Heart of Atlantis

Quinn screamed, but she couldn’t protect Alaric from his past any more than he could protect her from hers, and the merciless barrage continued.

Alaric, rising from the oubliette, noticeably thinner, his eyes sunken and wild, and the robed figures kneeling to him as one of them draped a robe over Alaric’s shoulders.

“All bow to Poseidon’s new high priest, long may he rule over our holy temple,” they chanted.

She wanted to kill them all, steal Alaric away and comfort and feed him, but the visions sped past, and soon she was watching him grow stronger, harder, and colder. More and more alone. He learned to wield the Trident, which was plenty powerful enough without its gems, and he learned to hunt and fight and kill vampires.

She watched him battle rogue shape-shifters and nests of murderous vamps. She watched him save and protect and rescue, over and over and over. So many deaths on his conscience, so much blood on his hands, all in service of protecting his prince, his people, and humankind.

After what felt like centuries of images buffeting her mind, she saw Alaric watch Conlan with Riley and felt how conflicted he’d been when he’d realized his prince loved this human, and then a blast of intense emotion nearly knocked her on her ass, but this wasn’t her emotion, not this time.

It was his.

She was watching him heal her, Quinn, from that bullet wound when they first met. She watched him as he fell back, blasted into shock by the force of his own feelings. She listened to him confess how much danger he believed himself to be in, simply from touching her.

“You want to know what happened?” With two steps, he was right up in Conlan’s face.

“I’ll tell you what happened, my prince,” Alaric continued, rasping out the words. “What happened was I sent my healing energy inside Quinn. Inside that human. And she grabbed hold of me.”

He shoved a hand through his hair and laughed a little wildly, eyes flaring green and hot.

Savage.

“She dug her mental claws into my balls, is what happened. I healed her, and she destroyed something in me. Shredded it.”

“What—” Conlan never got the question out.

“My control,” Alaric snarled. “The absolutely rock-hard control that I’ve spent centuries perfecting. Your little girlfriend’s sister reached out with her emotions, or her witchy empath nature, or what the hell ever, and all I wanted to do was fuck her.”

Conlan stepped back half a step at the ferocity in the priest’s voice and dropped his hands to his dagger handles. For an instant, icy death menaced the air between them.

Alaric laughed, bitter again. “Oh, you don’t need your blades. In spite of the fact that I wanted her more than I’ve wanted anything in my life, I won’t touch her. Although, even now, my mind tortures me with images of pounding into her body, right there on the ground in the mess of her own blood, fucking and fucking her until I drive myself into her soul.” Alaric viciously kicked at a tree and shards of bark flew into the air, then disintegrated in the green energy bolts he shot at them.

This was new and dangerous territory, and Conlan attempted to proceed with caution. “Alaric, you must—”

“Yes. I must. I must never succumb to any lusts, or my power is ended. Certainly, I would be of no further use to you or to Atlantis. No use to the jealous bastard of a sea god whom I serve,” the priest said flatly, his voice suddenly devoid of the rage and passion that had infused it moments before.

“I must get away from her,” he continued. “Now. From this place. I am ruined for this day, in any event. This . . . this energy drain has voided any hope I had of re-scrying for the Trident until I recover. I will meet you back at Ven’s safe house tonight.”

Conlan grasped his friend’s shoulders, shaken by the blasphemy he’d never heard from him before. “Alaric, know that your use to me and to Atlantis goes far beyond the powers you gained from Poseidon. Your wise counsel has served me well for centuries, and I will need you when I ascend to the throne.”

Alaric stared over Conlan’s shoulder toward Riley and her sister. “These empaths. They signal a treacherous difference in our ways, Conlan. I can sense it. Change is coming. Peril that comes from within our very souls.”

Quinn shuddered as the most powerful wave of magic yet seared through her body, and she realized it was tinged with a dark, disturbing emotion.

It was tainted with shame.

Alaric must have seen what she was seeing; discovered that she had learned how he’d reacted to her that very first time.

“It was the same for me, you must know that,” she cried out, not knowing if he could hear her, or if her voice was trapped in the vision with her. “I was terrified of you and of the feelings you evoked in me. You can’t be ashamed of how you feel about me. Please, no.”

But the horrific visions kept coming, showing her what he had endured since she first met him; the impossible decisions he was forced to make on a daily basis; and, most of all, the bleak, icy loneliness he endured.

He was a man doomed to be alone by the very god he served, and not only for the space of a normal lifetime. Tears streamed down her face as the pressure crushing his heart and soul, increasing exponentially over the centuries, grew so much worse when, one by one, his friends and companions all found true love and the soul- meld.

He, of all of them, still alone. Always alone, with only the dream of Quinn to sustain him on so many long, dark nights.

“Never again,” she vowed, her heart full to bursting with her determination to protect him—even from Poseidon—to never let him be alone again. As the final vision, of Alaric standing on the roof of the palace in Atlantis, grim and solitary, faded, and the room around her came into view again, she reached another realization. Alaric’s magic hadn’t stopped funneling into her with all the speed and fury of that tornado in Japan.

Instead, she had somehow become able to control it. She didn’t know how, or why, but somehow she’d gained the capacity to contain every ounce of the power he was thrusting into her in a metaphysical reflection of a far more primal act. All she could do was hang on for the ride, but at least she could hang on, with no more worries that the magic would incinerate her brain. With that realization came another, even more basic.

Even more important. One that he needed to know.

“I love you,” she told him. Without qualification; without hesitation. Never again would she doubt it.

His entire body shuddered, as if he’d been terrified of a far different reaction, and he opened his mouth to speak, but then his eyes glowed even hotter, and tiny blue flames danced in his pupils. He tightened his grip on her hands and said, “Quinn,” and then he was gone, probably lost to his own visions, and all she could do was hold on and pray that he still wanted her after he’d seen the blackest regions of her own soul.

* * *

Alaric didn’t even have a chance to apologize to Quinn. He’d had no idea that the soul-meld would subject her to the blasts of his magic, or he never would have asked her to do it. Hells, he never would have allowed it. He’d tried to release her when the surge of power intensified beyond human endurance, but the ancient ritual refused to be interrupted once begun, and its magic was far too strong for him to break.

He’d feared that she’d banish him from her presence, cast him aside, and even ridicule him once she learned the darkest secrets of his being, but instead—miraculously—she’d smiled. She’d told him she loved him. And now—now the soul-meld took him, and the time for reflection was gone.

Alaric watched, trapped on a crazy whirlwind like an insane version of a child’s carousel, as Quinn’s life spun