We can. We’ll rest for the day and find the Emperor tonight.”
“If it’s still here to be found,” he said grimly. “We don’t know when they’re going to move it, Serai. We need to contact Ven and Conlan, now. Too much—too many lives—depend on us finding that stone for us to wait a single minute longer.”
She sighed and moved away from him, saying nothing, but she raised her face to the sky and closed her eyes. A long moment later, she inhaled sharply and opened her eyes.
“There’s no response. They’re gone.”
“That’s impossible. They wouldn’t have just left, not with the Emperor lost and your life and those other women’s lives on the line. Try again.”
She did, but then shook her head. This time she looked a little frightened. “They’re gone, Daniel. Either dead or gone back to Atlantis, or somewhere else that is far out of my range.”
“What is your range?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps a thousand miles, in current measurements? More or less.”
“That’s pretty impressive. And you’re sure? Absolutely sure?”
“Yes. There is nothing. It’s different from Reisen; I can feel his presence but he won’t answer or has his mental communication pathway shut to all messages, not just mine. But there is no trace of Conlan, Ven, or the Nereid at all.”
Daniel put his arms around her and pulled her close, unable to resist comforting her.
“I can call the portal, if you’re sure we need them,” she murmured, her breath warm against his neck.
He tried very hard to concentrate on facts and the mission at hand, but the reality of her soft warmth against his body was knocking all of his brain cells out of his head as his blood rushed south.
“Portal?” He kissed her cheek, and her nose, and her other cheek, before taking her mouth. Heat rushed through him, a conflagration so intense he almost thought he had been caught in the sun, from her touch and the way she responded to him.
“Sun. Need to get out of the open,” he managed, when he could make himself stop kissing her. “Can you call the portal from inside the cave?”
“Of course,” she said. “Which cave?”
“There.” He pointed to an opening that nature had carved into the face of the rock wall curving away from them on the left, and the rough stone footholds that the Sinagua had added centuries ago to nature’s handiwork. “Can you climb that?”
She flashed a wicked grin at him. “Of course. Especially now, with your magical blood inside me.”
He didn’t have time to think of any coherent response to that before she was racing across the ground and then almost flying up the stairs to the cave. At the top, she turned and looked at him, still standing where she’d left him.
“Coming or not?”
Drops of water splashed on his head, and he turned his face up to the sky, welcoming the first rain they’d had since beginning the quest. Morning showers didn’t last long in Sedona this time of year, he’d noticed, and he should take advantage of this one. He flew up to the cave, not bothering with the stairs, and immediately pulled the empty water bottles out of the pack, uncapped them, and set them on the ledge.
“Luckily they have wide mouths. They should fill easily enough,” he said. “Thankfully it’s finally raining. We were out of water.”
Serai looked at him, then up at the sky, and then down at the water bottles. Then she leaned against the wall of the cave and started laughing.
“Are you losing touch with reality?” he asked cautiously. “I know you’re exhausted, and this is very difficult, and the burden on you—”
“Daniel. You just told me you’re thankful it started raining.”
“Yes.”
“You just told me, one of Poseidon’s own, that you’re thankful it started raining, since we were out of water.”
He was starting to understand, and feeling like an idiot, when she apparently decided he needed visual illustrations. She waved a hand, and a shimmering silver curtain of pounding rain surrounded them—inside of the cave.
Serai gracefully leaned down to take one of the bottles, held it up to the indoor waterfall, and then, once it was full, handed it to Daniel.
“Taste this.”
He drank deeply, and it was the best, purest, sweetest water he’d ever tasted. “Not bad” was all he’d admit, but she laughed at him. Together they filled the rest of the bottles, and then Serai waved her hand once more, and the indoor rain stopped, magically leaving the cave completely dry.
“Water is the one thing—the only thing I can think of, to be candid—that we don’t need to worry about,” she said, but her smile faded quickly. “I’ll call the portal, and we’ll find out just what Conlan knew or didn’t know about the Nereid’s attack.”
She raised her hands and softly sang out to call to the portal’s magic, but this time the portal didn’t respond right away.
“Maybe it doesn’t like caves?”
“That has nothing to do with it. I’m so weak, perhaps . . . I’ll try again.” She called again, but still there was no response, so she tried again.
And again.
And again.
Nothing.
The first pale rays of sun were beginning to glow in the air outside, lightening the darkness in the cave, so Daniel could see very clearly when the blood drained out of Serai’s face.
“It’s a test,” she whispered. “It’s a test, and I have to pass it or we all die.”
“Serai, that can’t be true. Why would you be forced to face a test when you’re fresh out of sacrificing millennia of your life for Atlantis?”
She slowly slid down the wall until she collapsed into a ball on the cave floor. “It doesn’t matter what I did before. All that matters is now. The portal—it only ignores a call if assistance is refused.”
“No. Ven and the guys said the portal is capricious. Maybe this is some sort of practical joke, and if you try later—”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I could hear it—hear
He crouched down beside her and took her into his arms. “Never,” he said fiercely. “You will never be alone so long as I draw breath. The portal will have to kill me to take you away from me, and let me tell you, I’m very hard to kill, even for a magic doorway.”
She smiled, only a little, but it was a smile, and even so much courage was enough to take his breath away.
“I need to kiss you now. I need to be inside you. Now. Please,” he said roughly, and he didn’t give her time to answer before he claimed her mouth in a kiss that held every ounce of his desperation that she would live,
“Yes, Daniel,” she said, when he finally allowed her space to breathe. “Yes, I want you, too. I need you, too.”
Serai held out her arms, aware in a place deeper than mere consciousness that she’d accepted more than just a kiss. More than just his body into hers. If they made love again, she was in very real danger of reaching the soul-meld with this man, and he would be bound to her for eternity. Exactly as she hoped. Perhaps not in his plans, however, since he kept telling her she would be better off without him. Was that just a pretty way to say he didn’t want to spend very much time with her?
She closed her eyes, refusing even to consider it. She might not live through another day; worry for the future could certainly wait until later. For now, she had this man in her arms, kissing her, ravishing her with his deep, dangerous kisses.
