Atlantis Rising

then the royal family really was doomed. She would have made good, finally, on a five-thousand-year-old promise.

Because Ven would walk into the gates of hell itself to shove his daggers up her bloodsucking ass. And he was honest enough to know he'd never come out of that confrontation alive.

Alaric drew a deep breath. 'He is whole.'

Ven's entire body sagged in a relief so fierce his vision literally went funky; he blinked away little gray spots that floated in front of his eyes. 'Thank Poseidon!'

Alaric remained silent, which raised Ven's suspicion. Just a tiny doubt. 'Alaric? Is there something you're not telling me? Is it simply coincidence that he gets back here just a few hours after Reisen blasted his way into the Temple and ripped off the Trident?'

The priest clenched his jaw, but said nothing for another minute. He finally spoke. 'As to Reisen, I cannot tell. He is yet impossible to scry. For Conlan—'

Alaric hesitated, then seemed to reach a decision, nodding. 'The prince is whole. Somehow, in spite of seven years of torture, he is whole. She was unable to compromise his mind or capture his soul to her use. But—'

Ven grasped Alaric's arm in a steel grip. 'But? But what?'

Alaric said nothing, merely looked down at Ven's hand clenched around his arm. The knowledge that Alaric could incinerate Ven's hand with a single surge of elemental power lay between them.

Right at that moment, Ven didn't give a rat's ass.

But he sighed and released Alaric's arm. 'But what? He's my brother. I have a right to know.'

Nodding imperceptibly, Alaric glanced back down at Conlan's still form. 'But simply because she was unable to suborn his soul to her own use does not mean that Conlan retained full possession. No one can survive that duration of torture with his soul intact.'

He looked up at Ven, gaze flat. Dead. Promising destruction. Ven saw his own need to kick some vampire ass reflected in the priest's eyes.

'Conlan has returned to us, Ven. But we may not know for a long time exactly how much of him returned.'

Ven bared his teeth in a fierce parody of a smile. 'We'll figure it out. My brother is the strongest warrior I've ever known. And Anubisa is gonna find out exactly what it means that I am the King's Vengeance.'

He grasped the handles of his daggers, eyes gleaming. 'I'm gonna shoot me some vengeance right up her puckered ass.'

Alaric's eyes shone for an instant with a glittering green light so bright that Ven had to squint against it. 'Oh, yes. She will learn. And I will gladly assist you with that lesson.'

As the two walked out of the observation chamber, Alaric looked back at the railing that Ven had crushed, then at Ven. 'Poseidon has some vengeance of his own to offer.'

Ven nodded, silently swearing the second formal vow of his life. If it takes my death to do it, Anubisa will be destroyed. Glory be to Poseidon.

The bitch is going down.

'Interesting timing.'

Conlan tensed, fingers twitching to reach for the hundredth—thousandth—time for the sword that Anubisa had stolen from him. Then the familiarity of the voice penetrated the lethargy of the healing process.

'Alaric,' he said, relaxing back down against the pillows.

Poseidon's high priest stared down at him, the suggestion of a smile quirking up the side of his mouth. 'It's a little tiresome to be right all of the time. Welcome back, Conlan. Long vacation?'

Conlan sat up on the healers' marble-and-gold table, stretching, staring at flesh knitted whole. Bones unbroken and reset.

Scars that would never heal.

The need to scorch her face clear off her body with a big fucking energy ball consumed him. Ate at his gut. He shook it off and focused on the priest again.

'Right all of the time?' he repeated. 'You knew I was alive?'

'I knew,' Alaric confirmed, hard lines etched in his face. He folded his arms and leaned back against a white marble column.

Conlan's gaze was drawn to the veins of coppery orichalcum twining around its carved shapes. Dolphins leaping, Nereids laughing at their mermaid play. The scent of delicate green and blue lava-tulips permeated the air.

The images and scents of home he'd been refused for seven damn years.

He wrenched his gaze back to Alaric. 'Yet you left me to rot?' Betrayal flared, warring with common sense. Alaric would have had duties to the Temple. To the people.

To Atlantis.

Alaric straightened and slowly unfolded his arms, his restraint only underscoring the enormous power leashed within him, his icy green eyes flashing with fury. 'I searched for you. Every day for the past seven years. Even this day, before you arrived, I was preparing to join your brother, who was waiting above for yet another hopeless trip to find and rescue you from wherever they'd imprisoned you.'

Conlan clenched his jaw, remembering Anubisa's parting shot, then nodded. 'She shielded us. She's more powerful than we ever suspected, then.'

Alaric's face hardened, if planes and sculpted lines that already appeared to be cast in marble could be said to harden. 'Anubisa,' he said flatly. It wasn't a question. 'It is unsurprising that the goddess of night can project the void of death to mask her… activities.'

The word torture hung, twisting and pulsing, in the air between them. At least the priest had the decency not to speak it.

Conlan nodded, reaching for the scar at the base of his throat before he realized what he was doing. Forcing his hand down when he did. 'She kept me from water. Far away from any water, but for the barest minimum to drink to keep me alive. I had no chance to channel any power—no chance at all.'

When he could bear to meet Alaric's eyes, Conlan flinched at the depth of the sorrow and fury there.

'Never once. Never the slightest resonance of your existence,' Alaric said, gripping the jade handle of his dagger. He held it out to Conlan, blade down. 'If you doubt my loyalty, cousin, end my life now. I deserve it for my failure.'

Conlan noted the reference to their family connection in the cynical corner of his mind that calculated the niceties of Atlantean politics. Alaric never spoke a single word that didn't carry at least two meanings. Often polemic, at times pedagogical. Never purposeless.

Conlan accepted the dagger and turned it over in his hands, then flipped it back to its owner. 'If you failed in your appointed role, priest, Poseidon's justice would be the one kicking your ass. You've no need of mine.'

Alaric shook his black hair behind his shoulders, eyes narrowing at the emphasis on his title. Then he nodded once and slid the dagger into its emerald-jeweled sheath. 'As you say. We face other problems, prince. You have finally returned, only hours after the vehicle of your ascension is lost.'

'Tell me,' Conlan said, fury scalding the shreds of his self-control.

'Reisen. He killed two of my acolytes.' Alaric spat the words out, clenching his fists. 'Conlan, he took it. He took the Trident. He's gone above. If the undead get their hands on it…'

Alaric's words trailed off. Both of them knew the cost of misused power. Poseidon's former high priest lay rotting in the black abyss of the temple oubliette for overstepping his powers.

Poseidon served deadly reminders to those who betrayed him.

Conlan inhaled sharply, the hairs on his arms standing up in response to the nearly invisible currents of elemental energy Alaric crackled through the room. For his power to leak out like that, the priest must be damn near the edge of his self-control. Or else seven years had seen one hell of a surge in his power.

Conlan didn't know which option should concern him more.

»

Their friendship had weathered the strain of the demands of politics and power. Conlan trusted Alaric with his