Heart of Atlantis

He waited another few minutes before he stood up. Just in case.

Clearly, he wasn’t the only one on the beach who was balancing on the crumbling edge of sanity. He’d gone mad when he’d believed her to have been kidnapped or worse. Now that he knew she was safe, she could kick water on him all day long. He smiled again, and sent a fervent prayer to whatever gods were listening—although quite pointedly not to Poseidon—that he could continue to keep her safe.

No matter what the cost.

* * *

As the sun rose over the horizon, Quinn stared out at the waves and tried to let the beauty and serenity of the island sweep through her. The pure, salty scent of the ocean surrounded her as the breeze of the water played with the damp ends of her hair. The gentle roar of the tide all but demanded that she relax and let nature’s peace calm her raging thoughts. She could pretend she was on a vacation. Tourists would pay a fortune to visit this unspoiled beach, and it was all hers.

Well. All hers, if she didn’t count him.

She was trying to ignore him. That would teach him. Probably nobody ever ignored Alaric, Mr. High Priest Arrogant Son of a . . . Actually, she didn’t know whose son he was. She didn’t know anything about his family. Did Atlantean high priests even have mothers? Did they spring, full-grown, from some kind of whale egg?

It would never work between them. Yes, they had some insane animal attraction between them, but what did they even know about each other? She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and then almost laughed as the most terrifying warrior and most powerful magic-wielder she’d ever known sat in the water, waiting for her permission to stand up. She counted down under her breath, “. . . three, two—”

He stood up before she got to one, as expected, and it ticked her off even more that he rose up out of the water with his usual elegance. Alaric moved with the grace of a predator stalking prey, and too often lately she’d felt like the bunny rabbit to his wolf. His natural arrogance and belief he was in charge of every situation and every person he encountered wouldn’t allow him to understand her: her fear of losing herself to his dominating nature; her fear that if she gave in, even once, to passion with him, she’d never be able to resist him again.

As he walked out of the water and onto dry sand, a brief shimmer of blue-green magic glowed around him. When the light dissipated, his clothes were completely dry. She wished she knew how to perform that handy trick, since her jeans were soaked and sand was sticking to them.

Alaric waved a hand in her direction, and her clothes also dried in a shimmer of light, as if he’d been reading her mind again. She didn’t like it. Not one bit.

She pitched her voice to carry over the crashing surf. “Can you read my mind?”

He raised one dark eyebrow and smiled. “No, I have told you I cannot. It does not take thought-mining to anticipate that you would wish to be dry, however.”

“Right. Can you guess what I’m thinking now?” she asked sweetly, as he approached. What lovely broad shoulders you have, she thought, and then felt her face burning.

He studied her face, and his smile slowly faded. “Ah. I cannot imagine it is anything complimentary.”

She forced her mind back to the issue at hand, and away from how well his hard-muscled body filled out his clothes. “Let’s talk about how you might have gotten some of those people in the cars back there killed.”

“I would rather discuss kissing you,” he said solemnly, and she nearly laughed but fought it down.

“This isn’t funny.”

“No, it isn’t funny.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “You are right. I could have caused people to die. This displeases you, so I will not allow it to happen again. It’s a simple solution.”

She blinked. “Alaric, we’re the good guys. We wear the white hats. It should matter to us that people don’t die just because they get in our way.”

He made a complicated gesture with one hand, and a dolphin shot up out of the air in a graceful pirouette, rising to at least twenty feet in the air, before wafting back down to the waves at a gentle pace that clearly was not governed by the laws of gravity. It was a beautiful and terrifying display of restraint and power.

So he was frustrated with her. Most people rolled their eyes when they got frustrated. Alaric made dolphins do ballet. The symbolism of the differences between them wasn’t lost on her.

“I have spent hundreds of years protecting these innocents you care so much about, mi amara. You judge me so harshly?” His face was all hard angles and lines, as if he waited for her to condemn him. She found, ultimately, that she couldn’t.

“Nobody was hurt?”

“None that I saw,” he replied. “I must be truthful with you, however. Every person on that road could have died if that had been what it took to protect you. See me for the heartless monster that I am, Quinn, and make no mistake that your safety is my only priority.”

“It’s not a burden I want,” she said. “I can’t say the same—you can’t be my only priority. I need to get to New York and confront this Ptolemy and see what he wants. Maybe I can stop him, if he needs to be stopped.”

“Oh, he needs to be stopped,” Alaric said grimly. He sat down next to her on the white sand and told her what had happened at the Plaza. She listened in silence until the end, when he confessed his “idiocy” in saving the boy instead of following Ptolemy.

When he finished, she placed her hand on his arm. “You just can’t help it, can you? You’re a hero even when it’s in spite of yourself.”

“You weren’t there,” he reminded her with brutal honesty. “If you had been in danger, the results would have been far different. The boy would have died.”

She shook her head. “No, you would have found a way to save us both. Or I would have saved him and you would have saved me, or we would have saved each other and the boy. We would have figured it out together, Alaric. We’re a team. We have to be, or the bad guys win. It’s as simple as that.”

He shrugged. He’d been doing a lot of that lately, and she didn’t like it. It was almost as if he’d given up the fight, just as surely as Jack had done.

She decided to change the subject. “Well. Enough of that. Where exactly are we? This isn’t Mount Fuji anymore, that’s for sure.”

She scanned the pristine length of beach and its beautiful palm tree–covered border. The ocean was so brilliantly blue it almost hurt her eyes, and the rising sun shone on the water as brightly as if the entire vista had escaped from a traveler’s favorite postcard. Seabirds played diving games with the sparkling waves, and a trio of dolphins chose that moment to leap into the air in synchronized splendor. The only sounds were the gentle pounding of the surf in front of them and the calls of birdsong from behind them.

Alaric pulled her against him, and she leaned her head on his shoulder, trying to soak in a rare moment of peace. Not quite sure how to achieve it.

“This is an unnamed island in the Bermuda Triangle, Quinn. Atlantis is in a deep-sea trench directly underneath us, about five and a half miles down.”

Quinn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Really? Did you just tell me the real location of Atlantis after thousands of years of every explorer and crackpot in history searching for it?”

“I did. Does that buy me back into your good graces?”

“Maybe a little. Wow. But, wait. Bermuda Triangle? Really? Is something freaky about to happen? Also, I thought Atlantis would be somewhere off the coast of Greece.”

She could feel his body begin to shake silently, and it took a moment for Quinn to realize he was laughing.

“What now? Don’t make me shove you in the surf again,” she threatened.

“It’s the way you said ‘something freaky’ as if that didn’t describe most of your life. Caught me off guard.”

She had to admit he had a point.

“Yes, we were originally located near Greece, when Atlantis rode the surface of the waves, but in the Cataclysm the gods created, Atlantis was transported here inside a tremendous magical vortex. None of our Elders or our records can say how. Since then, this area has been the center of a powerful magical fluctuation that often causes havoc with weather patterns.”

“Are there sunken ships, airplanes, and spaceships littering the seafloor near Atlantis?” Quinn was fascinated and willing to continue the conversation for a while. She deserved a moment or two without worries about death,