Heart of Atlantis

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.

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.”

Conlan blew out a deep breath but then nodded.

“She knows this, though, and I don’t. Tell me. Everything.”

The door slammed open, and Ven ran into the room. “Sorry I’m late. Got held up. Erin is going to put me in an early grave.”

Erin, walking in behind him, rolled her eyes. “I’m the most powerful witch in my coven. If I can’t handle a little uprising from black magic wannabes, I deserve to be stripped of my wand.”

“I thought you said wands were for Harry Potter,” Justice said, tilting his head.

She grinned at him. “Figure of speech. ‘Stripped of my wand’ just sounds cooler than ‘stripped of my elemental magic and the Wilding,’ right?”

Conlan glared at all of them. “Can we focus? Now? Please? Consider this a royal decree, if that helps.” He pointed at Ven. “You and I will discuss your lack of communication skills later.”

Ven snorted and flung himself into an upholstered chair near the table, one long leg draped over the arm. Alaric told them everything. Everything about Ptolemy Reborn, the attack in Japan—all of it. Except for what had occurred between him and Quinn on the island, of course. Some things were meant to be private.

Conlan sat back in his chair, stunned, when Alaric finished his recitation. “The portal is alive? We guessed it had some form of sentience, but this is . . . surprising, to say the least. And now apparently the portal spirit is male, not female, if the voice we heard when Quinn spoke to it is an indicator.”

“I think we have no time to concern ourselves with the portal just now,” Alaric said.

“Yeah. It’s worse than even you know. That blast, Alaric? The one Ptolemy blew up the hotel with? News reports are saying that the king of Atlantis announced his presence in the world by killing seventeen people,” Ven said grimly. “Those Platoists and a few of the hotel staff.”

Conlan’s face turned to stone. “I have been preparing the way for Atlantis’s arrival on the surface for months. Foreign dignitaries, heads of state, all of it ruined by this impostor.”

Alaric’s fury rose up inside him with the force of a typhoon over open ocean. “Yes,” he snarled. “We wouldn’t want the deaths of a few innocent humans to get in the way of politics.”

“You know I don’t mean that,” Conlan shouted at him. “How long have you battled beside me? Has anything ever gotten in my way when it comes to protecting humanity? I take my oath as a Warrior of Poseidon very seriously and you should know that.”

“He has Poseidon’s Pride, Conlan,” Alaric said quietly. “He’s able to use it. And it gets even worse. I think he might be demon kin.”

“Yeah, demon kin, whatever,” Ven threw in. “You want worse? Anubisa is back. Archelaus wasn’t just slinging rumors. She walked into the Primus today and destroyed every vampire member of Congress in one fell swoop. Told the humans who happened to be there to pass along the word that no vampire in the world was safe until they delivered the heads of the Atlantean royal family to her on a plate.”

“She has always had a flair for drama,” Alaric observed, mostly to give Conlan a chance to regain his composure. Anubisa, the vampire goddess, had held Conlan captive and tortured him for seven long years before he’ escaped. Alaric thought that a bit of madness still lurked in Conlan’s mind from the ordeal. How could it not?

“Good. Maybe she’ll kill Ptolemy for us,” Ven said.

“Why would she go after the vampires, though, is what I don’t understand,” Erin said. “They’re her progeny, right? Why not threaten to kill humans instead?”

“Humans don’t have the juice to find us,” Conlan answered. “She knows every blood pride in the world will be after us now. One of them is bound to get lucky.”

“Yeah, and we have an answer to your flying monkeys, too,” Ven said. “Shape-shifter communities are going wild all over the world. Losing any vestige of civilization and turning feral. Interestingly enough, all of this started within a day of when those scientists in Turkey found Poseidon’s Pride. The jewel must be driving them nuts somehow.”

“The Trident may act as a stabilizing influence on its raw power,” Alaric said.

“Which is why you need to go find it,” Conlan said. “Take Ven, take everybody you need. I’d go, but I’m going to have to do a lot of damage control right now. When you find the bastard, call me, though. I’d love to face this man who would be king.”

Alaric defied his prince only rarely.

This would be one of those times.

“I will not leave Quinn. Didn’t you hear what I told you? He announced her identity to the world. Every vampire, rogue shifter, and any of a dozen other shapes and sizes of big and bad will be after her.” Alaric called to his magic until his body glowed bright blue-green from head to toe and he held so much power inside him that one simple flick of his fingers could have leveled the palace. “I will never leave her side, or allow her to be in danger again.”

“She’s safe in Atlantis, and you know it. No vampire or shifter can enter through the portal,” Conlan said calmly. “And turn down the lights, my friend. We get that you’re scary. We get that you have an insanely overprotective need to make sure Quinn is safe. We’ll find a way, but we have to stop this man, or demon, or whatever in the nine hells he is. Now.”

A quiet voice came from the doorway, and they all turned to see Quinn standing at the open door, sheer rage stamped on her delicate features. “Perhaps the next time you decide to discuss my future, you might remember to include me in the discussion. Especially when the future of the whole damned world is at stake.”