“You’re a sick bastard,” Aazuria told him.
“Perhaps. Of course, any of my children with Visola would have also been bastards, but I would not have loved them any less.”
Aazuria put her head in her hands. “This conversation is hurting my brain. Please make it stop.”
Taranis smiled and stood up to retrieve her water bottle. He also grabbed a small plastic cup and a packet of Alka-Seltzer. “You are probably just hung over,” he told her, as he proceeded to mix the remedy together for her.
“No, I don’t think so,” she told him. “I don’t get hung over. It’s just your exasperating stupidity that’s making my head hurt.”
“Drink this, anyway,” he ordered, giving her the plastic cup.
To be polite, she accepted and complied. Then she wondered why she was being polite to someone so lamentably impolite. She put the cup down in revulsion.
“Aazuria, I just want you to know… that I regret my decision.” He seemed uncomfortable with saying this out loud. “I understand now—and I have for a few hundred years—that I made a great mistake. I was young and ignorant. I see now, of course, that I didn’t appreciate what I had with Visola. I searched far and wide, and I never found another woman remotely like her. Losing her was the biggest regret of my life.”
“It should be,” Aazuria told him.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her, and I didn’t mean to wage war against your people. I was young, and I was weak.” He lowered his eyes in embarrassment. “I was stupid, but I was never evil.”
“Stupidity can be far worse than evil.”
“I have come to realize that,” Taranis said. “That is why I am no longer stupid.”
There was a brief silence in the cabin.
Considering his words, Aazuria took a sip of the Alka-Seltzer. “She still has a tattoo with your nickname on her body. She says that it reminds her not to trust people.”
Taranis smiled. He stood up and lifted his shirt, revealing a large tattoo on the side of his abdomen. It was a large, ferocious bird, with flaming feathers extending backward around his side. The style of art was very old and intricate.
Aazuria stared with her jaw slightly ajar. The tattoo was breathtaking, and so was the body to which it clung. She fought the urge to reach up and trace the pattern with her fingertips. It would be highly inappropriate. “The Firebird,” she said softly. “Visola’s nickname.”
“I keep mine to remind me of what I’ve lost,” he told her, returning to his seat. “If I’m ever lucky enough to get a chance with a woman vaguely like her again, I will never let her walk away and slip through my fingers. I have grown up a great deal.”
“Good luck,” Aazuria told him dryly. “There are no women like Visola.”
“No,” he said, gathering the papers he had put aside, “but I think I can find someone pretty close to her. Literally.” He began scanning through the sheets again. “From the looks of these documents, a certain spectacular lady might soon be on the market again.”
Aazuria gasped, realizing that he had been reading her divorce papers. She reached out and ripped them out of his hands, and rose to her feet. “How dare you! These are private.” She hugged them against her chest protectively while glaring at him.
“There’s some pretty interesting stuff in there,” he said, leaning back in his seat. “It seems like you’re not that into him. You didn’t have sex with him for fifteen years?”
“Oh my Sedna!” Aazuria said, growing pale. “I was in captivity for most of that time.”
“Failure to provide companionship due to mental illness, diagnosed by a medical professional?”
“Stop,” she said softly. “I don’t want to talk to anyone about this, least of all you. How dare you insert yourself into my private matters?”
“I just couldn’t resist. I just really want to insert myself into your private matters,” he said, with a small grin.
She stared at him. “Did you really just say that?”
“No,” he responded. “You did.”
Her cheeks darkened.
“I’m just kidding around, Queen Aazuria. I must admit, I was looking at the papers because I want to find out more about you. Perhaps I should quit with the espionage and just talk to you. I want you to know that I am honored that you would return my home to me.” He smiled at her, and there was a glimmer of mirth in his eye. “Frankly, I am excited at the prospect of being under you.”
“You’re doing it again,” she accused.
“No, for real. I am delighted to know that I will have a woman of your caliber above me. You may tell me what to do, and I’ll be obedient.”
“Just stop,” she said in annoyance. “We have restored your old palace, along with a good deal of Helike and other smaller cities in the Mediterranean. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to oversee all of them.”
“It would be my pleasure,” he told her. He gestured to her divorce papers. “Maybe then you can change that whole situation where your husband is a stay-at-home dad, and you’re never around, and unfit to be a mother.”
Aazuria glared at him. “You need to stop being an asshole, right now. You think you’re being cute or funny, but I don’t know you. You’re not my friend. We either talk business, or we don’t talk at all. Do you understand?”
“Yes. My apologies, Queen Aazuria.” He shrugged sheepishly. “In my defense, I have been spending a lot of time with Callder Murphy lately, and he’s been a bad influence on my filter.”
“There are no excuses,” she said quietly. “Now, can I trust you with Atlantis, or shall I find a more competent leader?”
“I am the rightful ruler, and I will help take Atlantis to greater heights than it has ever seen,” he vowed, suddenly serious. “I will gladly join Oceanus, and follow every rule, pay every tax. I am truly grateful to be part of an organization that finally understands the real danger.”
“The real danger?” Aazuria asked.
“The land,” said Taranis. “The real danger is the land. Mother Melusina, the great prophet—she has been forecasting for years that there will be a massive war between land and sea.”
Aazuria shivered, remembering the creepy woman’s prophecies. “I’m surprised you know of Adlivun’s High Priestess.”
“She has gained global fame in recent years. I am a big fan of her work.” He hesitated. “I know that you have played a big role in her prophecies in the past, but this time she speaks of me. She says I will be important in the coming war. ‘The Leviathan will protect Oceanus. The Leviathan will sink the impure.’ The impure being land-dwellers, of course.”
“Do you have knowledge of her location?” Aazuria asked with a frown.
“Not at the moment.”
Aazuria nodded. “I will need to speak with you about her more in depth later. She may be dangerous.”
“She is very dangerous,” Taranis agreed. He patted the seat beside him. “Just sit down and relax, and drink your Alka-Seltzer.”
Frowning, Aazuria glanced from the chair up to the man. A memory suddenly came back to her. “Sedna, almighty! Last night, you tried to kiss me! What was the point of that? There’s reconnaissance, and then there’s reconnaissance. I understand you spying on us, but trying to kiss me? That seems excessive.”
“That wasn’t me,” he said innocently. “It was Dmitri.”
“What?” she asked in frustration.
“I was in character,” he explained. “I was improvising. It’s what Dmitri would have done, so I went with it.”
“You’re unbelievable. You have excuses for everything.”
“I tried not to lie too much, even in character,” he said defensively. “I really don’t speak English as well as my mother tongue. But my mother tongue is not Greek, it’s Old Atlantean.”
“You took that whole charade way too far,” she said. “I was drunk and you were pressuring me to go upstairs with you.”
“What can I say? Dmitri found you attractive.” He shifted his
eyes to the left in embarrassment. “Also… uh, I might have slipped something in your drink. Which is why you passed out.”
“You did what?” Aazuria yelled. She glanced at the coffee he had given to her and the cup with Alka-Seltzer in fear.
“I was planning to take you somewhere private and ask you more questions later,” he admitted.
“So you were going to abduct me!” she accused.
“I changed my mind,” he explained with embarrassment. “It turns out that it was unnecessary. Talking to you works just as well.”
Aazuria shook her head in horror. “You are both stupid and evil!”
“I never meant you any real harm,” he assured her. “I just wanted to get to know you. The psyche of a person is deeper than the deepest ocean. You can easily explore the surface, but until you really dive down and discover what lies at the very bottom, you will always be vulnerable to the unknown.”
“But if a person does not grant you permission to access their depths, then you must not seek to discover them through deceitful and dishonest means. You must honor their solitude and sanctity,” Aazuria told him. “Being intrusive and violating a person’s privacy? That can be just as dangerous as not knowing—you could make enemies of people who would otherwise be willing to offer you their friendship.”
“I think I would prefer to risk offending someone than to not know that someone poses a threat,” Taranis told her, rising to his feet. His head nearly brushed the ceiling of the airplane’s cabin. “I told you that I am no longer stupid—and part of that means a continuous commitment to seeking knowledge at all cost.”
“It seems a great and suspicious change,” she said, fixing him with an angry look. “That you would propose to me without ever having had a conversation, and now you go to such great lengths to spy on me, inspect my personal documents, drug me…”
“And all of this has led me to the ultimate conclusion that I probably should have tried harder to secure your hand in marriage, back in the sixteenth century,” he told her.
She stared at him, thunderstruck. “What?”
“You are a brilliant woman. Back then, all I saw was a child with zero sex appeal, and I could not believe my father was forcing me to marry you. But my father was right, because he could see the woman you’d become, and the way the world would change. It would have been more appropriate for us to be together than any other match. As much as I regret losing Visola, I regret not having gotten to know you.” He smiled sadly. “If only I could go back in time, right? Undo all my transgressions and correct all my oversights …”
“I would have never relented to the likes of you,” Aazuria told him. “All the courting and pursuing in Europe would have done you no good. You were a scoundrel, and you still are.”
“No. I would have been successful,” he told her with a smile. “I can be very persistent.”
“And I can be very resistant,” she responded darkly.
“You are making some big mistakes right now, Aazuria,” he told her. “You don’t know me—you don’t know the man I have become. You can’t base your entire impression of me on the foolish boy who fucked up in the 1580s.”
“People do not change,” she told him. “People are not like the sea; we remain solid at the core. If I judged you based on the past twenty-four hours of being in your territory, my impression would be no different than 1582. I will thank Sedna every single day, from now until the day I die, that I escaped the horror of marrying you! To think, that my younger years could have been filled with more torment and misery than it already was!”
“It would not have been torment,” he assured her. “I believe that we would have grown quite fond of each other. It would have been awkward at first—I mean, we would have been engaged for several years before we actually got married, and we both had a lot of growing up to do. But eventually, we would have grown to love each other. Both of our nations would have been strengthened. Many wars would have been prevented. We would have conquered Ker-ys, and maybe the Rusalka. We would have stood against Bimini, and we would have obliterated the Clan before they ever had a chance to form. And best of all, we would have had so much time to build a family. We could have had many children. I might have more than one daughter who has been missing for seventy-five years, and you would have more than just one daughter who ran away from home. We could have had over a dozen children. Strong, noble sons and beautiful, intelligent daughters. Things could have been wonderful, if only we had both listened to our fathers.”
Aazuria felt her face soften, but she refused to admit the logic in his words. “All of that would have been highly improbable. It is more likely that I would have slit my own throat from being forced to share a bed with you.”
He cringed. “It is very difficult to slit your own throat, Queen Aazuria.”
“I would have requested that Visola do it for me,” she said, lifting her chin defiantly.
Taranis smiled. “I think you are just embarrassed to admit that it makes sense. We would have made a great couple. We would have made an excellent king and queen. We would have made each other very happy.” He moved closer to her, staring down with laughter dancing in his eyes. “Unless you didn’t have sex with me for fifteen years. Then I probably would have been forced to take Visola as my mistress on the side.”
Aazuria could not control herself. Her hand had lifted once more of its own accord, and it was already flying into the Leviathan’s face. Her knuckles connected with his nose and cheekbone so swiftly that he did not have time to block the strike. He stumbled backward, clutching his bloody nose.
“I’m sorry,” Taranis said, his eyes wide. “I was just kidding! I guess I struck a nerve.”
“You are incorrigible,” she told him. “Turn this plane around immediately. I will not insult Visola by accepting your help. I will save her on my own. I have the armies of over a dozen nations at my disposal. I will never need charity from a lowlife like you.”
“Aazuria…”
“No. We might be desperate, but we will never be desperate enough to need you!”
“She could die,” Taranis responded.
“Maybe she wants to die,” Aazuria shot back, “and maybe it will be better that she dies with honor than lives to see herself rescued by one of the people she despises most. I think she would certainly prefer to be tortured to death by the American government than saved by you.” Aazuria’s lips curled scornfully. “I will not owe you a debt. I will not let my dearest friend owe you a debt. Turn this plane around!”
“There’s no need to get upset, Aazuria. I was just joking around.” He put both of his hands up to indicate surrender. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I know that this is a touchy subject, but we really should be able to laugh about something that happened so many centuries ago…”
“I cannot laugh about you disrespecting my friend,” Aazuria told him.
“You’re right, you’re right. I should have said that. I apologize.” He sighed. “I realize that I was way out of line. I should not joke about Visola like that.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Instead,” he mused, “I should have teased you about taking your sister as my mistress. Or even marrying her! That doesn’t seem to bother you too much, does it?”
Aazuria stared at him. She felt a storm of fury rising in her chest.
“I’m just saying… you’re kind of hypocritical.” Taranis crossed his arms thoughtfully. “You forgive and remain married to a man who does the same things that you despise…”
“Do not dare to speak of my husband,” Aazuria warned in a furious whisper. “You think that just because you read a few papers, you can presume to know anything about my life? Or my family? Or what we’ve been through? Trevain is a kind and good man. Unlike you, he would never intentionally harm me, or my loved ones. He’s not even a hundred years old! Which means he is much younger than you were when we first met, and still, he has not made half of your mistakes. He has ruled my country with wisd
om and dignity, even in my absence. You? You are unfit to be a king, and I pity the child who ever called you father.” She moved closer to him, grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him down until he was at her height. She glared into his eyes, which were that unusual shade of amber possessed by certain sea-dwellers. She was reminded of Bain and Glais, but she knew that the comparisons ended at physical resemblance. Hoping that she could convey all of the loathing and fury she felt, she frowned, examining his face until he was uncomfortable. She watched a bit of blood from his nose dribble down over his lips, and felt satisfied at the sight. “Prince Taranis Evenor, you are a sorry excuse for a man. I won’t give you Atlantis. I don’t trust you, and the thought of dealing with you on a regular basis makes me ill. Perhaps I will put your sister, Marina, in charge. She seemed intelligent and capable—and much less psychopathic than you are.”
“Psychopathic?” he repeated with surprise.
“Yes. I don’t know what games you’re playing, but it ends now. I don’t trust you. I don’t know if you’re an enemy or a friend. I have never known.”
“You should take a risk and try to trust me,” he encouraged. “I only mean well.”
“I wish you were on my side,” she told him. “I wish you had acted like a civilized person and met with me when I came to Fort Helike. I wish you had introduced yourself, and that we could have sat down over food to discuss an alliance, and the future of Oceanus. I wish I felt comfortable accepting your help with Visola, but I don’t. You insulted me. You spied on me. You drugged me.”
“Please believe me. I am on your side, Queen Aazuria…”
“No. My husband is on my side. Whether or not we get divorced, he will always be my family. Trevain was born and raised an American, but if we go to war with the USA, I have no question in my mind of which side he will fight on. He would not desert me.” She studied the Leviathan’s face, and abruptly released his shirt. “Thank you for making me realize this.”
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