by Alyssa Day
Dawn was breaking, and Quinn was so fierce and beautiful in the golden light of morning that he found himself almost unable to breathe at the sight of her, until she looked up and scowled at him. She sat, face like one of Poseidon’s darkest thunderstorms, in about six inches of water. Waves broke against her and splashed on the glistening white sand around her, and she was completely drenched.
“You are a total slime ball, you know that? A . . . a scumbucket, useless pile of—”
“Perhaps you should carefully consider your words,” he said, cutting her off before she had the opportunity to more fully demonstrate her command of insults. “I didn’t have a lot of time to control the portal, since you wanted me to protect your humans from the storm.”
“The storm you created,” she snapped.
He couldn’t help it. He started laughing. She resembled nothing more than a kitten caught in a rainstorm, snarling and spitting her dismay.
She narrowed her eyes, scrambled to her feet, and started toward him, moving fast. He watched, expecting her to stop before she reached him.
She did not.
Instead, she hit him at a full-on run, and knocked him backward so hard that he fell flat on his ass in the surf and sat there, sputtering seawater out of his mouth and staring up at her in total shock.
Quinn’s narrowed-eye stare all but dared him to stand up again. “Do not ever, ever laugh at me after you throw a tornado at me, drop me from way too high up in the sky—without a parachute, I might add—and scare me half to death. Do you hear me?”
“The situation has little likelihood of coming up again,” he said cautiously.
“You are so frustrating,” she shouted at him, kicking more water on him. “Why couldn’t you find some other tough rebel chick to drive out of her mind? Why did it have to be me?”
He shoved his dripping wet hair out of his face and, relief finally overwhelming him, grinned up at her. “World-bending kisses,” he smugly reminded her.
Her mouth fell open, and she stood there gaping at him for several long moments before she shook her head and started laughing. “You are insane, you know that, right? Totally, entirely insane.”
“The thought has often occurred to me,” he admitted. “May I stand now, or do you plan to knock me over again?”
She tilted her head, as if considering her options. “Just stay there,” she advised. Then she turned and walked away from him until she was about twenty feet from the surf line, where she sat down and stared out at the waves.
He waited another few minutes before he stood up. Just in case.
Clearly, he wasn’t the only one on the beach who was balancing on the crumbling edge of sanity. He’d gone mad when he’d believed her to have been kidnapped or worse. Now that he knew she was safe, she could kick water on him all day long. He smiled again, and sent a fervent prayer to whatever gods were listening—although quite pointedly not to Poseidon—that he could continue to keep her safe.
No matter what the cost.
* * *
As the sun rose over the horizon, Quinn stared out at the waves and tried to let the beauty and serenity of the island sweep through her. The pure, salty scent of the ocean surrounded her as the breeze of the water played with the damp ends of her hair. The gentle roar of the tide all but demanded that she relax and let nature’s peace calm her raging thoughts. She could pretend she was on a vacation. Tourists would pay a fortune to visit this unspoiled beach, and it was all hers.
Well. All hers, if she didn’t count him.
She was trying to ignore him. That would teach him. Probably nobody ever ignored Alaric, Mr. High Priest Arrogant Son of a . . . Actually, she didn’t know whose son he was. She didn’t know anything about his family. Did Atlantean high priests even have mothers? Did they spring, full-grown, from some kind of whale egg?
It would never work between them. Yes, they had some insane animal attraction between them, but what did they even know about each other? She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and then almost laughed as the most terrifying warrior and most powerful magic-wielder she’d ever known sat in the water, waiting for her permission to stand up. She counted down under her breath, “. . . three, two—”
He stood up before she got to one, as expected, and it ticked her off even more that he rose up out of the water with his usual elegance. Alaric moved with the grace of a predator stalking prey, and too often lately she’d felt like the bunny rabbit to his wolf. His natural arrogance and belief he was in charge of every situation and every person he encountered wouldn’t allow him to understand her: her fear of losing herself to his dominating nature; her fear that if she gave in, even once, to passion with him, she’d never be able to resist him again.
As he walked out of the water and onto dry sand, a brief shimmer of blue-green magic glowed around him. When the light dissipated, his clothes were completely dry. She wished she knew how to perform that handy trick, since her jeans were soaked and sand was sticking to them.
Alaric waved a hand in her direction, and her clothes also dried in a shimmer of light, as if he’d been reading her mind again. She didn’t like it. Not one bit.
She pitched her voice to carry over the crashing surf. “Can you read my mind?”
He raised one dark eyebrow and smiled. “No, I have told you I cannot. It does not take thought-mining to anticipate that you would wish to be dry, however.”
“Right. Can you guess what I’m thinking now?” she asked sweetly, as he approached. What lovely broad shoulders you have, she thought, and then felt her face burning.
He studied her face, and his smile slowly faded. “Ah. I cannot imagine it is anything complimentary.”
She forced her mind back to the issue at hand, and away from how well his hard-muscled body filled out his clothes. “Let’s talk about how you might have gotten some of those people in the cars back there killed.”
“I would rather discuss kissing you,” he said solemnly, and she nearly laughed but fought it down.
“This isn’t funny.”
“No, it isn’t funny.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “You are right. I could have caused people to die. This displeases you, so I will not allow it to happen again. It’s a simple solution.”
She blinked. “Alaric, we’re the good guys. We wear the white hats. It should matter to us that people don’t die just because they get in our way.”
He made a complicated gesture with one hand, and a dolphin shot up out of the air in a graceful pirouette, rising to at least twenty feet in the air, before wafting back down to the waves at a gentle pace that clearly was not governed by the laws of gravity. It was a beautiful and terrifying display of restraint and power.
So he was frustrated with her. Most people rolled their eyes when they got frustrated. Alaric made dolphins do ballet. The symbolism of the differences between them wasn’t lost on her.
“I have spent hundreds of years protecting these innocents you care so much about, mi amara. You judge me so harshly?” His face was all hard angles and lines, as if he waited for her to condemn him. She found, ultimately, that she couldn’t.
“Nobody was hurt?”
“None that I saw,” he replied. “I must be truthful with you, however. Every person on that road could have died if that had been what it took to protect you. See me for the heartless monster that I am, Quinn, and make no mistake that your safety is my only priority.”
“It’s not a burden I want,” she said. “I can’t say the same—you can’t be my only priority. I need to get to New York and confront this Ptolemy and see what he wants. Maybe I can stop him, if he needs to be stopped.”
“Oh, he needs to be stopped,” Alaric said grimly. He sat down next to her on the white sand and told her what had happened at the Plaza. She listened in silence until the end, when he confessed his “idiocy” in saving the boy instead of following Ptolemy.
When he finished, she placed her hand on his arm. “You just can’t help it, can you?
You’re a hero even when it’s in spite of yourself.”
“You weren’t there,” he reminded her with brutal honesty. “If you had been in danger, the results would have been far different. The boy would have died.”
She shook her head. “No, you would have found a way to save us both. Or I would have saved him and you would have saved me, or we would have saved each other and the boy. We would have figured it out together, Alaric. We’re a team. We have to be, or the bad guys win. It’s as simple as that.”
He shrugged. He’d been doing a lot of that lately, and she didn’t like it. It was almost as if he’d given up the fight, just as surely as Jack had done.
She decided to change the subject. “Well. Enough of that. Where exactly are we? This isn’t Mount Fuji anymore, that’s for sure.”
She scanned the pristine length of beach and its beautiful palm tree–covered border. The ocean was so brilliantly blue it almost hurt her eyes, and the rising sun shone on the water as brightly as if the entire vista had escaped from a traveler’s favorite postcard. Seabirds played diving games with the sparkling waves, and a trio of dolphins chose that moment to leap into the air in synchronized splendor. The only sounds were the gentle pounding of the surf in front of them and the calls of birdsong from behind them.
Alaric pulled her against him, and she leaned her head on his shoulder, trying to soak in a rare moment of peace. Not quite sure how to achieve it.
“This is an unnamed island in the Bermuda Triangle, Quinn. Atlantis is in a deep-sea trench directly underneath us, about five and a half miles down.”
Quinn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Really? Did you just tell me the real location of Atlantis after thousands of years of every explorer and crackpot in history searching for it?”
“I did. Does that buy me back into your good graces?”
“Maybe a little. Wow. But, wait. Bermuda Triangle? Really? Is something freaky about to happen? Also, I thought Atlantis would be somewhere off the coast of Greece.”
She could feel his body begin to shake silently, and it took a moment for Quinn to realize he was laughing.
“What now? Don’t make me shove you in the surf again,” she threatened.
“It’s the way you said ‘something freaky’ as if that didn’t describe most of your life. Caught me off guard.”
She had to admit he had a point.
“Yes, we were originally located near Greece, when Atlantis rode the surface of the waves, but in the Cataclysm the gods created, Atlantis was transported here inside a tremendous magical vortex. None of our Elders or our records can say how. Since then, this area has been the center of a powerful magical fluctuation that often causes havoc with weather patterns.”
“Are there sunken ships, airplanes, and spaceships littering the seafloor near Atlantis?” Quinn was fascinated and willing to continue the conversation for a while. She deserved a moment or two without worries about death, danger, or deceit.
Surely she’d earned that much over the past ten years.
“No spaceships that I know of, but I wouldn’t discount the notion,” he said without a trace of humor. “We did the best we could to assist any of your ships floundering in various massive storms, especially ones Poseidon caused when he was in a petulant mood, but we are limited in how much we can help, according to how many of us can travel by portal at any time. We can’t exactly swim up from the dome.”
“The pressure would crush you.”
“Not to mention our best swimmers can only hold their breath for six or eight minutes. Five miles is a long way down.”
“This may be the most bizarre conversation I’ve ever had, and that’s saying a lot,” she said. “Let’s at least walk and see if we can find something to drink and some fruit.”
He held up one hand, and a swirling ribbon of water spiraled playfully through the air from the trees until it stopped and hovered in front of Quinn.
“It’s perfectly safe to drink.”
Quinn took him at his word and drank deeply from the magical water fountain. “It’s delicious,” she said, surprised. “As pure as the water at Fuji.”
“You’re unlikely to find any purer. Nobody ever comes here but me, as far as I know. The island doesn’t show up on your radar, or tracking devices, or whatever instruments your people use to chart the planet.”
Alaric drank, too, and then released the swirling water, and it retreated back through the trees.
“You don’t always have to take it all on, either, you know,” she said quietly, making a sharp detour in the conversation. Even when she was frustrated and angry with him, even though he’d blocked his emotions from her, the crushing weight of his loneliness hovered at the edges of her awareness. “The weight of the world. The responsibility for everyone else’s problems. Sometimes it’s okay to let somebody else worry about you.”
His eyes darkened, and a glimmer of something almost too powerful to be faced head-on looked out at her from behind that emerald glow. But a bird broke through the trees nearby, and the sound broke through the moment.
He held out his hand to her. “Let’s explore, if you like.”
She stared at him, afraid that she would be accepting so much more than just his hand.
“It’s your choice, Quinn,” he said, his eyes shuttered against her—against the possibility of rejection.
In the end, it wasn’t a choice at all. She put her hand in his and simply waited, breathing slowly in and out so as not to react, as the electric sense of connection settled into place between them. They could deal with the issue of their attraction later. For once, she simply wanted to be Quinn. Not rebel leader, not forbidden love of an Atlantean high priest—just Quinn.
He said nothing, as if recognizing and granting her wish. They started walking, and she pretended, if only to herself, that they were normal tourists, sightseeing in paradise.
For once—just this once—pretending would be enough.
Chapter 8
Alaric watched Quinn as she walked along the beach, head down, eyes fixed on the sand or on a place he could not see; perhaps her own dark past. He’d long found that the solitude of the island setting was a balm to his own soul. A place where no demands would be placed on him—where no legions of enemies lined up to be battled, defeated, and killed.
They visited him, though, those legions. The faces of everyone he’d ever defeated, in the never-ending battle to protect humanity from its own folly; they haunted him in his sleep and, at times, visited him in his waking hours, as well. The ones he’d lost through his failure to protect fast enough, hard enough, or with sufficient scope—those ghosts accused him, too. A parade of death that had long caused him to believe his future would be a rapidly narrowing tunnel of madness and despair.
But then he’d met Quinn. Strong, courageous, and compassionate. A small human female who dressed like a homeless teen, fought like a hardened battle veteran, and plotted like a master strategist. It was she who should be claiming to be descended from Alexander the Great. None would have the slightest doubt.
Quinn glanced up at him, her brows drawn together in concern. For him. The experience was so novel that it sent another shock wave pounding through his body. Someone worrying about him—the monstrous high priest of terror. The one Atlantean women warned their children about, as if he were the bogeyman of their nightmares. “Be good, or High Priest Alaric will take you away to the temple.”
They thought he didn’t know. He’d trained himself to ignore it.
They thought he didn’t care. He’d forced himself not to.
“What are you thinking about? You have a death grip on my hand,” Quinn said, stopping and turning to look up into his face. “It’s Ptolemy, isn’t it? We should go. As long as he has Poseidon’s Pride, everybody is in danger.”
Alaric loosened his grip on her hand and then raised it to his lips. “Yes, Ptolemy. And other things, thoughts of little merit. This place has that effect on me, I’m afraid. Too much t
ime and space for darker thoughts to intrude on common sense.”
A shadow crossed her face, and she pulled her hand away from him and hugged herself as if cold, in spite of the warmth of sand-reflected sun. “I don’t have the centuries of this battle behind me like you do, but believe me, I know about darker thoughts. I sometimes wish I could have been the sweetly ignorant person I pretended to be for my cover identity. It’s amazing what a pink dress and a little lipstick can do for a woman’s perceived IQ.”
He knelt to retrieve a perfectly intact shell, pearly white with creamy brown striations, and shook off the sand before presenting it to her.
“I do not know what this IQ is, but I believe I understand your meaning. Perhaps we should buy Ven a pink dress, so he fools the enemy the next time we go into battle?”
Quinn laughed. “Oh, boy. Can you imagine? No, wait. How about Lord Justice? With that crazy blue hair and the ever-present sword? Actually, though, that might be even scarier.”
She ran a finger along the edge of the shell before closing her hand around it. “Thank you. This is beautiful.”
“A reminder that life is not all blood and death,” he said, wishing he believed it.
He could see in her eyes that she did not believe it, either.
“Ours have been.”
“So that the lives of others would not,” he returned. He found another shell, a broken one, and hurled it far out into the waves. “It has always seemed a fair trade. Until now.”
“Until now,” she repeated slowly. “Alaric, I can never be what you might want me to be. I have forgotten anything I ever knew about any emotions but rage and pain and vengeance.”
“Emotions can be relearned, Quinn. Brennan taught us that.”
“Brennan was a warrior under a horrible curse from Poseidon not to feel any emotion until he met his one true love and then she died. How cruel and twisted is that? Your god isn’t exactly what I’d call loving and benevolent.”