by Alyssa Day
“You can’t unspill the milk. You can’t make people forget vampires exist,” Ian said.
“And kidnapping my son? That’s not an abuse of power? Or do you believe that the ends justify the means, no matter how horrible, in which case I don’t see much difference between you and the ones you want to stop,” she said, getting right up in his face.
He lost part of what she said, caught in her golden-brown eyes, and was actually leaning down to kiss her when he caught himself.
“I will have my people take Ian wherever you want him to go, as soon as it turns full dark,” he said, stepping back. “If he gives me his word he won’t send the cavalry after us.”
“More like the army,” Ian muttered. “You hurt my mom, and I’m going to go all Call of Duty on your ass.”
Ivy’s lips quirked up as if she were fighting a smile. “Ian, don’t say ass, and don’t threaten the scary vampire,” she said, and then she blinked. “I just fell down the rabbit hole, didn’t I?”
Nicholas wondered if he were getting his first headache in a couple of hundred years. “What is a call of duty in this context, and what rabbit hole?”
Mother and son looked at him in unison, then at each other, and they both burst out into laughter that was tinged with hysteria.
“Humans,” Nicholas said, throwing his hands into the air.
“I’m not going anywhere, Mom,” Ian said. “I won’t promise to be quiet. I’m staying right here with you until we both leave together.”
“I need one more thing from you, and then you are free to go,” Nicholas said. “But you shouldn’t attempt it alone. I have sent for one of your coven to attend and assist you. I don’t want you to be harmed.”
Ivy shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. You can’t put another of my people in danger. I know that your . . . ex-partner lied about Aretha. She wouldn’t have just up and left for Aruba without telling me. She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Nicholas stared at her for a long moment, wanting to spare her the truth but knowing he could not. “Yes, but not at my hand or even his. The power surge from the amethyst that rendered you unconscious killed her.”
Ivy stumbled back a step. “It’s my fault, then. I killed her.”
Ian put his arms around her. “No, Mom. You heard what he said. How could you know what the King stone would do? You’re lucky it didn’t kill you, too.”
“The boy is right,” Nicholas said. “If anyone is to blame, it’s me for using you and your apprentice like pawns. Yet another bad decision in a long line of them.”
“You want me to help you gain even more power, when you admit you make bad decisions right and left? Hurt people? Get them killed?” Ivy patted her son’s shoulder and then stepped toward Nicholas. “Why would I possibly do that?”
Nicholas considered mentioning her own use of the dark arts, but decided against it. After hearing about her husband, he knew why she’d turned to the black. Instead, he told her the simplest truth.
“I am the lesser of many evils, and sometimes that’s the best you can do.”
Chapter 28
Atlantis, the maidens’ temple
High Princess Riley, surrounded by the three women she trusted as much as she did her own sister, stared down into the crystal stasis pod, at the dark-haired woman sleeping serenely inside. The story of Sleeping Beauty come to life, right here in front of her. Of course, she was standing in a temple, under a dome, underneath the ocean, in Atlantis, so everyday reality had taken a left turn quite some time ago.
“It’s not your fault,” Erin said, putting a hand on Riley’s arm. “You tried to set them free. Everybody has been working on it.”
“Maybe. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough,” Riley said. “Maybe I didn’t really want to meet Serai, the woman my husband was supposed to marry. Hard to measure up to a princess with ancient magic and, oh, yeah, who happens to be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, if I were a guy, I’d do her,” Keely said.
Riley jerked her head up to stare at the archaeologist in disbelief, only to see that she was grinning.
“Sorry, Riley, but somebody needed to lighten the mood,” Keely said, unrepentant. “You aren’t doing anybody any good feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I think you’ve been spending too much time with Lord Justice. You are losing your sense of tact,” Marie, the head of the temple devoted to childbirth, said gently. Marie, the only native Atlantean of the four of them, was a classical beauty like Serai, and wore her dark hair up in its usual intricate braid. “Shouldn’t you be with him, after he was caught in that spell?”
“He’s fine. Just sleeping off the after-effects and bad mood. Speaking of men, though, how’s your kitty cat doing?” Keely replied. “Still smoking hot?”
Marie’s mouth fell open, and Erin laughed out loud. Marie was very much in love with the alpha of a panther pride in the southeast United States. Unfortunately, their respective duties didn’t allow them very much time together. Riley hoped they could work something out soon. Marie too often looked tired and sad these days.
“Perhaps we could remember why we’re here,” Riley admonished them. “One of us can surely figure out something. Erin, with your magic and Marie’s healing, isn’t there something—”
“We have tried, Princess,” Marie said. “You know that.”
“Tried and tried, and tried some more,” Erin added. “My gem-singing magic is growing stronger every day, but the Emperor doesn’t respond to it, the maidens don’t respond to it—it’s useless. I’m useless.”
Marie chided her. “You are far from useless. Just this morning you saved that woman’s baby, and we’d thought he was far too sick to live.”
Erin shrugged. “Sometimes I get lucky. So much of this is a wish and a prayer, after all.”
“We’ve all been praying for them,” Riley said. “The maidens. Why do we call them that? They have names. Serai is gone. Delia is dead. Merlina, Helena, Brandacea, and Guen remain. We have to save them. We have to.”
Keely touched the crystal over Brandacea’s face. “She looks worse,” she said grimly. “I don’t know how much longer they can take this.”
Horace approached them and bowed to Riley. “Princess, I wondered if you will be here for very long. My attendants haven’t had any rest or food in quite a while, and—”
“Of course, please send them out. You, too, Horace. And call me Riley, please.”
“Thank you, Princess,” Horace said, bowing again. “I’ll remain here. I’ve eaten and am rested enough.”
She studied his pale face and the dark circles under his eyes. “I doubt it, but I understand. I don’t want to leave them, either.”
“I wondered—” He broke off and bowed again. It seemed to be a nervous habit.
“Wondered what?” Keely said. “If you have an idea, now would be a great time to quit bowing and tell us.”
Horace shot her an unhappy look before turning toward Riley. “I would like to try to release one of them. We are accomplishing nothing by trying to shore up the Emperor’s fluctuating magic. Serai clearly survived leaving stasis. What if—”
“What if we could save them by taking them out of the pods? Let’s do it,” Erin said. Her eyes lit up as she surveyed the four remaining women in their crystal pods. “We have to at least try with one, Riley.”
It didn’t take Riley long to decide, since she’d been thinking along exactly those lines for a couple of days by then.
“Yes. Yes, let’s do it. Who is having the hardest time now?”
Horace turned pale, as he realized that she’d agreed to his idea. “I don’t—I shouldn’t—”
Keely put her hands on her hips. “Spit it out, Horace. Which one is closest to being lost if we don’t rescue her now?”
He gulped and then pointed to Brandacea. “She is so weak; her life force is barely flickering now.”
Erin nodded. “It’s true. I can feel it, too. If we’re going to do this,
we should try with her first. She’s in the most danger if we do nothing.”
“Should we call the high prince?” Horace asked. “This decision is—”
“The decision is mine,” Riley said firmly. “Conlan is finally catching a nap after being out all night searching for the Emperor and spending all morning setting up his plans for going back with a contingent of warriors to find Serai, Daniel, and the Emperor.”
“What do we do?” Marie asked.
“It’s deceptively simple, actually,” Horace said. “We just open the lid.”
Riley and Erin exchanged a glance. “Why haven’t we tried it before, then?”
“We have, Princess. Within minutes, the maiden—it was Delia—was choking for air, almost as if she had lost the ability to breathe. We had to return her to the pod, or she would have died, I’m almost sure of it. She almost did, anyway, but a surge of magic from the Emperor restored her.”
“What makes you think now will be different?” Keely shook her head. “We don’t even have Alaric here to help, and nobody is a better healer than he is.”
“No, but Marie and I together come pretty close,” Erin said. “What choice do we have? We try again to release them, or they die anyway, at least Brandacea will. Look at her. She’s barely holding on, as it is. Does she have another night, while Conlan and Ven try again to find the Emperor?”
“In addition to that, she may not have time to wait while we figure out how to use the Emperor, even if they can find it immediately,” Riley said.
She looked around at each of them in turn: Erin, Marie, Keely, and Horace. “We can do this. It would be criminal not to even try.”
“And if we’re wrong?” Marie’s face was pale. “I am no stranger to death, Riley, but if we do this, and we fail, we will have brought this woman’s death upon her.”
“Or we can stand here and do nothing, and kill her just as quickly,” Erin said. “I know this isn’t a democracy, but I vote we try.”
“Me, too,” Keely said. “I don’t want to live with the regret of having stood by and done nothing.”
“I am with you, as well, Princess,” Horace said.
Riley looked at Marie. “It’s up to you, which is fitting, since she’s your ancestor. I’ll make the final decision—the burden will be on me—but I won’t consider it unless we’re unanimous.”
Marie looked down at Brandacea for a long time, and then she finally nodded. “I can feel her growing weaker every minute. I agree that she will not last the night unless some solution is found. I vote yes, as well.”
Riley clasped Marie’s hand in one of hers and Erin’s in the other, and Erin took Keely’s hand, and Keely took Horace’s hand. They stood there together, in silence, each of them occupied with his or her own thoughts or prayers, and then Riley looked up.
“Let’s do this, and please, God, let us be right.”
Horace placed both of his hands, palms down, on the cover of the pod, and he chanted quietly, in what Riley recognized by its cadence must be ancient Atlantean. A shimmering silver light appeared and surrounded the pod and its occupant, until Brandacea’s still form glowed as if lit from within.
“Now,” Horace said, and four of them lifted the crystal cover from the pod, carried it to the side of the room, and propped it up against the wall while Marie kept watch over Brandacea.
“It’s so light,” Keely said. “It doesn’t seem like the door to a prison should weigh so little.”
Horace bristled. “It was never meant to be a prison. They agreed to do this, for the good of Atlantis.”
“Seems like somebody should have been more worried about the good of these women,” Erin said.
Riley put a hand on Horace’s arm. “It’s all right. Nobody blames you, Horace. We’re just upset and frustrated and more than a little bit scared.”
He nodded. “I know, Princess. So am I.”
Marie called out, “She looks strange.”
Erin pulled a handful of precious gems from a pouch she’d carried tucked into her belt. “Is it okay if I put these in there with her?”
Horace started to answer but stopped and shrugged helplessly. “Honestly, I don’t know. Will the resonance of your gems or your singing interfere with the Emperor’s magic or will it help? We’ve never tried this before, so I have no idea.”
“You have to try, Erin,” Marie said urgently. “She’s starting to hyperventilate.”
Erin quickly placed the gemstones around Brandacea on the silken pallet, humming as she did so. As soon as she’d arranged the gems to her satisfaction, she began to sing a song of healing and hope. Marie took Brandacea’s hands in her own and added her own song. She was no gem singer, but she had vast powers of healing, and Riley hoped Brandacea would respond to the combination of both types of healing magic.
The song filled the chamber, and Horace added his own counterpoint through his chanting, but Riley could see no difference in Brandacea. If anything, her breathing became more labored.
“It’s not working,” Keely said, grabbing Riley’s wrist. “We’re making her worse.”
“Give it time,” Riley said. “They just got started. I’ve seen Erin and Marie at work with women in childbirth; I’ve seen how they helped me. We have to give them a chance.”
“I’m not sure we have time to give them,” Keely whispered. She pointed to Brandacea, who suddenly arched up in the pod, her eyes still closed, gasping for breath.
“It’s not working, Riley,” Erin said, clutching the side of the pod. “We’ve got to put the lid back on and get her back into stasis.”
Marie cried out. “Now. We’re losing her. Put the lid back on, now, now, now!”
Horace shook his head, tears running freely down his face. “The Emperor isn’t helping. Without it, nothing we do will matter. Once the stasis is broken, we can’t restore it without the Emperor’s magic. We tried before, you understand.”
“What about good old CPR?” Keely said. “I’m not as ready as all of you to give up just because the mumbo jumbo doesn’t work. Move.”
She shouldered them out of the way, bent over the pod, and prepared to administer CPR to Brandacea. “Riley, get over here and be ready to do mouth-to-mouth if she quits breathing.”
Brandacea made a horrible groaning noise, arching up again, and then she collapsed back down and the light covering her body vanished. Her face, without the glow of light, was a deadly pale bluish-gray, as if she were a corpse that had died days before.
Riley flinched back for an instant at the sight, before she put the whimsical notion out of her mind and began artificial respiration while Keely began the rhythmic push and release of CPR. Long minutes went by, Riley didn’t know how long, until finally she heard Erin shouting at her.
“Riley! Riley, stop. It’s been way too long. There’s no hope. Riley, you have to stop now.”
Riley lifted her head to see that everyone was staring at her. Keely had stopped CPR and every one of them, even Horace, was crying. Numbly, she looked down at Brandacea, only to see that the maiden’s eyes were fixed and open, staring at nothing for eternity.
Riley shook her head, back and forth, as if denial would make reality change to suit her. “No. No, no, no. She can’t be dead, not because of me. No.”
Erin took her arm and tried to pull her away from the pod, but Riley violently shook her off. “No! We have to try again. Try something else. Erin, more diamonds or emeralds or something. Sing louder. Keely, start CPR again. She’s not gone, she’s—”
“She’s gone, mi amara,” Conlan said from behind her, and suddenly her husband’s strong arms wrapped around her, as he tried to pull her away from Brandacea.
Riley fought him with every ounce of her strength. “No! Leave me alone. I can do this, it’s my fault, I said to open the lid, take her out of storage. We had to try, but it’s my fault. I have to fix it. I have to save her. I have to—”
“You cannot, my love. Some things cannot be fixed.” Conlan’s face was grim;
a forbidding study in grief and despair. The lines around his eyes had deepened, almost overnight, and Riley had a moment of clarity in her own grief as she realized that the job of high prince was killing him. “She’s gone. All we can do now is find the Emperor and save the others.”
Riley wanted to lean on him and cry, but she forced herself to stand on her own. She had done this. It was her responsibility. Her failure.
“We need to help her. Give her a proper burial,” she said, and her voice only wobbled a little. Only a little.
“No, Princess,” Horace said gently. “As you see.”
She glanced down at the crystal pod, only to see that Brandacea was gone. Vanished completely, as though she’d never been there.
“Without the magic to sustain her, the weight of thousands of years settled on her all at once,” Horace said. “She is gone, returned to dust as she would be if she had lived and died so long ago.”
Riley walked over to the stasis pod next to Brandacea’s and stared down at the golden-haired woman inside. Merlina.
“We won’t fail you, Merlina,” she promised. “Or Guen or Helena, either. No matter what it takes.”
Conlan took her hand. “I swear to you that we will do everything we can.”
“I know, because I’ll be there with you,” Riley said.
Conlan shook his head, but Riley held up a hand to forestall any protest. “Ven said he couldn’t find Serai’s trail. I’m an empath—aknasha—so I can maybe find her emotions even if nothing you can do works. We have to find her and the Emperor, Conlan, and I’m going to help.”
A muscle in Conlan’s jaw jumped as he clenched it, but he finally nodded. “You may be right. Let’s go through now and see if we can pick up her trail, and then I’ll return for Ven and the warriors.”
He called to the portal and then turned to the rest of the women and Horace. “Please don’t take this as your personal failure, Marie, Erin, Keely, Horace. Something had to be done, and you four were very courageous to even try.”