Kay Hooper - The Wizard Of Seattle

She hesitated, then said in a small voice, "But were we a part of it? I've been thinking about it, you see, and I can't help wondering. Maybe we changed the future by helping Roxanne and Tremayne, but is that all we did? What if we were always meant to be a part of the process that destroyed this place?"

Merlin couldn't deny the possibility. He hadn't told Serena about Antonia's prophecy, or about his own belief that the Leader had misread what she had seen. But if he was right about that, and right in believing Antonia had no understanding of the trust required for a man and woman of power to mate, then her attempt to do so might well strike the final blow to Atlantis.

"You can't agonize over it, Serena," he said finally. "Neither of us can. Look around you. No matter what we did, when we came here, Atlantis was already dying. The powerless people here, men and women, had mutated and were dying out. The wizards were doomed, as well. It's possible that merely by being here and being what we are, we became a step in the process… but that's all. And it happened a long, long time ago."

She looked at him solemnly. "I'll try to remember that. But can we leave as soon as we know Tremayne and Roxanne and Kerry are safely away? I don't want to watch what's going to happen here."

"Of course we can." Merlin bent his head to kiss her, and as always, sharp hunger flared between them. She melted into his arms, and forgot about everything except him and her and the way they made each other feel…

When Varian received the message carried to his palace by a powerless male from the city, his first urge was to burn it without even reading the scroll. But he did read it out of curiosity, and then he wanted to burn it.

Meet with Antonia to discuss the future leadership of Atlantia? Was the whore mad enough to imagine he was that much a fool?

But when the rage faded, Varian considered the matter from another angle. Antonia was, after all, a woman of power. And he'd heard she was still beautiful. He owed it to himself to at least meet her-under the proffered flag of truce, as it were. And if she was still beautiful, well, he might just find out what a woman of power was like in bed.

But she suggested they meet in her city, and there was no way he would agree to that. He sent an alternate suggestion back to her, proposing that they meet in the Old City, where he would conjure an appropriate meeting place from the ruins.

Rather to his surprise, she accepted promptly, and they agreed upon an early afternoon three days away.

Serena and Merlin returned to their gate into time just three days before the end. Merlin was certain that Tremayne, Roxanne, and little Kerry had boarded their ship safely and departed from Atlantis. But, of course, they had no way of knowing if the future had indeed been changed by that, not until they passed through the gate into their own time.

"Assuming we were successful in changing the future," Serena said as they stood on the mountain's slope and looked out over Atlantis for a last time, "you'll continue with my training, won't you?"

"Of course."

"And one day, if I'm patient and work really hard, I'll be just as powerful as you are?"

"Not quite."

She turned her head toward him. "You said I could become a seventh-degree Master wizard," she reminded him.

Merlin smiled suddenly, a gleam of humor in his black eyes. "So I did. And I have every faith in your ability to do just that. But what I didn't tell you is that Nola was wrong about my level. I'm a tenth-degree Master."

Serena stared at him for a moment, then laughed. "Then I'll just have to try harder, won't I?"

"Yes-and I'll enjoy it very much." He leaned down and kissed her, then took her hand and turned toward the shimmering rock face that was their gate. He was carrying the box containing his staff under one arm. "Ready?" he said, halting at the gate to look down at her.

"I suppose." She was almost as nervous as when they had come through the first time. What if they'd failed?

"Serena?"

She looked up at him.

"I love you."

Very slowly she smiled. "I thought I'd have to wait a few millennia to hear you say that."

"It'll be true then, too." His black eyes were tender. "Whatever happens, I want you to know that I love you with everything inside of me."

She caught her breath and said shakily, "If… if nothing's changed and the Council orders you…"

"We'll find a place for ourselves somewhere," he assured her. "Somehow. I love you, Serena. I'm not going to lose you, no matter what."

She lifted her face for his kiss, virtually certain now that she was lit up like a Christmas tree with happiness. "I love you, Richard. I've always loved you."

They looked at each other for a long moment, black eyes and green bottomless with love, their fingers twining tightly together. And then, with the past spread out behind them, they stepped together into the future.

Varian didn't bother to reconstruct one of the ruined buildings in the Old City; instead, he merely erected a small, plain structure amid the rubble. He gave his creation two rooms that were separated by a closed door, some fragment of shrewdness warning him that Antonia might take offense if she found only a bedchamber awaiting her.

He made the bedchamber inviting, however, with a large and comfortable bed piled high with soft blankets, and a fireplace to provide warmth as well as golden light. In the main room, the one Antonia would first enter, he was more diplomatic, conjuring two comfortable chairs of precisely equal dimensions and setting them across from one another near that room's fireplace. Then he produced a table on which were a number of delicacies, two pretty jeweled goblets, and a generous flagon of wine.

It was far more trouble than he was accustomed to going to in order to set the scene for seduction, but Varian didn't begrudge the effort. Ever since he had been confronted by two pairs of wizards his curiosity- and his arousal-had been growing steadily. He'd found no satisfaction with his concubines; all he could think of was the intelligence, fire, and spirit he had seen in Serena, and the delicate beauty of Tremayne's female. Riding a wizard had become his sole ambition.

He knew himself well enough to be aware that a part of the anticipation he felt lay in the risk: Any woman of power could injure him, and Antonia could quite possibly kill him. But he had thoroughly explored every avenue of sexuality except a coupling snatched from the very jaws of death, and the potential danger of such a ride, he had found, was a more potent aphrodisiac than anything else he'd ever known.

In fact, he'd been forced to hide his swollen arousal by making his trousers more baggy than usual and adding a loose tunic over his shirt. He had briefly considered conjuring a far more regal outfit than he normally wore, but in the end decided he had no need of fine trappings in order to impress anyone. So his shirt and trousers were of everyday quality, and the tunic was merely leather.

He stood by the main room's single window, gazing out as he waited impatiently for Antonia to arrive. like the nearby front door, the window was completely open, without glass or shutters; he'd decided they would both feel more relaxed if they weren't "dosed up" during the first tense minutes of their meeting.

It occurred to him that their meeting-most especially if it ended in the bedchamber-could last the remainder of the afternoon and into the night, which meant they'd be caught beneath the Curtain. The whore was accustomed to it, of course, but he wasn't. He had, years before, descended several times into the valley at night merely to experience the effects, and he had once ridden one of his concubines beneath the Curtain to find out what it was like (incredibly exhausting, it turned out; he hadn't been himself for days afterward), but otherwise he'd remained on his mountain.