Then she’d brought her finger to her mouth, smiling.
“But you
will
beg. Just like your father begged when I sliced the flesh off of your mother as she yet lived,” she’d purred, evil mixed with a hideous lust in her eyes.
He’d roared his hatred and defiance for hours.
Days.
He’d even wept, driven to madness from the pain, on seven separate occasions.
Once during each year of his imprisonment.
But he’d
never
begged.
“But
she
will,” he said, voice hoarse with the effort of remaining upright. “She will beg, before I’m done with her.”
“Highness?” The guards rushed forward to assist him, yelling out for aid. He whipped his head up, teeth bared, growling like the animal he’d become. They both stopped, midstep. Frozen in place.
Unsure how to react to royalty gone feral.
Conlan staggered forward, determined to take the first steps onto his native soil without aid.
“We must inform Alaric immediately,” said the older, more experienced warrior of the two.
Marcus. Marius, maybe?
Conlan focused, certain he must know the man.
It was important that he remember things.
Yes,
Marcus
.
“You’re bleeding, Highness.”
“Mostly,” he repeated, stumbling forward another step. Then the world spiraled down to black.
Ven stood in the observation chamber, looking down on the hall of healing below, where Poseidon’s high priest, clearly exhausted, labored over Ven’s brother. It took one hell of a lot to drain the energy out of Alaric. He was rumored to be the most powerful high priest who had ever served the sea god.
Not that warriors knew much about the difference between one priest and another. Or, usually, gave much of a shit. Except, right now, he cared about that distinction.
A lot.
Ven clenched the railing, fingers digging into the soft wood, as he thought about what exactly Anubisa must have done to Conlan. He knew what she’d done to Alexios. One of Conlan’s most trusted guards, the Seven, Alexios had spent two years under Anubisa’s tender ministrations. Hers and those of her evil apostates of Algolagnia, who drew their only sexual pleasure from pain and torture.
Then she’d left him—naked and near death—to die. In a pile of pig shit on Crete. The vamp goddess of death was big on symbolism. Maybe something she’d inherited from her father-husband, Chaos. And that was seriously twisted right there.
It had taken Alaric nearly six months to retrieve the warrior’s memories. That half year had included two cycles of purification in the Temple to cleanse his soul.
Ven didn’t want to think it—fucking
hated
to think it—but sometimes he wondered if Alexios had
ever
come all the way back from whatever black pit of hell she’d dragged him into.
Still, Alaric had okayed him. Alexios was back as one of the Seven. It was a matter of honor that Ven trust him.
The Seven served as the most trusted guard to the high prince of all Atlantis. Even when he was gone; presumed dead.
They also led and coordinated the teams of warriors who patrolled the surface lands of the earth. Watching over the damn humans, who’d let themselves be herded like—what did the bloodsuckers call them? Sheep?
While Ven and all of the Warriors of Poseidon had to keep to the shadows. Out of sight. Incog-fucking-nito. Defending the landwalkers from the badasses among the bloodsuckers, the furry monsters, and all the shit that went bump in the night. And, frankly, the badasses seemed to be in the majority in those particular species most of the time.
And they’d done a damn fine job the past eleven thousand years, give or take. Until the day about ten years ago when the freaks that inhabited the night decided to come out of the coffin. First the vamps, then the shape-shifters. The job of Poseidon’s warriors got about fifty kajillion times harder when that happened.
For whatever reason, Anubisa hadn’t bothered to let her people—her vamp society—in on the secret of Atlantis. But Ven knew that could change any minute. If anybody knew about the capriciousness of gods and goddesses, it was an Atlantean.
Doomed to the bottom of the sea at Poseidon’s whim.
Not that he’d ever complain about it. Out
loud
, at least.
Still, it was tough to defend humans when the big, bad, and ugly roamed freely, and the Atlanteans had to stick to the shadows. But Ven had argued the point in the Council until his face turned blue, and then he’d finally given up. The Elders didn’t want anybody to know about Atlantis, and until Conlan ascended to the throne, nobody could go against their edict.
Ven looked down at his brother again, barely registering the soothing tones of the harps and flutes being played by temple maidens in the alcoves surrounding his brother. The music was supposed to aid in healing.
Ven laughed. Yeah, except Conlan hated that light, fluffy Debussy shit. When he ascended to the throne, he’d probably ask for Bruce Springsteen or U2 to play at his coronation.
If
.
If
Conlan ascended to the throne.
He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if Conlan had gone bad. Because guess who was second in line? Yeah. Ven would go from being King’s Vengeance to high prince in a royal godsdamned minute, and there was no fucking way he was cut out to lead anything.
He looked down at his brother again, lying so still. Conlan had grown up like royalty, honor and duty and all that happy shit ingrained in his soul. But Ven had grown up pure street fighter. There was a big, ugly part of his soul. The part that had withered and died when he’d been with his mother at the end, before she died. When she’d begged him to save himself. Keep his brother safe.
He’d promised her, sobbing, as she died.
Great fucking job he’d done of keeping his word.
The wood snapped under his clenched fists.
“Tough wood to break with your bare hands,” observed a dry voice.
Ven didn’t look up at the priest, instead pulling splinters out of his torn and bleeding palms. “Yeah, they don’t make these railings like they used to,” he muttered.
Alaric walked—more like glided; the man was spooky—up to stand next to him. “I can heal that if you like,” he offered, tone dispassionate.
“I think you’ve done enough healing for one day, don’t you?”
Alaric said nothing, merely looked down over the railing at his sleeping prince.
Ven studied Alaric as the priest watched Conlan. Alaric and Conlan had grown up running around the kingdom like the hellions they were, tearing up the streets and fields with their games and pranks. Rarely reined in by their indulgent parents or a community respectful of the royal heir and his cousin.
Later making their way through the taverns and the bar-maids with the same verve and boyish charm.
There was nothing of boyishness about the priest now. He wore the power of his office like a shield of armor. Invisible, but unmistakable. The sharp planes of his face and the hawk-like asceticism of his nose reminded all who confronted him that here was a man of faith, stripped to muscle and bone by the demands of his service.
The demands of
power
. If the faintly glowing green eyes hadn’t already warned them away, that is.
High priest, dark phantom, instrument of Poseidon’s power.
Scary son of a bitch.
“No, there is not a helluva lot of boyish charm left in any of us, is there, Alaric?”
Alaric lifted one eyebrow, but gave no other sign of surprise at the comment. “You want to know if he has been compromised,” he said, face gray and used-looking. After a dozen or so hours of healing, it was pretty impressive that he could even stand upright.
“After Alexios—” Ven began, then stopped, unable to go on. If Anubisa had compromised his brother’s soul, then the royal family really was doomed. She would have made good, finally, on a five-thousand-year-old promise.
Because Ven would walk into the gates of hell itself to shove his daggers up her bloodsucking ass. And he was honest enough to know he’d never come out of
that
confrontation alive.
Alaric drew a deep breath. “He is whole.”
Ven’s entire body sagged in a relief so fierce his vision literally went funky; he blinked away little gray spots that floated in front of his eyes. “Thank Poseidon!”
Alaric remained silent, which raised Ven’s suspicion. Just a tiny doubt. “Alaric? Is there something you’re not telling me? Is it simply coincidence that he gets back here just a few hours after Reisen blasted his way into the Temple and ripped off the Trident?”
The priest clenched his jaw, but said nothing for another minute. He finally spoke. “As to Reisen, I cannot tell. He is yet impossible to scry. For Conlan—”
Alaric hesitated, then seemed to reach a decision, nodding. “The prince is whole. Somehow, in spite of seven years of torture, he is whole. She was unable to compromise his mind or capture his soul to her use. But—”
Ven grasped Alaric’s arm in a steel grip. “
But?
But what?”
Alaric said nothing, merely looked down at Ven’s hand clenched around his arm. The knowledge that Alaric could incinerate Ven’s hand with a single surge of elemental power lay between them.
Right at that moment, Ven didn’t give a rat’s ass.
But he sighed and released Alaric’s arm. “But
what
? He’s my brother. I have a right to know.”
Nodding imperceptibly, Alaric glanced back down at Conlan’s still form. “But simply because she was unable to suborn his soul to her own use does not mean that Conlan retained full possession. No one can survive that duration of torture with his soul intact.”
He looked up at Ven, gaze flat. Dead. Promising destruction. Ven saw his own need to kick some vampire ass reflected in the priest’s eyes.
“Conlan has returned to us, Ven. But we may not know for a long time exactly how
much
of him returned.”
Ven bared his teeth in a fierce parody of a smile. “We’ll figure it out. My brother is the strongest warrior I’ve ever known. And Anubisa is gonna find out exactly what it means that I am the King’s Vengeance.”
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.”