Manu had yet to decide which camp he stood in, having little contact and no communication with their stand-in ruler. As the brother of King Neptune, Aegaeon had no royal claim to Atlantis’s matrilineal throne, but he was a just high mer, and that was reason enough for Manu to serve in the Royal Army.
As hoped, Regent Aegaeon awaited them in the Chamber of Heroes, standing tall with both hands behind his back while he stared at the lit scepter. To Manu’s relief, it hadn’t yet dulled. Part of him had feared the light would dim before anyone arrived to witness it.
Its glow was truly magnificent, an amber light with a core bright as the sun. He stepped into the circular room and walked down one of the aisles between statues depicting deceased ancestors and fallen soldiers. The room held dozens of such monuments to the dead.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Aegaeon murmured. “I never thought I’d see it lit again. All this time, I wondered if another might ever wield it, and yet…here it is.”
The scepter nestled in the hand of a marble figure carved in Queen Ianthe’s likeness. She and her king stood side by side in full armor, her husband wielding his trident. Both weapons were the real thing, treasures incorporated into their memorial stones by the artisan responsible for the chamber’s upkeep.
Manu’s presence no longer served a purpose. Realizing this, he bowed stiffly. “I will leave you both to discuss this, my lords. If you’ll excuse me—”
“No.” The scrawny old priest studied him. “Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise that you were the one to witness the light’s return. I would not have you leave, Commander Manu. Surely this is a sign from Thalassa.”
It took all of his control not to laugh in the man’s face. A sign from the goddess? If the goddess wanted to send Atlantis a sign, there were better ways to do it than creating a pretty light show with a jewel. Manu would settle for her proving her existence by wiping out the Gloom so no more of his friends died in senseless battle.
That would be a sign.
What he wanted, what he truly desired, was to see Thalassa bitch slap Calypso to the darkest pit of Tartarus, never to be seen again, and saving more young mers on the brink of adulthood from dying in the never-ending war.
That would be a sign.
Flickering lights were not signs.
Actions were signs.
Aegaeon appeared to be every bit the heretic Manu felt in recent days. He snorted and glanced away from the stone. “Forgotten goddesses aside, what do you suggest this means?”
A quiet smile came to Hipponax’s face. “It means a member of the blood touched these waters. Somewhere, a mer of royal lineage swims in the Atlantic once more. That is what it means.”
“Impossible. We found the remains of my brother and the queen many years ago. There were no survivors.”
The priest glanced at the scepter again. “The child may have lived.”
“Ah, I don’t dare to have such hope and see it crushed, Hipponax. Wouldn’t the Gift of the Sea have shone long before this eve if Princess Zephyrine survived the ambush?”
“Possibly. We cannot know for certain. It is an ancient relic, Aegaeon, and as such, it is unpredictable. Only the queen truly understood it, and we lack her wisdom. What I do know is the remains of Commander Manu’s mother and our princess were never recovered. Our princess could be alive and awaiting a rescue. We could restore a queen to the throne.”
A pregnant pause hung in the air between the two men, Manu the only spectator. Aegaeon’s jaw worked a few times, clenching with tension. His gaze darted to the scepter and lingered.
“All right,” the regent said in a quiet voice. “For a moment, I will humor your theory that my niece survived the ordeal that slew two dozen Myrmidon guards, my brother, and our queen. What do you suggest we do to find her?”
“It will take time to develop the proper ritual spells to trace her whereabouts, but it can be done. I require blood from you, as you and she are kin.”
“I agree to this.”
“We must move quickly. And quietly. For the Gift of the Sea to remain dormant all this time can only mean her powers have also been dormant. Now that they are awakened, she will be a target to all things creeping and dark in these seas. I propose we send Manu to safely retrieve her.”
Manu jerked around to face the high priest. His mouth opened and closed in silent protest, but words never came. For High Priest Hipponax to recommend him for a surface mission was the highest honor, one he couldn’t dismiss, no matter how much he dreaded leaving the water behind.
He swore internally. There were dozens of reasons he’d prefer not to go to the surface, chief among them that the mortals were unpredictable, barbaric creatures.
“Will you accept this appointment as our champion, Manu?” Regent Aegaeon asked.
Manu placed his forearm against his waist and dipped forward into a deep bow. “I would send no other in my place, my lord.”
“I will contact one of our many agents among the humans.” Hipponax stroked his waist-length white beard and gazed into the distance. “You can begin the search in a place called Texas.”
“Why Texas?”
“When the king and queen left with their escort twenty-five years ago, they were to meet with a mortal dignitary there. If the princess lives, it is possible she washed ashore there.”
“And what am I to do if I do find her?”
A low chuckle shook Hipponax’s shoulders. “Return with her, of course.”
3
Girls’ Night
Sunset shone over the Gulf of Mexico, turning thousands of waves into gold slivers beneath the darkening sky. Sitting on a towel printed with characters from The Little Mermaid, Kailani watched the gulls swoop and hunt for food.
Three months had passed since the afternoon from hell, the day she’d pulled three unresponsive bodies from the Atlantic Ocean. Johnson and Franco had recovered. Morris didn’t. Despite their best efforts to revive him, the conservationist had been underwater too long for any amount of CPR to bring him back.
If only she’d realized they were in danger sooner. If she’d been quicker to act, all three could have survived the ordeal.
No matter how much logic told Kailani it wasn’t her fault another ship decided to play chicken with their boat, she couldn’t let it go. A minute might have been all the difference between Morris’s death and survival.
Survivor’s guilt was a fucking bitch, and it had curled its unrelenting hooks so hard into her psyche no amount of rationale would dislodge it, even when Morris’s widow hugged her at the funeral and told her she’d done everything possible.
Kai heard the approach of her younger sister long before Sadie’s shadow fell over her. Saying nothing, she plopped onto the sand and gazed into the turbulent water.
For a while, they sat together with the sunset behind them and foamy ocean waves crashing against the shell-speckled shore a few meters to their front. Gull cries and the roar of the surf made their own evening melody, filling the silence between them. This place, to the rear of their beachside property, was where Kailani went to do her best thinking. And her brooding. And any other verb requiring absolute peace and solitude from other human beings. Her mother and sister had learned long ago to leave her alone as long as her moods required.
“Hey. I know you came out for the quiet, but Mom sent three texts asking about dinner.”
“Sorry. Tell her I had a snack. Not really hungry.”
“Oh.” A deliberate pause. Kai didn’t have to glance at her sister to know Sadie was watching her. “What’s up?”
“Thinking.”
“About?”
Kailani didn’t respond. They both knew the answer.
“Come on. Let’s take a walk.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
“Why?”
Sadie rolled her eyes. “You never go anywhere. You’re always home, sitting here on the beach looking at nothing. Let’s have some fun.” Sadie took on a pleading
expression, practically begging. “Please? When school starts, I’ll never have time to hang out with you. These are my last two semesters. They’ll be the most difficult. A few weeks from now, you’ll wish you hung out with me when you had the chance.”
“You’ll manage. You always do.”
“That’s not the point,” Sadie whined.
“Mm.”
“I miss you, silly. You were gone for years, and now that you’re back, it’s like you’re still not here with us.”
Six years in the U.S. Navy satisfied Kai until the desire to study marine biology lured her back to civilian life. And that pursuit of knowledge afterward led her to joining Clear Shores, a charity founded by a Hollywood billionaire with way too much money on his hands and a desire to help ocean life after playing a conservationist in a movie.
Gods. She missed them. She missed them so badly it hurt. After the run-in with the Cristóbal claimed so many lives, their benefactor had backed down and declared the organization finished. They’d lost five men and women who would never again feel the ocean breeze or hear whale songs on a pleasant afternoon.
It didn’t help that their murderers were still tied up in court. Zeus 2 hadn’t been close enough to capture clear footage after all, so it was one crew’s word against another.
“I just want to spend time with you again. I miss having a sister.”
That one plea snapped Kai out of her pity party. Her gaze lifted from the sand to Sadie’s worried face. They may not have been flesh and blood, but she’d known from the moment the social worker arrived with little Sadie in her arms that they were meant to be sisters.
“All right. We’ll go out.” The words tasted like impending regret. How long would it take to contemplate slitting her own throat to escape the party scene?
“Yaaaas, Queen.”
Kai rolled her eyes at the inside joke. Their last name was Queen. The instant they were inside the house, Sadie wasted no time dragging Kai upstairs and rummaging through her wardrobe. While Kai was four inches taller, her sister was plumper and liked to steal the stretchy, elastane minidresses from her closet. In some cases, the twenty-one-year-old nursing student actually put them back.
Those were rare moments indeed. Kai rarely counted on seeing anything again once it disappeared into Sadie’s room.
“You have thirty minutes to get ready, but I’m doing your makeup.”
“I don’t need makeup.”
“Everyone needs eyeshadow and brows. Besides, I have a new green and a gold that will look amazing on you.”
“I don’t—”
“Thirty minutes.” Sadie whisked one of Kai’s sarongs from the closet and swept from the room, leaving her to stare into the vast space of pretty things acquired during her Navy career but never worn.
What a waste. Studying her reflection in the mirror hanging from her closet doors, she wondered if her carefree younger sibling was right and if abrupt change was what she needed to shift her depressing life on its axis. Something had to change.
And there was nowhere better to start than visiting a beachside club.
Of all the missions Manu undertook through the years, infiltrating human society irritated him the most. Other members of the Royal Army would have seen a visit to the surface world as an honor. He saw it as punishment.
Less than a day ago, when Manu arrived in Atlantian armor, his contact had outfitted him in board shorts to blend in with the locals. He already missed his sharkskin, also longing for pristine water and the beauty of a city unspoiled by humans. Homesickness would have to be the motivation to find Princess Zephyrine sooner than later, as he couldn’t imagine spending more than another day in this dismal hell.
Manu maneuvered around a cluster of scantily clad teens. The boardwalk was nothing more than a narrow strip of cement running parallel to a dirty little beach crowded by too many people. He must have arrived during the height of the tourist season, but nothing excused the state of the sand. The filth. The litter.
Did humans care nothing for their world?
Of course not. The bits of trash that came to Atlantis from the surface were proof of that, as humans treated the entire world as their refuse pile. It infuriated him that they enjoyed carefree, safe lives while his people fought against the Gloom. The only wars the humans faced were those of their own making, wars caused by greed, corruption, and hatred of their fellow man over little more than which figure to worship in the sky.
He snorted. Humans. They didn’t deserve the protection they received from Atlantis or any of the other worlds.
Dragging his attention back to the present, he noticed a pair of women in bikinis passing by on his left, whispering to each other while sneaking glances at him. “Check out the tattoos on that one,” tickled his hearing along with the words, “Forget the tatts. Look at those abs.”
Ah.
Humans were always good for a little ego stroke, at least. They’d been his attentive admirers during his last visit a decade ago, when he’d escorted a dignitary from Atlantis to visit a human lawmaker in Orlando. The small handful of humans aware of their world served an important purpose, keeping the secrecy while also fighting for a healthier Earth.
Ignoring the ladies devouring him with lustful gazes, he changed direction and gauged the reaction of the bloodstone in his pocket. Since his arrival on the shore, it pulsed like a homing beacon. The closer he came to her, the faster the single drop of ruby blood throbbed in the translucent gemstone’s center. When Manu neared five girls by a seaside bar, the bloodstone practically hummed.
One of them was bound to be the princess, and yet none appeared stately or regal. Except for…
There was a woman among the group. She stood tall and lean, built like a warrior goddess with athletic thighs exposed by a sarong knotted at her left hip. Like the others, she wore next to nothing, with her stomach exposed, but she towered above them like a giantess.
His heart raced just looking at her. Dark violet hair spilled over her shoulders, blacker toward her roots—and her skin glowed golden bronze in what little remained of the sun.
This woman couldn’t be human. He scanned her arms, strong limbs that were defined but not overly muscular, certainly capable of wielding a spear or a trident in battle. Her top consisted of two triangles and string, but those barely covered her breasts on account of their design, not her size. They’d have filled his palms if he cupped them, but just barely. She dressed like the embodiment of desire but everything about her said Atlantian, from the proud carriage of her shoulders to the color of her hair. She’d inherited Queen Ianthe’s deep violet shade.
“You got to get laid tonight, girl. You just have to,” reached his hearing.
“Sex is the only solution to your problem.”
“You need a guy who will beat it up and put it on you right.”
Beat it up? He pondered the unusual words, raking them in context over his brain a few times until understanding dawned with skyrocketing disgust.
There was no mortal among all the kingdoms of Earth worthy of their future queen.
He had to take her away from here at once.
4
A Scientific Nightmare
Three of Sadie’s college friends had joined them. As the night dwindled, so did Kai’s hopes of getting home at a reasonable hour and crawling into bed with a damned good book. She had a new paranormal romance to enjoy, and a pile of romantic comedies by her favorite hockey romance author, novels she’d set aside for when her mood improved and life felt worth living again.
Now she was shackled to four college sorority girls as their designated driver, and the likelihood of returning home before last call seemed a distant impossibility. Kai sloshed the ice around in her third cranberry, lime, and soda while watching the girls groove together to some popular summer rap song the world would forget about before winter.
Earlier in the night, they’d tried to coax her into picking up a man, swearing they’d catch an Uber if she did. A one-nigh
t stand didn’t hold appeal, something she hadn’t indulged in since her days in the military, when the selection of men had been somewhat plentiful during three deployments aboard naval ships.
Years later, she realized she must have screwed herself into the mother of dry spells.
Not a dry spell. A goddamned sexual drought.
Six years, going on seven. That’s how long it had been since she’d had a man. At one point in her life, she’d considered a week to be a long while. What a naïve child she’d been.
Sadie nudged her ribs, appearing like a magical imp to her left. “Hot guy at four o’clock. He’s been watching you.”
The moment Kai twisted for a look, Sadie pinched her. “Don’t turn around to look at him. Geez. Way to be a novice.”
“Short of growing eyes in the back of my head, there’s no other way to look at him,” Kai hissed, rubbing her hip. In no mood for playing coy, she turned and made eye contact with the king of all surfer hunks, a guy with a body women would feign drowning for if it meant he’d possibly apply some mouth-to-mouth action.
He had muscles for days and an athletic physique built by work and labor, not machines and leg days at the gym. Her nameless admirer reminded her of the Marines stationed aboard her old ship, though he was tall, dark, and bronze under the sun with shoulder-length black, almost-blue hair that definitely didn’t fit military regulations.
Professional model, maybe? Surfer? No one would call him beautiful, his features too rugged, too masculine for that. A strong jaw and high cheekbones gave him a chiseled look. Kai’s adopted mother would call him classically handsome, like an old portrait drawn in a forgotten style no artist dared use in modern day sculpture.
“Looks sort of like…um, one of your people, you know?” came Sadie’s whisper in her ear. “Hawaiian maybe? Hm, no. Samoan?”
Return to Atlantis: a Fantasy Romance (Kingdom in the Sea Book 1) Page 2