Heart Of Atlantis

happened to this Nereus? Happy ever after? Many fat babies?”
    He paused. This was where the story broke down. “Actually, Zelia died, and Nereus tried to drown the world. He nearly destroyed the dome and everyone in Atlantis with it.”
    “So he went
nuts
, is that what you’re saying?” Quinn scrambled to her feet and continued backing away from him. “Bat-shit crazy, insane, loony tunes, rubber room material? Nearly destroyed your
entire civilization
, but hey, let’s get naked?” Her voice had risen and she was shaking.
    “The two are probably unrelated,” he began cautiously. He had no idea how to fix this, but he was desperate to find a way to do so—to fix everything—so that the terror and disbelief he heard in her voice would disappear.
    His body, rebelling after so many years of denial, ached with frustration and the desolate certainty that his chances of remaining celibate for the foreseeable future were increasing with every word out of his mouth.
    “Probably. Unrelated. Sacred vow, insanity, destroy Atlantis, but it’s okay, probably unrelated,” she muttered, stalking off toward the beach. “Get me out of here, Alaric.”
    “We don’t have to leave now. I refuse to take you anywhere until we talk this out,” he commanded, following her.
    Unfortunately, the irritating woman didn’t respond at all well to commands.
    “Get. Me. Out. Of. Here,” she said, enunciating each word as if slicing it with a dagger. “Also, don’t touch me again. Not now, not ever. Or at least not until your people don’t need you anymore, and you’re old and gray and retired.”
    He strode ahead of her to hold a low-hanging palm frond out of her way before she marched right into it, and she stopped and poked a finger into his chest.
    “Except that won’t happen. You won’t get old and gray. I’ll get old and gray, if I live that long, which I probably won’t, and you’ll still be young and beautiful and hot and sexy, and I can never kiss you again, and you made me want what I can’t have, and right now I kind of hate you for it.” She finally stopped to draw breath. “And—and—put your shirt on!”
    He watched her stalk off down the beach, completely unable to think of a thing to say that would fix everything and get them back to the part where she was kissing him. The faint tingle of magic behind him alerted him to the portal, and he whirled around to see the high prince himself step out onto the sand.
    Conlan looked at Alaric and then at Quinn’s departing figure, and then he whistled. “What did you do to my sister-in-law? Riley only stomps off like that when she’d rather be punching me.”
    “I only wish she would strike me,” Alaric said glumly. “I fear this problem is far too big for that.”
    “How bad can it be? At least you didn’t threaten to abdicate the throne for her,” joked Conlan, who had done just that for Riley, Quinn’s sister.
    “Worse. I threatened to break my vows to Poseidon.”
    Conlan’s eyes widened. “You’re willing to trust that Keely is right about your magic?”
    “What choice do I have? I petitioned Poseidon, over and over, and he refuses to answer. I petitioned the Elders, and they tell me exactly what they always have: if I ‘succumb to fleshly evils,’ I will lose all of my power. I can believe them and spend the rest of my life alone, or I can believe Keely and Serai are right and claim Quinn for mine.” Alaric smashed an extra-large energy sphere into the sand in front of him out of pure frustration.
    “Serai?” Conlan raised an eyebrow.
    Alaric filled him in on what Serai had told him.
    “Quinn doesn’t seem to be in the mood to risk your future,” Conlan observed, as Quinn flopped down on the sand, with her back pointedly toward them.
    “Quinn needs to be convinced,” Alaric growled. “I can best do that in Atlantis.”
    “I can’t influence you on this, I know, without the utmost hypocrisy, but I’m worried about the repercussions, too. I can’t imagine you as anything other than the high priest of Atlantis, and there’s the little matter of how in the nine hells we’re going to retrieve Poseidon’s Pride if you can no longer touch it,” Conlan said, his face somber.
    “That, as always, is the ultimate truth,” Alaric said, clenching his hands into fists. “My duty must always come before anything else.”
    “Now that we’ve figured out your love life, or lack thereof,” Conlan said, smiling ruefully as if to let