Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

them clear over a car. They—” She had to pause, to catch her breath from the pain cutting off her air supply.
    He waited, giving her time, not pressuring her.
    Finally she could breathe again and she met his gaze. “They shot her to death. Right there in the road. They said in a press conference that she was the one who had brutally killed a local politician, but I knew it was impossible. Until I linked the two, the mind control story I was working on and her abduction.
    “If I’d told her—warned her . . .” The pain took her, and she buried her face in her hands, fighting to stay quiet and not attract the guards’ attention.
    Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
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    “If you’d told her, she would have been careful, but she was young and in love, and they were and are a well-organized team of trained killers,” Brennan said. “They would have taken her anyway. This is not your fault, Tiernan. Nobody but Litton and the monsters he works with and for are responsible for this. You did not kill her.”
    His words fell on her withered soul like a benediction, and warmth and light followed in their wake, breathing hope into the dark places in her heart that she’d feared could never be redeemed.
    “I didn’t kill her,” she said slowly, forging another link in the chain that connected them. “Just like you didn’t kill Corelia and her child.”
    His head shot up and a haunted expression darkened his eyes. “That’s different.”
    “No, it’s not. So either you admit that you don’t bear the blame for Corelia, or you leave me alone with my guilt for Susannah,” she fired off, desperate for him to find the same absolution he was offering her.
    Wonder dawned, first in his eyes, and then his entire expression changed. Lightened. Almost as if a burden exactly like hers, or maybe one weighted down so much more, by two thousand years of gravity, was beginning to lift.
    “You are more than I could ever deserve, Tiernan Butler,” he said, his voice low and husky. “I will see you safely out of this hell if it is the last thing I ever accomplish in this life. You are mine, my revelation and my redemption, and I will never let you go.”
    The intensity in his voice shook her to the center of her being, but the memory of the vision she’d had in the soul-meld was still with her, still vivid. The baby he didn’t—couldn’t—recognize.
    Maybe, just maybe, visions could be changed.
    “I still want to have a chat with Poseidon,” she said, but a yawn escaped in the middle of the sentence. Exhaustion and hunger were finally catching up with her.
    “Rest now,” he said. “I will watch over you, and we will discuss Poseidon when we escape from this trap in the morning.”
    She wanted to say that there was no way she could sleep on a concrete floor in a cell, with murdering thugs and evil scientists all planning horrible things for them, but her drooping eyelids proved she was wrong. So she nodded and curled up in the tightest ball she could manage, as close to the bars as she could safely be while staying out of range of accidently striking them in her sleep. Just before she drifted off, an idea flashed in her mind and wouldn’t let go. She raised her head and looked at Brennan.
    “Why don’t you tell Poseidon that you’re sorry? After all this time, surely he’d accept your Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
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    apology, right? Even gods should be able to forgive.”
    He stared at her, his mouth opening, then closing, but he said nothing for the longest time. “Tell him I’m sorry,” he said, as if the words themselves were a revelation. “You are a miracle, mi amara. You truly are.”
    She smiled a little and gave in to the waves of tiredness pulling at her. “Mi amara yourself, buddy. I know what that means, remember. And if you get me out of this, you can call me anything you want.”
    Brennan managed to ingest two more drops of the potion, dismissing any slight concern of overdose. All that mattered was that he stayed awake to protect Tiernan.
    To remember Tiernan.
    The heat of manufactured energy rushed through his body again, sizzling through blood and bone. His skin itched and burned, and even his hair follicles tingled. It was unpleasant, but not to the point of pain; physically he was fine. Emotionally, however, was far different.
    Emotionally, he was strained beyond endurance. Anger seared into rage, and fear for Tiernan’s safety