Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

before.
    He shoved a hand through his hair and pushed it away from his face and then turned to pace to the other side of the room.
    “There was a girl. A woman,” he hastily corrected himself. “She was so seductive, and I was Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
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    more than willing. She was a senator’s daughter. I thought—I thought our alliance was simply a pleasurable diversion.”
    “You had a fling?” Tiernan asked, her expression solemn, although he thought he saw a hint of mischief dancing in her glorious whiskey-dark eyes. The rest of his tale would kill her amusement.
    “We were caught,” he said flatly. “I offered to marry her. She didn’t want me, and in any event, her father said I was unsuitable. There was a scandal and the sea god . . . well. Poseidon was not pleased.”
    “You took the hit, huh?” Her voice was warm, almost as if she had sympathy for him.
    He did not want her sympathy. He could never deserve it.
    “He cursed me. He cursed me with such an unforgiving and unending curse that I have spent more than two thousand years of my life unable to feel any emotion.” Rage, rage that he could finally feel after so long without it, seared through his blood. “Two thousand years,” he repeated, and then he bitterly recited the words that had been burned into his memory in that tavern back room:
    “‘For all eternity, until such time as you can meet your one true mate, you will feel no emotion.
    Neither sadness nor joy; neither rage nor delight.
    “‘When you do meet her, you will experience a resurgence of all of the emotions you have repressed over the years and centuries and even millennia.
    “‘If that alone is not enough to destroy you, you will also be cursed to forget your mate whenever she is out of your sight. Only when she is dead—her heart stopped and her soul flown—will your memory of her fully return to you, thus allowing you until the end of your days to repent bringing dishonor upon the name of the Warriors of Poseidon.’”
    He closed his eyes, fists clenched at his sides, in the middle of the room, waiting for her to heap scorn upon him for his failure. Waiting for her to run away from the horrible import of his words.
    “Bit harsh, wasn’t it?”
    His eyes snapped open at the unexpected words. She still sat in the chair, her head tilted to the side, watching him.
    “You don’t understand. I have not told you the worst of it, for I am a coward.” He paused, as another wave of pain sliced through him when he thought of Corelia and the babe. The child who would have been his son or daughter, had it lived.
    Had it not died, because of him.
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    She made an impatient movement. “I understand perfectly well. I understand that you were a hell raiser when you were young, as so many of us are, and I also understand that your sea god is a little bit unbalanced, no offense.”
    “But I—”
    “You did nothing that any frat boy with a keg and a toga party hasn’t done,” she said, interrupting him again. “Yet somehow you’ve been punished for more than two thousand years? And I can’t believe I’m even saying that. Two thousand years. Just how old are you? Are all Atlanteans as old as you?”
    “I killed the mother of my child when she carried him in her belly.” The words came out harsh, rasping his throat. Scorching his heart.
    The color drained from Tiernan’s face. “You . . . what? You—But wait.” She drew a long, shuddering breath. “No. That’s not true. Or rather, some part of it is not true. I can feel something . . .”
    As she fell silent, those enormous dark eyes of hers fixed on him in shock and horror, the pain rose in his chest, cutting off his breath. He bent forward in the chair, catching himself with his hands before he fell out and his face hit the floor. Agony at the loss of his child, bitter remorse over Corelia’s death—both vied for control of his sanity.
    He began the deep breathing exercises again, forcing himself to climb back into the chair. “It is truth,” he said. “Truth enough, anyway.”
    “Truth enough isn’t good enough. Tell me exactly.”
    He bowed his head and complied, recounting Poseidon’s blistering condemnation and accusation. “So you see,” he concluded, “she died because of me. My own child died because of me. I have no right to either life or happiness, but I have spent every day since that one