Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed

can draw upon the power of the goddess herself, more powerfully than even a First Maiden, in order to heal.”
    “Then I will raise him myself, as my own child,” the queen said, her eyes carrying the weight of ravaging pain, but still dry. “He carries the blood of my husband and is kin to my son Conlan and to any future children I might bear. Could I do any less?”
    “Could you love this child?” Keely asked, registering in the back of her/their mind the First Maiden‟s courage to dare to question a queen so. “He deserves to be loved and not made to feel unwanted.”
    “I will love him,” the queen replied firmly, as though trying to convince herself. “I must love him.”
    The baby sleepily opened his eyes and looked up at Keely. She reached out to touch his cheek, and she fell, plunging back into the dark.
     
    The visions came fast and faster; one after another. Brief snippets of memory the sword had gathered throughout its long existence. Blessedly, Keely was observing only as a bystander throughout, as she was thrown from moment to moment.
     
    The throne room
    “He cannot know,” the king said to a man and woman who stared down, overjoyed, at the baby she held in her arms. “He can never know.”
    As they agreed, words tumbling over each other in their haste, the queen stood behind her husband with tears rolling down her face.
     
    A rocky shore, in the midst of a
    thunderstorm
    Waves crashed against the cliffs, and the king stood alone, silhouetted against a tempest-painted sky. A voice, somehow larger and louder than the waves, surrounded him. “You must tell him. His name shall be Justice, and he will serve as a reminder of the injustice that will result if Anubisa is allowed to extend her dominion over the human race.”
    The king bowed his head, his fists clenched at his side. “I cannot tell him. I cannot risk my sons, and the enemies of my sons, knowing of his existence.”
    The voice, again. The voice that somehow Keely knew—although it was impossible for her to know it, it was impossible that it was true—was that of the sea god.
    Poseidon.
    “Do not defy me in this. You will tell him, as I have ordered. I have set a geas upon him, and he is cursed never to reveal the circumstances of his birth, unless he should then kill everyone who has heard him.”
    “Then you have created a monster and a murderer,” the king shouted, pointing his sword—the sword—at the waves.
    “No,” thundered the god. “I have created a weapon, unlike any that ever has been honed for battle. He will serve your sons, and he will serve my justice. When he is ten years old, you will give him your sword, and you will rename it Poseidon‟s Fury, to ensure that my fury at Anubisa‟s treatment of my chosen king is never forgotten.”
    Lightning crashed down on the waves, and a dark, undulating shape arrowed through the water toward the shore, but before Keely could catch a glimpse of it, she fell back down into the dark.
     
    Outdoors, in front of a small cottage
    The small, blue-haired boy looked up at the king, bewilderment on his face, then down at the sheathed sword that rested in his thin arms. “But, but I don‟t understand, Your Majesty. Why would you give me your sword?”
    The king stared down at him with no tenderness in his expression. “There‟s something I need to tell you—”
    And Keely fell.
     
    Twisting, turning, and whirling through the centuries, Keely fell from vision to vision. The one constant was Justice, growing from child to man to seasoned warrior, always with the sword either strapped to his back or being used in battle. Battle after battle. Desperate fight after desperate fight. Vampires and shape-shifters, all of them with the goal of enslaving or eating humans.
    All of them defeated by Justice, wielding Poseidon‟s Fury.
    Keely fell, and fell, and fell, in a never-ending vision. Vision wrapped inside vision, bloody battle after bloody battle, until she couldn‟t remember anything but carnage, pain, and death.
    But she grew to know him—oh, yes, she grew to know this wild man who‟d stolen her away.
    The anguish that lived deep inside him. The loneliness. The bitterness that came from living for centuries as a tool in an angry god‟s quest for vengeance.
    Her heart turned over, and Keely felt the helpless tears rolling down her face. “Enough!” she cried out. “Enough, already. Please, I can‟t take any more of this. Please, please. No more.”
    She fell,