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 in front of him in terrifying flashes. Losing her parents, joining the rebels, and lying to her sister. Constantly being forced to deceive the few friends she’d ever made; growing more and more alone and isolated. Choosing the harder path at every fork in the road, and offering herself up like a sacrificial lamb for the most dangerous missions and most suicidal battles.
He watched, his own composure rocked to its foundation, as she lost her faith in the very people she was fighting to protect, when the rebels were forced to fight against other humans. The collaborators were the worst. She despised them. Her hatred was so strong it smashed the walls of his mind as he watched her argue with a human who had killed other humans, again and again, for the chance to become a vampire.
“I’ll live forever,” the man had told her, smirking.
“Better luck next time,” she’d said, and then she shot him in the head. She stood over the man, impassive, as he died, and then she dropped to the ground and cried. She’d been fighting for several years by then, but it was the first time she’d been forced to kill another human, and something inside her had shattered, irrevocably broken.
Her innocence, perhaps.
He felt her emotions ice over, and her mental shields grow ever stronger, as she used her gift of emotional empathy to ferret out traitors among the rebel forces. He watched as she climbed through the ranks; as her clear head and fearlessness made her a natural leader.
He felt her cautious hope and then joy, when she met a tiger shifter who made a big impression, and a part of Alaric that he hadn’t realized was still afraid relaxed, as he experienced her love for Jack. A sister’s love for a brother—a warrior’s love for her comrade—but never a romantic love.
He swore to himself that when all this was over, he’d find a way to heal Jack and return him to himself. Surely in the combined knowledge of all of the libraries of Atlantis, there must be a way.
The soul-meld dragged him relentlessly on and on, forcing him to see the vicious attack when the vampire captured Quinn and killed her companions. Her terror and pain, hidden so well while she pretended to be her captor’s willing slave, nearly drove him mad. His throat ached, and he realized that perhaps the voice he heard roaring in rage and fear was his own.
But the visions kept coming.
The cascade of images was oblivious to his pain and rage, and unfeeling in the face of her darkest memories. They pushed him past the first time he’d met her, showing him her shock and terror at her reaction to him, letting him feel the powerful emotion that swept through her whenever she saw him or even allowed herself to think of him.
He felt the despair she’d known on that rooftop in D.C. when she’d told him she was ruined. He saw inside her heart when they’d first kissed, and now he knew that the searing heat of passion between them wasn’t only one-sided. She’d felt it, too.
Her amusement, gratitude, and resentment pulsed from her when, time after time and often in spite of her protests, he’d healed her from minor and major injuries alike.
Finally, finally, the visions showed him the dank space underground to which Ptolemy had stolen away with her, and her terror when Anubisa arrived. His stomach roiled with fury at Anubisa’s demands, and he felt Quinn’s anger and compassion for the girl who’d also been held captive.
The hotel. Quinn’s shock when she saw the wall of photos of herself; her relief when Alaric came for her. Her love for him.