Heart Of Atlantis

my
balls
, is what happened. I healed her, and she destroyed something in me. Shredded it.”
    “What—” Conlan never got the question out.
    “My control,” Alaric snarled. “The absolutely rock-hard control that I’ve spent centuries perfecting. Your little girlfriend’s sister reached out with her emotions, or her witchy empath nature, or what the hell ever, and all I wanted to do was
fuck
her.”
    Conlan stepped back half a step at the ferocity in the priest’s voice and dropped his hands to his dagger handles. For an instant, icy death menaced the air between them.
    Alaric laughed, bitter again. “Oh, you don’t need your blades. In spite of the fact that I wanted her more than I’ve wanted anything in my life, I won’t touch her. Although, even now, my mind tortures me with images of pounding into her body, right there on the ground in the mess of her own blood, fucking and
fucking
her until I drive myself into her soul.” Alaric viciously kicked at a tree and shards of bark flew into the air, then disintegrated in the green energy bolts he shot at them.
    This was new and dangerous territory, and Conlan attempted to proceed with caution. “Alaric, you must—”
    “Yes. I
must
. I must never succumb to any lusts, or my power is ended. Certainly, I would be of no further use to you or to Atlantis. No use to the jealous bastard of a sea god whom I serve,” the priest said flatly, his voice suddenly devoid of the rage and passion that had infused it moments before.
    “I
must
get away from her,” he continued. “Now. From this place. I am ruined for this day, in any event. This . . . this energy drain has voided any hope I had of re-scrying for the Trident until I recover. I will meet you back at Ven’s safe house tonight.”
    Conlan grasped his friend’s shoulders, shaken by the blasphemy he’d never heard from him before. “Alaric, know that your use to me and to Atlantis goes far beyond the powers you gained from Poseidon. Your wise counsel has served me well for centuries, and I will need you when I ascend to the throne.”
    Alaric stared over Conlan’s shoulder toward Riley and her sister. “These empaths. They signal a treacherous difference in our ways, Conlan. I can sense it. Change is coming. Peril that comes from within our very souls.”
    Quinn shuddered as the most powerful wave of magic yet seared through her body, and she realized it was tinged with a dark, disturbing emotion.
    It was tainted with shame.
    Alaric must have seen what she was seeing; discovered that she had learned how he’d reacted to her that very first time.
    “It was the same for me, you must know that,” she cried out, not knowing if he could hear her, or if her voice was trapped in the vision with her. “I was terrified of you and of the feelings you evoked in me. You can’t be ashamed of how you feel about me. Please, no.”
    But the horrific visions kept coming, showing her what he had endured since she first met him; the impossible decisions he was forced to make on a daily basis; and, most of all, the bleak, icy loneliness he endured.
    He was a man doomed to be alone by the very god he served, and not only for the space of a normal lifetime. Tears streamed down her face as the pressure crushing his heart and soul, increasing exponentially over the centuries, grew so much worse when, one by one, his friends and companions all found true love and the soul-meld.
    He, of all of them, still alone. Always alone, with only the dream of Quinn to sustain him on so many long, dark nights.
    “Never again,” she vowed, her heart full to bursting with her determination to protect him—even from Poseidon—to never let him be alone again. As the final vision, of Alaric standing on the roof of the palace in Atlantis, grim and solitary, faded, and the room around her came into view again, she reached another realization. Alaric’s magic
hadn’t
stopped funneling into her with all the speed and fury of that tornado in Japan.
    Instead, she had somehow become able to control it. She didn’t know how, or why, but somehow she’d gained the capacity to contain every ounce of the power he was thrusting into her in a metaphysical reflection of a far more primal act. All she could do was hang on for the ride, but at least she
could
hang on, with no more worries that the magic would incinerate her brain. With that realization came another, even more basic.
    Even more
important
. One that he needed to know.
    “I