Warriors of Poseidon 02 - Atlantis Awakening

high above him he heard Deirdre begin to laugh.

Chapter 22
    Atlantis, the Temple of the Nereids
     
    Conlan looked down at Riley's pale, sleeping form and forced himself to believe in miracles. The flickering light of the candles reflected prisms of color from the jewels surrounding the low bed in one of the Temple's many healing rooms.
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    He forced the words out past a throat frozen with pain. "The stasis holds?"
     
    "Yes, I can easily hold it for the full forty-eight hours," Marie said.
     
    He shot a hard, measuring stare at the First Maiden, noting the gray pallor and the lines of strain in her face. "Are you sure? Marie, I know I have no right to ask you to risk your own life or health—"
     
    She shook her head. "Do not finish that thought, Your Highness. As First Maiden, it is my right and my privilege to offer aid to the women and unborn babes of our realm. Can I do less for the future heir than I do for the least of us?"
     
    "Why? Why is this happening?" His voice was a howl of anguish, more wounded animal than man. "Why does her body reject the child?"
     
    "The energy of her pregnancy is… wrong. I've never felt anything like it before. It's not a simple miscarriage, but something fundamentally off—discordant—in the energies between mother and baby."
     
    He stared down at Riley, who had become more important to him than his own life. His beloved, his soul, his future queen. He finally asked the question that she had forbidden him to speak, or even to think, although it gouged bloody holes in his heart to form the words. "If you took the babe?"
     
    Marie's face paled even further, and she swayed on her feet. "I cannot, Conlan. Riley spoke to me before she agreed to the stasis, and she made me swear on my oath as First Maiden that I would do nothing that would harm her child, if there were the slightest hope that the baby might survive. No matter who might ask."
     
    He made himself ask. "Is there that hope?"
     
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    She touched Riley's forehead with one slender hand, then looked up at him, a quiet strength in her eyes in which he desperately wanted to believe. "As long as there is life, there is hope, my prince. Now we must pray to the Goddess and to Poseidon that your brother and the gem singer are successful."
     
    The cabin, high up on Mount Rainier
     
    Ven finished reinforcing the magical warding that Alaric had taught him, then settled back to watch Erin. She'd spread the gemstones from the velvet bag Marie had given her across the table more than two hours before, and then spent the time since staring at them. She had not moved except to lift first one, then another, stare intently at them, then place them carefully back down on the wooden surface. He'd reined in his questions and his curiosity, but when she put her head down on her arms, the muffled sound of despair sliced through him like the sharpest dagger.
     
    He pulled her up off the bench and into his arms. "Tell me," he murmured against her hair.
     
    "I can't do this. I don't know enough. Marie expected me to somehow instinctively know how to use these gems; how to channel their power. I'm the gem singer, woo hoo," she said bitterly. "But even though I hear their song, I don't know how to use it. I don't know how to sing their songs." Her voice caught on a sob against his chest.
     
    "I can hear the power of the stone in the mountain calling to me, Ven. It's so loud it's like thunder in my chest and bones. Every hour, on the hour, it rings and calls me."
     
    "If you hear it, then we can find it, Erin. It's calling out to you to find it and we will."
     
    "But will it matter? If I can't figure out how to sing these small healing gems, how will I be able to sing the healing of a jewel so powerful that it calls me through thousands of Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
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    pounds of dirt and rock? I'm not enough, Ven. What if I try and fail and Riley's baby dies?"
     
    His heart clenched in his chest, both at the thought and at the resonance of the pain in her voice. "We won't fail. I'll be there, and I'll be your strength."
     
    He remembered her word. "Together, we'll be a humdinger."
     
    A tiny laugh escaped from her lips and she looked up at him and touched his face, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "Thank you. I needed to jump off the self-pity train and get back to