by Alyssa Day
He calmed somewhat, tense muscles relaxing for a moment, but then a wave of something that looked like either despair or loathing crossed his face, and he shuddered. “We seem to be unable to think clearly around you, Keely. Perhaps you might rest while we bathe, so that we can continue this discussion when we do not stink of the blood of Pharnatus’s self-sacrifice.”
“Rest? Rest?” She heard her voice rise into a near shout, but couldn’t seem to help it. “Are you kidding me? You’ve just escaped from someplace that can’t exist, a pitiful man killed himself in your arms with your sword, you kidnapped me, you’re talking about yourself in the plural again, and about claiming and baser impulses, and you want me to take a nap?”
She clenched her hands into fists and looked wildly around for something she could use to defend herself, jarringly aware that it was the second time in one day she’d had to do so. “If I ever get out of this, I’m buying a switchblade,” she snapped. “Or maybe a Taser. Or a gun. There is no napping. There is no resting. There is only you, getting me out of here.”
He lifted the sheathed sword over his head, and she figured she was done for. Her mother had always warned her that her mouth would get her in trouble.
Moderately famous archaeologist killed by ancient warrior come to life: reenactment on YouTube.
But he simply placed the sword, sheath and all, on the ground, and then pulled off the remnant of his shirt. Blood and dirt streaked his skin, and she could see by the scar tissue in half a dozen places that he’d been badly wounded many times. Some of those looked like they should have been fatal.
“Are you hurt?” she found herself asking. “The—that blood—is any of it yours? Do you need medical assistance? I know some rudimentary first aid, if you can get us to some supplies.”
He froze in place and stared at her, an expression she couldn’t decipher on his face. “Did you just offer aid?”
Exasperated, she folded her arms over her chest. “Yes. Why? Am I breaking some kind of ‘don’t touch the royalty’ rule? Because I have to tell you, I’ve got a good healthy dose of scared going on right now, but it’s about to get overruled by what my grandmother always called ‘pure cussed ornery.’ ”
He blinked. “You honor your grandmother, then, for you are both warrior women, are you not?”
It was her turn to blink, because that had almost sounded like admiration in his voice. “But—”
“No,” he said, cutting her off. “There is no rule against touching royalty, although I claim no such heritage for myself. Half brother or no, I was merely the unwanted bastard forced on a captive king. It is rather that I could not believe you would offer to aid me when I have treated you so very poorly.”
She tried to process the information, but she didn’t have enough knowledge to form any theories. The soap opera drama of royal families throughout history seemed to be in full force with this one, too, and she needed more knowledge before she even wanted to speculate. “I did. I mean, I will. Help you if you need it,” she managed to say, her breath catching in her throat as he started toward her. Then a thought occurred to her. “You said ‘I’ again. Not ‘we.’ Is that . . . Can you explain that?”
He walked slowly as if to show he meant no threat and finally came to a stop directly in front of her. “You honor me, Keely, and I will explain as much as I can. But first I must bathe and rest. You need rest, as well.”
“Not that again! Look, I told you—” But as she looked up into his eyes, she forgot what she’d been thinking. Blue-green flames danced deep in the centers of his black pupils and, fascinated, she raised a hand to touch his face. Of course she needed rest. She was so tired, wasn’t she?
So very tired.
When her fingers traced the sharp curve of his cheekbone, he shuddered underneath her hand, awakening a trace of potent sensual awareness in her body. But a tiny voice buried deep in her mind shouted at her that she wasn’t tired at all. That she needed to escape.
As she stared into his eyes, the voice faded. Just as well. She was so very, very sleepy.
Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she felt her knees give way beneath her. He caught her as she fell. “You’re holding me again,” she murmured, sleep claiming her in waves of peace and restfulness.
“None other shall ever hold you, Keely,” he said, and then she felt his lips lightly touch her forehead. “You are mine.”
Something about his words—something wrong—tickled at the edge of her consciousness for a few seconds, but then she surrendered into sleep. She could figure it out later. When she wasn’t so very, very tired.
Sinking down, down into gentle waves of slumber, she dreamed of swords, jewels, and a sapphire-haired man who wielded them both.
Chapter 15
Atlantis, the palace, the next morning
Conlan looked around his strategic planning room—he refused to think of it as a war chamber, when the subject at hand was his own brother—and wondered why a night of sleep hadn’t seemed to refresh any of them. Darkness lay like bruises under the eyes of everyone entering the room, and he knew his own face reflected the same. Riley had suffered through a difficult night, again, and he found it impossible to sleep when she could not.
He glanced at her, to be sure she’d obeyed his command to remain on the comfortable couch, resting on mounds of pillows with her feet up. The pregnancy had not been easy, and as her due date grew nearer, she seemed to grow ever more pale and thin, except for the enormous mound of her belly.
She’d finally admitted to him only the day before that she was unhappy. Their wedding had been postponed again and again as the surface battle to protect the humans intensified. Then, of course, when Justice had vanished, all thoughts of planning a celebration had been put on indefinite hold. But, as she’d reminded him, the baby would not wait for the perfect time to arrive. He or she would enter the world at a time of nature’s choosing, and if they did not make haste, the baby would be born without the blessing of legitimacy.
Or, as Riley had so elegantly put it, “Over my dead body.” So, even if the official royal wedding, which by tradition and law had to follow or accompany the coronation, must needs be put off once more, there would be a wedding. Soon.
Whether they found Justice and Dr. McDermott or not.
As the last of the stragglers arrived, Conlan held up a hand for silence and then addressed the most senior of the servants circulating in the room, offering refreshments. “Thank you, Neela. If you will leave the trays, we can serve ourselves now.”
It was an unspoken request that they be given privacy, and Neela instantly understood. She’d been with his family for decades and, unfortunately, knew well the requirements of war-time planning. With what seemed like nothing more than a nod of her head, she rounded up her staff and they were gone in the space of a few minutes, closing the enormous copper-and-orichalcum-inlaid wooden doors behind them. The sparkling Atlantean metal twined with the copper to form intricate designs on the door. Symbols of welcome or of warning, Conlan had never been sure exactly which.
Conlan took a long drink of the hot coffee and then put the mug down on a table. “Good morning, everyone. Thank you for gathering with me at such an early hour. We all know the situation, so I won’t waste our time with the recap. We have three goals: First, we have to find Justice and Dr. McDermott. Second, Alaric must determine whether Justice has been compromised by his time in the Void. And, third, we’re going to go on the offensive.”
“It’s about damn time,” Ven called out from a spot across the room, standing next to Erin’s chair. “Playing a reactive game against Anubisa’s Apostates has gained us nothing but pain, pain, and more pain. If she hurt him . . .” Ven’s words trailed off, but even from across the room, Conlan could read the agony in his brother’s eyes. Justice had sacrificed himself to the vampire goddess for Ven, and the weight of that had been crushing Ven’s soul ever since.
“I must agree,” Alaric said. He stood alone, as always; separate and apart
from the rest of them. Perhaps only Conlan knew the full extent of that aloneness—Conlan had been there with Alaric when the priest had first realized the full extent of his feelings for Quinn. But Poseidon’s high priests all swore a vow of celibacy, and Quinn’s role as coleader of the human rebels had forced her into her own state of solitude.
Never had a pairing been more impossible, but futility did not easily translate into the ability to forget.
“We need to work more closely with the human rebels and forge a comprehensive plan,” Alaric continued. “The days and centuries of acting as a strike force are behind us. If Quinn—if Jack and Quinn are in a position to meet with us, we should make that meeting sooner rather than later. But our first priority must be Justice, of course.”
Riley shifted on the couch and made some small noise of discomfort, and Conlan tensed, ready to leap across the room to her aid. She shook her head, though, and smiled at him. “I’m fine. Just stretching. Our son persists in wanting to sit on my bladder.”
“Our daughter is never still, like her mother,” he corrected.
“If you desire to know the truth of it, all you need do is ask,” Alaric said dryly. “As much as we have all enjoyed this amusing interplay for the past several months.”
Riley rolled her eyes at him, then wedged a small pillow behind her back and looked around the room. “There is nothing—nothing—more important than finding Justice and making sure that he’s okay. Even before we knew he was your brother, we knew he was our family, just like everybody else in this room and each warrior in the Seven.”
There were several nods of agreement. Conlan began to speak, but Riley shook her head again. “It’s my turn to be selfish. I understood that everything needed to be put on hold for Justice when he was taken captive by Anubisa. I’ve done everything I could to support the search. But now, from what you tell me, he disappeared voluntarily. Not only that, but he abducted that poor archaeologist.”
“Talk about your international incident,” Erin said, wincing.
“Exactly,” Riley replied. “Here’s my point, although I know I’m making it badly. My baby will not be born until his parents are married. I understand that we can’t hold the big brouhaha wedding, and I’m fine with that. I never cared about a big circus of a ceremony, anyway. But either we go to my church at home, we bring a minister to us in Atlantis, or we go to a damn Elvis chapel in damn Vegas. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. I always loved Elvis, anyway. But one way or another, Conlan and I are getting married sometime in the next week.”
The beauty of it, and one of Riley’s most amazing qualities, was that she never raised her voice. She didn’t have to. She was human, not Atlantean, and she’d once joked that the closest she’d been to royalty before she’d met Conlan was going to Burger King. But she wore the demeanor of a queen as though born to the role.
“Well, you’ve heard it. My future queen has spoken, and I can do no less than obey,” Conlan said, smiling at her.
“She’s correct that the child should be born to wedded parents,” Alaric said. “He or she will face enough problems when the time comes for you to pass on the crown, as the first half human ever to take the throne in Atlantis. There is certainly no need to add the additional burden of illegitimacy.”
“We can always count on you, can’t we, Alaric?” Riley said, exasperation mixed with a grudging affection in her voice. “I meant that I want my baby to be born into the world knowing that his parents love each other enough to make the ultimate commitment. But thank goodness we have you to point out the legalities of the situation.”
Alaric raised one eyebrow and looked puzzled. “Although I detect sarcasm in your words, I am unsure as to its cause. Although . . . oh. Of course.” He bowed to her. “As you wish, my lady.”
Riley narrowed her eyes. “If this is one of your ‘Riley is hormonal’ moments, Alaric, you’d better be glad I’m too huge to waddle over there and kick your butt.”
“My butt, as you say, is infinitely relieved,” Alaric replied. “But perhaps we might return to the subject at hand.”
Ven crossed the room to the central long, wooden table, where stacks of maps and strategic plans had been piled on one side to make room for the refreshments. He helped himself to another cup of coffee. “Here’s a quick status report. We got word this morning that there’s a vampire uprising in St. Louis. Evidently, Anubisa is trying to crack the whip on how the vamps gather Apostates, but she’s doing it through Vonos. Guy’s got all the subtlety of Bruce Willis going after the bad guys in the fifth or sixth Die Hard.”
Conlan nodded. “Alexios, Christophe, and Denal left before dawn to travel to St. Louis and meet Jack, Reisen, and the rebel faction there.”
“Do we suddenly trust Reisen?” Alaric asked, his eyes suddenly glowing a fierce green as he drew power to him. “After he took it upon himself to steal Poseidon’s Trident from the god’s own Temple?”
“Whether we trust him or not is moot. Quinn trusts him, Jack trusts him, and they both reported that he’s on some sort of quest for redemption,” Conlan said. “He only takes on the most dangerous missions, going so far that they’re afraid he may be suicidal.”
“I don’t care about his quest for redemption. I don’t want him anywhere near Quinn,” Alaric snarled. “I will leave for St. Louis as soon as we adjourn this meeting.”
“We need you here, Alaric,” Erin said. She’d been unchar acteristically quiet during the meeting. “I’ve been trying to reach for Justice—for some hint of his presence—ever since we got here. You know, I’m a gem singer? Protégé of the goddess of the Nereids? Since we discovered he was half Nereid, I was hoping that, somehow, I could use that connection to try to get at least a rough idea of where he might be.”
She shook her head before they could ask. “No luck. Nothing. I may be a witch and a gem singer, but I apparently stink as a cell phone.” She turned back toward Alaric. “That’s why we need you. You’re the only one with the power to locate Justice.”
“I have no wish to offend you, Erin,” Alaric said. “But you do realize, of course, that I’ve been attempting to contact or locate Justice constantly since he left us last night?”
Erin sighed and slumped a little in her chair. “I’m sorry, Alaric. I should’ve realized. I’m just exhausted. I don’t think I’ve slept at all since Justice went off with Anubisa months ago. He saved my life. He saved Ven’s life. He even saved my sister, in a way. But now we don’t know where he is. We don’t know where Deirdre is, or if my sister is even alive.”
She stopped and scrubbed fiercely at her eyes with her fists. When she spoke again, her voice was husky with unshed tears. “I guess I’m just ready for something to go right.”
Ven knelt beside Erin’s chair and drew her into his arms, and the anguish on his face mirrored what sliced through Conlan’s chest.
“I think we’re all ready for something to go right,” Conlan said. “We need a plan, then. Alaric will go to St. Louis, but continue to attempt to locate Justice. Riley and I will find either a minister or an Elvis willing to perform a marriage in Atlantis. Ven, you lead a team to try to figure out where Justice is with this archaeologist and then go bring them home.”
A knock sounded at the door, and Liam put his head in and looked an inquiry at Conlan. Conlan nodded and beckoned him to enter.
“Perfect timing,” Ven said. “We need to know about this Dr. McDermott. What is it about her that made Justice go nuts?”
Liam strode into the room, shaking his head. “That I don’t know. But I can tell you this: Keely McDermott is a true object reader, though the Gift was thought lost in the waters of time. She read the sapphire, and she saw Nereus.”
Alaric’s head snapped up, and he leaned forward. “What did she say? What did she say about High Priest Nereus and the Star of Artemis?”
“Not much,” Liam confessed. “I’d planned to question her more about it once she was safely in Atlantis. But she did say the strangest
thing. She said I looked exactly like him.”
Chapter 16
The cavern underneath the Temple of the Nereids
Justice woke instantly, climbing through waves of sleep to full alertness in the space of a couple of seconds. There had been no unguarded rest in the Void, and even less during his brief time with Anubisa. Her rage when he’d been unwilling—and, truth be told, unable—to consummate their relationship had been monumental. She was a goddess and possessed a dark beauty more exquisite than mortal eyes could even comprehend. But it was beauty rooted in evil and steeped in murder and damnation.
A wave of self-disgust washed through him. After all, it’s not like he was all that particular. Over the centuries, he’d been with plenty of women, whenever he pleased. Unfortunately, nothing and no one had actually pleased him in several decades. There had always been something missing in his brief encounters. Something he hadn’t wanted to recognize.
Until he saw her face. Keely. The thought of her jolted him into full memory of where they were and what he’d done. He leapt up from the pile of quilts and blankets that he’d fashioned into bedding the night before. The cavern had been a refuge for those of troubled mind before the rockfall and subsequent instability of the tunnels, and several trunks filled with blankets and random bits of clothing were stacked in a corner. He suddenly remembered making a similar bed for her, but where? Either the fog of his memory wasn’t cooperating, or else she was gone. What if she’d escaped? What if he never found her again?
Panic raced through him at the thought. Panic and something deeper. Something darker. Something originating in the Nereid half of his soul. He was growing to recognize that side of himself, as it fought harder and harder to be released. Fought his Atlantean half for control.
He whirled around, searching the darkened cavern for a sign of her, and then sighed in relief, his muscles unclenching from the adrenaline-based fight-or-flight mechanism they’d shot into when he thought she’d gone. She was still there, asleep on the pile of bedding he’d created for her near one gemstone-encrusted wall.