu­rity. And, Cal­lum was the first ever male Tuya which had sent ev­ery­one on Khoth reel­ing.

  Never be­fore had any of them con­sid­ered a fe­male dragon mat­ing a male of an­other species un­til Cal­lum was marked Tuya. The sa­cred dragon on his shoul­der in­di­cated he was one of the few ca­pa­ble of pro­cre­at­ing with a dragon.

  Finn shook his head to clear it of the ran­dom thoughts and fo­cused on the mat­ter at hand. “How do we pro­tect the Prince?”

  Blaze jumped to his feet, clench­ing his fists at his side. “I am not a child to be cod­dled. I don’t need a babysit­ter. Be­sides, I am an as­set to have in the field. I can help cap­ture Cyril.”

  An­gus placed one large palm on his son’s shoul­der. “No one is sug­gest­ing you are no’ ca­pa­ble. But we must con­sider the dan­ger to you. Your mother and I would be dev­as­tated if Cyril man­aged to harm you, or worse. You are my weak link, and he knows it.”

  Izzy waved her arm in the air, try­ing to hide the wince of pain that crossed her fea­tures with the move­ment. “Be­ing a tar­get sucks butt. Trust me, I know how you feel, but tak­ing greater risks will not only put you in dan­ger but oth­ers, as well. We’re lucky the fe­male in the food shack wasn’t hurt when she rushed us to safety in­side the build­ing.”

  An­gus’s head swiveled from his son to Izzy, whom he had par­ented for the past sev­eral years since her par­ents were forced to re­turn to the Tehrex Realm. “What’s this about a fe­male?”

  Finn jumped in be­fore the chil­dren could re­spond. Her mu­si­cal voice and full lips hadn’t left his thoughts since meet­ing her. “A siren that works for Medure Eats ush­ered the kids in­side the small restau­rant right af­ter the ex­plo­sion.”

  “Who is this siren? Could she be work­ing for Cyril? Seems sus­pi­cious that she was there when the bomb det­o­nated,” An­gus snarled.

  The room went silent with the king’s anger while Finn’s in­stincts prick­led. A quick glance around the room told Finn no one was go­ing to say any­thing to ag­i­tate An­gus fur­ther. It was a tricky po­si­tion to be in, but there was no way he could al­low sus­pi­cion to re­main on Ta
lysia when she’d acted to pro­tect the kids de­spite her own fear.

  Not many would have been so coura­geous in the face of so many un­known. There was no way for Talysia to know she wasn’t go­ing to be at­tacked when she opened the door, yet she did out of con­cern for the safety and well-be­ing of those that were in­jured.

  “The siren is not on Cyril’s side. Talysia re­ported that she hasn’t worked at Medure for very long. She trav­eled to Khoth from the Tehrex Realm a few months ago with her sis­ter,” Finn replied.

  An­gus’s light green eyes nar­rowed, and his lips pursed. Finn’s heart raced in his chest. Not once since the king’s re­turn had Finn been on his radar in a neg­a­tive way, but it seemed as if he’d done it now. An­gus was not happy, and Finn had no idea what he would do to him now.

  Open­ing his mouth, Finn was about to take his words back. Or, try to any­way. The si­lence in the room was thick enough to slice with a knife. An­gus cut Finn off be­fore he could say any­thing. “I am no’ cer­tain of her in­no­cence. I find it verra sus­pi­cious that this siren is a re­cent vis­i­tor from Earth, and we are look­ing at a de­vice de­signed af­ter those of hu­mans.”

  Blaze looked at his fa­ther over his shoul­der. “Finn’s right, Dad. The fe­male had the chance to harm us if she wanted. Our guard was down and we were fo­cused on the ex­plo­sion, yet she didn’t make one move against us.”

  “In fact, she was try­ing to pro­tect us from Troy,” Izzy added.

  “Troy?” An­gus asked as his in­tense gaze shifted to the youth in ques­tion.

  “He was run­ning to­ward us when the siren opened the door and she thought he was at­tack­ing us. I get why she was afraid. All she saw was a male run­ning to­ward us and we were in­jured,” Izzy ex­plained.

  An­gus asked Blaze ques­tions about what they were do­ing at the time of the ex­plo­sion and Finn started pac­ing the room as he con­tem­plated the re­sponses. From what the prince told his fa­ther, Troy went to the bath­room and left Blaze, Izzy and Dono­van in the mid­dle of the beach that was de­stroyed in the in­ci­dent.

  There was lit­tle doubt in Finn’s mind that Blaze was the tar­get. It was sheer luck that Izzy wanted to pick some flow­ers to take back for Aria; oth­er­wise, the chil­dren wouldn’t have sur­vived the in­ci­dent.

  It made sense to Finn. Elim­i­nat­ing Blaze would weaken An­gus and Keira, dis­tract­ing them from any­thing go­ing on around them as they were con­sumed by grief. The king and queen loved their chil­dren more than any­thing.

  Blaze had grown so much in the last few years and, while smaller in stature than his fa­ther, he was as big as most of the Maa­hes. The prince was at the top of his train­ing class and a ca­pa­ble knight, but he was hot-headed and im­pul­sive like most his age.

  Finn re­called how dif­fi­cult it was to con­trol dragon fire at twenty-one. He’d seen Blaze lose con­trol sev­eral times, but sur­pris­ingly the prince was far more ca­pa­ble than any male his age. But that didn’t mean he was ready to be out on his own. Finn felt it was his duty to pro­tect the royal fam­ily and Izzy above all else.

  Think­ing of Izzy, Finn re­called the first time she vis­ited Khoth all those years ago. The pre­co­cious fe­male won ev­ery­one’s heart in­stantly. She was strong-willed. Her mom said she was stub­born, but Finn sensed an in­ner power that ri­valed the most pow­er­ful drag­ons in the realm.

  Finn spent far less time watch­ing the other kids grow, but Izzy and Blaze were de­vel­op­ing into pow­er­houses. Even­tu­ally they’d both be the rul­ing forces for their re­spec­tive realms. Their en­e­mies needed to watch out. There would be no stop­ping ei­ther of them once they de­vel­oped to their full po­ten­tial, and honed their skills.

  “What are sirens like any­way? I can’t imag­ine Talysia be­ing ag­gres­sive,” Izzy added, redi­rect­ing the con­ver­sa­tion back to the sexy fe­male.

  Finn’s ears perked up at that, but he kept his mouth shut. He knew noth­ing about sirens ex­cept they had ex­cep­tional voices and he didn’t want the king or his fel­low Maa­hes think­ing he was bi­ased in fa­vor of Talysia. That would dis­count any­thing he said in sup­port of her.

  “Shite. I doona know much, ex­cept their voice is said to lure sailors to their deaths,” An­gus replied to Izzy. “But, of course, that’s a leg­end on Earth. I sus­pect they doona have that ef­fect on su­per­nat­u­rals. I’ve met only one and agree that their voices are mag­i­cal.”

  “We’ve had very few sirens on Khoth,” De­clan, An­gus’s per­sonal as­sis­tant in­formed them as he typed on a com­puter. The male was likely run­ning a search of their data­base. “They spend most of their time in Saqara with the sea drag­ons. From what I see here they are a rel­a­tively peace­ful species and have never caused prob­lems for us be­fore.”

  “Are they cold?” Finn asked, re­call­ing the freez­ing tem­per­a­tures he felt em­a­nat­ing from Talysia when she stood there shak­ing from what he as­sumed was fear.

  Ev­ery­one’s head swiveled in his di­rec­tion, forc­ing him to elab­o­rate. “When I spoke with Talysia the air around her was sev­eral de­grees colder than the rest.”

  Shak­ing his head, De­clan clicked on sev­eral more screens be­fore re­ply­ing. “I see noth­ing men­tioned about their tem­per­a­ture be­ing lower than most be­ings.”

  “Are there any warn­ings in our files?” An­gus asked.

  “No, Sire. There are no warn­ings,” De­clan in­formed the king.

  “I re­serve judg­ment aboot this siren, but I want all Maa­hes to be on guard around her. And, re­port any­thing you learn right away,” An­gus or­dered. “Now. How is the beach restora­tion go­ing?”

  Finn lis­tened to Leg­ette tell the king how the knights on scene used their wings to smooth the sand into a level area be­fore they left the scene. It had taken hours for them to comb through the sand and col­lect ev­ery piece of ev­i­dence they could find.

  “The Maa­hes will re­turn to col­lect ev­i­dence from the sur­round­ing for­est. I doubt we will find any­thing of value in the un­der­brush and downed branches and leaves, but we can’t leave it out of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Leg­ette ex­plained. With the fad­ing light it was de­cided they would fo­cus their ef­forts on the sandy beach. It was where the bomb ex­ploded, so it con­tained most of the ev­i­dence. There was not enough light to con­tinue their in­ves­ti­ga­tion; oth­er­wise, they would still be there.

  “More than ninety per­cent of the dam­age was done to the sand close to the wa­ter’s edge,” Finn added. “We should warn the pub­lic that the shal­low en­trance is no longer there. Par­ents will need to know not to al­low their chil­dren to en­ter the wa­ter unat­tended.”

  “De­clan, have signs printed and posted near the area. I want a knight sta­tioned at the beach from now on,” An­gus or­dered. Finn won­dered if that was go­ing to be enough to make the pub­lic feel safe enough to once again visit the pop­u­lar beach.

  The King was smart for en­sur­ing the safety of those vis­it­ing the af­fected area. It was one of Khoth’s most pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions. The lo­cal econ­omy at Ray­nah Beach de­pended on the steady stream of vis­i­tors. Most busi­ness own­ers lived in the city a short dis­tance away and re­lied on that in­come to keep their homes and sup­port their staff.

  Im­me­di­ately, Finn thought of Talysia and what would hap­pen to her if the area suf­fered as a re­sult of the at­tack. It would be a crime for her to lose her job, but also for the gen­eral pub­lic to have a fa­vorite des­ti­na­tion taken from them.

  * * *

  Chap­ter 3

  The night breeze blew her long black hair into her face, stop­ping Talysia. Shift­ing the plat­ter to one hand, she used the other to tuck the way­ward strands be­hind her ears. It was bad enough that her stom­ach was swarm­ing with but­ter­flies. She didn’t need the wind con­spir
­ing to trip her as she made her way to Tate­nen.

  The pur­ple night sky was still a sight she was get­ting used to, and as the moon re­flected in the dark store win­dow, she couldn’t help but won­der what she was do­ing. Why did she think it was a good idea to take snacks to Finn at the cas­tle? It wasn’t as if he was go­ing hun­gry, or, had even asked to see her again.

  For the first time in her life she was fol­low­ing her gut and seek­ing him out rather than wait­ing to see if he looked for her. Grow­ing up, it was drilled into her head that a siren never sought male com­pany. They lured them to their sides. As a half-breed, the teas­ing was re­lent­less over the fact that she and her sis­ters could hardly con­vince a mer­man to take them to the tide­pools.

  Shak­ing off the doubt, Talysia re­sumed her trek to Finn, en­joy­ing the peace of the evening. Khoth was far qui­eter than Earth, but it was by no means silent in the realm. The sounds of laugh­ter and mu­sic were mixed with that of na­ture. She loved it on Khoth and could see her­self set­tling there per­ma­nently. If her sis­ter Tia agreed, that was.

  When they left Ca­lypso, they pledged never to leave one an­other’s side. Talysia couldn’t imag­ine be­ing with­out Tia af­ter all they’d been through. Hav­ing some­one at her back was com­fort­ing in a for­eign land where you didn’t know the rules or the lan­guage. Thank­fully, she was able to com­mu­ni­cate with the be­ings on Khoth.

  As she walked, Talysia thought about ev­ery­thing she liked about Khoth. The weather was per­fect year-round. She hated gray, rainy days so the fact that the sun was nearly al­ways out here was a ma­jor bonus. The tech­nol­ogy was an­other thing she en­joyed. On her home planet, they didn’t have all the ameni­ties they did on Earth and she liked tele­vi­sion and com­put­ers.