Warriors of Poseidon 04 - Atlantis Unmasked

with her bows, which were made only of the richest, most magical wood from the heart of an eleven forest. Goddess of the moon and sworn protector of the weak and helpless.
     
    Weak. Helpless. Two things Grace had vowed never, ever to be.
     
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    But upon first hearing Gran tell wild stories of unbelievable powers, Grace had privately scoffed, in spite of the faint tingle of recognition that had stirred in her mind. She‟d told herself she was humoring the old woman. But finally, when she gave in and took the bow from her great-grandmother‟s hands the magic had poured into Grace. Changing her. Making her . . . more.
     
    Gran had told her that she‟d only held out long enough for Grace to find her, but it was time for her to rest. Kneeling there, watching the life fade from her great-grandmother‟s eyes, Grace had sworn to use the bow and trust Gran had placed in her, and make something of them both. Make something of herself.
     
    Finally, when she was twenty-one, she‟d met one of the rebel leaders so far up the chain of command that everybody said her name with a certain hushed awe. Not that Quinn looked tough. More like a character in a manga novel—tiny, with dark, raggedy hair. But it had only taken one look into Quinn‟s eyes to know the truth, because the dark gaze held a bottomless well of pain and rage and deep, black knowledge.
     
    Grace had gazed long and hard into those eyes and never looked back. Only a teenager—a girl—she‟d honed herself into a warrior. And these days she avoided mirrors and only occasionally wondered if, when others looked into her own eyes, they saw the same thing she‟d once seen in Quinn‟s.
     
    It didn‟t matter. None of it mattered. She blew the air out of her lungs and sank down beneath the waves again, letting the water swallow her body and her tears. She almost allowed the forbidden thought to enter her mind. The thought that came more and more frequently these days.
     
    The thought of how pleasant death by drowning would be, compared to the alternatives.
     
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    But not today. Not on Robert‟s birthday. A decade since that final birthday—ten long years since he was murdered. It would profane his death and, more important, his life if she were to choose to die on this of all days.
     
    She pushed her body back up through the strong current and gasped in the oxygen she needed. She‟d live to fight another day. For Robert.
     
    But the vision of another face superimposed itself over Robert‟s in her mind as she struck out for shore. A scarred face, with eyes haunted by unimaginable pain and sadness. A face surrounded by a lion‟s mane of gloriously golden hair.
     
    Alexios. Alexios . The Atlantean warrior whose fighting skills were already legendary among the rebels. The man whose face—half ruined by vicious scarring, half sculpted into impossible beauty—appeared more and more frequently in Grace‟s most sensual and disturbing dreams.
     
    Half of the women in her command had a schoolgirl crush on him. Some sort of Phantom of the Opera thing. He could have slept with any of them. All of them.
     
    But he never, ever had. Or at least not a whisper of it had reached her ears, and a rebel squadron was a very close-knit group. No secrets were ever kept, no matter how minor.
    Secrets caused failure.
     
    Failure caused death.
     
    No, Alexios wasn‟t involved with any of the women, or men for that matter, in her command. But maybe he had a girlfriend in Atlantis. Maybe even a wife.
     
    Not that it was any of her business. And the strange, empty ache in her stomach was only hunger. It had nothing to do with regret. Nothing to do with that kiss that had shaken her to her core.
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    Just before he‟d vanished. A girl could take that sort of thing personally.
     
    She reached the shallows and stood to walk the rest of the way, squeezing water from her hair and pushing it back away from her face, scanning the beach as she did. Forget Alexios. Clearly he‟d forgotten her. Constant vigilance, even here. Especially here.
    Especially any time or place she might be tempted to let her guard down.
     
    The glimmer of moonlit sand appeared empty, but vampires often rode silken shadows in the night. The only thing truly known about their powers was that the full extent of them was a closely