Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

years’ comments or ‘wounded soul’ and I’m thrown off.”
    “I cannot help that. Imagine if you had lived the first decade of your life in France, the next decade in Spain, and the next in Germany. Your French would have German and Spanish words mixed in, don’t you think?”
    She nodded. “I’ve heard you speaking another language. Is that Atlantean?”
    He shot a look at the guards, but they were laughing about something and paying their prisoners no attention. “Yes, but let’s keep that between us.”
    “Conlan told me as much, when I swore my oath of secrecy the first time I visited.” Her gaze dropped to his hands, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “What is that?”
    He slowly pulled the stopper free and shifted position, pretending to yawn and stretch, then he coughed. While his hand covered his face, he squeezed two drops of the potion onto his tongue. It immediately burned its way down his throat like liquid fire.
    Whatever was in it, it certainly felt like it was working.
    He shifted position again, stoppering the vial and hiding it back in his pocket. Hopefully they would not force him to strip again. He’d been lucky the first time, hiding the vial in his mouth when he’d tossed Smitty his clothes, but he doubted he’d get something past the mercenary a second time. Unfortunately, there had been intelligence in those cold, dead eyes.
    Tiernan was still staring at him, but her eyes were narrowing and he could tell she was about to demand answers, so he forestalled her with a dollop of information and another question.
    “Alaric gave me a little pick-me-up to keep me from falling asleep. I can’t afford to take the chance, after what happened this morning. Tell me more about Susannah. Was she happy to be with child?”
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    “Will it be enough?” she whispered, ignoring his clumsy attempt to change the subject. “Will it work?”
    “I don’t know, but I feel a surge of energy even as we speak,” he said, and it was true. A wave of tingling heat was washing over him, shimmering sparkles through his vision until Tiernan appeared to have been dipped in silver gilt. The image made his cock jump in his pants, which made him groan at the exceedingly inappropriate timing for his libido to make an appearance.
    Desire apparently did not care to give way to danger or even sheer impossibility.
    “Brennan? What are you thinking?”
    “Trust me, you do not want to know,” he said, then turned the conversation back to somewhat safer topics. “Alaric gave me the potion, so it is almost blasphemy to think it would not do exactly what he ordered it to do.”
    “Do you really want to hear more about Susannah?”
    “Only if you want to tell me.”
    Tiernan took a deep breath. “The main thing left to tell is that she’s dead, and I killed her.”

Chapter 29
    Tiernan remembered that evening as clearly as if it had happened only the week before.
    Forcing the words past the lump in her throat was entirely another matter. The shock on Brennan’s face for the few seconds before he’d schooled his expression back to his normal impassivity goaded her on, though. He needed to know.
    She needed to tell it. Finally, finally tell it.
    “I was working on a story. This story, in fact. The rumors of enthralled shifters had just started working their way around, and I had a source, and, well, I was hot on the trail. Staying up all night, fresh out of college, chasing down leads. The high—I can’t begin to tell you what it’s like.
    Believing you’re a champion for the greater good—” She stopped, mid-sentence, realizing what she was saying, and to whom.
    Brennan’s lips were turned up at the edges. “I think I might have an idea,” he said.
    “Of course you do. Well, then, you get it in a way few people outside of journalism, or I guess police work or medicine, can. It’s a calling. A need to help, to be part of something bigger than yourself. To right society’s wrongs.” She stopped and rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’m babbling.
    But I was in the zone, on that high, and it was big. I could tell it was huge, and there was a Boston link. I had proof that a local scientist was involved in a conspiracy to abduct shifters and experiment on them.”
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    Brennan leaned forward, his hands clenched into fists on his thighs. “You ran willingly into the middle of