"Probably. Unrelated. Sacred vow, insanity, destroy Atlantis, but it's okay, probably unrelated," she muttered, stalking off toward the beach. "Get me out of here, Alaric."
"We don't have to leave now. I refuse to take you anywhere until we talk this out," he commanded, following her.
Unfortunately, the irritating woman didn't respond at all well to commands.
"Get. Me. Out. Of. Here," she said, enunciating each word as if slicing it with a dagger. "Also, don't touch me again. Not now, not ever. Or at least not until your people don't need you anymore, and you're old and gray and retired."
He strode ahead of her to hold a low-hanging palm frond out of her way before she marched right into it, and she stopped and poked a finger into his chest.
"Except that won't happen. You won't get old and gray. I'll get old and gray, if I live that long, which I probably won't, and you'll still be young and beautiful and hot and sexy, and I can never kiss you again, and you made me want what I can't have, and right now I kind of hate you for it." She finally stopped to draw breath. "And--and--put your shirt on!"
He watched her stalk off down the beach, completely unable to think of a thing to say that would fix everything and get them back to the part where she was kissing him. The faint tingle of magic behind him alerted him to the portal, and he whirled around to see the high prince himself step out onto the sand.
Conlan looked at Alaric and then at Quinn's departing figure, and then he whistled. "What did you do to my sister-in-law? Riley only stomps off like that when she'd rather be punching me."
"I only wish she would strike me," Alaric said glumly. "I fear this problem is far too big for that."
"How bad can it be? At least you didn't threaten to abdicate the throne for her," joked Conlan, who had done just that for Riley, Quinn's sister.
"Worse. I threatened to break my vows to Poseidon."
Conlan's eyes widened. "You're willing to trust that Keely is right about your magic?"
"What choice do I have? I petitioned Poseidon, over and over, and he refuses to answer. I petitioned the Elders, and they tell me exactly what they always have: if I 'succumb to fleshly evils,' I will lose all of my power. I can believe them and spend the rest of my life alone, or I can believe Keely and Serai are right and claim Quinn for mine." Alaric smashed an extra-large energy sphere into the sand in front of him out of pure frustration.
"Serai?" Conlan raised an eyebrow.
Alaric filled him in on what Serai had told him.
"Quinn doesn't seem to be in the mood to risk your future," Conlan observed, as Quinn flopped down on the sand, with her back pointedly toward them.
"Quinn needs to be convinced," Alaric growled. "I can best do that in Atlantis."
"I can't influence you on this, I know, without the utmost hypocrisy, but I'm worried about the repercussions, too. I can't imagine you as anything other than the high priest of Atlantis, and there's the little matter of how in the nine hells we're going to retrieve Poseidon's Pride if you can no longer touch it," Conlan said, his face somber.
"That, as always, is the ultimate truth," Alaric said, clenching his hands into fists. "My duty must always come before anything else."
"Now that we've figured out your love life, or lack thereof," Conlan said, smiling ruefully as if to let Alaric know he shared his dismay, "what else is new?"
Alaric smacked himself in the forehead, and Conlan's mouth fell open.
"I don't believe I've ever seen you do anything so uncontrolled in your life," the prince said.
"My life is so far out of my control right now, I don't even recognize it." Alaric smashed another energy ball into the sand next to the intricate glass sculpture the first had formed. "The most important thing of all, and I'm only now mentioning it. My apologies."
"Mentioning what?" Conlan said with elaborate patience.
"There is a pretender to the throne. He calls himself Ptolemy Reborn and claims to be descended from Alexander the Great. He stole Poseidon's Pride, and he plans to crown himself king of Atlantis."
Conlan blinked once and then bared his teeth in a grim parody of a smile. "This? This I think we'd better sit down for."
Quinn didn't need much persuading to go to Atlantis. She'd been anticipating this moment since she first learned her sister was in love with the Atlantean high prince. Plus, she had a tiny nephew she was dying to meet. She'd ignore the insane high priest and his magic-giving-up lunacy for as long as necessary, and then she'd escape and make her way to New York, hope Ptolemy was still there, and confront him. Or else find a way to go get him. It was a plan.
Not a good plan, or even much of a plan at all, but it was a start. If her heart would only stop aching so much at the thought of it.
She stepped into the portal again, wondering how many trips through a magic doorway it took before a person became blase about it. Whatever that number was, she hadn't reached it yet. Maybe she never would. She certainly didn't anticipate traveling to Atlantis very often, in what was left of her sure-to-be short life.
The magic doorway deposited her on a grassy space, and remembering Noriko, she turned around to face the shining oval. "Thank you for the transportation, and for not dropping me to my death in that tornado. I appreciate it."
The armed guards standing in a loose semicircle around the space stared at her with varying expressions of amusement, until the portal flashed with a brilliant blue light and a deep male voice emanating from the center replied.
"You're welcome."
Then the guards' expressions changed to astonishment, and it was Quinn's turn to be amused.
"It never hurts to be polite," she said loftily to the one who looked like he was in charge.
He bowed, a grin quirking at the edges of his lips. "Yes, my lady."
"I wondered about that," Alaric said, but he tightened his lips against saying anything further when she deliberately turned away from him and toward Conlan, who was staring at the portal with slightly widened eyes.
"So is this it? Is this the famous . . . oh. Oh, holy cow." She stopped talking; she almost stopped breathing, as she looked up and up at the crystalline structure curving gently above her head. The dome. It was really true.
A scattering of twinkling lights swam past the outside of the surface of the dome nearest her, and she walked closer, fascinated, until she was close enough to realize they had done just that--swum by--because it was a school of some kind of tiny iridescent fish whose bellies lit up like Christmas lights. It was beautiful and breathtaking, and Quinn finally allowed herself to calm down and simply enjoy the moment.
When she slowly turned away from the fish, and looked up, she realized that the twilit sky inside the dome sparkled with starlight, but in patterns she didn't recognize.
"Are they representations of constellations you saw before? Back when Atlantis was still on the surface like the rest of the continents?"
Conlan nodded. "Yes. It's a self-perpetuating magic, created more than eleven thousand years ago. We understand the stars have shifted since then."
"And of course you're here in the Bermuda Triangle, which might affect any stars you see, too, right?"
"Yes, but we hope that changes when we rise and take our place on the surface again. We believe the magic required to sustain and hide us so far beneath the waves is what causes the temporal disturbances above."
She didn't even want to tackle that. Sounded like physics or science fiction, and she was too tired for either. In the meantime, she'd noticed something else.
"There's no moon."
Alaric shook his head. "No. Never a moon. An oversight or deliberate, we don't know."
She turned to look at him and was nearly undone by the sadness in his eyes. He was caught on the horns of a terrible dilemma, and she didn't want to be part of his downfall. Couldn't be. Couldn't watch him turn bitter with despair, as his inability to help his people ate at his soul.
She knew that kind of despair, up close and personal. She w
ould never willingly cause it in another. Especially not Alaric. Never him.
So instead she pasted a happy smile on her face. "Now I think it's time I meet my nephew, don't you?"
Conlan grinned. "He will steal your heart and drool all over your shoulder. I'm just warning you in advance. This teething thing is a barnacle."
She laughed. "A barnacle? We say something difficult is a bear."
"I know, but it doesn't make any sense. Bears are fluffy things that roam. Barnacles are hateful creatures that stubbornly stick around for far longer than you want them." The prince ran a hand through his hair, and she was suddenly struck by his resemblance to his brother Ven.
Her nephew would look like these men, tall and dark and classically gorgeous, and look like a Dawson, too. She wondered if he had Riley's deep ocean blue eyes or her own dark ones, maybe. If he had golden curls like his mom, or Conlan's dark beauty.
She quickened her pace. "You have a point about barnacles. I think I'll use that expression from now on. But can we hurry, um, Your Highness? I haven't seen Riley in far too long."
Conlan laughed again and slung a companionable arm around her shoulder. "Hey, none of that. We're family now."
Family. Atlantis. The myths just kept coming and coming.
Chapter 10
As they walked through fantastical gardens whose flowers shone and sparkled in the magical starlight, Quinn stared around like a country bumpkin gone to visit her city cousins. The scents of the flowers jumbled together in a delicious blend of aromas so wonderful she almost wished she were a perfume maker.
"That--is that a cousin to a daisy?" She pointed at a blossom fully three feet across, with a deep purple center and fuchsia petals. "It's like I've walked into a Dr. Seuss book."
"Riley said exactly that," Conlan said. "She bought the entire collection for Aidan, so I could see what she meant. You'd almost think the author had been Atlantean."
"If I see any talking elephants, I'm running for cover," she warned, and he laughed.
Alaric, walking silently beside her, said nothing, but his face grew darker and darker, as if he had little or no patience for light chatter about flowers and books. Considering the sword that had been hanging over his head for centuries, it wasn't surprising.
She had to put it out of her mind, at least for a while, though, or she'd go crazy. She focused on the incredible garden, pretending she was just an ordinary woman enjoying the beauty of the night-drenched view.
When they walked out from beneath the canopy of a bower of silver-leaved trees, she looked up and actually gasped. "Wow. Just wow. Cinderella's castle has nothing on this place."
The delicate marble and crystal spires and towers of the palace shone like a jewel box. It was a dream from a fairy tale, and she was walking up to the perfect fantasy of every five-year-old girl on the planet. And with Prince Charming, no less.
She started laughing. Really, what else was a girl do to?
The heavy wooden front doors swung open, and her sister ran out of the palace and flew at Quinn, embracing her in a huge bear hug.
"You came, you finally came," Riley said, both laughing and crying.
Quinn found her own eyes tearing up while she hugged her sister. It had been far too long. Too many duties had kept her from the only family she had left in the world.
"I missed you so much," she whispered.
Riley sniffled. "Too much for too long, crazy girl. Enough of this Quinn the Terminator crap. Get in here and be Auntie Quinn for a while."
Quinn shot a look at Alaric over her sister's shoulder, and the grim understanding in his face almost undid her. She might have nothing left to her except to be Auntie Quinn.
Could she live with that?
She might have to find out.
"We have a lot to tell you," she said, the full weight of Ptolemy's claims and actions settling back down on her shoulders. "None of it good. But first, let me meet my gorgeous nephew."
They left the men behind, to Quinn's relief, and Riley led her through rooms and hallways and past people dressed in flowing clothes that seemed to belong in a fairy tale. Riley kept up a running commentary, but Quinn gave up trying to remember it all after the third or fourth "this is the way to the breakfast kitchen" or "this is the warriors' wing" or "the household staff lives down this way."
"You have become somebody who has household staff," Quinn marveled. "Who would have thought?"
Riley stopped short and turned around, an embarrassed smile on her face. Her dark blue eyes flashed with amusement, and she sent a powerful blast of embarrassed resignation through their shared emotional connection. "I know, it's ridiculous, right? But what was I going to do? It came with Conlan, kind of a package deal."
"Prince Charming," Quinn drawled. "Does that make you Sleeping Beauty?"
"No, that was Serai. I think more like Cinderella. Not that we lived in ashes, but you know what I mean. It's a long way from the life of a struggling social worker to life in a palace on a mythological lost continent."
"Mom would have loved it. Remember all those stories she told us?"
They shared a moment of sad fondness for the woman they'd lost too early, and then Riley took off again, her cloud of red-gold hair flashing. "Come on. Aidan should be awake by now."
"Isn't it bedtime? Not that I know anything about babies."
"No, he has an after-dinner nap, and then he's awake for a while and goes back to sleep around ten," Riley said, racing down a hallway lined with tapestry-covered walls.
Quinn was no expert, but she thought the tapestries looked old and intricate enough to belong in a museum. Which was funny, considering that the entire place belonged in a museum of antiquities. Every archaeologist and anthropologist on the planet was going to wet his or her pants when word got out about this place.
Up one final staircase, and Riley flung open two ornately carved doors to an enormous room that looked like it belonged in a magazine. Gorgeous carved woods, silver and crystal accessories, and rich, lush fabrics combined to make the room a showplace.
A thin wail coming from a round white wicker bassinet in the center of the room alerted them to the occupant's state of mind.
"He's up, and he's mad. I'm supposed to be right there when he wakes up," Riley said, smiling. "His 'prince of the manor' arrogance showing up early, I guess."
Quinn eagerly followed her and was rewarded by an armload of warm, squirmy, angry baby being thrust into her arms.
"Meet your auntie Quinn while I get a diaper, kid," Riley advised her son, before disappearing into another room.
Baby and rebel leader stared at each other with matching expressions of total surprise. The baby's emotions pulsed strongly, wrapping themselves around her in a cocoon of love and contentment. This child was loved, and he knew it. His innocence and purity shone like a beacon, and underneath both there was something else--something more. A strength and self-possession that was unbelievably powerful in such a tiny baby.
"Oh, boy," Quinn whispered. "Welcome to the world, Aidan. You are destined for great things, my sweet nephew."
He grinned up at her, gums flashing, and Quinn realized she'd just fallen hopelessly in love for the second time in one day.
Conlan and Alaric headed for the war room, bypassing Conlan's fancy and rarely used throne room on the way.
"Do you want me to tell you now or wait till everyone is gathered?"
"Most of them aren't even here," Conlan said. "Ven returned several hours ago, but Erin was in some kind of trouble in Seattle with her witch's coven, so he portaled out of here after telling me cryptically, 'We've got big trouble, bro.'"
"He's not wrong," Alaric said grimly.
"Justice is here. I'll call him." Conlan didn't even pause, but Alaric knew he'd sent out a call on the Atlantean shared mental pathway to his half brother, the only Atlantean in the royal family who was also descended from the ancient race of Nereids.
Complicated family tree in the Atlantean royal house.
r /> Justice arrived at the war room seconds before them, and he held open the door. His long blue braid reached his waist and almost covered the broad battle sword sheathed on his back. He was wearing fighting leathers, as usual.
"No more guards?" Alaric said, surprised to see the change.
Conlan's face hardened. "It was a waste of resources. Anybody who infiltrates the palace will go for Riley or the baby, not a stuffy roomful of old scrolls and maps."
Justice snarled out an Atlantean curse. "If any should try to harm the prince or your lady, we will personally deliver him to you. In several trips."
At the sound of the plural we, Alaric sent out a subtle mental touch, to discover if Justice were still walking on stable mental ground. He was relieved to find that all was well.
Justice grinned at him. "I was talking about we, the warriors, not we, the two halves of my dual soul, priest, but thank you for your concern for my welfare."
Alaric couldn't get over the change in the man since he'd found Keely and their adopted Guatemalan daughter, Eleni. Justice had always been hard, vicious, and almost terrifying. He was still all of those things, when battle called for it, but he had somehow found the ability to laugh, too.
Conlan led the way to the scarred wooden table that had seen countless war councils for thousands of years. He pulled out a chair and sat heavily.
"Here we go again," Conlan said wearily. "I'm more and more tired of being high prince some days."
Alaric took the chair opposite the prince, and Justice leaned against a wall.
Alaric glanced at them both in turn. "Well, then, you will be delighted to hear that there is a man on the surface who has just declared to the world that he is the rightful king of Atlantis."
He leaned back in his chair and waited for the explosion.
It didn't take long.
Conlan smashed his fist on the table. "You need to explain this now. It took everything I had to wait this long to hear the story behind what you told me on the beach, but I did not wish to ruin my wife's sister's first visit to Atlantis so soon. I also wonder why my brother didn't tell me this. Did he know?"
"He knew, but you said Erin was in danger. He had to go to her. None of us would have done differently, and you know it," Alaric pointed out. "Also, Quinn is in the middle of all of this, and she will not appreciate being treated as a helpless female who needs to be shielded from plans."