Losing Serai . . .
But wait. He tried to focus on Ven’s mouth, which was still moving. Forming words. Important words.
“What? What did you say?” he demanded.
Ven grasped Daniel’s shoulders and shook him a little. “Wake up, my friend. We’re running out of time. You need to make a third blood exchange with Serai, and you’ll both be saved.”
Daniel looked around the circle of people he mostly had dared to think of as friends. “Truly? The third blood bond?”
“Now,” Conlan commanded. “For once in your life, listen to me and do it now.”
“Please,” Tiernan added.
“If it kills her—” he began, but Ven cut him off.
“As opposed to sitting here, waiting for the sun to turn you both into barbecue? Do it
When Daniel still hesitated, afraid of turning Serai into the monster he’d once become and feared more than anything he’d become again, Ven drew one of his daggers.
“Forgive me, Daniel,” he said, and then he quickly grabbed Serai’s hand and drew a line across her palm. Daniel almost didn’t realize what Ven had done until he smelled the rich, warm scent of her blood.
“And you,” Ven said, and almost blindly Daniel held up his own hand. Ven made the same cut, and Daniel gently placed his hand across Serai’s slightly open mouth and lifted her hand to his own. As he drank, too desperate to hope, too terrified to be self-conscious about taking her blood in front of everyone, her lips moved, just a fraction of a movement at first, but then more strongly, as she drank his blood. He felt the pull on his hand and drank more strongly from hers, and the Emperor, lying forgotten between them, suddenly pulsed in a blaze of purple fire.
Serai’s body arched up in his arms, and Daniel cried out as the same pain she was feeling—he could sense her pain, as she could feel his—transformed, magically, miraculously, into restorative healing warmth that flooded from the Emperor into both of them, surrounding them, embracing them, giving them life when they’d faced death.
The tsunami of light went on and on, scouring them inside and out, until he fell back, exhausted, on to the grass, still tightly embracing Serai.
“I see we’re having a party, and you’ve decided to invite some friends,” Serai said, lifting her head from his chest and looking around. “Perhaps next time, you could wait until I’ve had a proper bath and arranged my hair.”
Daniel stared at her, dumbfounded, and when that sexy, seductive, magnificent smile formed on her lips, he knew he truly had died and gone to the most spectacular of all heavens.
“We’re alive?” he asked stupidly.
“We’re alive, and I’m really, really hungry,” she said, and everyone around them started laughing.
But then the sun rose over the horizon, and the first questing rays of light reached them, and the entire world caught on fire.
Chapter 40
Serai was staring up at the sky, reveling in the first rays of the sun, when the Emperor caught fire and exploded into a shimmering dome of light. The stone itself was still whole; she could feel it in her hands, but the searing purple flames shooting from it were like the most magnificent fireworks the fire guild had ever created.
It wasn’t only the Emperor, though. As she looked around, she realized that the Atlanteans had joined hands and were contributing their own magic to support the dome protecting Daniel from the sun. Protecting her.
Saving them all with love and friendship.
But the Emperor told her a secret of its own, whispering to her through its magical resonance: they didn’t need protection.
She and Daniel were now the first two of a new breed of nightwalker; no longer nightwalkers at all. They would be able to walk in the daylight forever more.
“Daniel,” she said. “Do you trust me?”
“Always,” he said instantly.
“We have to walk into the sun.”
Not a flicker of doubt crossed his face. “Yes, except I think we’ll fly.”
She jumped up, strong and whole and sure, and held out her hand. “Now, please.”
He took her into his arms and shot up into the rosy, golden light of the breaking dawn, and together they soared high in the sky, high above the people who loved them and who would wait for them, high above the caves and the darkness and the pain.
The light shimmered on their skin like a caress and they stared at each other in fascinated wonder.
“I have not seen the dawn in eleven thousand years,” Daniel said, his beautiful eyes shining in the sun.
“Nor I,” Serai replied, laughing and crying and kissing him.
“I want to see every single dawn for the next eleven thousand years, with you,” he said, his love and sincerity shining as brightly as the dawn sun itself.
“Well,” she said, after some consideration. “I may want to sleep in once in a while.”
He shouted out his laughter to the morning skies, and then he kissed her so deeply that they were spinning like a deep-sea whirlpool when the kiss ended. As they floated back down to earth, back down to the top of Cathedral Rock, back down to their friends, Daniel embraced her so tightly she almost couldn’t breathe.
“My own Sleeping Beauty is finally awake,” he said.
“And my own Prince Charming woke me with his kiss.”
As they finally touched back down, still lost in a passionate kiss, they became aware of cheering and applause. When they broke the kiss and looked around, Serai’s face flamed red as she realized what a spectacle she’d just made of herself. A proper Atlantean princess would
She cut off the self-criticism, in her father’s words, midthought.
“What the heck,” she said, looking around at everyone and grinning. “I have it on very good authority that I’m a hot chick.”
As if in response to her words, the sky split in two, and a whirling torrent of water and power and silvery light burst into the space above them as a voice like thunder tore through the fabric of the world.
All of the Atlanteans bowed deeply, leaving Daniel, his mouth hanging open like a carp’s, staring up at Poseidon. Serai grabbed his hand and pulled him closer to her.
Daniel just blinked. “Is that—are you—”
“Your daughter? I thought that was just a figure of speech,” Daniel muttered, and Serai tried not to laugh.
“It is,” she whispered. “Just listen.”
“Nobody could stop me,” Daniel said, finally bowing.
Poseidon’s booming laugh split the air like a crack of thunder.
An arrow of water and light sliced through the air and slammed into Daniel, knocking him down, and when he stood, his shirt hung in shreds and the brand of the Warriors of Poseidon had been burned into the top right side of his chest. Serai threw herself into his arms, crying and laughing.
