Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed

“You honor me, Keely, and I will explain as much as I can. But first I must bathe and rest. You need rest, as well.”
    “Not that again! Look, I told you—” But as she looked up into his eyes, she forgot what she‟d been thinking. Blue-green flames danced deep in the centers of his black pupils and, fascinated, she raised a hand to touch his face. Of course she needed rest. She was so tired, wasn‟t she?
    So very tired.
    When her fingers traced the sharp curve of his cheekbone, he shuddered underneath her hand, awakening a trace of potent sensual awareness in her body. But a tiny voice buried deep in her mind shouted at her that she wasn‟t tired at all. That she needed to escape.
    As she stared into his eyes, the voice faded. Just as well. She was so very, very sleepy.
    Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she felt her knees give way beneath her. He caught her as she fell. “You‟re holding me again,” she murmured, sleep claiming her in waves of peace and restfulness.
    “None other shall ever hold you, Keely,” he said, and then she felt his lips lightly touch her forehead. “You are mine.”
    Something about his words—something wrong —tickled at the edge of her consciousness for a few seconds, but then she surrendered into sleep. She could figure it out later. When she wasn‟t so very, very tired.
    Sinking down, down into gentle waves of slumber, she dreamed of swords, jewels, and a sapphire-haired man who wielded them both.

Chapter 15
    Atlantis, the palace, the next morning
    Conlan looked around his strategic planning room—he refused to think of it as a war chamber, when the subject at hand was his own brother—and wondered why a night of sleep hadn‟t seemed to refresh any of them. Darkness lay like bruises under the eyes of everyone entering the room, and he knew his own face reflected the same. Riley had suffered through a difficult night, again, and he found it impossible to sleep when she could not.
    He glanced at her, to be sure she‟d obeyed his command to remain on the comfortable couch, resting on mounds of pillows with her feet up. The pregnancy had not been easy, and as her due date grew nearer, she seemed to grow ever more pale and thin, except for the enormous mound of her belly.
    She‟d finally admitted to him only the day before that she was unhappy. Their wedding had been postponed again and again as the surface battle to protect the humans intensified. Then, of course, when Justice had vanished, all thoughts of planning a celebration had been put on indefinite hold. But, as she‟d reminded him, the baby would not wait for the perfect time to arrive. He or she would enter the world at a time of nature‟s choosing, and if they did not make haste, the baby would be born without the blessing of legitimacy.
    Or, as Riley had so elegantly put it, “Over my dead body.” So, even if the official royal wedding, which by tradition and law had to follow or accompany the coronation, must needs be put off once more, there would be a wedding. Soon.
    Whether they found Justice and Dr. McDermott or not.
    As the last of the stragglers arrived, Conlan held up a hand for silence and then addressed the most senior of the servants circulating in the room, offering refreshments. “Thank you, Neela.
    If you will leave the trays, we can serve ourselves now.”
    It was an unspoken request that they be given privacy, and Neela instantly understood. She‟d been with his family for decades and, unfortunately, knew well the requirements of war-time planning. With what seemed like nothing more than a nod of her head, she rounded up her staff and they were gone in the space of a few minutes, closing the enormous copper-and-orichalcum-inlaid wooden doors behind them. The sparkling Atlantean metal twined with the copper to form intricate designs on the door. Symbols of welcome or of warning, Conlan had never been sure exactly which.
    Conlan took a long drink of the hot coffee and then put the mug down on a table. “Good morning, everyone. Thank you for gathering with me at such an early hour. We all know the situation, so I won‟t waste our time with the recap. We have three goals: First, we have to find Justice and Dr. McDermott. Second, Alaric must determine whether Justice has been compromised by his time in the Void. And, third, we‟re going to go on the offensive.”
    “It‟s about damn time,” Ven called out from a spot across the room, standing next to Erin‟s chair. “Playing a