Return to Atlantis: a Fantasy Romance (Kingdom in the Sea Book 1)

by Vivienne Savage

  Had she been raised among her own people for the second half of her life, she’d have known it all. But that, too, was not Kai’s fault.

  “Do you think we’ll make it in time?” she asked, breaking her prolonged silence.

  “Hopefully.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I wish I knew, Princess.” As of the last report to reach them by comms, Fare’s defenses were holding the Gloom at the main gate. Other artillery forces had also been deployed, and a few units from the cavalry of a nearby village had been sent to help drive back the darkness.

  Over the course of the next seven hours, they received intermittent updates, though they tapered, growing fewer and farther between, until at last the dome of Fare arose from the obscuring mist. Dozens of coral glider headlamps reflected off the glass surface in the far distance.

  The underwater craft traveled swiftly when Manu didn’t obey the usual speed limits set forth by the Council of Lords. Few did when a true emergency arose, but he’d called only their best and most experienced pilots to cruise in their forward formation. Exceptional reflexes and talent were needed to not only avoid dangers and obstructions in their path while shooting along at over one hundred miles an hour, but to also avoid striking each other.

  “Commander Manu Ghostfin to Fare. What is your current status?” Silence greeted him. “Fare, what is your current status?” He heard Kai suck in her breath, and the sound of his own racing heart pulsed a nervous drumbeat between his ears. Radio silence was never what one wanted when rushing to an ally’s aid. “Fare, report,” he barked out. Again, no one responded. A deep weight centered in the middle of his chest when he considered the possibilities.

  “Are there any reasons why they wouldn’t respond less than thirty minutes after their last check-in?” Kai asked in a quiet voice.

  “They could have evacuated or taken refuge deeper in the city. Comms could have been taken down during a fight. Numerous reasons.” None of what he said alleviated the unrelenting pressure around his heart.

  “Worst case scenario?”

  “Everyone is already dead.”

  Kai sucked in a sharp breath between her teeth. “They can’t be. Not an entire city, right?”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. Helike was utterly destroyed, though they were less prepared for danger than Fare.” He bit his lip, staring ahead while decelerating. If anyone had evacuated, they would have seen evidence of refugees fleeing from the battle. At least, the Gloom was already dispersing, its bleak veil of darkness thinning.

  They found devastation moments later along with the first corpses and a few crushed gliders. The dome hadn’t ruptured, unlike Helike’s barrier. Instead, the guards and all defenses at the forefront of the city had been obliterated. Kai twisted in her seat to stare at their surroundings through the rear viewport, a window intended for a second gunner.

  “These men can’t have been dead for long. Look. There’s no scavengers. Not even a few hermit crabs.”

  “You’re right.” Manu tapped a button on the comm. “Daedalus.”

  “Yes, Commander?”

  “We’re going in on foot. Fall back and maintain a defensive perimeter.”

  “Roger that, Commander.”

  Kai glanced at him, raising a brow. “We’re going in on foot?”

  He raised a skeptical brow. “You understood that?” He’d spoken in Atlantian at all times unless addressing her directly.

  “You weren’t speaking English?”

  “No.”

  He sailed into the city’s port, followed by a platoon of gliders, though it took precious minutes for the six squads to disembark from their craft into a crowded bay and await his orders. He didn’t miss the number of eyes shooting curious glances at Kai as they fell into formation, their officers at the lead of each group.

  Captain Daedalus’s voice reached him through the comm pinned to the collar of his suit. “Commander.”

  “What do you see?”

  “We’ve found what remains of Gailshark Battery. Bits of their gliders are littered around the southwestern perimeter of Fare.”

  “And their pilots?” His gaze snapped to the men before them. Some were related to mers serving in Fare’s Myrmidon force.

  Daedalus exhaled a slow breath. “Shark bait.”

  “I copy. Resume your mission,” Kai said before raising his voice to address the squads before him. “Keep aware. This is no longer a defensive mission. We now search for survivors.”

  Kai’s anxiety levels rose each time they made a new discovery of corpses in the overrun city, though it was more of a large township than anything, home to five thousand mers. According to Manu, Fare was only large enough to keep a single battery of gliders, approximately one hundred and fifteen vessels, each manned by a pilot and a gunner. All appeared to have been destroyed during the fight, along with their only whale thumper. She’d yet to see a whale thumper in action, only in passing, as Manu hadn’t opted for one of the enormous underwater tanks to join their mission.

  That was what she compared them to at least: heavily armored marine tanks designed to crawl on the ocean floor, though they possessed glider jets and propellers.

  “Are you nervous?” Manu asked suddenly.

  “No.”

  He studied her for a moment then squeezed her shoulder. “The Gloom sweeps in and often sweeps out. If there are any straggling beasts, there won’t be many.”

  “I’m not worried about that.”

  He arched a brow, but he didn’t question it. As pleasant as she found his touch, she shrugged out from under his hand and proceeded forward on the path. Fare didn’t differ much from Atlantis with its paved roads and neatly manicured grounds, enchanted lanterns casting captive sunlight over their underwater realm.

  Mers liked wisteria and fig trees, incorporating a lot of Greco-Roman plant life into their city designs, as well as homes resembling the stone structures she saw in gladiator flicks and historical movies. When the squads broke into pairs to cover more ground, Manu and Kai moved together down one side of a bloodstained lane. Her belly twisted every time they passed some piece of a dismembered citizen. The place had been reduced to a ghost town.

  Gods. She swallowed down the bile rising in her throat and tried to hide her rising panic when they crossed near a graying, half-blackened corpse. Manu gestured for her to go ahead and drew a blade as long as her forearm from his belt.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure this one doesn’t rise from the Gloom.”

  “What?”

  “As I said, Your Highness, I am guaranteeing this one does not rise from the Gloom.”

  She didn’t linger. He stopped multiple times after that, whenever they crossed a forgotten body stiffening in a road or some shelter. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough for this after all.

  They searched homes with vacant bedrooms, shattered furnishings, and empty cribs.

  Empty cribs.

  Her heart constricted in her chest at the sight. Better empty than to see Manu putting an infected child out of its misery. Kai didn’t know if her heart could take that.

  She swallowed sour bile without any relief and hastily wiped the back of her hand across her face, furious and hurting, inundated by more emotions at once than she thought possible. And still they encountered no beasts, only the carnage left in their wake.

  “Commander, Daedalus reporting.”

  Manu paused, eyes narrowing as he tapped the button on his collar. “Good news?”

  “Survivors found northwest of the city. It appears some citizens tried to evacuate while Gailshark Battery threw themselves at the Gloom. We’re escorting them to meet the rescue vessel en route.”

  Manu hung back to speak a moment longer with his captain. During that time, Kai proceeded forward into another home. The door had been bashed in off its hinges, and the stink of the Gloom permeated the air when she stepped inside. Furnishings had been tossed aside and squid ink splattered t
he walls.

  Shallow breaths didn’t help against the sharp tang. She already held a white-knuckled grip on her spear. Then something scuttled against the wall, and she picked up the sound of many legs clicking against stone. Kai whirled with her spear at the ready to see a giant bristle worm emerging from a crack in the wall, though there was a putrid essence leaking from raw, open cankers in its fractured crimson shell. There seemed to be no end to it, the creature as long as she was tall. Perhaps more.

  It rushed at Kai, darting forward like a lance. She rolled to the side without losing her spear and was on her feet again, stabbing with it. The noise of her spearhead striking the hard, chitinous shell echoed through the small space.

  “Princess?” Manu called, alarm in his voice.

  The second time it lunged at Kai, she fended it off with the spear’s long shaft, screaming, “Gloombeast!”

  By then, Manu was already barreling inside with a curved blade in his hand, silver glinting in the dim light. He swore at the sight of it. Then it raced toward her like a furious serpent. “Shield out!”

  She whipped the shield from her back, heart slamming faster than a snare drum in her chest. Terror made her lightheaded. This was the kind of moment he’d trained her to survive. While it was only one Gloombeast, she fought against her body seizing in fear when it flew at her. Then muscle memory and instinct led the way as she bashed the worm with her shield.

  The worm struck metal hard enough for Kai to stumble back a step, unprepared for its strength. When it bounced away, Manu intercepted it with his blade and sliced it clean across the middle. Both halves flopped to the ground, one squealing and thrashing, while blue-green ichor flooded from the severed ends. Before the half with its mouth could go for her again, Kai reversed her spear and drove it down through the worm’s head.

  Kai stared at it for a long while after, until it stopped moving and was only a dead thing leaking on the living room floor.

  “Are you all right?” Manu stepped in behind her. One of his hands curved around her upper arm, chafing up and down. Without caring if it was appropriate, she leaned back against him.

  “I’m fine, I think. Just shaken up.”

  “I shouldn’t have let you go on alone like that. I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault. I walked off.” She swallowed, hating when he let go and put a step of distance between them. She twisted around to look up at him. “How could so much damage be done here in so little time?”

  He smiled bitterly. “Numbers. The Gloom is ever growing, and their army is always open to conscription. Once a mer or sea creature is infected with Calypso’s vile sickness, they become part of it.”

  “I know that, but…is there no defending against it? No recovery?”

  “Once infected? No. It’s death once one of them pierces your heart with its toxic barb.”

  “When one of our own falls—”

  “We put them out of their misery if they survive the initial injury. Were I sick, I’d want the same done for me.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “That is life in Atlantis, Princess. Until the Gloom is pushed back, until Calypso and her masters are defeated, it’s the reality of our underwater realm. This is why the general and your uncle are desperate for you to learn.”

  Kai gripped her spear so tightly her hand hurt. “Then I’ll learn. Whatever you need me to learn, I’ll do.”

  “It’ll require more hours than you already give.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “It won’t be like the training plan we’ve made for you. What Regent Aegaeon and General Lago want will require more than anyone could safely give. I’m against it, because I don’t want to break you.”

  “It won’t break me.”

  “Are you sure about that, Your Highness?”

  “I’m positive. Fuck the history, fuck the lessons. Teach me everything you’d teach a mer entering your army. Make me a Myrmidon. Treat me to everything I need to know to fight this. Put me through hell if you have to, because whatever you do to me can’t be worse than what happened to these people.”

  14

  Leilei

  Every time Manu made his mind up about the princess, she turned his preconceptions about her inside out. A week ago, she’d been a clumsy woman-child with a weak understanding of their society. Yesterday, Kai held her own against a Gloombeast and showed the first signs of the fearless leader she’d one day become.

  Manu stared at his bedroom ceiling, cursing both the hour and the unfortunate circumstances that wouldn’t grant him even a few hours of reprieve from fantasizing about her. With a dream about Kai haunting his sleeping mind, he’d awakened harder than whalebone.

  And now he had to dedicate eight hours of his day to her personal instruction. He groaned and rubbed his tired face.

  Fuck. The gods hated him.

  As a mer of the warrior class, he wasn’t permitted to mate any female—or male, for that matter—of a caste higher than two ranks above his own. As much as Atlantis prized its Myrmidons, they didn’t fancy warriors rising to the royal class. Beyond that, servants were the only members of the rigid caste system unable to elevate via marriage. A servant was always a servant, as were their children, committing mers like Amerin to a lifetime of domestic slavery.

  Pacifica operated differently from her sister kingdom in the Atlantic Ocean, lacking antiquated social systems designed to oppress segments of its population. Had Manu not already devoted too many decades of his life to service in Atlantis, he would have immigrated to the neighboring ocean and tested his luck in the nation of his mother’s people, a place where hard work and dedication determined futures—not birthright. He’d heard Queen Laka was a just and fair merwoman, as compassionate as she was strong despite her royal blood.

  Sometimes, he wished he’d followed Calanthe. Life could have been good there for them both.

  Despite the temptation to burrow deeper under the covers and shirk his responsibilities, Manu dragged himself from between the sheets and trudged into the bathroom. Without waiting for the fire crystals to heat the water to his preferred temperature, he eased under the shower spray and prayed the cold withered his arousal.

  It didn’t. Nothing washed away the sordid fantasies that had haunted his dreams of Kailani in her tiny swimsuit, those indecent and impractical cloth triangles leaving almost nothing to his imagination. And in those dreams, he plucked the delicate strings and pulled it away from her flawless skin, baring her to his mouth. In those dreams, the schism between warrior class and royalty didn’t exist and he was free to touch and taste and kiss her to his heart’s content.

  As Manu took his cock in hand and stroked down to the base, his unrelenting subconscious tortured him with a new fantasy, a memory of the previous day he’d replayed over and over during the return trip home from Fare while Kai slept in the copilot’s chair. In that fantasy, she stood over the corpse of another Gloombeast they’d encountered during an intended rendezvous with the squad, a disturbing chimera of squid and lobster with lethal claws, shooting vile ink while lunging at them from the shadows between two residences. As it was still developing a stinger, she’d been in no true danger, allowing Manu to stand back and watch her take it on.

  When he tested her, she passed with flying colors, radiating confidence. She was no longer the same scared girl who shrieked while fleeing monsters from the Gloom on Galveston Beach.

  Funny how the most arousing sight of Kai wasn’t her in skimpy beach attire, practically naked under the setting sun, her hair wild around her shoulders and spilling down her back.

  The most attractive he’d ever seen the princess had been her standing in triumph over her enemy with squid ink on her shield and blue blood on her spear. The sexiest he’d ever seen her, the hottest she could ever be, had been the moment their eyes met and he saw a glimpse of a powerful queen destined to rule their kingdom and restore light to the underwater realm.

  That was the Kai he craved.

  Cursin
g himself for dwelling on it, he continued to stroke, remembering the way she’d turned to him with pride dancing in her eyes, seeking approval he’d been eager to give.

  Now, she was his student. Soon, she’d be his queen. To make matters worse, he had every reason to believe Kai planned to pick his best friend for her mate and future king.

  Stop thinking of her.

  If only it were that easy.

  He’d hit rock bottom, stroking off to a merwoman he could never have.

  With an hour to spare before Kai was due to join him at the barracks, Manu leaned into the neighboring office and rapped on the door. Cosmas was already behind the desk, kneading his temples with one hand and reading the morning edition of the Daily Atlantic. As the most recent suitor to be seen with Princess Kailani in public, Cosmas made regular appearances in the gossip section, his every move dissected.

  All of the legitimate counting houses had started taking bets, giving Cosmas favorable odds at becoming the next king. Lord Fridericus, on the other hand, was last calculated at having a 25-1 chance at winning the princess’s approval. From what Manu had overheard between Kai and Amerin, the mer had a zero percent chance. That made Manu childishly gleeful.

  “You have a free moment?” Manu asked. “Or are you too busy admiring the newest photo of you?”

  “The photo is shit, and I always have a free moment for you, my friend. What can I do?”

  “I may have done something stupid—”

  “You do something stupid?” Cosmas leaned back in his seat and crossed both arms over his armored chest.

  “Shut up.”

  “You definitely have my attention now. What did you do and how bad a mess am I going to help you clean up? Are we hiding bodies, paying off mistresses…?”

  “It’s nothing that damned dramatic.” At Cosmas’s inquisitively raised eyebrow, he sighed and continued. “I may have chosen a shark for our princess from the riding program without considering whether or not she might be into riding. As you’ve been spending time with her recently, I wondered if you’d have any insight into it. And whether…this animal may be to her liking at all.”