Alyssa Day: Atlantis Rising

He grasped the handles of his daggers, eyes gleaming. "I'm gonna shoot me some vengeance right up her puckered ass."

Alaric's eyes shone for an instant with a glittering green light so bright that Ven had to squint against it. "Oh, yes. She will learn. And I will gladly assist you with that lesson."

As the two walked out of the observation chamber, Alaric looked back at the railing that Ven had crushed, then at Ven. "Poseidon has some vengeance of his own to offer."

Ven nodded, silently swearing the second formal vow of his life. If it takes my death to do it, Anubisa will be destroyed. Glory be to Poseidon .

The bitch is going down.

"Interesting timing."

Conlan tensed, fingers twitching to reach for the hundredth—thousandth—time for the sword that Anubisa had stolen from him. Then the familiarity of the voice penetrated the lethargy of the healing process.

"Alaric," he said, relaxing back down against the pillows.

Poseidon's high priest stared down at him, the suggestion of a smile quirking up the side of his mouth. "It's a little tiresome to be right all of the time. Welcome back, Conlan. Long vacation?"

Conlan sat up on the healers' marble-and-gold table, stretching, staring at flesh knitted whole. Bones unbroken and reset.

Scars that would never heal.

The need to scorch her face clear off her body with a big fucking energy ball consumed him. Ate at his gut. He shook it off and focused on the priest again.

"Right all of the time?" he repeated. "You knew I was alive?"

"I knew," Alaric confirmed, hard lines etched in his face. He folded his arms and leaned back against a white marble column.

Conlan's gaze was drawn to the veins of coppery orichalcum twining around its carved shapes. Dolphins leaping, Nereids laughing at their mermaid play. The scent of delicate green and blue lava-tulips permeated the air.

The images and scents of home he'd been refused for seven damn years.

He wrenched his gaze back to Alaric. "Yet you left me to rot?" Betrayal flared, warring with common sense. Alaric would have had duties to the Temple. To the people.

To Atlantis.

Alaric straightened and slowly unfolded his arms, his restraint only underscoring the enormous power leashed within him, his icy green eyes flashing with fury. "I searched for you. Every day for the past seven years. Even this day, before you arrived, I was preparing to join your brother, who was waiting above for yet another hopeless trip to find and rescue you from wherever they'd imprisoned you."

Conlan clenched his jaw, remembering Anubisa's parting shot, then nodded. "She shielded us. She's more powerful than we ever suspected, then."

Alaric's face hardened, if planes and sculpted lines that already appeared to be cast in marble could be said to harden. "Anubisa," he said flatly. It wasn't a question. "It is unsurprising that the goddess of night can project the void of death to mask her… activities."

The word torture hung, twisting and pulsing, in the air between them. At least the priest had the decency not to speak it.

Conlan nodded, reaching for the scar at the base of his throat before he realized what he was doing. Forcing his hand down when he did. "She kept me from water. Far away from any water, but for the barest minimum to drink to keep me alive. I had no chance to channel any power—no chance at all."

When he could bear to meet Alaric's eyes, Conlan flinched at the depth of the sorrow and fury there.

"Never once. Never the slightest resonance of your existence," Alaric said, gripping the jade handle of his dagger. He held it out to Conlan, blade down. "If you doubt my loyalty, cousin, end my life now. I deserve it for my failure."

Conlan noted the reference to their family connection in the cynical corner of his mind that calculated the niceties of Atlantean politics. Alaric never spoke a single word that didn't carry at least two meanings. Often polemic, at times pedagogical. Never purposeless.

Conlan accepted the dagger and turned it over in his hands, then flipped it back to its owner. "If you failed in your appointed role, priest , Poseidon's justice would be the one kicking your ass. You've no need of mine."

Alaric shook his black hair behind his shoulders, eyes narrowing at the emphasis on his title. Then he nodded once and slid the dagger into its emerald-jeweled sheath. "As you say. We face other problems, prince . You have finally returned, only hours after the vehicle of your ascension is lost."

"Tell me," Conlan said, fury scalding the shreds of his self-control.

"Reisen. He killed two of my acolytes." Alaric spat the words out, clenching his fists. "Conlan, he took it. He took the Trident. He's gone above. If the undead get their hands on it…"

Alaric's words trailed off. Both of them knew the cost of misused power. Poseidon's former high priest lay rotting in the black abyss of the temple oubliette for overstepping his powers.

Poseidon served deadly reminders to those who betrayed him.

Conlan inhaled sharply, the hairs on his arms standing up in response to the nearly invisible currents of elemental energy Alaric crackled through the room. For his power to leak out like that, the priest must be damn near the edge of his self-control. Or else seven years had seen one hell of a surge in his power.

Conlan didn't know which option should concern him more.

»

Their friendship had weathered the strain of the demands of politics and power. Conlan trusted Alaric with his life. Didn't he?

It was enough to split a man's skull open.

Clenching the sheets in his fists, he fought for composure. For some semblance of royal countenance to overlay the ragged insanity threatening to eat through his mind.

Through his gut.

To his soul.

His heart was long since gone. Shattered at the end of a whip, while forced to hear silken words whispering of the atrocities they'd heaped upon his lady mother.

Anubisa and her apostates of Algolagnia. They'd murdered his mother an inch at a time, and they'd enjoyed it. Worse, they'd gotten off on it. A deep shudder wracked through him, remembering how Anubisa had pleasured herself to orgasm in front of him while she told him stories of torturing his parents.

Again and again and again.

Anubisa was going to die.

They were all going to die.

"Conlan?" Alaric's voice almost physically wrenched him out of his memories of death and blood. Alaric. He'd said hours later…

"Hours? And here I am," Conlan said, remembering. "She let me go. She knew, Alaric. She knew ."

His final day. His final hour.

"Oh, princeling, you have brought me such pleasure," she murmured in his ear. Then she slid down his naked body and delicately licked at the sweat, the blood, and the other, thicker fluids that pooled to drip down his thighs. "But I think you must needs return to your people. You have a delightful surprise waiting for you. And, in your current state, you're no longer any fun."

Standing up, she'd waved one of her attendants over. "Twelve of my personal guard. Twelve, you understand? Don't befooled by this temporary weakness. The brat prince of Atlantis lias… hidden strengths." She'd run a finger down his cock, laughing as he'd tried to flinch away from her.

Then she'd flicked her gaze back to her attendant. "Throw him out."

Still naked, long, curling hair matted with his blood, she'd stalked toward the doorway of the cell that had served as his prison for seven years. Then she'd stopped and looked back at him over her shoulder. "Your bloodline amuses me, princeling. Tell your brother that I come for him next."

He'd cursed, then, finding his voice again. Called her names that he hadn't even known he knew. Until her guards came, and one of them demonstrated that he'd taken offense by way of a club to Conlan's head.