She got in the way of a vampire.”
Daniel stopped eating and rested his fork on his plate, then respectfully nodded his head to June. “I am sorry for your loss.”
Serai was impressed with the woman’s dignified demeanor. Not a hint of anger toward Daniel showed in her expression or manner.
“I thank you for that, but you should know that I don’t blame you for what happened to my mama any more than I blame Jack for what happened to my uncle or, for that matter, blame Quinn for what humans have done wrong in the world,” June said with quiet dignity. “There’s just no accounting for evil and meanness, and we can’t judge a species by a few bad apples.”
“You are truly wise, Lady June,” Serai said, handing her plate to Daniel and standing up to curtsy to the woman and give honor to those she had lost. “May the oceans of your ancestors bless and protect you and your family.”
June wiped tears from her cheeks and enfolded Serai in a huge hug.
“Oh, bless your heart, honey.” She patted Serai’s back and then let her go before pointing at Daniel. “You take care of this nice girl or you’ll be hearing from me, young man.”
Daniel nodded gravely, although Serai saw a hint of a smile playing around his lips, probably at being called “young man” by this youngling who’d only lived a handful of decades. “I promise I will.”
June bustled off, and Serai resumed her seat and her exploration of the fruit that was so like and yet unlike Atlantean blushberries. She held the large, ripe, red fruit up and raised an eyebrow.
“Strawberry,” Daniel said. “How’s your stomach doing?”
“So far, so good.” She took a bite of the strawberry, almost humming with happiness as the fruit’s sweet and tart taste exploded on her tongue. Just for a short while, sitting here and eating what was quite like a picnic back home, she could almost forget the danger she and the others faced. She could almost be an ordinary woman, not a freak conjured by magic and the dictates of an ancient society’s breeding program. Right at that moment, she thought she would be perfectly happy to never, ever step foot in Atlantis again.
Naturally, that’s when the Atlantean warrior raced into the cave and, taking in the room at a glance, leapt across the floor toward Daniel, drawing a lethal-looking sword as he came.
“If you hurt her, I will end you, vampire,” the warrior shouted.
Faster than thought itself, Daniel was up and off the floor, blocking Serai from the madman. Daniel had drawn his daggers, but she’d seen sword against daggers when Atlantis was attacked, and she never wanted to see it again. Especially not when Daniel was the one with only the daggers.
But before she could even scream, it was over. In midair, Daniel twisted and ducked under the warrior’s sword arm and disarmed him, and then slammed his elbow into the man’s face on the way down. She’d been right, she saw, staring down at his unconscious face on the floor at her feet. She hadn’t mistaken those features. He was clearly and classically an Atlantean warrior, and he’d hit the ground so hard the dust he’d displaced was still settling on and around him.
She looked at his body for the distinguishing mark of the elite Warriors of Poseidon, but he was fully covered, not even his arms bared, and the mark was rarely found on a warrior’s hand . . .
She froze, and the scream she’d bottled up earlier found its way out of her throat. She screamed again and pointed, and only when she realized that Quinn was staring at her like she was a lunatic did she stop and manage to speak.
“Why, Daniel? Why did you do it?”
Daniel’s dark brows drew together as he looked from her to the fallen warrior. “Why? Did you know him? He’s fine. He’ll be awake in a few minutes.”
She backed away, fighting the waves of dizziness that threatened to claim her. “No,” she cried, shaking her head back and forth and pointing at the unmistakable evidence. “No, no, no, no. Why did you have to cut off his hand?”
Impossibly, cruelly, hideously, Daniel began to laugh. “Serai, you don’t understand.”
Serai didn’t want to understand a world where a man she thought she loved laughed at dismembering his foes. Instead, she ran, pushing past a startled-looking Quinn. She ran, escaping all of them, out into the bright sunlight, where neither shadows nor vampires could follow.
Chapter 8
Conlan looked around at his family and wondered how to begin a conversation that would almost certainly explode into a battle, right there in the middle of the flowering bushes and blooming trees. Not exactly a typical battle scene, by any measure. His wife and he didn’t exactly see eye to eye on the issue of the maidens in stasis.
Actually, it was more a matter of degree. He wanted to find a way to release them. She wanted to find a way to release them—yesterday.
His brother, by title the King’s Vengeance, and by reality the high prince’s chief pain in the ass, solved the problem for him.
“So,” Ven said, lounging on a marble bench next to the fountain. “This is a cluster, uh,” he cast a quick glance at his consort, Erin, a very powerful human witch with little tolerance for profanity, “cluster futz of royal proportions.”
Lord Justice, Conlan’s other brother, laughed. Technically Justice was Conlan and Ven’s half brother, but nobody set store by that. He sat on the ground with his back leaning against his consort, the human archaeologist and object reader Keely. “That’s one way to put it. Does anybody know what happened? For example, how Serai got out, where she went, or what in the nine hells is going on?”
Conlan’s wife, Riley, high princess of Atlantis and former human social worker, shook her head. The sight of her glorious wealth of red-gold hair flying in the slight breeze reminded Conlan of what they’d been doing with and to each other during one of their infant son’s increasingly rare naps, before the crisis in the temple occurred.
Not that this was the time to think of sex. Not even earthshatteringly good sex. Though Riley’s eyes were flashing with so much anger he doubted he’d get to do much more than think about sex for quite a while.
“I told you we needed to release them from that impossibly cruel prison,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get the elders to move their venerable asses on this subject since I first came to this archaic, chauvinistic, sorry excuse for a society.”
“You love it here,” he said mildly, knowing he was right.
She looked around, her gaze lingering on the flowers and fountains before moving to the delicate crystal- and-marble curves of the palace towers and spires. “Yes, I do. Except for this. Conlan, it’s wrong to keep women imprisoned like prized heifers at the county fair for an ancient idea of a breeding program. You know it, I know it, and—”
“Virginsicles,” Keely interjected, a dark look on her face. Justice wrapped an arm around her legs and glanced up at her. He never let the stunning redhead get far from him, since her love was the only thing that had ever been able to help him control his dual nature.
Keely almost absently smoothed a strand of Justice’s long blue hair off her pants leg and then scowled at Conlan. “I call them the virgin popsicles. Frozen in that damn stasis until they get to be released to be bedded and bred.”
“Trust an archaeologist to be blunt,” Ven drawled.
Erin lightly smacked Ven on the back of head. “She’s right.”
“I know she’s right. I didn’t say she wasn’t right, just that she was blunt,” Ven said. “Also, ow.”
Conlan felt like he was rapidly losing any slight bit of control he’d had over the meeting. He should have called them to the war room. He felt he had at least some semblance of control—or the illusion of it—over his opinionated family members there.
“We’ve been trying. You know we’ve been trying,” he told them all, but he was looking right at Riley. “The last time the priests and mages were able to release one of the maidens from stasis was when they freed my
