Heart of Atlantis

into the sand next to the intricate glass sculpture the first had formed. “The most important thing of all, and I’m only now mentioning it. My apologies.”

“Mentioning what?” Conlan said with elaborate patience.

“There is a pretender to the throne. He calls himself Ptolemy Reborn and claims to be descended from Alexander the Great. He stole Poseidon’s Pride, and he plans to crown himself king of Atlantis.”

Conlan blinked once and then bared his teeth in a grim parody of a smile. “This? This I think we’d better sit down for.”

* * *

Quinn didn’t need much persuading to go to Atlantis. She’d been anticipating this moment since she first learned her sister was in love with the Atlantean high prince. Plus, she had a tiny nephew she was dying to meet. She’d ignore the insane high priest and his magic-giving-up lunacy for as long as necessary, and then she’d escape and make her way to New York, hope Ptolemy was still there, and confront him. Or else find a way to go get him. It was a plan.

Not a good plan, or even much of a plan at all, but it was a start. If her heart would only stop aching so much at the thought of it.

She stepped into the portal again, wondering how many trips through a magic doorway it took before a person became blase about it. Whatever that number was, she hadn’t reached it yet. Maybe she never would. She certainly didn’t anticipate traveling to Atlantis very often, in what was left of her sure-to-be short life.

The magic doorway deposited her on a grassy space, and remembering Noriko, she turned around to face the shining oval. “Thank you for the transportation, and for not dropping me to my death in that tornado. I appreciate it.”

The armed guards standing in a loose semicircle around the space stared at her with varying expressions of amusement, until the portal flashed with a brilliant blue light and a deep male voice emanating from the center replied.

“You’re welcome.”

Then the guards’ expressions changed to astonishment, and it was Quinn’s turn to be amused.

“It never hurts to be polite,” she said loftily to the one who looked like he was in charge.

He bowed, a grin quirking at the edges of his lips. “Yes, my lady.”

“I wondered about that,” Alaric said, but he tightened his lips against saying anything further when she deliberately turned away from him and toward Conlan, who was staring at the portal with slightly widened eyes.

“So is this it? Is this the famous . . . oh. Oh, holy cow.” She stopped talking; she almost stopped breathing, as she looked up and up at the crystalline structure curving gently above her head. The dome. It was really true.

A scattering of twinkling lights swam past the outside of the surface of the dome nearest her, and she walked closer, fascinated, until she was close enough to realize they had done just that— swum by—because it was a school of some kind of tiny iridescent fish whose bellies lit up like Christmas lights. It was beautiful and breathtaking, and Quinn finally allowed herself to calm down and simply enjoy the moment.

When she slowly turned away from the fish, and looked up, she realized that the twilit sky inside the dome sparkled with starlight, but in patterns she didn’t recognize.

“Are they representations of constellations you saw before? Back when Atlantis was still on the surface like the rest of the continents?”

Conlan nodded. “Yes. It’s a self-perpetuating magic, created more than eleven thousand years ago. We understand the stars have shifted since then.”

“And of course you’re here in the Bermuda Triangle, which might affect any stars you see, too, right?”

“Yes, but we hope that changes when we rise and take our place on the surface again. We believe the magic required to sustain and hide us so far beneath the waves is what causes the temporal disturbances above.”

She didn’t even want to tackle that. Sounded like physics or science fiction, and she was too tired for either. In the meantime, she’d noticed something else.

“There’s no moon.”

Alaric shook his head. “No. Never a moon. An oversight or deliberate, we don’t know.”

She turned to look at him and was nearly undone by the sadness in his eyes. He was caught on the horns of a terrible dilemma, and she didn’t want to be part of his downfall. Couldn’t be. Couldn’t watch him turn bitter with despair, as his inability to help his people ate at his soul.

She knew that kind of despair, up close and personal. She would never willingly cause it in another. Especially not Alaric. Never him.

So instead she pasted a happy smile on her face. “Now I think it’s time I meet my nephew, don’t you?”

Conlan grinned. “He will steal your heart and drool all over your shoulder. I’m just warning you in advance. This teething thing is a barnacle.”

She laughed. “A barnacle? We say something difficult is a bear.”

“I know, but it doesn’t make any sense. Bears are fluffy things that roam. Barnacles are hateful creatures that stubbornly stick around for far longer than you want them.” The prince ran a hand through his hair, and she was suddenly struck by his resemblance to his brother Ven.

Her nephew would look like these men, tall and dark and classically gorgeous, and look like a Dawson, too. She wondered if he had Riley’s deep ocean blue eyes or her own dark ones, maybe. If he had golden curls like his mom, or Conlan’s dark beauty.

She quickened her pace. “You have a point about barnacles. I think I’ll use that expression from now on. But can we hurry, um, Your Highness? I haven’t seen Riley in far too long.”

Conlan laughed again and slung a companionable arm around her shoulder. “Hey, none of that. We’re family now.”

Family. Atlantis. The myths just kept coming and coming.

Chapter 10

As they walked through fantastical gardens whose flowers shone and sparkled in the magical starlight, Quinn stared around like a country bumpkin gone to visit her city cousins. The scents of the flowers jumbled together in a delicious blend of aromas so wonderful she almost wished she were a perfume maker.

“That—is that a cousin to a daisy?” She pointed at a blossom fully three feet across, with a deep purple center and fuchsia petals. “It’s like I’ve walked into a Dr. Seuss book.”

“Riley said exactly that,” Conlan said. “She bought the entire collection for Aidan, so I could see what she meant. You’d almost think the author had been Atlantean.”

“If I see any talking elephants, I’m running for cover,” she warned, and he laughed.

Alaric, walking silently beside her, said nothing, but his face grew darker and darker, as if he had little or no patience for light chatter about flowers and books. Considering the sword that had been hanging over his head for centuries, it wasn’t surprising.

She had to put it out of her mind, at least for a while, though, or she’d go crazy. She focused on the incredible garden, pretending she was just an ordinary woman enjoying the beauty of the night-drenched view.

When they walked out from beneath the canopy of a bower of silver-leaved trees, she looked up and actually gasped. “Wow. Just wow. Cinderella’s castle has nothing on this place.”

The delicate marble and crystal spires and towers of the palace shone like a jewel box. It was a dream from a fairy tale, and she was walking up to the perfect fantasy of every five-year-old girl on the planet. And with Prince Charming, no less.

She started laughing. Really, what else was a girl do to?

The heavy wooden front doors swung open, and her sister ran out of the palace and flew at Quinn, embracing her in a huge bear hug.

“You came, you finally came,” Riley said, both laughing and crying.