Atlantis Rising (26 page)

—and turning into human bimbo of the week while his fiancée waited back home at Atlantis.

“You’re a dead man,” she began, then faltered when Alaric lifted his head and pinned her with that scary green glowing gaze of his.

But not even facing Alaric at full steam would stop her. Not this time. “Back. Off. Alaric.” She bit off the words. “You and I are going to go around about whatever it is you did to my sister, but I need to talk to your
prince
for a minute.”

Alaric’s lips curled back from his teeth and the flashlight behind his eyes strobed up about a thousand degrees, but Conlan held up a hand. “Enough. What is this about, Riley?” He held a hand out to her, sending warmth and confusion through their emotional bond.

She slammed down her shields. Hard. Enjoyed the sight of his flinch.

“Forget to tell me anything when you were
undressing
me last night,
Prince
Conlan?”

He drew his eyebrows together, confusion clear in his eyes. “What—”

“You. Half a millennium old. Which is way,
way
too old for me, anyway, by the way. The throne. And, hmmm, what was it?” She tapped a fingernail on her teeth, looked up at the ceiling.

“Oh, right. Your
queen
. Ring any bells, asshole?”

She heard somebody gasp behind her, but was way beyond being embarrassed. Humiliated, sure. But it wasn’t like everybody in the house didn’t already know she was the prince’s slut du jour.

Riley’s face burned at the thought, and she was glad that Quinn was gone. Conlan took a step toward her, and she pulled one hand back in a fist. “I’ve never punched anybody in my life, but if you take one more step, you can be the first. Did you know that it has been
years
for me? Years since I trusted any man enough to take that step with him?”

Tears ran down her face, and she brushed them away with one hand, hating her weakness. Her stupidity.

“Riley, I swear to you—”

“Oh, yeah. This should be good,” she said bitterly. “Tell me all about how it’s not what I think. That you weren’t cheating on your fiancée with me last night. That the feelings you showed me weren’t a pile of astonishingly putrid
lies
.”

With that, the pain finally worked its way through her anger. Seared through her defenses and scorched its way through the center of her being. She faltered, nearly collapsed from the intensity of the pain.

“How could you?” she cried. “How are you able to lie to me with your heart?”

Conlan blurred into motion and caught her, his arms steel bands around her. “Everyone leave us,” he barked out, eyes feral with rage.

She shoved at his chest, tried to get away from him, crying now. Hard, wrenching sobs that felt like they’d rip out her throat.

He’d already ripped out her heart.

She dropped in his arms, dead weight, hoping he’d let her go. Unable to force her legs to hold her up. He went to the ground with her, falling to his knees in front of her, still holding her. She felt the waves of his anguish buffeting her. The waves of his emotion pushing at her, peddling their false claims of honesty and truth.

She screamed. “Get out of my head! It’s all lies. You are going to marry . . . what’s her name?”

“I don’t—”

She snarled in his face, driven to jealous anguish beyond anything she’d thought she had in her. “Tell me her
name
!”

Conlan dropped her arms, released her. Shoulders slumping, he looked her right in the eyes. “I don’t know her name. We’ve never met.”

She fell backward, mouth falling open. “What? I don’t understand. Why—”

“Why, indeed?” Conlan said, visibly drawing power into his body. His skin glowed with a faint blue-green iridescence and the flame was back in his eyes. “If I’m fit to be the king, then I should act as king, should I not?”

With that, he took Riley’s hands in his and looked back over his shoulder at Alaric, who’d never left the room. “As king, I should have the right to choose. Because the ancient breeding program has been the way of the Seven Isles since the beginning does not mean it must continue as such.”

Conlan looked at Riley, who sat, tears still streaming down her face, wondering what he was talking about.

Wondering why she cared.

Though she told herself she hated him, she could see the royalty in him, even kneeling on the floor. A position that would have rendered any other man subservient did nothing to diminish the kingliness in him.

The command.

She tried to breathe through the weight pressing on her chest—through the knot lodged inside her throat.

His next words knocked any remaining breath out of her. “I, Conlan of Atlantis, high prince of the Seven Isles, therefore decree that the ceremony of mate-choosing shall no longer apply to any who do not wish it. And I renounce it. As king, I will choose for myself.”

The gasps from behind her were louder this time, and her own echoed them. Alaric went dead white and clutched the edge of the table with both hands. Riley noticed it all only on the periphery of her senses; Conlan’s face filled her vision.

She couldn’t form a single word.

He stood, drawing her up with him, and put one arm around her waist. “I make my choice now. I choose her. I choose Riley Elisabeth Dawson,
aknasha
, human, to be my lady wife and queen.”

He turned to Riley, joy fierce in his gaze. “If she will have me.”

Before Riley could say a word, Alaric cut in. “No, you do not. You renounce nothing. Or else you doom Atlantis and the human world to a second Cataclysm.”

Alaric smiled bitterly at her, then swung his gaze back to Conlan. “And your human will die.”

As if to echo his proclamation of doom, the crashing sound of thunder ripped through the room and a lightning bolt of energy smashed into Alaric.

Conlan gasped and dove on reflex across the room toward Alaric as another bolt of energy scorched through the air at the priest.

“What in the nine hells?” he shouted, but he wasn’t fast enough.

The pure green burst of fire smashed into Alaric dead center. The priest lit up as though electrified, arms jerking like some demonically possessed marionette.

Conlan heard Riley screaming behind him, but he was trapped in the elemental current driving through the air and into Alaric.

It lasted for hours, or for mere seconds. There was no way to tell. Time suspended itself on the cusp of energy gone rampant.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the paralyzing beam of power vanished. Ven and Justice ran into the room, shouting, as Conlan leapt forward and caught Alaric as he fell.

He lay the unconscious form of the priest on the table and turned, breathing harshly, to help Riley.

She stood, trapped, between Ven and Justice, who each held one of her arms and whose grim expressions signaled a major need to hurt somebody.

Conlan was all
over
that idea.

He started toward Riley. “Take your hand off her or the next thing you’ll feel will be my boot up your ass,” he snarled at his brother.

“Yeah? And what exactly are you protecting? The woman—the
empath
who had the power to shut you down on the beach and now took Alaric out?”

Riley gasped. “What? Are you kidding? How could I do that?”

Denal spoke up from the hallway. “Lady Riley would never—”

Bastien cut him off. “Shut up, boy. This is a matter beyond your knowledge.”

Conlan’s steps faltered. He
knew
her. He’d been inside her
soul
, godsdamn it. But, it was true that she’d been so furious, and then Alaric—

“What are you thinking?” she cried out. “Why are you looking at me like that? You can’t possibly think that I—”

A hoarse voice from behind Conlan cut into her plea. “She is telling the truth, Conlan. She had nothing to do with this.”

Conlan swung around to see Alaric pulling himself to a sitting position on the table, face drawn and pale. “That was a sign from the Trident. It is ready to be found.”

The breath left Conlan in a rush, relief nearly making him dizzy. “Riley, I—”

“No,” she said, voice devoid of any feeling. “You can keep your pretty speeches. You’ve just proven that I’m nothing to you.”

She pulled her arm free of Ven and, head held high, turned to leave the room. At the doorway, she stopped and spoke without looking at him. “I can feel Reisen again. If I can help you locate him, I will. For Quinn’s sake. For the rebellion.”

Conlan tried to reach her emotions, but—worse by far than the locked shields—all he encountered in her mind was desolation.

“And stay out of my mind, Conlan. We’re through.”

Denal looked around at all of them, dared to speak. “What do we do now?”

Alaric answered. “Now we wait for another surge, so that I can locate the Trident.”

Bastien slammed his fist into the wall. “And then we go open a can of whup ass on the House of Mycenae.”

Conlan stood there with his guts bleeding on the floor, and the woman who’d caused it walked down the hall and out of his life. He bared his teeth in a snarl. “Exactly right, Bastien.

“Exactly right.”

 
Anubisa lifted her head from the limp and bloody form of Barrabas’s pathetic excuse for a general and hissed. The disturbance in the elements had blown through her mind like a clean wind driving the acrid stink of death off a battlefield.

She
despised
clean winds.

It was time to put Barrabas to work.

Riley sat on the couch in the games room, emptiness washing through her, an island of quiet in the midst of the rushing preparations for battle. She and Alaric had spent the entire day working together to try to locate Reisen and the Trident. She’d intermittently received frustratingly brief connections to their emotions, even as the Trident played a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the priest.

Finally, with the sunset, the flashes of power had become more powerful. Alaric had been able to track them, and the stronger emotional broadcasting she was feeling from Reisen and his warriors had helped triangulate a location.

Now, it was all about waiting. She was unable to process so many frantic emotional ups and downs, so she’d decided to quit trying.

After she’d steadfastly ignored Conlan all afternoon, he’d finally gone away to help prepare to hunt down Reisen and the Trident.

She’d help them find their Trident they needed so badly, and then she’d never have to deal with any of these bastards again.

She nearly reached out to touch Conlan’s mind before she caught herself and slammed her mental shields shut.

The Trident. Yeah, the thing that
he
needed so badly, so he could go become the
king
and marry his precious
queen
. Well, bully for him. The look of doubt on his face when Ven had accused her of harming Alaric was something she’d never forget.

Could never forgive. He’d been inside her—mind and body—inside her
heart.
But he’d still doubted her.

Thank God she’d never told him that she loved him.

“Not that I do,” she muttered bitterly. “Fleeting moment of lust-induced insanity, right?”

A shard of pain lodged somewhere deep in her chest twinged a protest at the thought, but she crushed it.

Ruthlessly.

Just like he’d been.
Ruthless.
Crushing her stupid fantasies of finally finding someone who would understand who she really was—and love her. Not abandon her.

“Riley?”

Great. Now she was even imagining his
voice
. She squeezed her eyes closed more tightly and ignored the wetness that pooled on her lashes.

A finger stroked her cheek, and her eyes flew open. She hadn’t conjured him. He was here.

He knelt in front of her, took her hands in spite of her attempt to avoid his grasp. The room was suddenly empty, too. No warriors, no weapons. Just the two of them.

And the pain.

“Riley, you can’t let a second of doubt destroy what we found between us,” he said. “Alaric and his doomsaying can rot in the nine hells, for all I care. I
need
you.”

Even with her shields clamped shut on her emotions and blocking his, she could see the anguish in his face. The lines bracketing his mouth seemed to have deepened a decade’s worth in the space of the past half hour.

She probably didn’t look so hot herself.

Not that she cared. She closed her eyes again, determined to shut him out.

Weakening when she felt his breath on her face—felt his kiss on her forehead.

“I’ve only survived for five hundred years by never trusting anyone, Riley. Never believing in anyone. Never loving anyone.”

She opened her eyes, needing to see his face.

Then she opened her shields, needing to feel his heart.

Both told her the same thing. Conlan—this proud warrior—was humbling himself before her. Desperate for her forgiveness.

The pain in his eyes rivaled anything she’d felt in his memories from the time of Anubisa’s torture. And suddenly she couldn’t bear it.

Couldn’t bear to be the one who caused him pain.

“Conlan, I—”

The sound of boots striding down the hallway interrupted her. It was Ven, and he had his battle face on.

“Alaric says we go now. The Trident is screaming inside his head, and there’s a new level of power to it.” He stared down at Conlan and Riley, clearly not happy with what he saw, but didn’t say another word. Just turned on his heel and stalked off.

“I have to go now,
mi amara aknasha
.”

“I know. Be safe.”

“You
will
be here when I return?” Conlan’s voice was fierce, desperation making it hoarse. “We can work this out then. Promise me.”

“Yes. I promise. Now go. The quicker you go, the quicker you’ll come back.”