Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

childhood, so alone, so different. She was so frail and thin, never eating enough, not hungry, afraid to come out of her room too often, afraid to hear the lies her parents told each other over and over again.
    Her friendships, ruined, one after another, from casual lies or careless deceit. Deliberate cruelties that stabbed all the deeper for being so unexpected, until she couldn’t trust, couldn’t love, couldn’t let anyone in. Not ever.
    The pain of it nearly crushed him, burying him under an onslaught of emotion for which he was spectacularly unprepared. She’d been so alone, for so long, a mere span of years compared to his own, but a lifetime was a lifetime and she’d been isolated for as much of hers as he’d been in his.
    “Never again,” he swore. “You will never be alone again.”
    She shivered in his arms, and he realized she was still crushed underneath him, bearing his full weight. He rolled over, feeling an instant sense of loss when his cock slipped from the warmth of her body.
    “I’m sorry, mi amara,” he said, stroking her hair away from her face. “I was lost to reason for a moment—”
    She raised her head and her eyes were wild, almost mad, as if she were lost in the wilderness of insanity. The soul-meld should never have caused that.
    “Tiernan?”
    She didn’t answer him, and he grasped her shoulders and shook her a little, terrified by the utter blankness of her face, a chilling counterpoint to the crazed look in her eyes.
    “Tiernan. Answer me,” he demanded. “Come back to me now, mi amara. I need you.”
    “Don’t call me that,” she said, and the edge of madness had migrated to her voice. “Mi amara. I know what it means. Don’t call me that. I am not your beloved, and I never, ever can be.”
    His hands slipped away from her as she threw herself off the side of the bed and crouched down, yanking the sheet off the bed to cover herself. Pain sliced through him to think he had caused that look of utter terror on her face.
    “Tiernan, what has happened? What did I do? Did I hurt you? I am a fool,” he said bitterly. “I should have been more gentle, I should have waited—”
    “You were gentle,” she interrupted, her face softening for an instant, even as she backed away Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
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    from the bed. Away from him. “You . . . It was wonderful. But we can never, ever be together like that again.”
    He’d had swords slice into his gut and cause him less pain than those few words. He doubled over from the body blow, shaking his head in denial. “No. No, you can’t mean that. Why would you—What have I done? What—”
    A terrible thought occurred to him. “What did you see? In my soul? Is it so blackened and beyond hope of redemption as to earn me this rejection?”
    She paused, then resumed her steps, backing away from him. From any hope of a future. “I can’t, Brennan.” Tears streamed steadily down her face, but there wasn’t a hint of indecision in her eyes. “I can’t.”
    Anguish was choking him, killing him, and he only hoped it would be a fast death. It was far, far too late to be a merciful one.
    A knock sounded at the door, and Tiernan rushed toward it even as he shouted at whoever it was to go away. He had no need of witnesses. Not now.
    Tiernan cast one last anguished glance at him, then pulled open the door, either uncaring that she was nude but for the sheet, or else so desperate to escape him that she would display herself to all and sundry.
    He heard the housekeeper’s voice, muffled as if she were speaking from the bottom of the deepest chasm in the ocean floor. Words. Meaningless words. Tiernan had rejected him, so what else could have value?
    He almost didn’t hear Tiernan close the door, but then she was standing in front of him, holding, ridiculously enough, a tray of coffee, juice, and pastries.
    She put the tray down on a table and simply stood, staring down at him, twisting her hands together. The hands that had so recently been touching his body. Holding him.
    “I still need you, Brennan,” she said, giving him a glimmer of hope, but crushing it with her next words. “I can’t finish this mission without you.”
    A layer of polar ice settled around him, shielding his reborn emotions from any further devastation, almost as if an ice god had seen his pain and pitied him. He raised his gaze to meet hers and the ice gave him a desperately needed calm.
    “I shall assist you in