Heart Of Atlantis

energy threatening to swamp her mind and incinerate her nerve endings. She found herself balancing on the edge of a towering and terrible knowledge, and as it poured into her and filled her, she suddenly
knew
things.
    Knew things she couldn’t have known, saw things she couldn’t have seen.
    Flashes of brilliant blue-green light scorched through her mind and illuminated scenes of Alaric’s life, careening from image to image like some insane Ghost of Atlanteans Past, and all she could do was try to hold on for the ride.
    Alaric as a child, running and playing with the other boys. Carefree and happy; but, even then, there was a certain reserve to him. He stood apart, and she felt the loneliness that never quite left him.
    Alaric as a young man, riding a horse at a breakneck pace across green fields, with Conlan chasing after him, both of them laughing.
    The two of them, carousing in what looked like a tavern, surrounded by admiring young women.
    Quinn cried out again as an especially intense surge of power or magic or whatever Alaric must carry around inside of him
all of the time
spiked into her brain and she lost her senses for a few moments. When she climbed back up out of the dark to conscious thought, the images showed her an older, harder Alaric.
    He shouted at Conlan that he didn’t want to be high priest. He didn’t want the duty or the responsibility. “What happened to our plans to travel around the surface for a few dozen years, doing nothing but eating, drinking, and wenching?”
    But the Conlan in the vision only shook his head, sadness on his face, and the insane tour continued, with Quinn soon floating on the edge of a dark, dark room.
    “
The darkness of the Rite of Oblivion is only equal to the darkness in your own soul
,” a voice was saying, but the voice’s owner was hooded and robed, so Quinn couldn’t see his face. She could see Alaric clearly enough, though, wearing nothing but a loose pair of pants, struggling as three robed figures pushed him toward a hole in the floor. Alaric’s clenched jaw, and the corded muscle starkly outlined beneath his skin as he tried to resist, told her that whatever waited for him underground was something that would terrify anyone with less courage.
    “
If the oubliette accepts you, it will give you back to us. If it does not, it will take you a very long time to die
,” the sadistic bastard said, and then the three of them shoved Alaric into the hole.
    Quinn screamed, but she couldn’t protect Alaric from his past any more than he could protect her from hers, and the merciless barrage continued.
    Alaric, rising from the oubliette, noticeably thinner, his eyes sunken and wild, and the robed figures kneeling to him as one of them draped a robe over Alaric’s shoulders.
    “All bow to Poseidon’s new high priest, long may he rule over our holy temple,” they chanted.
    She wanted to kill them all, steal Alaric away and comfort and feed him, but the visions sped past, and soon she was watching him grow stronger, harder, and colder. More and more alone. He learned to wield the Trident, which was plenty powerful enough without its gems, and he learned to hunt and fight and kill vampires.
    She watched him battle rogue shape-shifters and nests of murderous vamps. She watched him save and protect and rescue, over and over and over. So many deaths on his conscience, so much blood on his hands, all in service of protecting his prince, his people, and humankind.
    After what felt like centuries of images buffeting her mind, she saw Alaric watch Conlan with Riley and felt how conflicted he’d been when he’d realized his prince loved this
human
, and then a blast of intense emotion nearly knocked her on her ass, but this wasn’t
her
emotion, not this time.
    It was
his
.
    She was watching him heal her, Quinn, from that bullet wound when they first met. She watched him as he fell back, blasted into shock by the force of his own feelings. She listened to him confess how much danger he believed himself to be in, simply from touching her.
    “You want to know what
happened
?” With two steps, he was right up in Conlan’s face.
    “I’ll tell you what
happened
, my prince,” Alaric continued, rasping out the words. “What happened was I sent my healing energy inside Quinn. Inside that
human
. And she grabbed hold of me.”
    He shoved a hand through his hair and laughed a little wildly, eyes flaring green and hot.
    Savage.
    “She dug her mental claws into