Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

you about a very old curse, and the woman with the power to save me from it,”
    Brennan said.
    Riley took Aidan back from Conlan and walked over to the table, still covered with as-yet-untouched food. “Let’s eat while you talk,” she said. “I have a feeling this is going to be a long story.”
    “All the best stories are,” Tiernan said, finally daring to feel like they could figure this out. “I have a story to tell you, too, about a fox shifter named Susannah, the scientists who killed her, Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
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    and how Brennan is going to help me stop them.”
    “He is?” Conlan asked, aiming a long, measuring stare at her.
    “Yes,” Brennan said, still holding her hand. “I am.”

Chapter 21
    It took an hour, but Brennan finally finished telling them every bit of it. The full nature of the curse, much of what had happened in Yellowstone, and his reaction to Tiernan. He’d left out certain parts of the tale that were nobody’s business but his own, but he’d noticed the way Tiernan watched him. She knew what he was leaving out and certainly could guess at why. In fact, she’d done some creative editing of her own as Brennan, believing himself honor-bound to do so, began to confess to his attack on Tiernan in the hotel room.
    “Everything got a little crazy then,” she’d said, interrupting him. “Then when Litton’s flunky, Wesley, showed up . . .”
    Without missing a beat, she’d filled in the gaps of his story, her keen journalistic observations contributing quite a lot that he’d missed. But never, not once, had she returned to that particular part of the story, and she cut him off a couple of times when he edged close to the subject.
    “You do not have to protect me,” he’d snapped at one point.
    She’d planted her hands on those luscious hips and stared him down. “Tell that to Alaric,” she’d sweetly suggested, and rage burned through him again at the thought that Alaric could have hurt her.
    Rage and something deeper. More possessive. She had hurled herself in harm’s way—in Alaric’s way—for him. Even after telling him they had no future together.
    It was clear proof that she cared for him, too. Now he only had to find out what had happened during the soul-meld and somehow fix it. Break the curse. Persuade Poseidon to allow him to keep her, forever. To take her as his wife.
    “You can’t go back,” Conlan said. “To Yellowstone, I mean, although of course I don’t see how you can go back to the time before Tiernan broke the curse either, but let’s leave the metaphysical discussion for later.”
    Riley nodded, though she looked troubled. “You can’t even be sure you’d learn anything of value, Tiernan. They’re going to lie to you, at the very least. More likely they’ll just try to kill you.”
    Tiernan glanced at Brennan, a question in her eyes, and he nodded. It was time to tell all of it.
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    “Tiernan is a truth teller,” he said. “She possesses the lost Atlantean Gift of divining falsehood whenever it’s spoken.”
    “Almost whenever it’s spoken,” she corrected him. “Sociopaths, pure narcissists, and vampires don’t register with my . . . talent.”
    “Atlantis has always put truth tellers immediately to death,” Conlan said, and suddenly he loomed over her, his eyes shuttered and the threat of her immediate murder in every line of his face. “I see no reason why that tradition should not continue.”
    Brennan instantly threw himself between Tiernan and Conlan, his hands going for the daggers he’d left in his rooms. To kill a prince was treason, punishable by death. He’d willingly pay that price.
    “Conlan,” Riley said, rising from her chair. “No!”
    Tiernan caught her breath, but then she laughed and put her hand on Brennan’s arm. An instant wave of peace swept through him, taking his rage with it. “It’s the tuba. You’re the tuba when you lie, Prince Conlan.”
    The menacing expression vanished from Conlan’s face as though it had never been there, replaced by one of quizzical interest. “Tuba?”
    “Lies resonate with me on a sort of sound-wave frequency, if that makes any sense. Some lies are like fingernails on a chalkboard, or a petulant rooster screeching at dawn. Your lie sounded like the tuba, but played very badly by a beginning student.” She grinned. “Sorry if that was insulting, Your