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

by Vivienne Savage

  At last, there was a break in the storm of monsters, enough that Cosmas urged Kai to flee. Manu saw her eyes, watched her gaze dart to the gliders, the shape of her mouth asking why. Whatever response Cosmas gave, it was lost when the mer turned his back. Kai’s spine turned rigid.

  Another disturbance moved the sand bed.

  Each second Manu waited for her to leave was a second anxiety compressed his lungs in a vice, barely allowing him any air. Just as they bolted, the ground erupted again, sand and ocean detritus stirred by another of Calypso’s sea monsters. He lit into it, precise and careful shots chipping at a conical shell on the monster’s back.

  They started moving, the two mers just flickers of color in cloudy water, coral glider headlamps reflecting off their scaled lower bodies. Taking up a position as their escort, Manu followed without removing his fingers from the triggers.

  Before they reached the edge of the hill overlooking the fields, a single limb burst from the ocean floor. No monster, no gelatinous body, only a wicked cross between a manta ray’s barb and a scorpion tail protruding from the swaying kelp bed. Just as it swung forward toward Cosmas’s chest, Kai pulled off an impressive stunt with her tail, throwing herself in between them. It pierced her armor and shattered the golden cuirass. Manu saw the moment it entered her chest, the moment her eyes flew wide with pain.

  He couldn’t hear Cosmas’s scream, but he saw it, fury and anger boiling across his features. A trident thrust into the sand bed, presumably even hitting the mark. But it was too late.

  Against everything he’d been taught while piloting an underwater craft, Manu flooded the chamber and ejected from the coral glider, abandoning it and subjecting himself to the sudden pressure of the ocean pounding in on him from every direction. Mers had an adaptation that allowed their survival, but it still hurt. The brief moment of discomfort was meaningless as his future queen floated lifeless in the water, trailing rich, red blood against a sea of golden stars.

  29

  Doubt and Fury

  Three hours after surviving a successful surgery to repair her heart, Kai lay beneath a healing lamp while the enchanted light of Apollo glowed golden on her skin. Vitalis claimed to have pulled every magical trick from of his repertoire of spells and tearfully professed the princess’s survival to be in the gods’ hands.

  Manu had little confidence in their neglectful Atlantian deities, as they were the very gods who had allowed the Gloom to overtake the Atlantic Ocean in the first place. The same gods who allowed Calypso to cause rampant destruction across the kingdom for two millennia after driving her mad with envy to begin with. No matter the faith of his fellow mers, Manu was sick of gods.

  While seven of Atlantis’s key decision makers squabbled, Manu waited by the healing suite’s door beside Cosmas. The other mer should have been recuperating, pale from blood loss but too stubborn to lie in his own sick bed.

  The room was stifling, overcrowded for a place of healing, and still yet more people were bound to storm inside and blather their unwanted opinions. Chief among the expected visitors was General Lago, though he’d no doubt blame Manu for what happened.

  And that was fine. Manu blamed himself. If he’d been faster and had his eyes been sharper, he would have seen the fucking thing lying in wait and filled it with holes.

  “I’ve done all that is possible with medicine. All that remains is prayer,” Vitalis said. “We must now wait.”

  “Wait until she becomes a monster, you mean. You know as well as the rest of us what happens when any Atlantian falls to the Gloom,” Lady Nammu retorted.

  “Agreed,” said Lord Euripides. “What happened is a grave misfortune, but should she arise infected by the Gloom, I can only imagine the creature she would become. For the safety of all, we must lay Princess Zephyrine to rest.”

  “Kailani,” Aegaeon said in a quiet voice.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Her name is Kailani.”

  “What matter does it make?” asked Sophocles, another high mer of the Council of Lords. “What does her name matter now that she is dying before us, and with her, any hope we may have had of defeating the Gloom?”

  They cared nothing for whether Kai died. To them, she was a symbol of their continued importance in Atlantian society. She represented safety and an end to the Gloom. She represented a continued life of privilege in their pink shell manors. Without her, nothing guaranteed the Loyalists wouldn’t reenact the French Revolution and introduce a few high mer necks to an executioner’s axe. Manu suspected it wouldn’t be long until the royal-hating traitors constructed a few guillotines.

  Another lord sighed, dropping his heavy shoulders. Epicurus was a well-built mer, a retired Myrmidon and rarity among the nobility, like Cosmas. “Death will come for us all in time, Sophocles. What does it matter if it is now or tomorrow? I say let her live. Let her live, and then put down whatever the Gloom makes of her, should it make anything of her at all. Hours have passed, and yet look at her. There is still life in her face. Perhaps there is a chance, a hope of her recovery after all.”

  “Thank you, Epicurus,” Aegaeon murmured.

  Epicurus inclined his head.

  “Am I the only one here besides Nammu with a brain to see the foolishness of this? I will not stand by as you endanger all of Atlantis,” Lord Aeschylus said, a scowling mer with a perpetually curled upper lip, as if his surroundings always carried a foul odor. “It’s an unnecessary risk. One we cannot abide. Princess or not, we must put the girl down. Were it any of us, we’d be long dead.”

  Manu told himself it wasn’t worth the jail time. Introducing Aeschylus’s nose to his fist would only cause unnecessary drama. He clenched his left hand, knuckles cracking.

  Sophocles sighed. “Look at us, arguing over the fate of our future queen.”

  Lady Nammu jolted back a step, a hand raised to her heart. “Future queen? Whether this had happened or not, she never had any future as our queen. She is a child.”

  “I beg to differ, Lady Nammu. All queens must begin somewhere. The blood is in her veins, and more importantly, she has the gift of Thalassa.”

  “We don’t need the gift of Thalassa.” Lady Nammu clenched her jaw. “Has Aegaeon not kept our world safe from harm for all these years? No less safe than his brother and wife did.”

  “My love—”

  “Don’t you ‘my love’ me,” she snapped. “If you won’t speak for yourself, I will. This supposed queen has already proven herself unsuitable for the throne. She endangered my nephew by rushing into danger, and just look at what her childish antics have wrought.”

  Perhaps it was for the best, angry as Manu was, trembling with indignation, that Cosmas strode forward first to challenge her. “That is not what happened. I love you, Aunt Nammu, but you won’t tarnish her name while I stand here. Kai wanted an evening swim, and I voluntarily took her, as was my right. As was the plan arranged between all of us should her personal protection detail be unavailable. What happened out there wasn’t normal. I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  “You are blinded by your affection for her. You can’t be trusted to think rationally, Cosmas. Why aren’t you in bed? You have internal injuries, my dear.”

  “I’ll return to bed when this matter is resolved.”

  “You’ll return now. You may think this misfit unmer is the only eligible maid to wed you, but there will be many others, Cosmas. She—”

  Regent Aegaeon glanced at his wife, blue eyes lit by fury. “That is enough, Nammu!” His wife shrank away, blinking at him but still trembling with rage. “This is no decision to make overnight. It cannot be rushed. My niece is the last direct descendent of the royal bloodline, and I will not take her life until all other options have been exhausted.”

  He turned on a heel and strode from the room. Nammu followed, but she cast a murderous glance over her shoulder toward Manu before gliding into the hall.

  The others filed out one by one until only Cosmas and Manu remained, standing o
n opposite sides of the bed.

  Cosmas swallowed, throat bobbing. “I’m sorry.”

  “You owe no apologies to me. And it wasn’t your fault.”

  “It is my fault. She protected me.”

  “She did what was in her nature to do. I…I want to blame you. I want to be furious with you. But it isn’t your fault.”

  “Manu—”

  “Get some rest.”

  Cosmas lingered, one arm against his ribs. “Will you sit with her?”

  “Someone has to. I don’t trust what might happen if one of us isn’t here to protect her.”

  “Thank you.”

  Once the door shut behind Cosmas, Manu dragged a chair to the bedside and gazed at her pale face, the sweat gleaming on her brow. She looked bloodless, a still doll with algae bandages wrapped around her torso.

  Manu leaned closer, daring to take her clammy hand. “I know you’re still in there, Kai.” Her hand was so boneless and lax in his grip, slick with sweat. “They want to murder you in your sleep. To kill you now before you succumb to the poison in your veins and arise as part of the Gloom.”

  With his other hand, he stroked a damp lock of hair from her perspiring temple. “I won’t let them harm you. Not if I can help it. Not until we know you’re not our Kai anymore.”

  Impulsively, he leaned down and kissed her, hoping he’d have the courage to do it again while her eyes were open and filled with life.

  And to tell her how he felt, whether it was wrong or not.

  The cool air in the royal healer’s suite smelled like herbs and the sharp medicinal tang of alchemy. Manu rubbed his tired face, finding comfort in the astringent scent filling the room, preferable to the smell of Gloombeast still clinging to his skin. He didn’t dare leave Kai’s side, afraid the moment he did, the moment he let down his guard, they’d come to kill her.

  Forty-three years of Myrmidon training told him Kai should have been laid to rest. His heart wanted her alive. Wanted her in his arms, her pulse pounding strong and eyes glittering with laughter. The clash of training and desire alerted him to his own hypocrisy—affection for her versus common sense and centuries of tradition steeped in experience. He’d yet to see a mer recover from the Gloom once Calypso took them in her vile clutches.

  A tiny, niggling voice of self-doubt told him she was gone, and that despite all her effort, he’d only brought her to Atlantis to die. For that, he couldn’t forgive himself. Lord Aegaeon, General Lago, and Hipponax had dared to believe a load of idealistic eelshit, and now a brave and witty beautiful young woman was dying, the world soon to be much poorer for having lost her. Why couldn’t they have let her be?

  Manu knew the answer. Even if the underwater realm had allowed Kai to remain on the surface, Calypso’s vile abominations would have torn her to shreds. It was unfortunate, the future carved for her all because she’d had the misfortune of inheriting a few drops of divine blood, condemning her to a life of battle and warfare cut far too short.

  His eyes burned, red from lack of sleep. Not tears. Myrmidons did not cry. But they did grow exhausted, his shoulders sinking and chin dipping toward his armored chest.

  “Commander Manu?” Amerin’s gentle voice came from the door, a whisper in the quiet room with the power to snap him out of the brief drowse.

  Manu jerked upright, heart pounding. “Any news?”

  “No.” Amerin crossed the room with an enormous fuzzy blanket in her arms and unfolded it over Kai’s legs. It looked like it belonged to a child, cheerful yellow seahorses over pastel anemone print. “I thought you’d be resting by now.” She paused beside Kai’s bed and ran her fingers through the princess’s dark hair. “I thought Kai would like the blanket her mother made for her. Have you slept?”

  “No.”

  Amerin slipped into the chair beside him. “You should, you know. A little rest will do you some good.”

  Rest could come when Kai was awake. Or when she’d found peace. Until one event or the other happened, he couldn’t imagine leaving her alone in the room at the figurative crossroads between life and death.

  “I’ll be fine, Amerin. Thank you for the concern.”

  “At least shower and get out of your armor, Commander. Please. For her sake. Kai wouldn’t want you to suffer at her bedside.” Cosmas had come and gone again, sitting alongside Manu for two hours while Kai fought for her life. Eventually, Aegaeon and Vitalis dragged him back to his own recovery room, citing his need for rest was just as great.

  “I don’t—”

  “I will remain here. I won’t let them take her.”

  “You won’t have any choice. When they come for her, they won’t ask your permission.”

  “Commander Cosmas sent me to keep an eye.” Her gaze snapped to the door, lingering. “He’s behaving now for them, biding his time. If…if they try—”

  “There’s no if,” Manu said, voice quiet and hollow, as empty as his soul felt since the moment he saw the barb piercing Kai’s chest. “They will. No one’s ever come back from the Gloom.”

  “We don’t know that. A queen has never been infected before. Never in the history of Atlantis, in the line of our queens, has one of Calypso’s monsters infected a mer from Thalassa’s blood. We just have to fight for her.” Amerin bit her bottom lip. “You have to fight for her.”

  “I will fight for her if I must, because I’ll be damned if they take her life before we…before we do know. Before it’s fucking certain.”

  Kai deserved that much, to have the chance to speak her goodbyes.

  Manu had promised to protect her. He would with his final breath, whether his princess was in sickness or health.

  30

  Elysian Waves

  Kai opened her eyes to an underwater wonderland more spectacular than any Atlantian park or city. A thousand corals glowed all around her, their colors too numerous to count. A pink jellyfish swam past her to the left, and a school of neon fish swirled by to the right. There were enormous plant beds of crimson and pink aquatic flora, though these grew wild and untamed without a caretaker’s pruning. No matter which direction she turned, the endless twilight of the ocean displayed unfettered beauty.

  This was how the ocean ought to have been from one pole to the other. Filled with life and beauty instead of pollution and death.

  A Technicolor squid shot past her, and a tiger shark cruised in the distance. She floated there, lost in time and space, wondering where the murky sand bed of the battlefield had gone. As memories of her final moments returned, Kai turned again and came face to face with her own image, standing tall in sculpted sharkskin armor.

  It took about five seconds to realize it wasn’t her mirror image, and that there were laugh lines framing the woman’s full mouth and crinkles around her gray eyes. Her hair was violet from root to tip and flowed behind her on the underwater current, pinned from her face by a tiara shaped from coral.

  Neither paintings nor statues had done Queen Ianthe justice. And seeing her now, standing there at the bottom of the ocean with her serene smile and quiet nobility, told Kai she hadn’t survived the stingray’s barbed tail piercing her chest. Her brain had put together a final dream before death took her.

  “Mom?”

  Ianthe stepped closer and embraced her, imparting so many sensations of love and affection at once. Her mother’s hug was pure heaven, better than a warm blanket on a cold winter night. “I have loved you from the moment I knew I carried you, my dear sweet Kai.”

  Her heart hurt. Her mother knew her name.

  “You seem surprised.”

  “You called me Kai.”

  “Is Kai not the name you have adopted since our loss? I could call you Zephyrine, but you are no longer she. You are a new woman. You are better and stronger than I ever imagined or dreamed you could be. Why would I not recognize that?”

  Hallucination or reality? The rapid pulse behind her breast seemed ready to burst free. “I don’t understand. How are you here? Where are we?”

&n
bsp; “We are in the threshold between the world of the living and the land of the dead. Just as Elysium has lands and valleys for heroes, so too does it have shores and oceans.”

  “I’m dead?”

  “No, my love. But you are close to it.”

  “You’re not upset that I took another mother? That I forgot you?”

  “What?” Ianthe’s gaze softened. “No. Never, my love. What took place was what needed to happen to ensure your survival and happiness. More than anything, I feel gratitude to the woman who raised you, the woman who allowed you to live as a child should: in happiness and joy.”

  For years, Kai had fantasized about what it would be like to meet her biological mother. She’d grown up loving Sunshine and appreciating everything given by her adopted mother, but she’d always wondered about the woman who birthed her and how she’d wound up on the shores of Galveston with a dead woman.

  The reality of her mother lived up to every expectation and dream.

  “I…never stopped wondering about you.”

  “I know.” Her mother’s serene smile wavered. “But I sense there are doubts within you. The goddess never abandoned us, my dear sweet Kai.”

  “Then why wasn’t she there to help you? Why hasn’t she saved Atlantis?”

  “Even a goddess tires, my sweet. The battle against Calypso weakened her, and for years, she has hidden, regaining her strength and recovering from the ordeal. She could fight our battles no more than you could fight an entire army. Do you understand?”

  “But there’s been no sign of her. Everyone in Atlantis believes she’s abandoned the city and our people.”

  “Oh, my sweet love, no. Never. There are signs of her in this world, if you know where to look. She awakened your gifts the day of the Sea Angel’s wreck, waiting years until the ideal moment for your return to Atlantis. She could not send you earlier, Kai. Not until you were strong in mind and body. Not until you could withstand the forces of Calypso and her daughters.” Her mother smoothed the hair from her face, tucking it behind Kai’s ear.