by Alyssa Day
The voice from behind him was uncharacteristically serious. “You didn’t get anything on your hands.”
Daniel whirled around. “Ven? What are you doing here? Or, more to the point, why didn’t you help?”
The tall Atlantean prince rolled his eyes and shrugged while flashing a grin. “Seriously? Against only four of them? Are you a girl, now?”
“Better not let Quinn hear you say that,” Daniel said, before the pain of her name caught up to him. She’d been his friend. Until the forced blood bond. Now she was—if not an enemy, still no longer a friend. Wary. Not afraid, not Quinn, but she’d never trust him again. He knew, because he could still feel her inside him. Whispers of her emotional resonance touched his mind at times. The blood bond.
He’d saved her life and killed her trust. He’d thought it a fair trade, at the time.
“Quinn’s not a girl. She’s a rebel leader. Now are we going for a beer or what?” Ven demanded, gesturing toward Daniel’s hands. “Also, quit going all Lady Macbeth and wiping your hands on your pants. You don’t need to ‘out, damned spot,’ when you didn’t get slime on them.”
“Quoting Shakespeare? I expected something from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Daniel tried to smile but couldn’t sustain the effort. “Lady Macbeth. Interesting you say that. I feel like I’ve gotten slime on my hands every day since I took this job.” Daniel forced himself to quit rubbing his hands on his pants and took a deep breath. “I’m not a politician.”
Ven threw back his head and laughed. “Nobody sane is. You’re a warrior, my friend, like me. Now, let’s go get that beer and talk about how we’re going to keep you bloodsuckers from taking over the world. No offense.”
“Not tonight. I’m not a politician anymore anyway. I just resigned.” Daniel looked up at the stone front of the Primus entrance, built only a few years ago but designed to look like it had existed for millennia. The vampire aristocracy was big on pretense. Like the idea that they were aristocracy. Daniel’s own mother had been a peasant who owned a single mule.
Ven whistled long and low. “Conlan is not going to be happy to hear that.”
“With all due respect to your brother, whether or not the high prince of Atlantis is happy with my career choices is not big on my list of concerns. Good-bye.”
Ven’s hand grasped Daniel’s arm with almost vampire-like speed. Damn Atlanteans anyway.
“Remove your hand, or I’ll do it for you,” Daniel snarled. “You presume too much.”
“I’ve been told that before,” Ven said, but he released Daniel’s arm. “You saved my life. I’m not going to stand idly by while you sacrifice your own.”
“How did you—”
“You said good-bye. You never say good-bye. Ever. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that a vampire who has lived for thousands of years might get tired of putting up with life every once in a while. Especially when every day brings a new battle.”
Daniel looked into his friend’s eyes and lied to his face. “I’m not there yet.”
Ven stared back at him, hard, but finally nodded. “Fine. Take a rain check on that beer?”
“Another night,” Daniel agreed. He watched as the prince of Atlantis, one of the few men Daniel had ever called friend, leapt into the air and dissolved into a sparkling cloud of iridescent mist. The Atlantean powers over water were both beautiful and deadly. Daniel had seen both.
He waited until the last droplet of mist had long since vanished from his sight before he spoke, repeating the words that had given away his intent. “Good-bye, my friend.”
And then he went to face the dawn.
Chapter 2
The Maidens’ Chamber, Atlantis, deep beneath the Mediterranean Sea
“They might die. They might all die.”
The frantic words sliced through the fog that kept Serai’s mind in a near-permanent state of peaceful rest. The speaker’s urgency was such that she cast around in her memory for his name, but she couldn’t find it. One of the many, many attendants who had come and gone, lived and died, while she and her sisters waited out the millennia until they were freed. After the first thousand years, she hadn’t bothered to try to learn their names. They almost never spoke to her, after all. Only around her. About her.
“So beautiful,” they’d say. Or, more often, “What a waste.”
The fact that she agreed with the second assessment didn’t make it sting less.
“The companion stone is no longer sufficient,” another one said, breaking into the painful memories. “If we can’t find the Emperor, the maidens are all going to die.”
Die. She and her sisters were going to die? No. No. Serai jolted awake with the same painful wrench in her chest that accompanied each year’s brief period of consciousness. But something was wrong this time. Her internal clock, finely tuned after more than eleven thousand years of existing in the prison of stasis, told her that it hadn’t been an entire year since her last brief period of semi-wakefulness. It hadn’t even been half that. The pattern that had ruled her life for so long had changed, and she didn’t know why.
From the sounds of the controlled chaos in the room, she wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what was going on. Normally tranquil attendants, the current high priest’s acolytes, scurried around like rodents caught in a marble-walled trap. Voices that were always kept at hushed, serene, tones were raised in agitation, loud enough to drown out the ever-present gentle music. They were all panicking, and their fear transmitted itself to Serai—primal instincts that had long been buried shot into instant awareness.
Danger. Daniel.
Why did the two go so naturally together? Why, even after all this time, did her mind instinctively turn to the only man she’d ever wanted to rescue her? The only one she’d believed she could count on. She’d been wrong, though. So very wrong. Her heart, however, seemed not to have given up its lonely, helpless, hope.
Daniel.
Daniel. She used to pray she’d forget him, but she gave that up as futile after the first half a thousand years or so. How long must she be tortured with memories of the man who’d abandoned her? She had no time to think of long-lost love or the searing guilt that had followed her fateful choice on that long-ago day. This time, she had to rescue herself.
Serai opened her eyes and—it took nearly a full moment—the realization of the miraculous nature of that action flooded through her with the power of a lightning strike on storm-tossed waves.
She’d opened her eyes.
For the first time in millennia, she’d opened her eyes, and she had no intention of closing them again. In the spirit of the moment, she tried yet another impossible task and raised her arm from the pale cream- and rose-colored cushions of the silken pallet upon which she’d lain, encased in crystal and powerful magic, for so long. Action followed thought and she watched, wondering, exultant, as her hand touched the crystal covering of her prison.
A shudder of relief wracked her body—her limbs were obeying her commands—and a cry escaped her throat. Hoarse, rusty, and almost unrecognizable, but it was still her voice making that sound. Her voice. The stasis had done its job, then, as promised by a long-dead high priest, and kept her safe and whole throughout the turning of the world.
Kept them safe. She and her sisters-in-captivity. There were so few of them left now.
Pain stabbed at her, biting into her insides, and she instinctively hunched over to curl into the cramping ache. Unfortunately, the crystal case had been designed for sleeping maidens, not those having contortions, so she smacked her head into the gently curved cover and cried out again.
Pain. Sensation. Feelings she’d lacked for so long she couldn’t remember them. The shock of tactile sensation strangled the words she’d been about to speak, and before she could even remember what they’d been—What does one say after eleven thousand years of silence? Shouldn’t it be weighty and profound?—the first crack appeared in the surface of her crystal cage.
As she watched
, her eyes still open—maybe it was a dream, yet another dream where she believed she’d woken up; no it couldn’t be a dream, she’d never felt pain in one of those dreams—the small crack widened and lengthened into a rapidly growing spiderweb.
Her confusion turned to terror and her mind started screaming at her, a mindless howl of fear that turned to rage.
LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT!
Almost before she had time to realize she might be in danger, a wave of power built up in the crystal case until the cover shattered, exploding outward as if she’d shoved it with a giant smithy’s hammer. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t process the shocking truth.
She was free.
Free.
And her magic had grown exponentially since she’d last attempted to use it, thanks to the influence of the Emperor’s power.
Ignoring everything outside her immediate actions, she took a deep breath and then the next step—the first step. Carefully, oh so carefully, she lifted one leg, bare under the long tunic she wore, and stepped out onto the marble floor, easily avoiding the glass shards that had blown several paces away from her small pod. She stood, gazing around herself in wild-eyed wonder, for nearly the space of a single thought, and then her legs gave way beneath her and she collapsed onto the cool, hard surface.
Magic and stasis had kept her body in perfect working order, but neither could overcome the dueling emotions warring inside her. Ecstasy fought terror and her mind was the battleground—the shock of finally, finally attaining the freedom she’d dreamed of for so very long threatened to shake her rational mind free of its foundation. She huddled on the floor for a moment, then lifted her head and forced her voice to work. “I’m free. Oh, thank Poseidon, I am free.”
Perhaps not words profound to anyone else but her, but that was enough. She scanned the room, still lying on the marble floor she’d last touched when Atlantis rode the surface of the waves, finally thinking to wonder why the attendants hadn’t come to her aid. The answer was instantly apparent. The burst of power that had shattered her crystal cage must have smashed the three of them against the walls of the chamber, and they lay unconscious on the floor.
She hoped they were only unconscious. She summoned long-unused senses, tentatively reaching out to them. Yes, unconscious. Relief poured through her. Three hearts beating strongly. She hadn’t woken into the new millennium as a murderer, even an accidental one. She pulled herself up to stand, moving cautiously, not trusting that the magic had really kept her limbs in working order. But both legs worked and her muscles felt as firm and flexible as if she’d walked across the palace courtyard just hours before, instead of countless years ago.
A high priest’s magic, fueled by a god’s power, had held her safe and whole for so long. But what, then, was happening now? Still moving slowly, she made her way to the other glass cases, one by one, around the room, to all five that still held occupants. Five more women, all so young when they’d been encased in crystal. The youngest, Delia, had been only twenty-five years old, the same age as Serai, when they’d trapped her. Just barely old enough to wed, by Atlantean standards—ten or more years past that by the conventions of the rest of the world at that time. But Atlanteans lived a very long life span, and a quarter century was barely old enough to risk the soul-meld—hundreds of years bound to the same person.
She shook her head, impatient with her wandering thoughts. Perhaps the stasis that hadn’t weakened her body had weakened her mind. Shouts in the distance alerted her to the very real possibility that the priests of Poseidon’s temple had sensed the disturbance here.
“If they catch me, they’ll try to trap me,” she said, either apologizing or making excuses to Merlina, the woman sleeping in the pod nearest to her. “I can’t take the chance. I can’t be caged again—not ever. I have to run.” Desperation shuddered through her, but she forced her trembling body to move. One step, then another, until she came to the first attendant lying so still against the marble wall. A painting, of, oddly enough, peacocks wandering in the palace gardens, had fallen and crashed onto the floor near the man, luckily missing his head. Or maybe it had fallen first, then he. She didn’t know, and she didn’t need to know.
She needed to run.
No weapons anywhere in sight, not that she wanted to use them, but if she had to defend herself, she would. Daniel had taught her basic sword fighting during the hours she’d escaped her guards and met him at his forge.
Daniel, again. Always hiding in her mind, a ghost haunting both her dreams and her waking mind. The memory of his bare, muscled arms gleaming in the reflected light of the fire as he worked on one of his commissions caused her breath to hitch a little. The blacksmith and the lady. So impossible.
No time for memories. The shouting voices were coming closer. She’d always been fast. She would run so far they’d never find her. To the portal and even beyond. She slipped through the doorway that she remembered entering on that last, horrible day, saw the sunlight from windows down the hall, and nearly fell down to her knees from pure joy. But it was too late to run, the door at the end of the hall was opening, so she ducked behind a column and called on Poseidon to hide her from her enemies. And, even more important, to hide her from anyone who wanted to be her friend.
Or—worse—her husband.
High Prince Conlan made it to the Maidens’ Chamber close on the heels of the priest running flat out in front of him, because he flew there in mist form and didn’t bother with walking until he hit the doorway.
“Tell me,” he demanded, knowing the priest, too, had felt the massive power surge, unlike anything Conlan had ever experienced in Atlantis.
“You know the gem from Poseidon’s trident, the Emperor, controls the stasis pods,” the man told him, stumbling over the words. “It has been erratic lately. Causing some sort of magical stuttering in the connection to the maidens.”
Conlan managed not to slice skin off the man’s hide with a blistering reply, but he had little patience these days for people wasting his time by repeating what he already knew.
“What I know is that you have five seconds to explain what just happened, or find someone else who can.” Conlan strode past the man and into the main chamber, pausing at the threshold at the sight of shards of crystal littering the floor and fallen attendants lying scattered, like discarded dolls flung by a careless child.
“Poseidon’s balls. What in the nine hells happened here?” He didn’t stop for the priest’s reply, but crouched down by the first fallen attendant, checking for a pulse. The man turned his face and opened his eyes, blinking in confusion.
“What happened?” His eyes widened and he tried to push himself upright. “Your Highness.”
Conlan recognized Horace, the chief attendant. “Rest a minute, but tell me what happened while I check on these others.”
Horace nodded but then shook his head and scrambled to his feet to follow Conlan. “Yes, sire. I mean, no, I have to check on the maidens.”
Both of the other attendants, two women Conlan recognized by face only, were already stirring, so he turned to the priest who was still standing in the doorway, wringing his hands. Conlan narrowed his eyes. He needed to talk to Alaric about his choice of acolytes. This one was useless.
“You,” he snapped. “Get the healers over here. Now.”
The priest bobbed his head and then, backing out and doing a bizarre sort of dancing bow, turned and ran for help. Conlan shook his head in disgust. Damn Alaric anyway. The high priest should be here to help him with this, not off in North America somewhere pining over Quinn.
Horace was bent over one of the crystal stasis cases, his hands splayed on the surface, his eyes closed, perfectly still, but Conlan could feel the power humming from whatever the chief attendant was doing.
“She’s fine,” Horace said, opening his eyes and sighing. “I’ll check the others.”
Conlan nodded and headed for the case that clearly wasn’t fine. The case he’d s
tared into with mixed portions of anticipation and dismay on many occasions throughout his life. The case that had held the incredibly beautiful woman who once was to have been his wife and the future queen of Atlantis.
Except it was empty. Shattered. Clearly the explosion of crystal had originated here.
He spoke out loud the words he couldn’t quite believe. “She’s gone. Serai is missing.”
Serai, still crouching down in hiding, heard the voice she’d once anticipated with such fear and longing. It was him. The high prince. The one who’d been destined to marry her. The one who’d abandoned her for the charms of a human woman, according to the attendants and their gossip.
She hated him. Not that she’d ever wanted to marry a man she didn’t know and could never love. No, she despised High Prince Pretty Boy Conlan because he wasn’t Daniel, and because he’d been her chance for freedom and he’d left her to rot.
Enough woolgathering. Conlan had called for healers. More people would be coming. And Poseidon only knew where High Priest Alaric was—if he appeared, her brief moment of freedom would be over. The high priest terrified her.
It was time to run, and she knew exactly where to go. The portal and then the surface. The Emperor’s unique magic had fed knowledge of the outside world and of Atlantis to her and the other maidens for all these years. She could hide there; she would be inconspicuous and fit in—just another human woman, not a discarded Atlantean queen-to-be. She knew the languages. She could speak modern slang, even.
“Groovy,” she whispered. “That’s a bitchin’ idea.”
And then she picked up the hem of her skirt and ran.
Chapter 3
Reflecting Pool, Washington Monument, Washington, D.C.
Daniel walked into the water in the cool pearly light of impending dawn. It had been water that separated him from Serai, after all, and it only seemed fitting that water stand guard and witness over him at the time of the true death. The few people he could see were jogging, that peculiar human preoccupation with spending hundreds of dollars on shoes and clothing to drive their cars for an hour, so they could run for five minutes.
