The high priest balanced a sphere of glowing power in his palm, a not-so-veiled threat.
Ven held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Dude. Message understood. But you call me Your Highness again, and I’ll kick your ass.”
Conlan put a hand on Alaric’s shoulder. “Stand down, my friend. Ven has chronic mouth-runs-faster-than-his-brain syndrome, as we all know, but none is better in a fight. I doubt he’d serve Atlantis so well as a preening bird.”
“About Quinn, though, Alaric,” Riley said. “Have you seen my sister recently? She still hasn’t met the baby.”
“No, I have not. She is entangled with a problem in the southwest United States. Something about bankers funding magic to help the vampires cement their control over the human population.”
“A trifecta of bad, bad, and worse,” Keely said. “No offense, Erin, but the last thing we need is witches on the side of the vampires.”
“That certainly doesn’t offend me,” Erin said grimly.
“We’ve been fighting just that in my own coven. The way so many humans hate and fear witches makes the vampire’s acceptance very appealing to those who play deadly games with the black, though. An alliance between vampires and sorcerers would be a catastrophe.”
“We’re not going to let that happen. Not now, not ever,” Conlan said. “We are the Warriors of Poseidon, and the vow our predecessors first swore eleven thousand years ago is the same we swear today. We will protect humanity from dark witches and vampires, both. Now, more than ever, we need to find every single jewel lost from Poseidon’s trident, so Atlantis can rise to the surface and take her place in the world.”
“I’m a little tired of protecting people who help the ones trying to conquer them,” Alaric said, closing his hand over the energy sphere and squashing it. Sparks flew out between his fingers and fluttered to the ground, burning the grass wherever they fell.
“Not all humans are sheep, Alaric,” Erin said, as patiently as if she and Alaric hadn’t had the same conversation so many times before. “Wait. Back up a minute. What did you say about Quinn and black magic sorcerers? That’s not good. Not good at all. Does she need help?”
Ven’s lazy grin disappeared. “Why do you think that putting yourself in danger is the answer to every problem, Erin?”
Erin’s mouth fell open as she stared up at Ven. “Seriously? Did you just ask me that, Warrior Man?”
“That’s different,” he muttered, flushing a dark red.
“No, it isn’t,” Riley said, standing up. “Does my sister need help? Maybe I should go to her, since she won’t come to me.”
For the first time since he’d watched, terrified, as she struggled through a difficult birth to bring their son into the world, Conlan felt true panic. Riley in a nest of vampires and black magic practitioners? Over his dead body. But he knew better than to try to forbid it, either as prince or as husband.
“Aidan needs you here, mi amara. At least until he is weaned. Or did you plan to take our son, the heir to the Atlantean throne, into the midst of danger, too?”
Riley glared at him. “Of course I didn’t plan that. I just . . . I hate feeling helpless while Quinn is in danger, and now Serai and the other women, too. I need something to do.”
“I feel the same way,” Erin added.
Keely nodded. “I’m no witch or warrior, but I’m pretty good with planning and a fair hand with a shotgun. Just tell me what I can do to help, and let’s get to it. Those women don’t have much time, if Alaric is right, and he almost always is.”
Alaric bowed to her. “So pleasant to have someone acknowledge reality. Although the qualifier ‘almost’ was unnecessary.”
Justice pulled Keely closer and glared at the high priest. “Don’t humor him, Keely. His head will grow larger than the dome covering Atlantis.”
“Somebody has to go to Arizona and find out if Quinn needs help,” Riley said.
“I will go,” Alaric said, in a voice that rang with finality.
Since Conlan had been planning to ask him to do just that, he had no problem with it. “Fine. Before you go, though, is there anything else you can do here to help in the temple?”
Alaric shook his head. “Horace knows the magic of the stasis better than any in the recorded history of the temple. If anyone can keep them stable or find a way to release them, it’s him. All my presence and interference is accomplishing is distracting him and making him nervous.”
“You? Make someone nervous? Say it isn’t so,” Ven said.
Alaric glared at Ven, and Conlan ignored them both. “Then go. Find out what Quinn needs,” Conlan ordered his high priest, as if Alaric ever took orders anyway. Conlan cast a glance at his wife’s pale face before continuing. “Then see if you can convince her to come back here with you for a visit. Tell her that her sister needs her.”
Riley’s smile was reward enough for any king, and Conlan allowed himself a deep breath as the smallest portion of the weight on his shoulders lifted. International politics, Atlantean magic, the protection of humanity—it was an enormous burden, all of it, but one he would gladly shoulder forever, if only his wife continued to smile at him like that.
Damn. Alaric was right. Marriage was turning him into a girl.
Conlan turned to watch the high priest as he strode off toward the temple, presumably to offer final instructions before he returned to the surface. If Alaric and Quinn ever did manage to work things out, Conlan would laugh his ass off to see Alaric’s turn to be humbled by love.
Oh, yeah, he couldn’t wait for that. Payback, as the saying went, was a barnacle that bit you in the nuts.
He turned to the rest of them. “Back to the war room, I’m afraid, after we dine. Atlantis must rise, and soon, and now we need to plan for every possible reaction and outcome.”
Keely shook her head. “Have you heard the saying ‘God laughs when man plans’?”
He nodded ruefully. “I’ve gone one better. I’ve heard a god laugh when he learned my plans.”
Keely’s eyes widened, and then she laughed. “I’m never going to get used to this place, am I?”
“We certainly hope you do,” Justice said smugly. “We will never let you leave.”
This time Keely smacked Justice on the back of the head, and everybody laughed as they headed into the palace to eat. Conlan didn’t begrudge them a moment of lightness in a long line of crises. He’d been ruling Atlantis long enough to know that they must take their moments of peace when they could. They never lasted long.
Chapter 9
Daniel crouched in place, clinging to the ceiling of the cavern, not even bothering to try to appear remotely human. So the rebels feared him. They should fear him. He’d run into the sunlight after Serai, only falling back to the healing darkness of the cave when Jack, of all people, had shoved his burning body out of the sun’s deadly reach. Then, his body still smoking, enraged by the pain but most of all by his own helplessness—yet again—to help the woman he loved, Daniel had systematically destroyed everything he could get his hands on.
The two men who’d rushed in to try to stop him would regret that act of foolishness for a very long time. Quinn had finally thrown her hands up in disgust and left him to what she’d termed his “childish temper tantrum.”
He had a shameful feeling she might have been right, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but getting to Serai. He knew she was safe; Jack had followed her and was standing guard near her in tiger form, which probably made Serai feel safer than she would have felt had a man unknown to her offered to do so.
It figured. Daniel had spent his entire life in love with a woman who felt safer with a wild jungle cat than with a person. There was a lesson in there somewhere, but he’d be damned if he could figure out what it was.