by Alyssa Day
Atlantis, the cavern
Keely paced the edges of the cavern, staying as far from the crazy “you’re my mate” man as possible. Justice was doing something at one of the walls; she wasn’t sure what. After the “mate” announcement, she’d fallen into a shocked silence and then backed away from him, muttering speculations about his need for a nice round of electroshock therapy.
Half an hour later, she was still mumbling under her breath. From the narrow-eyed glances he’d shot her way, he probably had an idea that her remarks were far from flattering. He’d stayed well away, even when she’d washed up as best as she could in the pool and she’d caught him staring at her as if he wanted to devour her.
At least he hadn’t tried to jump her. She wasn’t sure how far he was likely to try to go with the “mate” thing. For now, they needed to solve the problem at hand.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said for probably the twentieth time, but loudly enough to be sure he heard her. “We’re going to get out of here.”
Justice didn’t bother to answer, which didn’t offend her, since he’d responded the first dozen or so times she’d made the same statement. He was undoubtedly as tired of hearing her as she was tired of saying it. Still, she carefully stayed at least ten feet from him at all times, wary of being in reach after that kiss.
That kiss.
That rock-the-universe, blow-fireworks-through-the-sky kiss. He’d set off the aurora borealis inside her skull, and she’d responded with a growling stomach.
Perfect. Just perfect. Although she’d always been a girl too practical for fairy tales, so meeting a fairy-tale prince didn’t change anything. Not even when he was a prince who had the most amazingly beautiful hair she’d ever seen on a man.
Hey, maybe he was insane, Mr. I’m Your Destiny and all, but at least he was gorgeous. Considering what he’d been through in his life, he deserved to be a little nuts. A tendril of sympathy whispered inside her mind as the memory of her vision surfaced. It’s a wonder he was anywhere in the same zip code as sanity.
Speaking of which, how many people had thought she was crazy? Nobody knew better than she did that sanity was a spectrum of relativity. Anyway, it had been so long since she’d been naked with a man that maybe she needed to lower her standards. Crazy? No problem, so long as he had great hair.
She sighed and snuck a glance at him from under her lashes. His hair was dry now. Silky, glossy, and gorgeous; it flowed in waves of blue down his back, clear to the top of the finest butt in the history of mankind. Or Atlantean kind. Or whatever.
He wasn’t Prince Charming; he was Prince Tall, Dark, and Deadly. Justice was no perfect, plastic prince, but a very real man with a very damaged psyche.
However, she, as she kept reminding herself, was no shrink. So maybe she should keep her distance, regardless of her hormones playing marching band.
He finally spoke up from where he was prying at one of the gem-encrusted walls. “I thought this was a hidden door to another passageway, but it’s nothing. Just another secret compartment that’s full of a whole lot of nothing helpful.”
He held something up in his hand, and the light from the lanterns flashed off it like paparazzi flashbulbs on Swarovski crystals. She couldn’t help herself. She was an archaeologist, after all, and professional curiosity was killing her.
“What is it?”
“More gems. Everywhere we turn in here, it’s more and more and more worthless gemstones,” he said, hurling them on the ground.
She walked over, careful not to get too close. “I’m not sure worthless is the word I’d use,” she said, bending down to select a sapphire the size of her palm from among the gems littering the floor. “I feel a little bit like Indiana Jones discovering an ancient treasure. This rock alone is probably worth more than a year’s salary for me.”
He shrugged carelessly. “Your salary is no longer important, as we will be sure you have everything you need. Take the sapphire if you want to. Take all the gems you want. To us they’re only stones, as you say. At best, instruments of healing now that we have a gem singer.”
A bitter taste like rotten grapefruit soured the back of her mouth. He thought she wanted his gemstones. He thought she would raid the most incredible archaeological site she’d ever set foot on.
He didn’t know her very well.
She decided to take the high road and ignore the comment, and she held the gem up to the light, examining it. “This reminds me of the one that Liam sabotaged me with back in my office. The companion stone to the Star of Artemis that Nereus was talking about.”
Justice reacted as though she’d shot an electric current through him. “What? The Star of Artemis? Nereus? Tell me everything, and I will give you every gem you could possibly want in a dozen lifetimes.”
Okay, that did it. Again with the buying her off with gems. She knelt down and very carefully placed the sapphire on the floor next to the other gems. Then she stood up and folded her arms across her ever-more-loudly growling stomach, lifted her chin, and put pure defiance into her stare. “I don’t want your stupid gems. What I want is a pizza. Or a plate piled high with pancakes, dripping butter and hot, sticky syrup. I’m not sure what you think you mean by telling me my salary is no longer important to me, but guess what? I’m trying not to be offended. I’m going to pretend I don’t even care about any of this right now. All I want is to get out of here and find something to eat.”
Almost before she finished her sentence, he leapt across the space between them and clasped her wrists in his hands. A wild excitement burned in his eyes and he smiled down at her. “Say it again. Say it again, just like that. Except add more descriptive terminology.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t want your hard, blue, shiny gemstones.”
He shouted out a laugh. “No, Keely. My beautiful, brilliant Keely. The pancakes. Describe the pancakes again. With butter and syrup and the smell and the sight and the taste.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “You’ve gone over the deep end, haven’t you? It’s sad, too, after everything you’ve gone through in your life, that the simple description of pancakes was the final straw.”
He laughed again, then leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “No, I’m not insane. Breakfast food has not driven me over the deep end, as you call it. I’m discovering the scope of my Nereid powers, and I think I found one that’s related to the transport power that brought us here. I’m as hungry as you are, Keely, and when you described the pancakes, I could almost smell them.”
He released her wrists and stood back, just a half step. “Describe them again, please. I think, somehow, I can bring us to the pancakes.”
Keely raised an eyebrow, thinking that there were a few things wrong with the plan. “Okay, not to be a naysayer, but there are just a couple of teensy little issues I’d like to bring up before I start waxing lyrical over Mrs. Butterworth. First, what pancakes? Where? What if we show up in the middle of breakfast at San Quentin?”
“That would be a problem?”
“I’m guessing you didn’t see Walk the Line. Prison, Justice.
San Quentin or some other prison, or maybe in the middle of a shape-shifter breakfast party.” She paused. “Do shape-shifters even eat pancakes?”
“I don’t know,” he said dryly. “What I do know is that anywhere that is not a cavern deep underground, blocked off by a cave-in, would more than likely be an improvement over our current circumstances.”
“Point taken.”
“Hold my hand,” he commanded.
She clasped her fingers in his and closed her eyes. Speaking of crazy, she must be right there next to him in the padded cell to go along with this. “What the hell. Fat, fluffy pancakes, with steam rising into the air from the top of the stack. Butter—real butter, not the margarine stuff—melting down the sides. Maple syrup fresh from Canada pooling on the pancakes and running over the edge of the plate—”
His shout interrupted her, but she didn’t feel any of t
he temporal displacement that had accompanied their journey into the cavern. Her eyes snapped open, only to find that nothing had changed. Still in the cavern. Still no way out.
He hadn’t transported them to the pancakes, no matter that her imagination was providing that rich, buttery maple smell. Her shoulders slumped for an instant, but then she tried to be upbeat for Justice. “It was only the first try. We can try again,” she said, injecting a little optimism into her voice.
But he wasn’t paying a bit of attention to her. He was staring at the ground. She looked down and started laughing.
A flowered tablecloth lay, spread out perfectly, on the floor next to them. Platters of pancakes, bacon, eggs, and sausage covered every inch. An opened newspaper lay next to an empty plate, neatly folded to the financial pages, and a pair of eyeglasses rested on top of it.
“Well,” she said diplomatically. “At least you brought the pancakes to us. Next time, maybe you could work on bringing the coffeepot, too.”
The expression of sheer outraged indignation on his face sent her over the edge, and the laughter poured helplessly out. She bent double, clutching her stomach with both arms, and laughed until tears leaked from her eyes. Maybe it was hysteria, maybe it was exhaustion or the culmination of way more stress than a mild-mannered archaeologist should have to endure, but it all caught up to her at once and she laughed until her ribs ached.
At some point, a quiet sound caught her attention and, wiping her eyes, she looked up to see that Justice was chuckling. Not a full-fledged laugh, not even a small one, but at least a chuckle.
It was a start. The man had a sense of humor. She could work with that.
Taking deep breaths to calm down before her laughter turned into hiccups, she plopped down on the edge of the tablecloth and picked up a fork.
“Hey, if we’re going to end up in jail for pancake theft, we may as well enjoy them.”
His eyes warmed to the color of molten jade, and her breath caught in her throat. Strange how something as simple as eye color could touch her emotions this way.
“I agree. Also I’m starving.”
As he sat down on the other side of the tablecloth, Keely stuffed a forkful of maple bliss into her mouth and practically purred, sending up a silent thank-you to the cook who was probably standing in the middle of her kitchen with her mouth hanging open at that very moment.
“Oh, wow. This is wonderful.”
He nodded, looking pretty happy himself. “They didn’t exactly serve home-cooked breakfasts in the Void,” he said, his voice cracking a little.
“Oh. I didn’t . . . I didn’t want to pry. But if you want to tell me about it, I’d be glad to listen,” she offered, placing her fork down on the edge of her plate.
His jaw clenched, then relaxed. Something dark flickered in his eyes before he finally nodded. “Maybe. Maybe you deserve to know. I wasn’t always a kidnapper of lovely archaeologists, you know.”
The smile he aimed at her was tentative, but it signaled huge progress, and she couldn’t help smiling back at him.
“Eat, or I won’t tell you any of it. You look like a gentle wave would knock you over,” he admonished.
“I’ll have you know that I’m stronger than I look,” she said, but she picked her fork back up and dug into a fluffy pile of scrambled eggs.
Justice worked his way through a healthy portion of breakfast in silence, then pushed his plate aside. “You saw my . . . the king.”
She nodded. “Your father.”
A grimace twisted his face. “Yes, if you like. Not that the man ever showed me anything but loathing. In any event, you know about the geas—the curse—upon me never to reveal the circumstances of my birth.”
“But you did, didn’t you?” she said, piecing together everything she’d heard from the others during the craziness at the portal. “You told them, when you sacrificed yourself to save your brother and everyone else.”
“Sacrifice is too noble a word. I did what anyone would have done, after taking the measure of the situation and developing a strategy.”
“Right. Of course. So many of us would voluntarily turn ourselves over to a . . . What was it? A vampire? No, wait, a vampire goddess. To save the lives of other people. Yeah, you’re right. That’s not noble. I do that every day before breakfast. Twice on Fridays.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t think I don’t see what you’re trying to accomplish.”
“Oh, good. I so rarely even know what I’m trying to accomplish myself, so it’s good that you can see right through me,” she said, widening her eyes in mock innocence.
It made him laugh, which inexplicably made her very, very happy. She decided not to overanalyze it. “Go on. You’re not noble, you’re off with the goddess, and then?” An oddly unpleasant thought crossed her mind. “Goddess, huh? I bet she’s pretty beautiful.”
“She is possessed of a terrible beauty that is almost inconceivable to human imagination,” he said grimly. “Every inch of her is a study in dark and glorious perfection.”
“Great. Goddess. Inconceivable beauty and perfection. We could probably move on now.” Okaaay. That’s one way to measure up short in the comparative looks department: go up against a goddess. She’d thought it was bad when one of her dates had been obsessed with Jessica Alba.
At least Jessica was human. Ish.
Justice was clutching the end of his braided hair so tightly his knuckles were white. “You don’t understand. Her attraction is like the flame to the moth, or the snake to its prey. She is death and despair and madness, somehow packaged in the dark fantasies of a deranged mind.”
Any childish thoughts of jealousy vanished in the face of his obvious struggle to explain it to her. “Is yours? Deranged, I mean? What did she do to you?”
His face hardened and he almost imperceptibly shook his head. “No. I won’t tell you that. I won’t tell anyone that, ever.”
Justice was silent so long that she thought he’d changed his mind about talking to her. But then he nodded, as if coming to some internal decision.
“Breaking the geas shattered my sanity. The curse was such that I always assumed I’d die if I ever broke it, but maybe something in the Void changed its nature. I don’t know. I just know that Anubisa wanted . . . She wanted me. She wanted me to do . . . things. Unspeakable, hideous things. But my mind fractured into a thousand pieces when I was unable to fulfill the geas and I came very near to dying. She wouldn’t let me die.”
The lump in her throat made it hard to talk. No one should have to endure so much as he had, centuries of life or not. She forced out the words. “And then? When you didn’t die?”
A smile so terrifying spread across his face that she almost physically recoiled from it. “Then she cast me into the Void, and said that she would take my brother in my place.”
“Do you have another brother? Besides Ven and the high prince?”
“No. She held Conlan prisoner for many long years of torture, so I know she’s planning to go after Ven again next. But now I’ll be here to stop her.”
She didn’t point out the obvious: that there wasn’t much they could do stuck in the cave. More and more she was starting to believe that they would make it out.
She was starting to believe in him.
“Will you be able to overcome the damage from breaking the geas? I mean, you do reference yourself in the plural sometimes,” she ventured.
“My mother was a Nereid, Keely. You saw her. She gave me qualities and, evidently, powers from her lineage. Powers that I don’t know anything about, yet. I think when my sanity fractured, it somehow let loose the Nereid side of my soul. He battles me even now, because he wants—”
He broke off, and a dark flush swept over his face.
“He wants?” she prompted, even though she was suddenly sure she didn’t want to know what the Nereid wanted. Not when it made Justice’s face turn to icy marble like that.
“He wants you,” he said flatly. “He wants to strip
you bare and get you under him, whether you agree or not. He wants to take you, Keely, and I’ll die before I let him.”
Her gasp echoed in the silence between them, and she nearly tripped over her own feet stumbling to move back and away from him.
Anguish tightened Justice’s features, and his eyes darkened to black as he sat, perfectly motionless, watching her. “So now you know, at least some of it. You know the darkness, the death, and the despair. There has been light, as well, but I would judge that you won’t be able to hear of that now.”
Some part of her responded to the pain in his voice and wanted to comfort him, but the reality of just how isolated she was—trapped with a self-confessed madman—was coming back to the forefront of her awareness. No matter what sympathy or even empathy she had for him, she couldn’t do him any good if she were dead.
Or brutalized by the evil side of his nature.
It took every ounce of her skill and training, but she managed to speak calmly. “Of course I would love to hear about the happy times, but you’re right. Now isn’t a good time. We should work on finding that way out of here, don’t you think?”
As he rose gracefully to his feet, she was extremely proud of herself for not flinching. When they escaped this cavern, after this experience, she’d be able to face anything.
If they ever escaped this cavern.
Firmly silencing the foreboding voice in her mind, Keely turned toward the cavern walls again. There had to be a way out, and she was going to find it.
Chapter 22
Justice roamed around the cavern, searching in vain for a way out. Whatever power he’d managed to call on earlier to transport them was silent, as if mocking him. An option had occurred to him, of course. But he wasn’t yet willing to unleash the Nereid trying to possess his mind, just so they could discuss strategy.
It might come to that, though. Hells, it probably would come to that. But for now, with he and Keely at least fed, he’d try one more time for a passageway he’d missed before. Desperation didn’t feel quite as sharp-edged with a full belly, even though he’d scared her into silence. Now she avoided him entirely, and he couldn’t blame her for it. But truth had seemed the best option at the time.