his arm around her waist as they watched on. Not ten minutes later it was decided the walls would be painted grey. Just like the rest of the public areas in the building. Mordecai barely stifled his laugh when Dana peered up at him with her eyebrows raised. “I know, I know. You told me so.”
“That I did,” came her self-satisfied reply.
Her gaze shifted and Mordecai noted the shift in her expression. He immediately felt his stomach drop. “What’s with the look?”
“What look?” Dana blinked up at him, the picture of innocence.
He snorted, “You don’t fool me. That is the exact same look Max gets when she is up to one of her machinations. What have you done?”
Dana smiled, her eyes sparkling with amusement as well as untold knowledge. “I have not done anything. I simply suggested to Knox that he might be of benefit to Dawn. She has a lot on her plate, what with overseeing the orphanage construction and fit-out with Celeste, and her clinic that she is trying to get up and running. Not to mention the training she is starting for life paladins and life chadens. It makes sense for her to have a helper. A personal assistant if you will.”
“Right. A personal assistant. As if her own four paladins of eons aren’t help enough?” Mordecai asked, cocking his head in the direction of Dawn’s excellent Order.
Dana hummed, watching Knox approach Dawn with keen eyes. “An extra pair of hands never goes astray.”
Mordecai spun Dana around, making her gasp as she fell against him clumsily. He wrapped both arms around her securely before saying, “These better be the only pair of hands you ever need.” He then squeezed her rump for good measure.
Dana’s eyes softened with what he now recognised as love. Dana said the words often to him – usually in the throes of their lovemaking – and he revelled in them. He was yet to say the words back, wanting more time to get to know the real Dana and shed the perception he had of her. Fifty years of hard feelings could not be erased overnight, but he was well on the way to that love he had told her he wanted so badly.
“Yours are the only hands ever to hold my butt, Sir Mordecai,” Dana informed him. She stood on her toes, pecking his lips. “And the only ones I will ever want. I love you.”
Mordecai groaned, swooping down and kissing them both breathless. “Thank the Gods,” he murmured.
“And the Goddesses,” Dana added.
Mordecai pulled back and grinned; “Those too.”
Book Two
Knox
Prologue
It roamed the earth aimlessly for more years than it could keep count of. Monitoring time was pointless, anyway; the black pit of nothingness was timeless. Still, one day, it stumbled across a small hollow of trees located next to a busy, noisy road. It should not have been appealing, nor should it have been safe. But the place had called to something inside of the creature, long believed lost. So, it had taken up residence in the trees, watching as people came and went. They were unappealing to the creature, sparking neither raging hunger nor curiosity, and it merely hovered nearby, insubstantial as the wind. Others of its kind would come and go, bringing an echo of comfort and a shared awareness for a brief time. But, like everything else, those feelings were fleeting.
Until one day, a being with power so bright it hurt the creature’s black eyes, walked into its hideaway. Like a moth to a flame, it was drawn to her. Its body starving, and its mind nothing but madness, it stalked forward in shadow form, unconcerned others of its kind were doing the same. They were of no consequence to the creature, just as the other beings surrounding the power were not. Taking on a more tangible form was necessary to feed, and it did so a bit reluctantly. It hated looking down and seeing its long, pale, spindly fingers, because, even in the void of its mind, it knew they were not always like that. It watched impassively as three other pits of despair attacked and were cut down by the warriors protecting the food source. The creature’s fingers twitched with the need to act but it could barely recall what it was supposed to do. Air caressed its face, moving the greasy hair off its forehead, but leaving the creature feeling hollow because it could not feel it. It knew it should be able to. Knew the