Atlantis Rising

He sat up fast, ramrod straight. 'My eyes do what, exactly?'

'Sorry, didn't mean to upset you. It's just that your pupils are so black, until you get that blue-green flame in them. I was a little bit curious.'

Conlan shot up off the bed. When he turned around to face her, she noticed that his eyes had gone black again. When he spoke, his voice was icy. 'It's very late, Riley. I need to discuss strategy with Alaric before I rest. You should also get some rest, because we'll undoubtedly be leaving early in the morning.'

He strode toward the door, leaving her gaping in his wake. 'What the hell just happened? Do you Atlanteans have split personalities or something? And why do you think I'm going anywhere with you in the morning? You still haven't explained anything to me, Prince Conlan, or whoever you are,' she said, temper rising.

He stopped at the doorway, looked back at her. 'I am Conlan, high prince of Atlantis,' he said, voice flat. 'I need explain myself to no one. The Warriors of Poseidon have been the defenders of humanity for more than eleven thousand years, and I have been their leader for centuries.'

He yanked the door open, took a step, then stopped. 'My reaction to a human female, aknasha or no, changes nothing.'

Before she could even begin to think of a response blistering enough to peel strips off his hide, he was gone, slamming the door shut behind him.

'You—you jackass!' she yelled, jumping up to run for the door. But before she could reach it, she heard the unmistakable click of a lock. Momentum carried her the rest of the way and she yanked on the handle, but only confirmed what she'd known when she heard the noise.

That arrogant, overbearing, dictatorial scumbag of a prince had locked her in the room.

Oh, he was so totally going to pay.

Chapter 15

Conlan leaned back against the door to Riley's room, shaken more than he wanted to admit, even to himself. His eyes got a blue-green flame in them?

When he wasn't channeling the elements—or any power at all?

Oh, he was screwed.

Something was seriously wrong with this scenario. Eyes didn't display the flame of Poseidon except when the person whose skull the eyes happened to be stuck in channeled power. Called the elements.

Not when sitting around chatting with a female.

A human female.

Unless… The thought that had driven ice through his veins flashed back into his head, refusing to be ignored. His mother's bedtime stories about ancient Atlantean lords and their ladies. Stories of fierce battles and enduring love.

Tales of the legendary gift of the soul-meld between an Atlantean and his mate, which branded a warrior's heart and soul as surely as Poseidon's mark branded his body.

It was impossible. The soul-meld was a legend, a fable. A fanciful bedtime story. Nothing more. Soul-melding did not exist.

Like empaths don't exist, right?

Oh, damn. He needed Alaric to figure this one out. Soon. As soon as the Trident was retrieved. After they'd figured out why the hell those vamps had attacked, and how to find the Trident in the first place.

Or even what to do about Reisen.

Yeah. All the subjects he'd forgotten to raise with Alaric and the Seven earlier.

He was screwed.

At dawn the next morning, Conlan woke from a fractured sleep to the smell of coffee and the sound of low, male laughter. For a minute or two, before he moved from the bed he'd fallen into, exhausted, late the night before, he lay completely still, examining what he was feeling. Actually, what he wasn't feeling. It was a kind of absence. The lack of something—what!

His eyes snapped open as the truth came to him. What he'd felt—what was missing—was rage.

Fury.

He'd needed the flames of anger to defeat helplessness. To goad him into living for the long years that he'd been Anubisa's captive. He'd fed those flames with memories of his parents and thoughts of his brother and Atlantis when despair or pain threatened to overpower the rage.

But now, in spite of the vampire threat, and even in spite of Reisen's treason, he'd let loose of some inner core of fury that had shored up his foundation for so long. His thoughts turned inward, examining, focusing on the building blocks of his psyche.

Of what Alaric had called his uncompromised soul.

It had been close. Damn, but it had been close. There had been so many times when he'd wondered why he bothered to try to stay alive. Why he kept fighting her.

Why he didn't let death take him.

Conlan thought back to the concrete floors and the ten-inch-by-ten-inch metal grate in the floor.

'The better for the blood to drain into,' she'd said, fangs flashing in the light of the dozens of candles that ringed the room. 'It's not like I'm going to drink it all, princeling. There will be much to tempt my blood pride down below.'

Her blood pride. More like her coven of minions from hell. He'd heard them wailing and gnashing their fangs in the cavern below his cell every hour of every day.

Every hour of every night.

Until the day she released him.

'And that's what pisses me off the most, isn't it?' he snarled, sitting up and swinging his feet off the bed. 'That she released me. That I didn't escape on my own. In the end, I turned out to be no better than any of the rest of her pets, didn't I?'

Just like that, it was back. The empty, barren landscapes inside his soul were filled with wrath.

He welcomed it. Hell, he and rage were old buddies.

Conlan? A delicate touch in his mind. Are you okay?

Riley.

For a heartbeat, the lyricism of her voice and the sparkling blues and golds of her emotions combined to drive the flames from his mind. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, sure that he could smell her clean, fresh scent. Flowers and the ocean.

Surer now—definitely louder, her voice pounded through his head: Conlan! If you're okay, get your ass over here and unlock this door, or I will pound on your head!

He started laughing at the contradiction. Ah, his delicate flower. Never one to say the expected, was she?

Nope. And she wasn't his anything, either. Better for both of them if he didn't forget it.

Sobering, he sent his reply back to her: On my way. Try not to chew through the wall, okay?

He felt a slight trace of her amusement sparkle through him in colors of warm honey and gold. Then that peculiar slamming sensation in his head, which cut off any trace of her.

Oh, yeah. She was pissed. This ought to be fun.

Not.

Reisen looked up from his contemplation of the object in his hands, eyes still dazzled, when the thud of heavy-soled boots thundered down the hall toward him. Micah strode into the room, followed closely by several