Heart Of Atlantis

An oversight or deliberate, we don’t know.”
    She turned to look at him and was nearly undone by the sadness in his eyes. He was caught on the horns of a terrible dilemma, and she didn’t want to be part of his downfall.
Couldn’t
be. Couldn’t watch him turn bitter with despair, as his inability to help his people ate at his soul.
    She knew that kind of despair, up close and personal. She would never willingly cause it in another. Especially not Alaric. Never him.
    So instead she pasted a happy smile on her face. “Now I think it’s time I meet my nephew, don’t you?”
    Conlan grinned. “He will steal your heart and drool all over your shoulder. I’m just warning you in advance. This teething thing is a barnacle.”
    She laughed. “A barnacle? We say something difficult is a bear.”
    “I know, but it doesn’t make any sense. Bears are fluffy things that roam. Barnacles are hateful creatures that stubbornly stick around for far longer than you want them.” The prince ran a hand through his hair, and she was suddenly struck by his resemblance to his brother Ven.
    Her nephew would look like these men, tall and dark and classically gorgeous, and look like a Dawson, too. She wondered if he had Riley’s deep ocean blue eyes or her own dark ones, maybe. If he had golden curls like his mom, or Conlan’s dark beauty.
    She quickened her pace. “You have a point about barnacles. I think I’ll use that expression from now on. But can we hurry, um, Your Highness? I haven’t seen Riley in far too long.”
    Conlan laughed again and slung a companionable arm around her shoulder. “Hey, none of that. We’re family now.”
    Family. Atlantis. The myths just kept coming and coming.

Chapter 10
    As they walked through fantastical gardens whose flowers shone and sparkled in the magical starlight, Quinn stared around like a country bumpkin gone to visit her city cousins. The scents of the flowers jumbled together in a delicious blend of aromas so wonderful she almost wished she were a perfume maker.
    “That—is that a cousin to a daisy?” She pointed at a blossom fully three feet across, with a deep purple center and fuchsia petals. “It’s like I’ve walked into a Dr. Seuss book.”
    “Riley said exactly that,” Conlan said. “She bought the entire collection for Aidan, so I could see what she meant. You’d almost think the author had been Atlantean.”
    “If I see any talking elephants, I’m running for cover,” she warned, and he laughed.
    Alaric, walking silently beside her, said nothing, but his face grew darker and darker, as if he had little or no patience for light chatter about flowers and books. Considering the sword that had been hanging over his head for centuries, it wasn’t surprising.
    She had to put it out of her mind, at least for a while, though, or she’d go crazy. She focused on the incredible garden, pretending she was just an ordinary woman enjoying the beauty of the night-drenched view.
    When they walked out from beneath the canopy of a bower of silver-leaved trees, she looked up and actually gasped. “Wow. Just wow. Cinderella’s castle has nothing on this place.”
    The delicate marble and crystal spires and towers of the palace shone like a jewel box. It was a dream from a fairy tale, and she was walking up to the perfect fantasy of every five-year-old girl on the planet. And with Prince Charming, no less.
    She started laughing. Really, what else was a girl do to?
    The heavy wooden front doors swung open, and her sister ran out of the palace and flew at Quinn, embracing her in a huge bear hug.
    “You came, you finally came,” Riley said, both laughing and crying.
    Quinn found her own eyes tearing up while she hugged her sister. It had been far too long. Too many duties had kept her from the only family she had left in the world.
    “I missed you so much,” she whispered.
    Riley sniffled. “Too much for too long, crazy girl. Enough of this Quinn the Terminator crap. Get in here and be Auntie Quinn for a while.”
    Quinn shot a look at Alaric over her sister’s shoulder, and the grim understanding in his face almost undid her. She might have nothing left to her
except
to be Auntie Quinn.
    Could she live with that?
    She might have to find out.
    “We have a lot to tell you,” she said, the full weight of Ptolemy’s claims and actions settling back down on her shoulders. “None of it good. But first, let me meet my gorgeous nephew.”
    They left the men behind, to