Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed

disbelief. You have no need to prove anything to anyone. We will force them to release you from Atlantis and we will leave with you.”
    She stared at him in surprise, but then the truth of his words sank into her and nearly shattered her. He was offering to give up his home and family—his entire world—to protect her.
    This warrior who fought viciously against others sacrificing for him was prepared to give up everything for her . It was more than she could comprehend, so she took refuge in humor.
    “Well, you‟d fit right in on campus with the blue hair, but you might have asked me first about coming home with me,” she said, attempting a smile. “You‟re not exactly a stray cat, and I have a really small apartment.”
    His eyes narrowed and he made a low, threatening noise deep in his throat. “We have claimed you, Keely. Perhaps now, when our grasp on calm and balance is so precarious, is not the time for your jokes.”
    She sighed, but said nothing. He was back to the claiming again. When she‟d done what she could for him and for Atlantis, she was going to have a long talk with him about the twenty-first century. Or maybe she‟d send him a nice, safe e-mail from a safe few thousand miles away.
    Safely.
    Not that she feared Justice. But the Nereid was an unknown quantity, and it was better that he and she weren‟t in the same time zone.
    She ignored the pain in her chest that accompanied the thought and started walking again.
    Toward Ven and the room that evidently held the Trident.
    Was it blasphemy to go poking around at the sacred objects of a god, even if you didn‟t worship that god? She touched the fish carving that rested under her shirt on its chain and wished that she‟d added a gold cross to the necklace. A symbol of her own faith. Although the fish could do double duty. Didn‟t a fish also serve as a symbol of Christi anity? Jesus fed all those people with only two fish, after all.
    She briefly closed her eyes and offered up a prayer that she would survive whatever lay in front of her. Survive and be able to help Justice. As if he could read her thoughts, he squeezed her hand briefly and a shiver of heat flared between them. She trembled as the sensation shuddered through her body, and the memory of his kiss back in the cavern shot into her mind, so powerful and potent that she stumbled.
    The memory flashed heat through her, but it wasn‟t sexual or even sensual. It was the warmth of simple joy: the taste of icy lemonade on a hot desert dig, the sight of a brilliantly colored sunset over the ocean waves, the sound of bells sparkling in a child‟s laughter.
    The warmth of coming home. To the kind of home she‟d always wanted.
    He caught her before she could fall, and she shook her head at the question in his eyes. How could she tell him that her heart had chosen now, of all inconvenient and inappropriate times, to fall fearlessly over the edge?
    Taking a deep breath, she put her Dr. McDermott face back on, gently pulled her hand free from his, and strode through the open door to face whatever lay inside.
     
    Justice and the Nereid watched from their shared eyes as Keely slowly circled the pedestal upon which the Trident rested on its peacock-blue silken cushion. She‟d done nothing else for what seemed like a very long time. Simply walked round and round the pedestal, never taking her gaze from the Trident, with its five gaping holes where the remaining of the seven gems should rest.
    None of them seemed to want to be the one to disturb her concentration, though. There was something in the way she held her body; her muscles clenched so tightly that he could see her hands trembling and her chest barely rising and falling with the shallow breaths she was taking. If he hadn‟t seen the real thing, he would have guessed that she was in a trance now.
    But he had witnessed the real thing, and the prospect of her going through such trauma again, on a far grander scale, froze the marrow of his bones with terror. She‟d promised him she could do it. That touching the cushion would be bearable.
    Even he, fiercely protective of her as he was, had to admit that the cushion itself had never seen battle or committed a single blood-drenched act. So it made sense that it would be bearable for her. Also, Keely had sworn that if he held her hand and gave her his support, she could do this.
    He could do no less than match her courage. But they needed to get on with it before his own courage faltered