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

by Vivienne Savage

  “For a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to serve on the king and queen’s personal guard in Pacifica. I encouraged her.”

  “Mm.”

  “She would have been miserable if she’d turned it down, El. You know this. There’s no honor greater than serving alongside royalty whether it’s here, Pacifica, or for the elves. She made the only sensible fucking choice.”

  “Or maybe she waited for you to do the right thing and fight for her, Manu. Had you truly wanted to marry her, Calanthe would be here alongside you instead of Queen Laka.”

  He said nothing.

  “At first, I thought you were heartbroken over her, but now I can’t tell if you’re merely grateful it’s over.”

  He clenched his jaw but still didn’t honor her shit with a response.

  “So, is that why you throw yourself into your duties, Manu? Because you’re desperate to fill your father’s footsteps? You’ll never stand on your own if your only goal is to become the next Lago.”

  “I’m not trying to become him.”

  “Then why won’t you let anyone in? Calanthe loved you.”

  “She had a funny way of showing it.”

  “You let her leave.”

  “I wasn’t her owner. If a woman wants to leave, she’s going to leave.”

  “I’m not talking about the offer to immigrate to Pacifica. I’m referring to the fact that you were so goddamned distant the woman was living with a shadow of the man you should be. You’ll never be the great General Lago. And maybe if you accept that, he will, too.”

  It hurt the most that she was right, her words burrowing through his flimsy excuses until he raked his fingers through his hair and groaned. “I know. I know. I’ve been telling myself for years that I’ll never be the son he wants. But still, I have to try.”

  “You don’t have to try anything. Nobody could ever be the son he wants. You deserve better, Manu. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to have freedom, and you deserve to have someone in your life.”

  He jerked back, looking at her. “El…”

  “Not me. You’re right about being way too fucked up for a relationship right now.”

  An amicable silence fell between them that didn’t feel at all awkward. Manu waited a moment before he offered his hand. “Friends again, then?”

  She took it and squeezed. “Friends again.”

  “Then let’s get drunk together like we did in the old days. I need a break from adulthood.”

  Atlantis operated on a combination of hydro-electric power and magic, their society differing in many ways from the world on dry land. But in other ways, they were exactly the same.

  Manu sat beneath the spinning colorful lights of the hottest dance club in the city, flanked by a gorgeous lady on both sides. He hadn’t paid for a single ale all night, the alcohol plentiful from the moment he arrived. But it wasn’t where he wanted to be. He wondered where Amerin had taken Kai, what they were doing, and if the protection detail he and Cosmas assigned to her was up to the task of guarding their princess against any threat.

  He shivered, uneasy without knowing why. Loto hadn’t arrived yet, and he’d been due to join them a half hour ago. The man was as much a workaholic as Manu, but one defining characteristic divided them—Loto had a family, a wife and a litter of children waiting for him at home each night.

  Elpis crossed the dance floor from the bar with a martini. She drank it along the way, set the empty vessel on the table, and took Manu by both hands. She pulled him to his feet. “Dance with me.”

  “I don’t dance.”

  “You used to.”

  “I lost the rhythm.”

  “Liar. Maybe you’re getting old.”

  “Bull. I’m only sixty-two. If anyone’s getting old, it’s you, El. Don’t you have a decade on me? I think the salt water’s drying you out.” He touched the corners of his eyes. “Looking a little creased here.”

  “Ha ha.” She made a rude gesture with both hands, the equivalent of the surfacer middle finger. He returned it, smiling. This was the El he adored, not the scorned woman dropping hints and alluding to wanting more from him.

  The banter continued until the two ladies hoping to keep him company rose from the table, shooting El dark looks for the interruption. When she ignored them, both huffed and strolled away to seek an easier conquest. Manu exhaled in relief.

  He glanced to his right and saw Cosmas in the corner with the mortal gaming tables, playing a round of darts. The group of mer waiting for their turn at the board all had hero worship gleaming in their eyes. “Ask him. He’s drunk enough to make a fool of himself. And thank you, by the way.”

  “I don’t want to dance with Cosmas.” Her eyes lit up with humor. “I want you to make a fool of yourself. Besides, you’re always the best-looking guy here. You can thank me by joining me on the floor.”

  “Fine.”

  The moment he joined her, his communicator beeped with an incoming call, its red light flashing on his belt. He glanced at it and groaned. As unenjoyable as the club scene could be, something told him their night out was about to come to an abrupt and early end.

  “Ignore it. That’ll be someone at the barracks fishing for an officer. I know it.”

  “All the more reason to answer if someone’s fucked up.” It beeped until he raised the receiver, accepted the call, and placed it to his ear. “Manu speaking.”

  “There’s been an attack at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Pearl. Loyalists everywhere,” Loto said in a rush. “The princess is caught in the middle of it.”

  “On my way.” He was already in motion before he clipped the device onto his belt again.

  Under normal circumstances, riots and other infractions of Atlantian law were the responsibility of keepers, but the princess’s presence changed things.

  “On your way where? What’s happening?”

  “Attack on Fifth Avenue. Looks like the Loyalists are at it again. Kai—Princess Kailani is there.”

  One of her ginger brows leapt up toward her hairline. “On a first-name basis with the princess now?”

  He grunted and pulled his trident from the stand. “We’ll discuss this later.”

  “You’re rushing off to save her.”

  “She’s the fucking princess. What do you expect me to do?”

  El crossed both arms and tucked them beneath her breasts. “I dunno. Maybe allow the mers on duty to do their job.”

  Manu paused. “El, this isn’t the time to—”

  “Or accept some help from your friends and fellow Myrmidons. Let me drag Cosmas away from his game, and then the three of us will wallow into the filth together.”

  She spun on a heel and stalked away, leaving Manu to stare at her retreating form.

  It looked like he wasn’t heading into battle alone after all.

  18

  To Lead by Example

  Blood trickled down Kai’s temple. She wiped it with the back of her hand and huddled behind an overturned skipper at the mouth of a narrow alley. They had been pinned for the longest ten minutes of her entire life, unable to leave and risk exposing themselves.

  Atlantian civilians didn’t have access to gunpowder-based firearms. Such things were banned in the underwater kingdom, weapons of destruction attributed to the predicted fall of the surface kingdoms. But the arms favored by Atlantians also weren’t any better than semi-automatic weapons and made hypocrites of the mers. Harpoon blasters charged to shoot energy lances struck her as way more dangerous than the standard 9mm handgun.

  In addition to the harpoon guns, they used deadly magical items smuggled into the kingdom from other corners of the surface world. According to Amerin and what she’d learned during her lessons, those were also banned.

  Later, when her life wasn’t in peril, she’d be able to find amusement in the parallels between the magical underwater kingdom, and the mundane surface world she’d left behind. For weeks she’d thought she’d entered a peaceful paradise. Now she knew better. Not more
than two minutes ago, she’d watched a fireball streak down the lane into a building, shattering every window in its frontward-facing wall.

  One of the Myrmidons leaned out from cover and scanned down the road. “They don’t seem to be after you, Your Highness. I think our presence here was merely a coincidence.”

  Another explosion sent shards of glass in every direction, tearing metal and crumbling bricks.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “They’re not trying to reach you. They seem preoccupied with making a point, perhaps. With causing as much damage as they can to this quarter,” Heracles said.

  “Agreed,” said the lone female Myrmidon, Diana. “This isn’t an assassination attempt, otherwise we’d be up to our necks in Loyalist scum. This is a riot.”

  “Why are they rioting?”

  “They loathe anything to do with tradition, especially if royals are involved. They’re fascinated by the mortal systems of government, which, while flawed, appeal to them over the current state in Atlantis.”

  Kai couldn’t help but think of the many times she’d watched news coverage of riots in the surface world. There were times when rioting—in her opinion—was absolutely necessary, especially when an oppressed people needed to make a point to the majority. This struck her as more than rioting, however. This was outright assault and terrorism.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “We hunker down until reinforcements arrive to extract us,” Heracles said.

  “And if they don’t come?”

  “Then we lead you out of here ourselves.”

  Poor Amerin was trembling beside her, huddled in a ball with her knees tucked up to her chest. She looked so damned frightened, the situation enraged Kai more than it terrified her. No matter how much these assholes wanted change, they didn’t have the right to terrorize harmless innocents like Amerin.

  Kai crouched down beside her and slid an arm Amerin’s shoulders. “It’s going to be all right. We’ll make it out of here,” she murmured.

  “They won’t let me live.”

  “What?”

  Though Amerin already shook like a leaf, her sobs intensified until her entire body shuddered.

  “Amerin. No one is here to kill you.”

  “They hate my kind.”

  Her gaze darted from Amerin to the chaos brewing in the main street. Another plume of fire rocketed into the air, and one of the phosphorescent, tubular skyscrapers near them made an alarming creaking sound. She pleaded for it to remain standing. She’d served in the Navy at the time of 9/11, and while she hadn’t been present in Manhattan when the towers fell, she’d watched enough videos to know the devastation it could cause when skyscrapers collapsed in a tightly packed area. The damage was always worse if there were still innocents inside.

  Someone screamed in the distance, the voice echoing across the Atlantian dome from above them. As she’d suspected, there were still people in the building above her. Her stomach knotted with tension and fear for the helpless people trapped in the destabilized structure. She had all of the security and protection she needed.

  But who protected them?

  “We can’t just sit here and hide,” Kai muttered.

  “We can. Until reinforcements arrive to extract you, we don’t move, Your Highness. I know it may be difficult to listen to—”

  “I’m the future queen. Manu has spent weeks training me to fight against the fucking Gloom, and now you have me hiding from some tantrum-throwing assholes with magical molotovs? This is shit. What the hell good was all of that fighting if I have to cower in a corner now?”

  “You don’t have a weapon,” Heracles pointed out.

  Her gaze dropped to his weapons belt. He held a trident, but he had two long, curved blades on his belt, a combat knife in his boot, and a harpoon blaster. The others were all similarly armed. “You have several. Give me something.”

  “That’s—”

  Kai straightened her spine. Living up to her future as queen had never seemed more important. If she was going to rule, she had to know how to phrase her expectations. “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. Give me your harpoon gun.”

  Heracles unsnapped the weapon from his holster and passed it to her. It had the weight and feel of any long gun from the surface but could have been the bastard child of a shotgun and a revolver, a huge cylinder mounted on top loaded with six translucent harpoon bolts instead of shells or bullets. Electrical magic flickered inside them.

  “You two stay with Amerin and keep her safe,” she called over her shoulder to two men in the small squad.

  Heracles fell into step beside her. “Do you have a plan, Your Highness?”

  “Not at all. We need to stop them from detonating another one of those bombs. They’re fire bomb potions, right?”

  “They are,” he confirmed in a clipped voice. “Most likely smuggled into their hands from elven lands.”

  Another of those magical grenades arced through the air, lobbed by an asshat standing just down the road. It struck the coral front of the building with a boom that almost shook Kai off-balance. Bits of bleached coral flew and rained white dust down upon them. Chaos raged everywhere she looked, from looters bashing in storefronts to criminals terrorizing their fellow mers. At a quick glance, she saw dozens of drivers hadn’t been able to escape, and were now trapped in their coral skippers, unable to navigate a road littered with burning rubble.

  Most of the people in the street hadn’t been the Loyalists’ high mer oppressors—the people they were harming the most right now were their own folk of the common classes. And that lit a violent storm of anger in Kai. If being queen meant she hid in safety while others suffered, then she didn’t want the fucking title.

  “There’s not as many as we saw marching,” she said as they moved into the street. Some mers abandoned their cars and tried to run away on foot.

  “There wouldn’t be. The cowards will have spread out to cause as much damage as possible. The ones left behind, however, will be armed.”

  “Then we need to do something.”

  “Lead on, Your Highness. We have your back.”

  A fight broke out behind them, three men from their squad caught in battle with Loyalists.

  Kai retraced the grenade to its source and saw a man beneath a street lamp with a duffel bag of glowing apple-red bottles, each one lit bright as an infrared bulb. Her heart started pounded faster than a herd of galloping Thoroughbreds, practically beating its way out of her chest when he shook it. The contents flared brighter, practically white-hot. She aimed the weapon, hoping to hit him in the leg, but fear gripped her index finger and wouldn’t let her pull the trigger. She’d never killed a man before, and wasn’t sure if she could kill one now, even for another person.

  “Someone help us!” a voice cried from above them again on the building’s upper level.

  Too many things happened at once. Kai froze up. She’d never been combat-trained. She’d been a tech, a brain who worked on wiring and other simple things, though she’d gone through a few drills during her six years and knew her way around a damned obstacle course. One second, a single second of hesitation, cost her the element of surprise that could have saved the people above. Instead of hurling the potion at the building, he tossed it toward Kai and the small Myrmidon squad.

  “Myrmidon chum!” he shouted.

  At the same time, Heracles yanked the gun from her hands, sighted down the barrel, and pulled the trigger, as did the other mer. One bolt pierced their assailant in his chest, issuing a spray of blood from his mouth and crackling arcs of electricity. The other struck the potion midair, though its liquid contents combusted and became a mist of smoldering embers. Heracles swore and threw himself in front of her to take an attack that would no doubt fry him down to the bone.

  At that moment, time slowed down for Kai. Whether it was the adrenaline pounding through her veins, or something magical related to her gifts, every second seemed to stretch before her with s
tartling clarity, frame by frame. As Heracles turned his back on the attack and shielded her with his body, she flung out both hands, one over his left shoulder, the other at waist-level, and a curve of freezing water materialized from thin air. The two forces met in the middle, hot and cold colliding to create a harmless puddle in the middle of the street.

  It had been purely instinctual. She still wasn’t sure what happened, even seconds later once time returned to its usual speed. Bits of slush clung to the Heracles’s glossy left shoulder pauldron and steam filled the air. A bit of ice glossed over his ear.

  Before she could ask what had just happened, someone blew a battle horn.

  “There’s our reinforcements.”

  He said it like she hadn’t just saved him from roasting like a turkey forgotten in the oven.

  “Oh. Good,” she said, likewise ignoring that she’d pulled off a feat of magic. Because the sooner she acknowledged it, the sooner she would freak the fuck out and wonder what the hell would happen to her next.

  The last thing Manu expected when he reached the corner of Fifth and Pearl was for Kai to refuse extrication. He stared at the stubborn princess crouched beside an injured keeper and considered throwing her over his shoulder. Then he remembered weeks of teaching her defensive maneuvers and reconsidered.

  He valued his balls too much to risk his little tadpoles a second time. One day, maybe not this decade or century, he wanted to be a father. It seemed unwise to provoke Kai again.

  “Not until everyone is safe.” She tore a strip of silk from her own skirts and held it to the man’s bleeding shoulder. The keeper shot her an appreciative look akin to hero worship, like the hand of Thalassa herself was on him. The poor bastard. He was probably delirious from blood loss.

  “This area will be reclaimed shortly. For your safety, I demand—”

  “Fuck whatever you demand.”

  One of the Myrmidons choked back a laugh, only to become stone-faced again when Manu shot him a cool stare. Heracles wiped the grin off his face.