Atlantis Betrayed

brother, was cared for and loved in return by both Declan and Hopkins. He saw the scarlet of excitement and adventure as she took on the persona of the Scarlet Ninja. Watched her go on her first heist.

Cried with her when she was finally able to help people the vampires had harmed.

Her soul was as beautiful as she was and the same glorious contradiction; neat, orderly, and organized in certain parts, and wild, flowing, and free in others. She was a woman made up of so many different and contrasting colors that she absolutely took his breath away, and the realization smashed into him as he reveled in the fire of her stubborn and courageous heart: he was hopelessly, irrevocably in love with her.

Fiona clutched Christophe’s shoulders, almost feeling as if she actually were falling off the edge of an impossibly high cliff into a terrifying abyss below. Somehow, she didn’t understand how or why or if it were even real, but she was falling into Christophe’s memories.

Darkness surrounded her, and fear and pain swallowed her up until she screamed. She was so young, no, he was, it was Christophe who was the child, this was his memory, and his poor, broken and battered body lay curled up in the corner of a rough wooden box. The darkness stank of urine and terror, and Fiona wanted to kill the woman who had done this to him. Even the rational realization that the woman was long dead, that all the townspeople who’d turned his parents over to the Fae were long dead, did nothing to reduce her need for vengeance.

They deserved to hurt and suffer for what they’d done to him. They deserved—but then she fell again. Fell into warmth and confusion. His grandparents had loved him, but he’d been closed off, terrified, angry.

Why hadn’t anyone saved him? Why hadn’t they saved his parents? Why were they lying to him? His young mind couldn’t understand it, couldn’t find a way to ask, so he reached the only decision he could. He quit trusting. Anyone, ever.

She fell again. Warrior training. Finally the belief that what he was doing was right. He could avenge his parents. Only to learn that his duty was to protect the very humanity who had caused his family’s murder. Doing his duty, year after year, while the anger, pain, and futility ate at him.

Falling again and again. The magic in him. So powerful. Alaric’s edict that he join the priesthood, learn to train and channel the power. Christophe’s refusal. Again feeling like an outsider. As though he weren’t good enough.

She fell again, this time into a pool of golden warmth. Felt bathed in hope and reassurance; a sense of belonging. A feeling of home after so many long centuries without. She looked into the light, the source of this wonderful, soul-renewing hope.

And she saw her own face smiling back at her.

Chapter 33

Christophe held Fiona as tightly as he dared, rocking her back and forth as she cried in his arms.

“How did you stand it?” she finally said, her sobs slowing. “So alone for so long. How could you bear it?”

He considered the question and realized he didn’t know how to answer it. “I didn’t know any different.”

“What was that? What happened to me?” She wiped her wet face on her pillow and then sat up, taking deep breaths. “How did I see your memories?”

“What you saw was actually my soul.” He sat up, too, pulling her close to him. He needed to be touching her. “That was an ancient Atlantean . . . ritual? Experience? I don’t even know what to call it. A blessing, perhaps. It’s called the soul-meld and what you experienced—no, what we experienced—was a journey through each other’s soul.”

“But how is that even possible?” She trembled against him. “You saw my childhood, too? Lived through my pain? I don’t know what to say.”

“I did, mi amara, and your soul is beautiful beyond the fantasies of the gods. You are courage and goodness made into light and formed especially for me. You must know that you are mine.” He pulled her into a tight embrace, wishing he could hold her there forever, just like that, with no vampires or Fae or missions to ever come between them.

“What does that mean, that I am yours?” she asked, her voice muffled against his chest.

He loosened his arms, but she didn’t pull away.

“Is that some kind of magic binding? Do you—what does it mean? Can it be broken?”

He fought against the terror biting into him with sharp metal teeth. He’d finally found her and she wanted to find a way to escape him. He wanted to shout and rage against the injustice, but that would frighten her, and he found that he cared more about her feelings than his own. He almost laughed.

Love, then, was a fool’s game.

“Yes, it can be broken. Or at least, it can be ignored,” he said. “The most precious tenet of Atlantean life is free will. The soul-meld, though it comes but rarely and offers a gift beyond price to a relationship, can be turned down. Refused.”

He inhaled a shuddering breath and said the hardest words he’d ever had to speak. “Tell me to go, and I will.”

She put her hand up to his cheek and stared up at him, her blue eyes drowning with some emotion he couldn’t translate. “Christophe.”

“Don’t,” he said, throwing himself away from her and out of the bed. “Don’t try to be kind. Don’t try to let me down easily. Just tell me to get out, and I’ll go.”

He stopped, realizing he still asked too much. “No. You don’t even need to say the words. I’ll leave now.”

He reached for the sheaths with his daggers and knocked over a vase of flowers. Instead of righting it, he hurled it against the wall and howled out the anguish that bubbled out of his chest until he thought it would consume him in its scarlet flame.

“Christophe. Christophe, listen to me.” Fiona knelt beside him, though he didn’t know how or when she’d gotten there. She shook his shoulders again. “Christophe! Don’t make me smack your bottom again.”

Tears ran down her face, silvery tracks not marring her incredible beauty but merely changing it, transforming it to something bittersweet. “I don’t want you to go. I love you.”

He raised his head and stared at her. He thought she’d said . . .

“What?”

“You can’t go. Don’t leave me. We can figure this out. I love you, you crazy Atlantean madman,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time. “I’m not sure why you’d want a cat burglar, but you’re mine, too, so let’s make this work, okay? No more talk of leaving me. Not ever.”

He couldn’t make a sound. He took her in his arms, swept her up off the floor and back into the bed, and made his clothes vanish with a thought. Before he could speak, or think, or even offer up a prayer of thankfulness to all the gods who might be listening, he was inside of her again.

“Mine,” he said. “I love you, too. This is where I belong. For always, my princess, my ninja, mi amara.”

She traced her fingertips down his spine and smiled. “What does that mean? Mi amara? ”

“My beloved. It means my beloved, and you are.”

Then he made love to her, gently and sweetly, for a very long time.

His. She was his. He would never let her go.

* * *

Fiona woke up gradually, swimming through sleep to consciousness in stages. First she realized her body was slightly sore, and she smiled at the memory of the lovemaking that had caused it. Then she remembered the rest of it, and her heart rate felt like it doubled as her eyes popped open.

Christophe came walking out of the bathroom, hair wet and a towel slung low on his hips, and strolled over to the window to look out. She took a few moments to enjoy the view before she let him know she was awake. His broad chest tapered down into sharply defined abdominal muscles, which veed down between his hips. He was a purely perfect specimen of masculine form, and he was hers.