by Alyssa Day
Even though now he regretted it, fiercely.
He glanced over at where she sat on the floor, the dishes pushed aside and a collection of jade figurines from one of the compartments spread out with mathematical precision on the tablecloth. To one side of the figurines, the collection of gems he’d tossed aside earlier were lined up like toy soldiers awaiting their general’s command.
She’d tied that wealth of hair back away from her face, and a little furrow had appeared between her silken brows as she concentrated on the objects. She hadn’t spoken in quite some time. Perversely, even though something about her fierce concentration appealed to him, he found himself resenting the ease with which she could dismiss him from her mind.
It would have been impossible for him. Every step he took, every thought he had, was wrapped in the knowledge that she was nearby. The flash of resentment had a now-familiar effect: the Nereid strained against the shields in his mind, growing stronger with every passing hour.
The cavern lay directly underneath the temple of his Nereid ancestors, and that half of his soul continued to cry out that it would not be denied. Justice shoved his hand through his hair, wondering how to defeat one side of his very nature without destroying his entire psyche.
Had he escaped the Void, only to find that its madness had followed him? Dwelt within him? Pharnatus’s sacrifice must not be in vain.
Frustration spiked into helpless, irrational fury. Keely could ignore him so easily, and he couldn’t even ignore a voice inside his own head. The realization flared inside him—a flash fire of rage—no less powerful for being unreasonable.
Pain caught his head in a vise grip. Steel spikes drove through his temples, heralding the Nereid as it broke through his shields. She casts you aside like you are nothing, Atlantean . If we had taken her, she would be tied to us forever.
Justice shook his head, denying it, but the movement only worsened the headache squeezing his skull, and he gasped. “No. We will not . . . I will not force her. I promised her.”
Then I will not share with you the Nereid art of using matter transference, and we will remain here, trapped, until we die.
Matter transference? But even as he turned the phrase over in his mind, he knew. It was the method by which he’d brought the food; stolen, no doubt, from very surprised and hungry people.
Far more important, it was how he’d brought Keely with him to his long-forgotten hideout.
Yes. The way in, and the way out. Simplicity itself, when you know the key, the Nereid whispered seductively.
Closing his eyes, he waged a brief but furious war with his other half, to no avail. He was seriously considering pounding his skull against one of the gem-covered walls to bash the information loose, when Keely called out to him.
“Justice? I may have an idea of how we can get out of here.”
Keely sat cross-legged on the floor, contemplating the figurines. Priceless objects, all of them, and incredibly important to any serious study of the Atlantean past. Even through her gloves, the sheer age of the carvings pressed on her mind and sizzled along her nerve endings. What she was considering was unbelievably self-destructive. Possibly suicidal.
But she was trapped between the proverbial rocks—of the cave-in—and a very hard place.
Justice didn’t know how to get them out. He didn’t even understand how he’d brought them there. Fine. She’d been inside his past, through the sword vision, and she knew enough of him to know his integrity. His honor. Even the pain he kept so tightly controlled.
He wouldn’t lie to her. He’d die before he let the Nereid hurt her. She would accept those facts as proven hypotheses.
So it was up to her.
He crossed the room, resembling nothing so much as a sleek panther, muscles flowing in a graceful, deadly stride. He took her breath away and muddled her neatly ordered, scientific thoughts.
She should be more afraid, especially after what he’d admitted to her, but somehow she trusted Justice enough to feel safe.
Kneeling down across from her, he retied the loosened piece of leather cord at the end of his braid. The cord probably came from one of the compartments, used to tie off yet another bag of gems. She shook her head, amused at herself. Here she was, sitting inside a treasure trove that would be a jewel thief’s wet dream, and all she could think about was escape.
Practical, pragmatic Keely.
Except, staring at Justice, wishing his strong hands had been on her skin instead of in his hair, she didn’t feel at all practical.
“If you continue to look at me like that, I will allow myself to entertain fantasies of what I would like to do with the remaining maple syrup and your lovely, lovely body,” he said, voice husky and nearly growling. His smile was strained and a muscle jumped in his clenched jaw. “There is much difference between a forcible taking and a willing surrender.”
As the hated blush swept up from her chest to her cheeks, she bit her lip and tried not to do it. She really tried, but she couldn’t help it. She just couldn’t.
She looked at the syrup.
This time he really did growl, and the primal ferocity of the sound unleashed a primitive yearning in Keely. Liquid heat spread from the center of her body, and she had to fight against squirming where she sat. Suddenly her pants were too tight and the lace of her bra rubbed unbearably against her sensitive nipples.
If he could do all that to her from a growl, she was in trouble if she ever got him naked.
“Focus,” she gasped out, deciding to put it out on the table. Or floor. Whatever. “I don’t know what this crazy attraction is between us, but we need to focus. I don’t want to trigger your . . . your problem, either.”
He froze and then carefully changed position to sit, cross-legged, a cautious distance away. She took a deep breath, lifted her chin, and confronted the issue directly. Ready to discuss the problem logically.
But his dangerously potent smile and the sheer masculine arrogance that shone from his eyes played havoc with her intentions. “You admit it, then,” he said calmly. “The attraction, as you call it, though I would name that a very tame word. This has nothing to do with the Other inside me, Keely. This is the desire that surges like a tidal wave between destined mates.”
She caught her breath at the heat his words evoked. “I’d have to be a fool or a liar to deny it. At least the desire part.
But it’s simply a reaction to a stressful situation. An adrenaline-based hormonal reaction.”
He raised an eyebrow, and those fascinatingly changeable eyes flashed from black to palest green. “I think not, my Keely. I will prove it to you. Count on it.”
Trying to ignore the heat that sizzled through her at his deliberately provocative words, she asked the question she’d been wondering about for some time. “Your eyes. Liam’s did that, too, the eye-color-change thing. Does Atlantean eye color correlate to your emotions? Like a physiological mood ring?”
He stared at her for a long moment before answering. “Perhaps. What colors have you seen in my eyes?”
She shrugged. “I haven’t exactly been cataloging, but they’ve gone from black to midnight blue to a glowing teal, and now they’re this beautiful pale green that reminds me of spring. Oh, and sometimes when they’re black, they have an intriguing little blue-green flame at the very centers of your pupils.”
His mouth dropped open a little before clamping shut into a thin line. The irises of his eyes darkened to black as she watched, like night falling suddenly on a lovely spring day. She nearly smiled at her own whimsy. Maybe she should have taken more poetry classes. She could write “Ode to an Atlantean’s Eyes.”
“Just now, for example,” she pointed out, trying to suppress her grin. “They changed from a vivid green to black when I made that comment about the flames.”
“Well, do not panic or jump up and pace the cavern again, please, but it would appear that you have been claimed by both halves of my nature, Keely,” he said, drawing the words out slowly as
if she’d torn them out of him. “You may be in more trouble than I thought.”
She opened her mouth to make some wisecrack, but then she realized that in no way was he joking. Ice shivered down her spine, which worked wonders for that focus she’d been wanting to find. “Both halves of your nature. I’m guessing that has to do with the ‘we’ persona you go into and the Nereid?”
Before he could answer, she shook her head. “No. Not now. When we’re out of here, I promise you, we’ll talk about all of this. I won’t run screaming for the hills for at least an hour or two.”
His face darkened, and he narrowed his eyes. “You won’t run away from me, Keely,” he said, steely command in his tone. “There is no place you can go that I will not follow. Know that now.”
“Yeah, well, you should know that I’m not so good at taking orders,” she fired back. “Instead of fighting about it, though, why don’t we do something productive? Like escape?”
She selected the largest of the sapphires and lifted it to show him. “I think I have a plan.”
Placing the gem carefully back down on the cloth, she decided the time had come. “There’s something I need to tell you. About the vision I had when I touched Liam’s sapphire.”
“Liam?” It was just one word but it carried a wealth of danger. Suddenly he was the feral predator again, and she didn’t know why. Perhaps he and Liam had bad blood between them. Now wasn’t the time to go into it, though.
“Yes, Liam, but he’s not important. You need to know my vision. I was in the room with your high priest Nereus and his wife, Zelia, while they discussed the Star of Artemis.”
“That’s impossible. Your vision must be wrong. I know this name, Nereus, but he couldn’t be married. Poseidon deemed that his high priests could never marry. If they don’t remain celibate, they suffer an enormous loss of their powers. Nereus was one of the most powerful priests in our history, so he could not have wed.”
She shrugged. “Maybe the marriage records got lost in the files somewhere. I’ve lived with these visions since I was a child, and they are never, ever wrong. Nereus was married to Zelia.”
She recounted the story of her vision of Nereus and Zelia, and what they’d said about the Star of Artemis. As she concluded her tale, an important detail struck her. “Justice, it has the power to heal fractured minds, they said. Maybe you could—”
Horrified at what she’d almost blurted out, she cut herself off mid-thought. She had no right. No right at all.
Justice’s clenched fists rested on his thighs, but when he spoke it wasn’t to tell her to stay the hell out of his business, like she expected and, to be honest, richly deserved.
“He knew? Liam knew this experience would harm you and yet he sent you into it with no warning?” The tone of his voice had changed—went deadly.
“Well, no, he—”
“He is a dead man,” he said flatly. “Each breath he takes is a debt owed to the nine hells.”
A shiver raced down her spine at his words, which weren’t delivered as a threat but more like a known fact. Keely spared a sudden sympathetic thought for Liam. “Well. That’s very poetic, but not fair in any way. He had no idea that the vision would affect me so strongly.”
“He should never have touched you,” he responded, implacable. “I will kill him for it.”
“Right. Okay. Going just a little bit overboard, don’t you think? Nobody’s killing anybody. Anyway, what I was getting at was the intense emotional connection I seem to forge with any Atlantean objects I read. I was thinking—”
She stopped and tried to fill her suddenly empty lungs with air, then began again, forcing the words out past the lump of fear in her throat. “I was thinking that I could start reading objects, one after another, until possibly one of them gives us some information about a way out of here.”
She pasted an optimistic smile on her face and tried not to think about all the things that could go wrong. Tried not to think about getting trapped in a maelstrom of never-ending visions. Tried not to wonder if this would be the time she died in one, finally proving one way or another whether vision death equaled reality death.
Of all the hypotheses she’d ever formulated, this was the one she was least anxious to prove.
Since her thoughts were whirling around like a hamster trapped in a wheel, she threw it in Justice’s court. “Well? Did you hear me?”
He sat, silent and still, his features icily pale. “In what possible delusional state could you believe that I would let you risk yourself in such a manner?”
Fury rode the hardened planes and angles of his face, and for an instant he looked like an avenging god himself. She refused to be intimidated, however.
Much.
“We don’t have a better option; you said so yourself. You don’t know how you got us here, and you don’t know how to get us out. We have to try something, Justice. I’m a scientist, and I explore different avenues, different hypotheses, until I find one that fits.”
Feeling a little like she was following a lion into his lair, she leaned forward and touched his arm. “It might not be so bad. As long as I meditate and prepare, my visions are usually not as intense as these most recent ones were.”
“It. Might. Not. Be. So. Bad,” he bit off from between clenched teeth. “Really.”
With a blur of preternatural speed, he grabbed her shoulders and yanked her across the figurine-and-gem-covered cloth and into his arms. “I forbid it,” he said, ice still coating every syllable. “I will go to battle against the other half of my own soul before I will let you take this chance with your health or your life.”
He rested his head on top of hers and embraced her so tightly that she almost couldn’t breathe. She was about to protest when she realized he was trembling against her. The internal battle he was waging must be one hell of a fight, and the worst part was that she didn’t know how to help him.
There was only one thing she could think of, and it was the simplest. She slipped her arms around his waist, and she hugged him back. A violent shudder shook his body and he eased up the slightest bit on the death grip he had on her ribs.
They sat, unmoving and silent, for several minutes, and then he raised his head. “I know what I have to do. I must make a bargain with a demon and hope we don’t all end up in hell.”
Chapter 23
Atlantis, the palace
After a long, hot shower and a change of clothes, Alexios headed down the immense tapestry-lined corridor to report in to Conlan. The intricate weaving and brilliant hues of Atlantean history—scenes woven over the course of thousands of years—barely registered as he headed for the war room.
The war room. Its walls had listened in, silent and without judgment, on the plans of Atlanteans for more than eleven thousand years.
Alexios wondered if walls could laugh.
Plans, plots, never-ending meetings to discuss never-ending wars. They were all merely chess pieces in a game played by gods, and even the strongest of the Warriors of Poseidon rarely rose higher than pawn.
That pawns were the most frequently sacrificed had crossed his mind a time or two.
Finally arriving, he stopped short, surprised to see guards posted at the door. Conlan—or, more likely, Ven—must be wary of treachery that could reach into the palace itself. It was unthinkable, and yet the presence of the guards demonstrated that someone had been thinking exactly that.
“Lord Alexios,” the elder, a battle-hardened veteran, said. “Prince Conlan and Lord Vengeance await you inside.”
The other pulled the heavy door open, and Alexios entered the room, glancing up at the walls as he did so. Silent wit nesses, he mocked himself. Plaster and marble and wooden beams, shaped by tools into something of function.
Much like himself.
Shaking his head to disrupt his grim thoughts, Alexios looked around. Conlan and Ven leaned over the long, scarred, wooden table in the center of the room, poring over maps. Ven moved to one side, sliding his fing
er down a map and muttering something, then glanced up and acknowledged Alexios with a nod.
As Alexios crossed the room, he got his second surprise. The human woman Tiernan Butler, clad in jeans and a white shirt, her dark hair pulled back from her face, stood between the two brothers. Judging by the expressions on their faces, whatever they were discussing wasn’t good.
Conlan and Ven wore simple clothing: dark shirts and pants similar to his own. Nothing in their attire shouted out the fact that they were royalty. The high prince, soon to be king, of Atlantis and his younger brother, next in line to the throne, never traded upon their heritage to put themselves above others. Even so, royalty and the aura of unflinching command radiated from them, a silent herald of their birthright.
The birthright—at least by half—of one other. One gone missing, yet again.
“News of Justice?”
Conlan shook his head. “None. And no contact with Alaric, either. Do you have news of him?”
Alexios whistled, low and long. “I’d thought he’d make it back here before me. He went after Quinn; she was wounded in the battle.”
Ven’s hands fisted, crumpling the map he held. The prince respected Quinn for the warrior she was but, more than that, she’d become his friend. Indeed, she was family, now that her sister Riley would wed Conlan.
Human marrying Atlantean. He thought of Bastien—Atlantean marrying shape-shifter. Ever more twisting skeins of yarn for some future tapestry that one day would decorate the palace corridors, perhaps foretelling the final end to those never-ending wars he’d mused on earlier.
“It was a minor wound,” he assured them. “But you know Alaric. He and Quinn have a . . . bond. He followed her, in order to make sure of her well-being.” He quickly filled them in on what had occurred in St. Louis. “Quinn, Jack, and Denal went after the vampire leaders.”
Alexios didn’t elaborate as to what the trio would do to the vamps when they caught up with them. He didn’t need to.
