Lords of Atlantis Boxed Set 2

by Starla Night

  “Make him your first lieutenant.”

  “No.”

  “King Kayo—”

  “I will never make him obey me. Only Tibe controls the warriors. They respect him.”

  “You doubt yourself, but even I can see how much the warriors like and trust you. Xarin included.”

  “You are an outsider to our ways.”

  “So I see more clearly. You are king. You’re more capable than you know. Demote Tibe. Issue the order.”

  “It is not so easy. Like pardoning your rebel. I could not pardon him now when the All-Council representative is due. Not even if he saved my life a hundred times.”

  She was so close. “What is easy is not always what is right.”

  “Or left.”

  “Huh?”

  “Or up or down. The easiest path is always with the current, and currents flow in every direction.”

  “Oh. Er, I meant honorable. The honorable action is not always easy.”

  “Hmm.”

  Elder Bawa scuttled across the city looking, to her outsider eyes, suspicious.

  King Kayo noticed too. He straightened. “Where are you hurrying to, Elder Bawa?”

  “My king.” Elder Bawa jolted. “Your bride is not in your castle. Still.”

  “And?”

  “I fear for her. For you both.” A worried smile split his thin face. “The stress of exposure will make her ill. You, of all warriors, should not risk her health. Or the health of your future young fry.”

  King Kayo wavered.

  She rose also. “Elder Bawa, I’ll feel less stressed after you stop hiding All-Council business from King Kayo.”

  He grimaced and barked in his language. She didn’t understand the words, but she felt intuitively he called her untrustworthy, hysterical, dangerous.

  King Kayo held up a palm. “Speak so she may understand.”

  Elder Bawa flashed hot anger. “My king—”

  “It’s okay.” She stretched, careful not to let her fins pop out, and collected the tattoo wand. She paddled to Warriors Luin and Poro. “This ‘dangerous, hysterical, untrustworthy’ female is going to check on Faier.”

  Elder Bawa watched her with narrowed eyes. He muttered something to the king about needing to treat her differently or else there would be trouble when the All-Council arrived.

  She stopped and whirled to face him. “I’m not in any danger from them, am I?”

  The king and Elder Bawa both turned and stared at her. Struck, as though they suddenly realized they could not keep secrets.

  “No,” King Kayo said, in English. “Of course you are not in danger from the All-Council, Sacred Bride Harmony.”

  “Good. I’m so used to being in fear of my life on the surface. I’m glad I don’t have to worry down here too.”

  Elder Bawa narrowed his eyes. “She is not like other sacred brides.”

  Harmony flipped again. “Are you sure? How do you know? It’s been an awful long time since you’ve seen a sacred bride. Maybe you don’t remember.”

  Elder Bawa’s lips thinned with anger. “I remember.”

  “Did you even have a sacred bride?”

  “Of course. One does not become an elder without contributing a young fry.”

  “How did your sacred bride enjoy staring at your interior walls the whole time?”

  “She did not stare at walls,” he spat, suddenly looking like he might cry. “She stared at me. Our time was short. We treasured every moment. As should you.” He drew himself up and firmly addressed the king. “A traditional sacred bride should know this.”

  Harmony raised her brows at King Kayo. “Would you like to tell him, or should I?”

  Elder Bawa rubbed his nose. “Tell me?”

  “Since you told Tibe.”

  King Kayo gritted his teeth. “That was a mistake. I thought he would understand.”

  “Tell me what?”

  She flipped forward and paddled toward her warriors. They would escort her to the depths once again.

  “What is she doing with that tattoo stick?” Elder Bawa demanded.

  “I do not wish to ask,” King Kayo said.

  “My king, you must keep her under tighter control. She must respect your authority.”

  “Apparently, she is not the only one. Explain the All-Council business.”

  “Er…my king, I must go—”

  “Elder Bawa.” His tone sharpened. Finally, he was taking Harmony’s advice. “You will explain. Now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Faier passed the time sharpening his trident.

  Harmony had ingeniously asked for a weapon. The Aiycaya warriors had equally wisely given her a damaged trainee trident. Dull, bent, and useless.

  But it was still a weapon.

  He’d found a polishing stone and scraped the growth off with long, even strokes.

  Harmony’s house guardian, Lady, gallivanted through the meadow. She twirled around him and batted a dead fish—an arm-length black gill—in front of him before settling on one of the coral perches and ripping out tasty chunks.

  He noted the width of its body. “They enlarged the new tunnel.”

  Lady’s plus-sign-shaped eyes rotated around her body in assent.

  He lifted his trident to examine the blade. The handle was smooth and the blade sharp. Now he polished the aesthetic pieces.

  An ugly trident could still kill. But a well-tended trident might make his opponents pause long enough to save their lives.

  He would soon test his work.

  “Faier?” Harmony’s vibration called.

  His chest spasmed. Harmony. He flew to the meadow.

  Mantis shrimp buzzed a warning.

  He pulled up, mindful of their clicks. His blood raced. Anticipation throbbed under his skin. Her body and her soul addicted him. Missing her made him sick.

  Had she missed him?

  Harmony emerged from the rainbow-iridescent tunnel and oriented on him. Her soul brightened like the sun. “Faier!”

  “Harmony.” He opened his arms.

  Her fins unfurled, and she barreled into him, laughing. “Oh, god, it’s been an hour, and I already missed you so much.”

  He held her tight against him. “It has been longer than an hour.”

  “Okay.” She pulled back. “I can’t wait until we’re both safe and we can be together all the time.”

  He wished for that future too.

  She sobered. “You’re looking better.”

  “A little.”

  “Only a little?” She studied him for a long moment, dropped his hands, and wheeled behind her for the box she had dropped. “I brought you more food.”

  He accepted her box. “This is welcome.”

  “Great.” Her smile crinkled, and the warmth of her soul nearly overpowered him. “And I brought this.”

  She held up a long, tapered stick embedded with a cool, white shard of opalescent resin.

  A tattooing implement?

  Harmony waited eagerly for his reaction.

  “There it is,” he commented.

  “I will fix you,” she said, suddenly fierce, “so when you swim out of here a free merman no one will confuse you for an exile ever again.”

  His heart squeezed. She cared for him so much. Her kindness warmed his soul. “Thank you, Harmony.”

  “Hmm.” She squeezed his biceps. “Your skin is smoother.”

  “Forced rest is healing.”

  “Look here.” She traced three fingers diagonal across his belly from nipple to hip. “The lines where the crocodile scratched you are almost gone.”

  Her familiar touch was easy and intimate. She’d claimed his body as hers and now reaffirmed it.

  His cock pulsed.

  She noted his swelling hardness. Her own awareness brightened her cheeks, her eyes, and her soul. She lifted her gaze, and her lips parted, revealing her pink tongue. “Did you miss me?”

  He drew her into his arms. “Very much.”

  Her
lashes fluttered closed, and her chin tilted up to invite his kiss.

  He accepted her invitation. Delving into her mouth, he supped on her heated moans. Her breasts rubbed his chest. He cupped her smooth globes. His fingers kneaded her dark teats.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist and impaled her wet heat on his throbbing hard cock.

  Mine.

  A hard shudder racked his body.

  Like the first time she had claimed him, his soul warred with his heart. He pumped her full of pleasure while probing his feelings deep inside. He hadn’t realized how many barriers he had wrapped around himself. How many layers screened him from feeling her love as anything more than a need?

  Her hungry moan as she nibbled on his jaw tore down another screen. “Faier. Yes.”

  He shuddered.

  Her channel squeezed his cock. “Mmm. There.”

  His soul reached out of his body and tangled with hers. Uniting them. Centering him.

  Enslaving him.

  Her passion broke his control into pieces. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t escape. Couldn’t think.

  “You are…everything I want…” she murmured.

  Shudder.

  She cried out and then rested on his shoulder.

  Crashing waves of pleasure from her release swept him away. He shattered and filled her with his white-hot seed. She was his mate. His soul. His.

  For one brief instant, his last view of Nerissa—golden, sparkling grounds, shimmering Life Tree—filled him with peace.

  But this peace could not last. Harmony, like his beloved first home, could be ripped away at any time.

  His soul plunged into chilly blackness.

  “Mmph!” Harmony shivered and flailed, separating them and brushing herself as though she’d been swarmed with mantis shrimp. “Oh, I must have fallen asleep. A little nightmare. Hahhh.”

  He stroked her back. “Rest.”

  “Not yet. There’s too much going on. Especially since—well, anyway.” She shook herself and grabbed the tattoo implement. “I’ll fix your tattoos, and then I’ll never worry about a stranger attacking you for being an exile again.”

  He offered his arm.

  She pressed the flat tip to his bicep and stroked like a human painting brush.

  He gripped her fist, oriented the tool perpendicular, and pressed firmly to score the skin.

  The bite of adamantium and the sting of Life Tree sap was so familiar, it put his teeth on edge. Concentrate on now. Not the past. Faier closed his eyes. He was grateful to share this time with Harmony and feel her presence, her love, while they could still be together.

  Before the Aiycaya warriors broke in and he had to fight his way to freedom, leaving her behind.

  “You did not convince the king,” he guessed.

  “I’m close.” She bit her lower lip. “I think he would have agreed already if the All-Council weren’t coming.”

  He surveyed the meadow. When the warriors broke through they would come from the other side. How much time did he have?

  “You should know I’m a semi-famous artist.” She connected his sleeve to curls around his wrist. “I used to sew rag dolls for kids at the hospital after my mom died. I used their parents’ clothes and sewed in a pressure module. It made a ‘thud-thud’ sound, so when the kids were alone at night, they could hug these dolls and hear heartbeats.”

  He concentrated on her heartbeat filling the ocean. “That sounds comforting.”

  “It was. They got a little popular, and my ex at the time—he was a law student—set up a company. He felt bad about breaking up with me during the ‘turbulent era.’ I would sell these to pay my way through college. And it kind of worked. They got featured on the local news, and I made a semester’s worth of profits. Then I got approached by a toy company about trademarking the dolls.”

  She followed the inner lines up his sensitive elbow and across his chest. Her heartbeat increased. The water tensed even though her tonal vibrations remained calm.

  “The company rep was super nice. He took me out to pancakes. I thought he would buy the rights or offer me a job or something. I told him how rough it had been because my mom wasn’t a natural-born citizen. After the dinner, he called up my ex and demanded the trademark or else he’d get me deported. My ex thought he was crazy. The next thing I knew, I was in an interrogation room guessing—wrongly—where my dead mom had lost my birth certificate. Ow!”

  She stuffed her thumb in her mouth. Her eyes reddened.

  He rested a palm on her leg. “This pains you.”

  “Oh, it’s fine.” Her chest vibrated dismissively as she sucked on her thumb. “I jabbed my thumb with the tool.”

  “Your memories. They pain you.”

  “Only because I wish I could go back in time and yell at myself. ‘It’s a trap!’ or ‘He’s not a father. He’s a crocodile in human clothing!’ I was so naïve.”

  She released her thumb with a pop. A vee-shaped chevron bled from the tip of her thumb. She tutted at her clumsiness, then leaned over his chest again and examined where she had left off.

  “I would have given him the trademark. Like, just have it. Don’t ruin my life. But I just waited for my ex to deal with it.”

  “He did not wish to lose this trademark.”

  “Right, he thought the guy had no case. After I got deported, he felt terrible and promised to bring me back. But,” she dismissed the past with a shrug, “he studied intellectual property law, not immigration. He got depressed, took drugs, and years passed. And I am now an exile.”

  She pressed the tip into his skin and connected the star compass over his heart.

  “It’s sad.” She concentrated on a squiggly curve. “But the real moral of the story is that I’ve waited my whole life for someone else to save me. You, Lifet, Fab, my ex. Monsieur Joseph. Evens. My great-grandmother. I should have just stood up and solved my own problems.”

  “Would that have found your birth certificate?” he asked.

  She shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe I would have taken more responsibility and never lost it to begin with.”

  The surface world was complicated. He knew. He had lived there.

  “My scars are visible on the outside,” he pointed out. “Yours are carried within. Do not let their invisibility make you forget. An injury is an injury even if no one can see your pain.”

  She softened. “Your scars are healing. Does that mean mine are too?”

  Deep hope welled in him. He wished to heal her. From his first touch he had wished it.

  She rested her forehead gently against his for a moment of silent support. “If you’re well enough to leave soon, I think we have to escape. I don’t want another fight because I’m almost through to King Kayo. But I can’t risk your life on ‘almost.’”

  He considered an alternative, even though it tore at his soul to say it aloud. “You can remain if you think you can change the city.”

  “What? No.” She tapped his forehead with hers reprovingly. “We’re together. Okay? Stay or go. I’m not ever leaving without you.”

  His throat closed. He couldn’t look her in the eye.

  Harmony obligingly looked away. She followed a swoop low around his torso to his backside and exclaimed, “Your legs are as scarred as your hands. It’s like you’ve been dancing with weed whackers. Why didn’t you ever try to repair your tattoos?”

  He cleared his throat even though he spoke with vibrations in his chest. “I could not tattoo across angry scar tissue.”

  “It’s not angry now.”

  She was correct. His skin had healed.

  He swallowed again hard. “Your invitation to treat me in Council Bluffs touched me deeply.”

  “I meant it.” She traced the half-seen lines diligently. “I can’t wait to show you my home. Why do you look surprised?”

  “I am a citizen of two cities and yet I have never truly belonged. Even now.”

  “Faier.” She lifted her head and nailed him with a gaze. “You be
long. The Coast Guard asked you to help them how many times?”

  “They use my skills. I am not one of them. And citizenship can be stricken away. In my case it has already happened twice. It is devastating to lose your home. Everything is gone.”

  “Friends,” she agreed, dropping her head back to her task. “Job. Past. Hope.”

  “You understand. It is the same under water. And, if a warrior does not find sanctuary with another city, he will sicken and die like his fallen Life Tree.”

  “That would suck.”

  “It is visceral devastation.” He swallowed, feeling the constant scratch, reawakening his dormant skin like scraping off the growths of the unused trident. “The first was the worst.”

  He found that as he described the fall of Nerissa, the words poured out, as uncontrollable as the lava that had swept it away.

  “I was so young. The city was ancient. I thought such a thing could not happen. But my father had sent me away once to another city. Rusalka. When he forced me to escape the undersea volcano, I sought refuge there.”

  The oldest, injured warriors had perished during their long flight. No one could give them proper funerals. They had reached the city of Rusalka, and only Faier had been strong enough to accept sanctuary.

  The others had been too happy by then to die. Slip into the eternal darkness of the Blacknight Sea.

  “One warlord whose own son had died took me in. I worked hard to be recognized, repay his kindness, and honor the elders and king. I even earned the right to claim a sacred bride. This angered the ‘true’ sons of the city. They abandoned me during a raid. I fought my way free, and you see the result.”

  “That’s awful. What wretched jerks. People like that don’t deserve a bride.”

  “Jealousy twists many honorable souls,” Faier agreed. “The elders declared me unfit to seek a bride after my injuries. So I betrayed them and joined rebel Atlantis.”

  “And Dragao Azul.” She filled in the details, both with the tattoo implement and with her words. “You’ve been through so much. And you still don’t feel like you belong?”

  He shook his head.

  She set aside the tattoo implement and clasped his hand. “That’s on you. Because you belong. I know you belong.”