So he was frustrated with her. Most people rolled their eyes when they got frustrated. Alaric made dolphins do ballet. The symbolism of the differences between them wasn’t lost on her.
“I have spent hundreds of years protecting these innocents you care so much about, mi amara. You judge me so harshly?” His face was all hard angles and lines, as if he waited for her to condemn him. She found, ultimately, that she couldn’t.
“Nobody was hurt?”
“None that I saw,” he replied. “I must be truthful with you, however. Every person on that road could have died if that had been what it took to protect you. See me for the heartless monster that I am, Quinn, and make no mistake that your safety is my only priority.”
“It’s not a burden I want,” she said. “I can’t say the same—you can’t be my only priority. I need to get to New York and confront this Ptolemy and see what he wants. Maybe I can stop him, if he needs to be stopped.”
“Oh, he needs to be stopped,” Alaric said grimly. He sat down next to her on the white sand and told her what had happened at the Plaza. She listened in silence until the end, when he confessed his “idiocy” in saving the boy instead of following Ptolemy.
When he finished, she placed her hand on his arm. “You just can’t help it, can you? You’re a hero even when it’s in spite of yourself.”
“You weren’t there,” he reminded her with brutal honesty. “If you had been in danger, the results would have been far different. The boy would have died.”
She shook her head. “No, you would have found a way to save us both. Or I would have saved him and you would have saved me, or we would have saved each other and the boy. We would have figured it out together, Alaric. We’re a team. We have to be, or the bad guys win. It’s as simple as that.”
He shrugged. He’d been doing a lot of that lately, and she didn’t like it. It was almost as if he’d given up the fight, just as surely as Jack had done.
She decided to change the subject. “Well. Enough of that. Where exactly are we? This isn’t Mount Fuji anymore, that’s for sure.”
She scanned the pristine length of beach and its beautiful palm tree–covered border. The ocean was so brilliantly blue it almost hurt her eyes, and the rising sun shone on the water as brightly as if the entire vista had escaped from a traveler’s favorite postcard. Seabirds played diving games with the sparkling waves, and a trio of dolphins chose that moment to leap into the air in synchronized splendor. The only sounds were the gentle pounding of the surf in front of them and the calls of birdsong from behind them.
Alaric pulled her against him, and she leaned her head on his shoulder, trying to soak in a rare moment of peace. Not quite sure how to achieve it.
“This is an unnamed island in the Bermuda Triangle, Quinn. Atlantis is in a deep-sea trench directly underneath us, about five and a half miles down.”
Quinn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Really? Did you just tell me the real location of Atlantis after thousands of years of every explorer and crackpot in history searching for it?”
“I did. Does that buy me back into your good graces?”
“Maybe a little. Wow. But, wait. Bermuda Triangle? Really? Is something freaky about to happen? Also, I thought Atlantis would be somewhere off the coast of Greece.”
She could feel his body begin to shake silently, and it took a moment for Quinn to realize he was laughing.
“What now? Don’t make me shove you in the surf again,” she threatened.
“It’s the way you said ‘something freaky’ as if that didn’t describe most of your life. Caught me off guard.”
She had to admit he had a point.
“Yes, we were originally located near Greece, when Atlantis rode the surface of the waves, but in the Cataclysm the gods created, Atlantis was transported here inside a tremendous magical vortex. None of our Elders or our records can say how. Since then, this area has been the center of a powerful magical fluctuation that often causes havoc with weather patterns.”
“Are there sunken ships, airplanes, and spaceships littering the seafloor near Atlantis?” Quinn was fascinated and willing to continue the conversation for a while. She deserved a moment or two without worries about death, danger, or deceit.
Surely she’d earned that much over the past ten years.
“No spaceships that I know of, but I wouldn’t discount the notion,” he said without a trace of humor. “We did the best we could to assist any of your ships floundering in various massive storms, especially ones Poseidon caused when he was in a petulant mood, but we are limited in how much we can help, according to how many of us can travel by portal at any time. We can’t exactly swim up from the dome.”
“The pressure would crush you.”
“Not to mention our best swimmers can only hold their breath for six or eight minutes. Five miles is a long way down.”
“This may be the most bizarre conversation I’ve ever had, and that’s saying a lot,” she said. “Let’s at least walk and see if we can find something to drink and some fruit.”
He held up one hand, and a swirling ribbon of water spiraled playfully through the air from the trees until it stopped and hovered in front of Quinn.
“It’s perfectly safe to drink.”
Quinn took him at his word and drank deeply from the magical water fountain. “It’s delicious,” she said, surprised. “As pure as the water at Fuji.”
“You’re unlikely to find any purer. Nobody ever comes here but me, as far as I know. The island doesn’t show up on your radar, or tracking devices, or whatever instruments your people use to chart the planet.”
Alaric drank, too, and then released the swirling water, and it retreated back through the trees.
“You don’t always have to take it all on, either, you know,” she said quietly, making a sharp detour in the conversation. Even when she was frustrated and angry with him, even though he’d blocked his emotions from her, the crushing weight of his loneliness hovered at the edges of her awareness. “The weight of the world. The responsibility for everyone else’s problems. Sometimes it’s okay to let somebody else worry about you.”
His eyes darkened, and a glimmer of something almost too powerful to be faced head-on looked out at her from behind that emerald glow. But a bird broke through the trees nearby, and the sound broke through the moment.
He held out his hand to her. “Let’s explore, if you like.”
She stared at him, afraid that she would be accepting so much more than just his hand.
“It’s your choice, Quinn,” he said, his eyes shuttered against her—against the possibility of rejection.
In the end, it wasn’t a choice at all. She put her hand in his and simply waited, breathing slowly in and out so as not to react, as the electric sense of connection settled into place between them. They could deal with the issue of their attraction later. For once, she simply wanted to be Quinn. Not rebel leader, not forbidden love of an Atlantean high priest—just Quinn.
He said nothing, as if recognizing and granting her wish. They started walking, and she pretended, if only to herself, that they were normal tourists, sightseeing in paradise.
For once—just this once—pretending would be enough.
Chapter 8
Alaric watched Quinn as she walked along the beach, head down, eyes fixed on the sand or on a place he could not see; perhaps her own dark past. He’d long found that the solitude of the island setting was a balm to his own soul. A place where no demands would be placed on him—where no legions of enemies lined up to be battled, defeated, and killed.
They visited him, though, those legions. The faces of everyone he’d ever defeated, in the never-ending battle to protect humanity from its own folly; they haunted him in his sleep and, at times, visited him in his waking hours, as well. The ones he’d lost through his failure to protect fast enough, hard enough, or with sufficient scope—those ghosts accused him, too. A parade of death that had long caused him to believe his future would be a rapidly narrowing tunnel of madness and despair.