by Stephen King
More beautiful than any woman in the history of the world.
He abruptly stopped kissing her when a concern surfaced. "You need food."
"No, I had room service, remember?" She pulled his head back to kiss him some more and then she raised her head. "Do you need food?"
"I'm interested in dessert. You," he said, his voice straining to sound even a little calm. "Quinn, I think we have to make a decision right now, because I'm going to tear your clothes off in approximately seven seconds if we keep this up."
She grinned. "Oh, are we keeping you up?"
She put her hand on his erection, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.
"I cannot believe you did that," he said, trying not to go off in his pants like an untried youngling. Or, more to the point, like a man who had been celibate for most of his five centuries of existence.
"I don't actually believe it, either," she said, looking a little stunned.
"Five seconds," he ground out. "Four, three--"
"Wait!" She jumped up and off the bed and backed away, panic written on her delicate features. "Nothing has changed. You can't--we can't--"
"Apparently I can," he said dryly, adjusting his pants to try to find a comfortable fit.
"But Poseidon--"
"He can get his own woman."
Alaric climbed off the bed and started stalking her across the room, step by step.
"We can't," she blurted out. "Not with Atlantis hanging in the balance."
Maddeningly, that was the ultimate truth. No matter how hard he'd tried not to think about it, just for these few stolen moments, everyone in his world depended upon him. He had to find Poseidon's Pride and return to Atlantis, no matter how tempting this interlude with Quinn had been.
It was as if the cold light of reality had suddenly pierced through the web of self-delusion he'd been hiding in for the past hour or so. His exhilaration at finding Quinn had left him stupid--almost punch-drunk--and now he must face his responsibilities and save his people.
"You're right," he said flatly. "But there is one thing we can do. If you agree, however, it must be solely for your own reasons, or for what is between us, and not from any misplaced feeling of altruism. You have given enough, done enough, and suffered enough for one hundred lifetimes."
"What are you asking me?"
He stared at the perfect face that had haunted his dreams since he'd first met her and asked the question driven by need; the question that should have been posed only through love:
"Quinn Dawson, will you agree to attempt the soul-meld with me?"
Chapter 23
Quinn forced herself to pause before shouting yes. Everything about Alaric made her crazy: crazy impulsive, crazy passionate, just . . . crazy. She wanted that feeling of belonging to him forever and ever, didn't she?
Doubts and fears tried to edge their way into her mind, but she shoved them aside. Not now. Not this time. There was no room for doubt, and yet . . . what if?
What if the celibacy thing was real, and Alaric lost all of his power? How long would it take for him to hate her? What if the emotion that had caught them up with the force of a whirlwind was driven by excitement and danger, and now that she was no longer a rebel leader, their lives would become ordinary and boring? What if they wound up stuck together for a very long time, maybe even hating each other?
But she looked at him--really looked at him--and she realized she didn't believe any of the doubts or fears. She couldn't believe them. She'd seen inside of this man, this proud, dangerous, terrifyingly courageous man, and she knew him. Knew his heart; knew his spirit. He'd never stop loving her--even though he hadn't yet said the words, she knew he did--and sometimes, life was worth a leap of faith.
"Yes," she said, finally, simply, staring into his incredibly green eyes. "Yes, I accept you. Um, I thought the soul-meld had to be--"
"No. It can take place platonically," he said, but then he flashed a breathtakingly wicked smile at her. "But it won't be nearly as pleasurable, I imagine."
He crossed the room in three quick strides and took her hands, but she shook her head, placing a hand on his chest to stop him. "Not here. There's no magic here. Downstairs, with the art. If we can't create beauty with our bodies while we do this, let's at least be surrounded by it."
He led the way down the stairs, and the weight of what they intended to do--and the knowledge of what it might mean for Atlantis's survival--echoed in each footstep. She glanced around the room and almost immediately settled on the perfect spot in front of the windows, as the sun set in a blaze of glorious golden light. She turned and held out a hand to Alaric, swallowing any nervousness when she saw him walking toward her, walking into the spotlight of sunshine, his strength and passion outlined in every line and angle of his strong, beautiful face.
He would be hers--for as long as she survived--and the knowledge was a gift she held close to her heart.
"The painting you admired," he said, gesturing to the canvas. "What better symbol for our union than hope?"
She nodded, unable to trust her voice, as Alaric took her hands in his and solemnly looked at her.
"Are you sure?"
She smiled up at him, and realized she truly was sure. No matter where she went in the future, Alaric was a man who could and would stand by her side. Fight by her side. Love her. Always.
"Yes," she said, and her voice rang out clear and strong, like a bell chiming the way to her future.
"Close your eyes."
She did, and he leaned his forehead against hers. "Now open your mind and heart and soul to me, mi amara, as I do to you."
She took a deep breath, tightened her grip on his hands, and threw her emotional shields wide open. Then she fell to her knees as pure power, of a scope she couldn't have even begun to imagine, poured into her. She realized Alaric had dropped down to kneel, too, still holding her hands, and she cried out as more and more and more energy rushed through her body.
"I can't," she said. "It's too much. I'm only human."
"You're far more than human, Quinn. This is part of the soul-meld for a high priest of Atlantis."
She thought he said something else, but she couldn't hear it, couldn't hear anything, couldn't feel anything except the inferno of magical energy threatening to swamp her mind and incinerate her nerve endings. She found herself balancing on the edge of a towering and terrible knowledge, and as it poured into her and filled her, she suddenly knew things.
Knew things she couldn't have known, saw things she couldn't have seen.
Flashes of brilliant blue-green light scorched through her mind and illuminated scenes of Alaric's life, careening from image to image like some insane Ghost of Atlanteans Past, and all she could do was try to hold on for the ride.
Alaric as a child, running and playing with the other boys. Carefree and happy; but, even then, there was a certain reserve to him. He stood apart, and she felt the loneliness that never quite left him.
Alaric as a young man, riding a horse at a breakneck pace across green fields, with Conlan chasing after him, both of them laughing.
The two of them, carousing in what looked like a tavern, surrounded by admiring young women.
Quinn cried out again as an especially intense surge of power or magic or whatever Alaric must carry around inside of him all of the time spiked into her brain and she lost her senses for a few moments. When she climbed back up out of the dark to conscious thought, the images showed her an older, harder Alaric.
He shouted at Conlan that he didn't want to be high priest. He didn't want the duty or the responsibility. "What happened to our plans to travel around the surface for a few dozen years, doing nothing but eating, drinking, and wenching?"
But the Conlan in the vision only shook his head, sadness on his face, and the insane tour continued, with Quinn soon floating on the edge of a dark, dark room.
"The darkness of the Rite of Oblivion is only equal to the darkness in your own soul," a voice was saying, but the voic
e's owner was hooded and robed, so Quinn couldn't see his face. She could see Alaric clearly enough, though, wearing nothing but a loose pair of pants, struggling as three robed figures pushed him toward a hole in the floor. Alaric's clenched jaw, and the corded muscle starkly outlined beneath his skin as he tried to resist, told her that whatever waited for him underground was something that would terrify anyone with less courage.
"If the oubliette accepts you, it will give you back to us. If it does not, it will take you a very long time to die," the sadistic bastard said, and then the three of them shoved Alaric into the hole.
Quinn screamed, but she couldn't protect Alaric from his past any more than he could protect her from hers, and the merciless barrage continued.
Alaric, rising from the oubliette, noticeably thinner, his eyes sunken and wild, and the robed figures kneeling to him as one of them draped a robe over Alaric's shoulders.
"All bow to Poseidon's new high priest, long may he rule over our holy temple," they chanted.
She wanted to kill them all, steal Alaric away and comfort and feed him, but the visions sped past, and soon she was watching him grow stronger, harder, and colder. More and more alone. He learned to wield the Trident, which was plenty powerful enough without its gems, and he learned to hunt and fight and kill vampires.
She watched him battle rogue shape-shifters and nests of murderous vamps. She watched him save and protect and rescue, over and over and over. So many deaths on his conscience, so much blood on his hands, all in service of protecting his prince, his people, and humankind.
After what felt like centuries of images buffeting her mind, she saw Alaric watch Conlan with Riley and felt how conflicted he'd been when he'd realized his prince loved this human, and then a blast of intense emotion nearly knocked her on her ass, but this wasn't her emotion, not this time.
It was his.
She was watching him heal her, Quinn, from that bullet wound when they first met. She watched him as he fell back, blasted into shock by the force of his own feelings. She listened to him confess how much danger he believed himself to be in, simply from touching her.
"You want to know what happened?" With two steps, he was right up in Conlan's face.
"I'll tell you what happened, my prince," Alaric continued, rasping out the words. "What happened was I sent my healing energy inside Quinn. Inside that human. And she grabbed hold of me."
He shoved a hand through his hair and laughed a little wildly, eyes flaring green and hot.
Savage.
"She dug her mental claws into my balls, is what happened. I healed her, and she destroyed something in me. Shredded it."
"What--" Conlan never got the question out.
"My control," Alaric snarled. "The absolutely rock-hard control that I've spent centuries perfecting. Your little girlfriend's sister reached out with her emotions, or her witchy empath nature, or what the hell ever, and all I wanted to do was fuck her."
Conlan stepped back half a step at the ferocity in the priest's voice and dropped his hands to his dagger handles. For an instant, icy death menaced the air between them.
Alaric laughed, bitter again. "Oh, you don't need your blades. In spite of the fact that I wanted her more than I've wanted anything in my life, I won't touch her. Although, even now, my mind tortures me with images of pounding into her body, right there on the ground in the mess of her own blood, fucking and fucking her until I drive myself into her soul." Alaric viciously kicked at a tree and shards of bark flew into the air, then disintegrated in the green energy bolts he shot at them.
This was new and dangerous territory, and Conlan attempted to proceed with caution. "Alaric, you must--"
"Yes. I must. I must never succumb to any lusts, or my power is ended. Certainly, I would be of no further use to you or to Atlantis. No use to the jealous bastard of a sea god whom I serve," the priest said flatly, his voice suddenly devoid of the rage and passion that had infused it moments before.
"I must get away from her," he continued. "Now. From this place. I am ruined for this day, in any event. This . . . this energy drain has voided any hope I had of re-scrying for the Trident until I recover. I will meet you back at Ven's safe house tonight."
Conlan grasped his friend's shoulders, shaken by the blasphemy he'd never heard from him before. "Alaric, know that your use to me and to Atlantis goes far beyond the powers you gained from Poseidon. Your wise counsel has served me well for centuries, and I will need you when I ascend to the throne."
Alaric stared over Conlan's shoulder toward Riley and her sister. "These empaths. They signal a treacherous difference in our ways, Conlan. I can sense it. Change is coming. Peril that comes from within our very souls."
Quinn shuddered as the most powerful wave of magic yet seared through her body, and she realized it was tinged with a dark, disturbing emotion.
It was tainted with shame.
Alaric must have seen what she was seeing; discovered that she had learned how he'd reacted to her that very first time.
"It was the same for me, you must know that," she cried out, not knowing if he could hear her, or if her voice was trapped in the vision with her. "I was terrified of you and of the feelings you evoked in me. You can't be ashamed of how you feel about me. Please, no."
But the horrific visions kept coming, showing her what he had endured since she first met him; the impossible decisions he was forced to make on a daily basis; and, most of all, the bleak, icy loneliness he endured.
He was a man doomed to be alone by the very god he served, and not only for the space of a normal lifetime. Tears streamed down her face as the pressure crushing his heart and soul, increasing exponentially over the centuries, grew so much worse when, one by one, his friends and companions all found true love and the soul-meld.
He, of all of them, still alone. Always alone, with only the dream of Quinn to sustain him on so many long, dark nights.
"Never again," she vowed, her heart full to bursting with her determination to protect him--even from Poseidon--to never let him be alone again. As the final vision, of Alaric standing on the roof of the palace in Atlantis, grim and solitary, faded, and the room around her came into view again, she reached another realization. Alaric's magic hadn't stopped funneling into her with all the speed and fury of that tornado in Japan.
Instead, she had somehow become able to control it. She didn't know how, or why, but somehow she'd gained the capacity to contain every ounce of the power he was thrusting into her in a metaphysical reflection of a far more primal act. All she could do was hang on for the ride, but at least she could hang on, with no more worries that the magic would incinerate her brain. With that realization came another, even more basic.
Even more important. One that he needed to know.
"I love you," she told him. Without qualification; without hesitation. Never again would she doubt it.
His entire body shuddered, as if he'd been terrified of a far different reaction, and he opened his mouth to speak, but then his eyes glowed even hotter, and tiny blue flames danced in his pupils. He tightened his grip on her hands and said, "Quinn," and then he was gone, probably lost to his own visions, and all she could do was hold on and pray that he still wanted her after he'd seen the blackest regions of her own soul.
Alaric didn't even have a chance to apologize to Quinn. He'd had no idea that the soul-meld would subject her to the blasts of his magic, or he never would have asked her to do it. Hells, he never would have allowed it. He'd tried to release her when the surge of power intensified beyond human endurance, but the ancient ritual refused to be interrupted once begun, and its magic was far too strong for him to break.
He'd feared that she'd banish him from her presence, cast him aside, and even ridicule him once she learned the darkest secrets of his being, but instead--miraculously--she'd smiled. She'd told him she loved him. And now--now the soul-meld took him, and the time for reflection was gone.
Alaric watched, trapped on a crazy whirlw
ind like an insane version of a child's carousel, as Quinn's life spun in front of him in terrifying flashes. Losing her parents, joining the rebels, and lying to her sister. Constantly being forced to deceive the few friends she'd ever made; growing more and more alone and isolated. Choosing the harder path at every fork in the road, and offering herself up like a sacrificial lamb for the most dangerous missions and most suicidal battles.
He watched, his own composure rocked to its foundation, as she lost her faith in the very people she was fighting to protect, when the rebels were forced to fight against other humans. The collaborators were the worst. She despised them. Her hatred was so strong it smashed the walls of his mind as he watched her argue with a human who had killed other humans, again and again, for the chance to become a vampire.
"I'll live forever," the man had told her, smirking.
"Better luck next time," she'd said, and then she shot him in the head. She stood over the man, impassive, as he died, and then she dropped to the ground and cried. She'd been fighting for several years by then, but it was the first time she'd been forced to kill another human, and something inside her had shattered, irrevocably broken.
Her innocence, perhaps.
He felt her emotions ice over, and her mental shields grow ever stronger, as she used her gift of emotional empathy to ferret out traitors among the rebel forces. He watched as she climbed through the ranks; as her clear head and fearlessness made her a natural leader.
He felt her cautious hope and then joy, when she met a tiger shifter who made a big impression, and a part of Alaric that he hadn't realized was still afraid relaxed, as he experienced her love for Jack. A sister's love for a brother--a warrior's love for her comrade--but never a romantic love.
He swore to himself that when all this was over, he'd find a way to heal Jack and return him to himself. Surely in the combined knowledge of all of the libraries of Atlantis, there must be a way.
