Atlantis Betrayed

“Yes, he was an illusion,” the Fae repeated, mocking them. “But this isn’t.”

He yanked Evan up off the floor with one hand and brutally jerked the shifter’s head up at a painful angle. Then he leaned forward until their faces were almost touching and he . . . inhaled.

That was all. He inhaled. Nothing more, and yet Evan began to scream and fight even harder than he had before, to get away. Christophe pulled his daggers, but the Fae pointed a single finger at Fiona, and the shifters attacked. The three were pure, single-minded, deadly determination in their enthralled state, and it took everything Christophe had to fight them off. By the time he’d killed the third, Gideon na Feransel was dropping the husk of Evan’s drained body on the floor.

That single action caught at something in Christophe’s mind and sliced away all of his years of denial in a single vicious swipe, and the memory played in full, living color.

His mother, her drained body falling to the floor. His father, only a dried-out husk remaining, thudding to the floor.

The same man the cause of all of it.

The same Unseelie Fae.

He turned blind eyes to Fiona, and she caught his arm. “What is it? What’s wrong? What did he do to you?”

“He finally caught on, Lady Fiona,” the Fae said mockingly. “That’s all. He finally remembered that I’m the one who killed his parents.”

* * *

Fiona knelt on the ground, Lucinda dying in her lap, and watched the man she loved shrivel away as if the Fae had drained him instead of Evan. The agonizing memories were too much; she could feel them screaming through his brain, and she wondered how either one of them would survive it.

“That’s it. Fall apart, Atlantean. I need you a bit more malleable,” Gideon said. “Be a good boy and fall asleep again, like you did when you were a sniveling brat all those years ago.” He laughed. “Your parents did taste so delicious. Enough life force to last me for almost a year. You Atlanteans are special. It was your fault, of course.” He stalked closer, but Christophe just stood there, shuddering. “Your fault,” the Fae repeated. “If you hadn’t run away that day; if they hadn’t wasted the time to try to find you, why, they might have escaped. You murdered your own parents, you pathetic, whining brat.”

His eyes shone with a dark and evil glee, and Fiona’s head nearly split with the weight of guilt and pain he was piling on Christophe with his lies and manipulation.

“No!” she screamed in Christophe’s face. “It wasn’t your fault. Don’t let him do this to you, or he wins.”

Christophe slowly raised his ravaged face to meet her gaze, and then, just as slowly, he nodded and spoke inside her mind.

He will never win while you are mine to protect, mi amara.

She could feel the Herculean effort it took as Christophe forcibly pushed his pain and terror aside and locked it into the back of his mind in a box of his own, to deal with later.

Together. We’ll deal with it together, later, she promised him, sending the thought from her mind to his with all of her focus.

But Christophe fell on the ground and huddled in a ball, rocking back and forth, and only the calming feel of his thoughts kept her from believing that he had given up entirely. Hopefully, he had fooled the Fae.

“It’s too late, Fiona,” the Fae said, all false pity and concern. “He’s no good to you. Luckily you have my offer of marriage, even though you’re soiled now. All I need is to lock you in a room for at least half a year, to prove to any naysayers that none of his fucks bore fruit in your delicious body.”

But then na Feransel made his first mistake. He took his eyes off Christophe, just for an instant, so he could leer at Fiona.

An instant was long enough.

Christophe leapt to his feet and shot an energy bolt through the air at the Fae. Power thundered through the room and smashed into Gideon, knocking him through the air and into the wall.

But a heartbeat later, Gideon was back on his feet and hurling his own power at Christophe. Back and forth, first one had the advantage and then the other—it was a towering magical battle between two masters, and all Fiona could do was drag Lucinda over to the wall and hope they didn’t get caught in the cross fire.

It lasted forever, or it ended in mere minutes, she couldn’t tell, but suddenly the door behind Gideon opened again and a shimmer of hot green light poured from it.

“That’s the doorway to the Summer Lands,” Lucinda whispered with the last of her strength. “He has hundreds of Fae warriors standing by in there to crush any support you brought with you.”

“That’s the Summer Lands? Not here?” Fiona suddenly had hope and for nearly five entire seconds she held on to the vision of Hopkins and the Atlanteans saving the day. But then her vision turned to a far different one as she saw the many dark forms crowding the doorway to the Summer Lands. In this new vision, the Fae warriors swarmed out of that door and killed them all, leaving Gideon no reason to release her brother.

She called out, and both Christophe and Gideon paused, restraining their power while they turned their attention to her.

“Willingly spoken, is that correct?”

Christophe saw it in her eyes or felt it in her soul before she even spoke the words, and he shouted a denial, but it was too late.

“I willingly go with you, Gideon na Feransel, in return for the lives of my brother and this shifter, Lucinda.”

“Willingly spoken and done,” Gideon said triumphantly.

Before Christophe could stop him, the Fae raised both hands and a sweep of power pushed through the room, overpowering everything and everyone it its way.

“No,” Christophe said, and his anguish at what she knew he thought of as her betrayal pierced the fragments that were left of her heart.

Then the room faded to a welcoming black.

Chapter 38

Christophe woke when a massive aquamarine smashed into the side of his head.

He’d been woken up in worse ways. He closed his eyes again.

Then the reality of what had just happened caught up with his dazed and battered mind, and he changed his mind. This was the worst, ever.

Fiona had willingly given herself to the Fae. There was almost nothing he could do about it. He was tapped out of magic, trapped in the Summer Lands—and, most likely, the Unseelie Court itself, the center and source of this Fae prince’s power—and the woman he loved more than his own life had just surrendered herself to the same monster who had murdered Christophe’s parents.

The worst situation of his life, perhaps, but there had to be a way to win. There was always a way.

Gideon na Feransel was going to die.

All of that analysis ran through his mind in the few seconds before he opened his eyes. He then sat up and retrieved the gem that had woken him so unpleasantly. He held it up in the air and scanned the area. Rock walls. Rock floor. Light from some unknown source. A cave?

“Thank you. I’ve been looking for this. Telios was just a frame?”

Gideon’s voice sounded in the chamber, but Christophe couldn’t see him. More tricks of illusion. “Telios was a tool for me to use, who unfortunately learned secrets he should not have tried to wield. He enthralled the shifters in the Tower Guard, stole the sword, and then killed them and blamed it on the Scarlet Ninja. Our lovely Fiona will be hanging up that particular outfit from now on, by the way, unless she wants to play dress-up for me.”

Christophe snarled and leapt to his feet, still clutching the Siren. “Where is she? If you’ve hurt her, you bastard, I’ll cut your dick off and feed it to you.”

“So violent. Why would I possibly hurt the mother of my future children?”

Christophe didn’t understand that, either. The Fae were big on purity of the race and all that. Sort of like the