Heart Of Atlantis (18 page)

“Quinn Dawson, will you agree to attempt the soul-meld with me?”

Chapter 23

Quinn forced herself to pause before shouting
yes
. Everything about Alaric made her crazy: crazy impulsive, crazy passionate, just . . . crazy. She wanted that feeling of belonging to him forever and ever, didn’t she?

Doubts and fears tried to edge their way into her mind, but she shoved them aside. Not now. Not this time. There was no room for doubt, and yet . . . what if?

What if the celibacy thing was real, and Alaric lost all of his power? How long would it take for him to hate her? What if the emotion that had caught them up with the force of a whirlwind was driven by excitement and danger, and now that she was no longer a rebel leader, their lives would become ordinary and boring? What if they wound up stuck together for a very long time, maybe even hating each other?

But she looked at him—really looked at him—and she realized she didn’t believe any of the doubts or fears. She
couldn’t
believe them. She’d seen inside of this man, this proud, dangerous, terrifyingly courageous man, and she
knew
him. Knew his heart; knew his spirit. He’d never stop loving her—even though he hadn’t yet said the words, she knew he did—and sometimes, life was worth a leap of faith.

“Yes,” she said, finally, simply, staring into his incredibly green eyes. “Yes, I accept you. Um, I thought the soul-meld had to be—”

“No. It can take place platonically,” he said, but then he flashed a breathtakingly wicked smile at her. “But it won’t be nearly as pleasurable, I imagine.”

He crossed the room in three quick strides and took her hands, but she shook her head, placing a hand on his chest to stop him. “Not here. There’s no magic here. Downstairs, with the art. If we can’t create beauty with our bodies while we do this, let’s at least be surrounded by it.”

He led the way down the stairs, and the weight of what they intended to do—and the knowledge of what it might mean for Atlantis’s survival—echoed in each footstep. She glanced around the room and almost immediately settled on the perfect spot in front of the windows, as the sun set in a blaze of glorious golden light. She turned and held out a hand to Alaric, swallowing any nervousness when she saw him walking toward her, walking into the spotlight of sunshine, his strength and passion outlined in every line and angle of his strong, beautiful face.

He would be
hers
—for as long as she survived—and the knowledge was a gift she held close to her heart.

“The painting you admired,” he said, gesturing to the canvas. “What better symbol for our union than hope?”

She nodded, unable to trust her voice, as Alaric took her hands in his and solemnly looked at her.

“Are you sure?”

She smiled up at him, and realized she truly was sure. No matter where she went in the future, Alaric was a man who could and would stand by her side. Fight by her side. Love her. Always.

“Yes,” she said, and her voice rang out clear and strong, like a bell chiming the way to her future.

“Close your eyes.”

She did, and he leaned his forehead against hers. “Now open your mind and heart and soul to me,
mi amara
, as I do to you.”

She took a deep breath, tightened her grip on his hands, and threw her emotional shields wide open. Then she fell to her knees as pure power, of a scope she couldn’t have even begun to imagine, poured into her. She realized Alaric had dropped down to kneel, too, still holding her hands, and she cried out as more and more and more energy rushed through her body.

“I can’t,” she said. “It’s too much. I’m only human.”

“You’re far more than human, Quinn. This is part of the soul-meld for a high priest of Atlantis.”

She thought he said something else, but she couldn’t hear it, couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t
feel
anything except the inferno of magical energy threatening to swamp her mind and incinerate her nerve endings. She found herself balancing on the edge of a towering and terrible knowledge, and as it poured into her and filled her, she suddenly
knew
things.

Knew things she couldn’t have known, saw things she couldn’t have seen.

Flashes of brilliant blue-green light scorched through her mind and illuminated scenes of Alaric’s life, careening from image to image like some insane Ghost of Atlanteans Past, and all she could do was try to hold on for the ride.

Alaric as a child, running and playing with the other boys. Carefree and happy; but, even then, there was a certain reserve to him. He stood apart, and she felt the loneliness that never quite left him.

Alaric as a young man, riding a horse at a breakneck pace across green fields, with Conlan chasing after him, both of them laughing.

The two of them, carousing in what looked like a tavern, surrounded by admiring young women.

Quinn cried out again as an especially intense surge of power or magic or whatever Alaric must carry around inside of him
all of the time
spiked into her brain and she lost her senses for a few moments. When she climbed back up out of the dark to conscious thought, the images showed her an older, harder Alaric.

He shouted at Conlan that he didn’t want to be high priest. He didn’t want the duty or the responsibility. “What happened to our plans to travel around the surface for a few dozen years, doing nothing but eating, drinking, and wenching?”

But the Conlan in the vision only shook his head, sadness on his face, and the insane tour continued, with Quinn soon floating on the edge of a dark, dark room.

“
The darkness of the Rite of Oblivion is only equal to the darkness in your own soul
,”
a voice was saying, but the voice’s owner was hooded and robed, so Quinn couldn’t see his face. She could see Alaric clearly enough, though, wearing nothing but a loose pair of pants, struggling as three robed figures pushed him toward a hole in the floor. Alaric’s clenched jaw, and the corded muscle starkly outlined beneath his skin as he tried to resist, told her that whatever waited for him underground was something that would terrify anyone with less courage.

“
If the oubliette accepts you, it will give you back to us. If it does not, it will take you a very long time to die
,” the sadistic bastard said, and then the three of them shoved Alaric into the hole.

Quinn screamed, but she couldn’t protect Alaric from his past any more than he could protect her from hers, and the merciless barrage continued.

Alaric, rising from the oubliette, noticeably thinner, his eyes sunken and wild, and the robed figures kneeling to him as one of them draped a robe over Alaric’s shoulders.

“All bow to Poseidon’s new high priest, long may he rule over our holy temple,” they chanted.

She wanted to kill them all, steal Alaric away and comfort and feed him, but the visions sped past, and soon she was watching him grow stronger, harder, and colder. More and more alone. He learned to wield the Trident, which was plenty powerful enough without its gems, and he learned to hunt and fight and kill vampires.

She watched him battle rogue shape-shifters and nests of murderous vamps. She watched him save and protect and rescue, over and over and over. So many deaths on his conscience, so much blood on his hands, all in service of protecting his prince, his people, and humankind.

After what felt like centuries of images buffeting her mind, she saw Alaric watch Conlan with Riley and felt how conflicted he’d been when he’d realized his prince loved this
human
, and then a blast of intense emotion nearly knocked her on her ass, but this wasn’t
her
emotion, not this time.

It was
his
.

She was watching him heal her, Quinn, from that bullet wound when they first met. She watched him as he fell back, blasted into shock by the force of his own feelings. She listened to him confess how much danger he believed himself to be in, simply from touching her.

“You want to know what
happened
?” With two steps, he was right up in Conlan’s face.

“I’ll tell you what
happened
, my prince,” Alaric continued, rasping out the words. “What happened was I sent my healing energy inside Quinn. Inside that
human
. And she grabbed hold of me.”

He shoved a hand through his hair and laughed a little wildly, eyes flaring green and hot.

Savage.

“She dug her mental claws into my
balls
, is what happened. I healed her, and she destroyed something in me. Shredded it.”

“What—” Conlan never got the question out.

“My control,” Alaric snarled. “The absolutely rock-hard control that I’ve spent centuries perfecting. Your little girlfriend’s sister reached out with her emotions, or her witchy empath nature, or what the hell ever, and all I wanted to do was
fuck
her.”

Conlan stepped back half a step at the ferocity in the priest’s voice and dropped his hands to his dagger handles. For an instant, icy death menaced the air between them.

Alaric laughed, bitter again. “Oh, you don’t need your blades. In spite of the fact that I wanted her more than I’ve wanted anything in my life, I won’t touch her. Although, even now, my mind tortures me with images of pounding into her body, right there on the ground in the mess of her own blood, fucking and
fucking
her until I drive myself into her soul.” Alaric viciously kicked at a tree and shards of bark flew into the air, then disintegrated in the green energy bolts he shot at them.

This was new and dangerous territory, and Conlan attempted to proceed with caution. “Alaric, you must—”

“Yes. I
must
. I must never succumb to any lusts, or my power is ended. Certainly, I would be of no further use to you or to Atlantis. No use to the jealous bastard of a sea god whom I serve,” the priest said flatly, his voice suddenly devoid of the rage and passion that had infused it moments before.

“I
must
get away from her,” he continued. “Now. From this place. I am ruined for this day, in any event. This . . . this energy drain has voided any hope I had of re-scrying for the Trident until I recover. I will meet you back at Ven’s safe house tonight.”

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.