A collective gasp sounded out through the room; the sound of a fountain trickling in the distance echoed in the aftermath of such brutal shock. Several sets of ice-blue eyes stared at me with horror as though I was the monster in their midst, not the creature above our heads.
The Rigas didn’t raise his voice, didn’t press home his advantage. He simply said, at a normal speaking volume which held more weight than a shout ever could, “Welcome to Atlantis, Miss Eden. Enjoy your stay.”
And then he was gone, and I was abandoned amongst Nero who trusted me about as much as I trusted any of them.
“Nice welcome,” I muttered, looking down at my dripping clothes, watching the pool of water grow ever bigger on the tiles. “Atlantis,” I grumbled with a burst of incredulous air. “As if.”
“Does it not feel like Atlantis to you, Gi?” a voice said off to the side; the minion the Rigas had waved over. I hadn’t paid him much attention, thinking I could demand a longer audience with the King. I assessed him for weaknesses now.
He looked like the Rigas, I noticed on closer inspection. Not surprisingly; as all Pyrkagia look similar, so it would make sense all Nero do too. But this resemblance was astounding. I flicked a quick look at the rest of the Nero watching, seeing the minute differences that made them related by Element but not necessarily by direct birth.
“Don’t tell me,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and feeling water dribble down my stomach. “A Nero Prince?”
He smiled, naturally it was beautiful. No one could call an Athanatos ugly. A playful glint flashed in ice-blue eyes.
“One of many, I’m afraid,” he said with a formal bow; arm crossed over stomach as he swept his free hand out at the same time. It was fluid and graceful, like fish swimming through water. Dancing in the waves. “We are always born as twins and father has been blessed with many,” he added with a wink.
“Great, twins,” I muttered to myself, but he’d heard. A chuckle sounded out; friendly, amused. Attractive.
I knew why his eyes were flashing ice-blue, then. I’d already taken a step towards him.
“Switch it off,” I whispered, the sound of my voice startling me; it was too husky.
I’d thought only Pyrkagia capable of this type of attraction. They controlled passion; passion involved seduction, allure. But this Prince of Nero before me was sounding his siren call.
I rubbed my arms, reached out to Earth to ground me. Found only marble and Water. I didn’t try for Air. I didn’t trust it, and the desire the Prince was creating was not grounded in Pyrkagia; it was false. As false as a siren.
“My apologies,” the Prince said, his words sounding genuine. I doubted them. “Your Aeras calls to me.”
“My Aeras?” What the hell did that mean?
“You are awash in it,” he explained as he came alongside me, indicating the direction we should take with the sweep of a white-robed arm.
I shook my head and glanced up at the wreath he wore on his head, automatically reaching for it with my Gi. But the Elemental slap I received in return had me pulling back all my powers and made me gasp.
My hand hung between us, halfway to his head, adrift in the air.
Deep blue eyes looked down at my fingers, and then a large hand came up and removed his wreath, placing it softly in my outstretched palm.
“Seaweed,” he said. “Of Nero, not Gi.” The words were spoken gently, not a reprimand, more like an apology.
“There’s no Earth here, is there?” I guessed.
“No Earth,” he whispered, as though the words were alien, foreign, not allowed out loud. “No Fire. No Air.”
I sucked in a breath, filling my lungs ready to deny that last when it occurred to me the air did taste different beneath the dome, smelled different. Almost like ozone, crisper, cleaner, untouched by chemicals and pollutants…and nitrogen.
“Pure oxygen,” I said, a reluctant sense of awe overcoming me. And then a thought occurred to me. “How long exactly does the Rigas intend to hold me prisoner in this artificial environment?”
The Prince stopped mid-step, spinning towards me, making me lose my balance as his hand shifted from beneath my elbow. I hadn’t realised I’d been leaning into him, relying on his aid to hold me steady. Or just drawn to the siren call of his Nero soul.
I freaking hated Athanatos sometimes.
“You are not a prisoner,” he declared, in all his immortal self-righteous fury. “You are a guest.”
“So I can leave whenever I please? Grab a ferry and get off this island?” I doubted it, I seriously did.
He smiled that becoming grin he effected with such charm and ease.
“Island?”
“That’s what Atlantis is, isn’t it? A lost island.”
“You could say that,” he hedged, gripping my elbow gently again and leading me through an arched doorway into a flickering hall. Dancing images flashed against the white walls; no paintings here, just the illumination of lights made to look like fish and sea creatures, seaweed swaying under the pressure of gentle lapping waves.
It was haunting and beautiful, and yet something about it left me uneasy.
“What would you say then?” I pressed, allowing him to lead me down the hallway as schools of fish darted over our heads, like a domed glass aquarium, but made of marble instead.
“Atlantis is an island, to be sure,” he said, guiding me past Greek marble statues of gods and sea monsters and animals that seemed made of three or four different species combined into something impressive and somehow beautiful when the complexity just made you shake your head.
“But?” I pushed, realising belatedly that he was closer than before, no longer holding my elbow, but resting his hand on the small of my back. Even when his eyes weren’t shining ice-blue, his siren call lured me closer to the rocks.
My stomach lurched; adrenaline coursed through me. I had no defence against this type of allure. Pyrkagia I could fight. Might versus might. But I was not a Nero. I could not battle like with like.
Panic began to take hold.
“But it does not float above the waves,” the Prince said, impervious to my increasing hysteria.
I stopped walking, breathing too quickly, and turned to look at him, then over his shoulder down the corridor we’d just traversed. The fish darted between the statues; the light show so real, I’d wondered if it was a projection of an actual movie.
“Those fish are really swimming, aren’t they?” I whispered.
My heart thundered inside my chest.
The Nero Prince looked back down the hall with a creased brow, watching the dancing fish for a moment and then smiling. It was small, amused, but trying not to be condescending.
I still didn't trust him. Not one bit.
Everything here left me feeling disconcerted.
“They are above our heads right now,” the Prince said carefully.
“And the statues?” I queried, my voice scratchy as my throat closed with dread.
“Nero’s creatures, also in the Water above our heads right now.”
Holy freaking sea monsters. That horse-fish-man thing had been real.
Silence stretched for a moment between us. I could hear him breathing; steady, deep, calm. I could hear my own breaths labouring as though I couldn’t get enough air.
The Nero were dangerous. This place was a trap. I had no protection here.
I worked on my rising panic, but there was much to be panicked about. I wasn’t breathing Air. I couldn’t reach any of the three Elements I already possessed. I was cut off to them, cut off to the world I knew. Cut off from Theo.
The Nero Rigas had lied.
I swallowed. It hurt. I struggled to breathe. The Prince stepped closer, concern marring his handsome face. His eyes shining an ice-blue that could only mean one thing.
“It’s not an island,” I said, holding up a hand to stall his progression closer.
Don’t touch me!
“Not above the sea,” he whispered i
n confirmation, his volume attempting to soothe.
I hated it. I didn’t trust it. I didn’t trust Nero.
The Earth was my balm, not Water. Not even Air. The Earth was what I reached for, even knowing it was not there. The Earth was what I pulled on, drew on, commanded to obey.
I’d had enough of being manipulated. I’d had enough of their lies and underhanded ways. Their politics and competition. Their distrust and power hungry positioning.
I’d had enough.
Uncontrolled anger fuelled me when my Stoicheio could not.
The Rigas had lied. They all lied. I clutched my head and let out a scream of fury. Pent up rage and frustration; heart aching loss and emptiness; mind numbing fear and agony. I’d had enough!
No more!
The building rumbled; Earth answering my call; rising from the depths; destroying whatever it touched as if an extension of my anguish. It rose at my command. Responded to my fear and anger; desperation and loneliness. Shook Atlantis at my beckoning due to my outrage.
And then an enormous, thundering crack sounded out above our heads.
The Prince looked up at the hallway ceiling as plaster fell and marble chipped, and the sea started to force its way in.
Screams of alarm sounded out down the hallway; footsteps echoed on tiles as more Nero approached. The Prince spun back and looked at me, his features etched in mortification and worry, awe and something else. Something I’d seen on his father’s face, just briefly before sadness chased it away.
“Gi,” the Prince called out over the cacophony of sounds as the building quaked and the ocean attempted to breach its walls. “You have to stop,” he yelled above the noises and screeches and shouts of command from Nero who clearly wielded authority. “Calm down,” he pleaded, as water splashed and eyes blazed ice-blue, and the Nero Rigas finally appeared amongst the throng of people attempting to stem the damage I had wrought.
“Enough!” he thundered, as the Prince reached for me. “Enough!” the King bellowed, and just as the Prince’s arms wrapped around my body, a wave of pressure met my chest, sending us tumbling farther down the hallway, me in the arms of a Prince I’d only just met, the Water King dousing my connection to Earth.
Atlantis wasn’t an island above the waves, as I’d presumed. But one that existed at the bottom of the sea. Far from what I knew, from who I craved. I knew that now. Not just from what the Prince had said, but because it rested on Earth. My Earth. And it told me.
There was no Air nor was there Fire inside this domed prison, buried beneath the sea. But there was Earth. Just outside. Just underneath.
I could reach it. I could destroy everything.
I lifted slightly unfocused eyes up to the Rigas as he towered over me. I held the King’s glare as steadily as my dizzy head allowed. Both of us knowing that I was imprisoned in the Rigas’ Atlantis, but the prisoner was far more of a threat than the King.
I smiled. The Prince let out a sigh of defeat beside me.
And the King…the King said, voice commanding, steady even, “You wanted to talk, Aether? Then let’s talk.” It was a threat. Not a compromise. And definitely not his defeat.
My tantrum felt like a hollow victory.
Chapter Two
Oh, This Could Not Be Good
The Prince stayed at my side. As if he offered a buffer between me and the infuriated Rigas. He obviously took his assignment to heart. Or his was the “good cop” to the Rigas’ “bad cop”. Either way, I didn’t trust the Prince's continued presence at all. The soft allure, that tantalising pull, seemed muted but still present. As though I was getting used to it, or he was trying to hide it, or it was a trick of my mind.
Everything seemed wrong here. Not just Theo’s absence. Or my missing Stoicheio. But the lighting and the mood and my reaction to it all. Part of me felt lulled, soothed; not like the Earth soothes me, but as if I was tired, lids heavy, body swaying, rocking on a gentle sea. Part of me was also incensed with rage.
Would there ever be a time in my life when I wasn’t betrayed?
We passed beneath intricate archways, their marble carved with creatures that made no sense to me. We slipped between enormous columns, that seemed to disappear into a murky darkness overhead that shifted with hidden creatures. Whatever had swum above us back in the hall I’d almost destroyed had moved to this new location.
We were being followed.
My fists clenched as the King took his seat in an enormous room. The Prince and I came to stand before his raised throne. The vastness of the space seemed impossible when you thought of where exactly we were. I tried not to. It didn’t help my breathing. Statues and columns lined the walls, lights and shadows flickered behind them, dancing across the marble, sweeping over the rounded ceiling.
I glanced upwards and saw depicted in terrifyingly accurate detail a man with two horns protruding from his head. They were curved and wicked, rising from his brow and retreating behind his broad back. Claws protruded from four digits on massive hands, a muscular torso drew the eye to a skirt, that I realised on closer inspection was made of seaweed.
Next to him lay a crab-woman, with a cracked shell, and pincers for hands. Her tangle of legs seemed segmented; for a moment I couldn’t work out what was so wrong. And then I counted them. There were too many. A feathered creature flew above her, white and ethereal, her breasts perfect, the curve of her waist enticing, her mouth open in a song. Her feet were fins.
I spun around in a circle, frantically taking in each creature which swam in the mural above our heads. Not all of them were recognisable for what they were; some were grotesque, others beautiful. All of them were under the sea when some really shouldn’t have been.
Taurus in my mind was a bull. But this bull walked through an undersea lava bed, throwing steaming rocks about with mountain-sized hands. His horns protruded out of the side of his head, almost as wide as his impossibly wide shoulders. Capricorn was dwarfed by him.
And a mermaid.
My eyes finally came to rest on the Rigas, who had allowed me this moment of observation unhindered. A knowing smile curved the corner of his full lips. A soft frost-like blue echoed in his eyes. He tapped a finger quietly on the armrest of his throne, looking for all intents and purposes relaxed and at home, and very much in charge.
My eyes flicked back up to the monsters depicted above our heads. If that horse-fish-man thing - Pisces, I corrected - was real, were these creatures real too? And if the Nero Rigas could control Water and its creatures, then could he control Aries and Cancer and all the rest?
I suddenly realised how precarious my position was. And the message the King was sending by bringing me to this room.
The throne was a tool, nothing more. The ceiling a warning.
“Aether,” he said. “We mean you no harm.”
An entirely different statement to, “We will not harm you.”
I remained mute. Not just because it was wise to reassess the threats in this room silently, but because the Zodiac mural had left me reeling.
“We only wish to Awaken your Nero,” the King said softly. “It is what your grandfather wanted.”
I smiled; I was sure it didn’t look amused. My grandfather and I had what you’d call an estranged relationship. He’d known what I would become, not told me, faked his death, and left me to wake up in a pit full of dirt to this… A world with its imbalanced Elements and immortal Elementals and a god who had abandoned it all.
“Not your best argument of persuasion,” I pointed out.
“Regardless,” the Rigas countered, “without your Nero Awakening you cannot become Aether. You need us.”
More than he needed me?
I crossed my arms over my chest and tapped my foot on the marble floor. It echoed off the high ceiling, drawing my attention but not my eyes. I’d grown far stronger in the past seven months than any of these ancient beings could see.
“It seems to me,” I said, “that more is at stake than just my Awakening.”
“How so?” the King asked.
I thought back on what Theo and Hip, the grandson of the Aeras shaman, had discussed in Machu Picchu. How the Elements were out of balance. How the deforestation of the Amazon was part of that. The Gi suffered because of it. The ozone layer was being depleted. The Aeras would feel it keenly. Bush fires in the Australian outback had caused pain for Pyrkagia. What was the last example they’d used?
That’s right. The polar ice caps melting due to global warming. Nero.
A lot had happened since Peru and that conversation with Hip. A lot of deaths and destruction caused by Genesis. Caused by the absence of a god and the indifference of his children.
I knew now why I was to be Aether. I just had no idea how to fix things.
I did need the Nero Rigas for that.
But he also needed me.
“How is the sea?” I murmured softly. “How fares the seaweed? The dolphins? The sharks? Pisces?” I purposely looked up at the domed ceiling, taking in the monstrous creatures above my head. Pisces was missing, but then he was back in the main hall. His position one of status.
I narrowed my eyes at the mural. Was Cancer now standing?
The King smiled; it was appreciative and calculating all in one.
“It is true we are entwined in this,” he said levelly. “But does that not only prove that we should trust one another?”
“Trust is earned,” I snapped back. “And you lost any you gained on Mount Victoria.”
He inclined his head regally; an acknowledgement of the deception he had played. He may not have agreed to Theo accompanying us in words, but the consensus had definitely been there.
“We seem to be at an impasse,” I declared.
The King sat up.
“You refuse to reach for Nero?” he enquired.
“I refuse.” It seemed the only bargaining chip I had.
Something changed in the room then, something dark and ominous. Shadows shifted across the floor; imaginary feet skittered across the back of my neck. I looked over my shoulder; no one was there. Just the Prince who wore an expression of disbelief and shock, and an archway that stood bare.
The Tantalising Taste Of Water (Elemental Awakening, Book 4) Page 2
