Ilia and Larissa hurried forward and I hugged them both. “Ready for some research?” I asked.
Larissa nodded, and Ilia screwed up her nose. “That’s why I have the wine. It helps with the research.”
She handed one of the bottles to me, and I was about to refuse when I thought … what the hell. Maybe it would help; maybe it would dull the pain just slightly. Either was a win in my book.
The first swig was sweet with a slight burn as it trailed down my throat. I took another straight away, remembering how hard it was to get supes drunk. Of course … this was fairy wine so the rules kind of went out the window.
Jesse reached out and stopped me before I took a third gulp. “Let’s see how you go with two,” he said softly, wrapping his arm around me and letting me fall into him.
I wrinkled my nose and shrugged before handing the bottle back to Ilia. “You might be right,” I admitted, feeling the warmth spread through my body. It reminded me of my power, and I panicked for a brief second that I might lose control of the energy.
“I’ll keep you safe,” Mab promised, still on her perch.
That made me feel marginally better.
Everyone was now around the room, pulling books from the shelves and flicking through them to try and determine if there was anything important. Axl was totally in his element, magically taking notes as he read at super speed through whatever thick tome he held.
“Atlantis was actually a series of islands,” he said out loud, his pen racing across the paper next to him. “Some of them remained after the main ‘royal’ island sank. Eventually though, they were lost to the sea.”
I turned toward him, finding that pretty interesting. “So the royals lived on the main island, but the others spread out.”
He nodded. “Yes. I have a population chart here that was taken the year before it sank. There were fifty thousand Atlanteans by the time the gods cursed them to exist beneath the seas.”
Wow, that was huge. So many lives lost when they sank—or so we thought. There was that other theory that they were simply in stasis, waiting to be freed. The same way I had been in stasis…
There was more silence, and I was reading some newspaper articles about life in Atlantis, marveling at the world they lived in, when Jesse cleared his throat. “I found something about Maddison.”
I stood suddenly, blood and alcohol rushing to my head and almost sending me face-first into the bookshelf. I was halfway to drunk, clearly, and it was doing exactly as I hoped: slightly dulling my pain. “What did you find?” I asked as I reached his side. He held a photo album, and in it was some text.
“This was Queen Helene, the ruler of Sonaris’s bloodline.”
Helene was beautiful, tall with curves for days, her long blond curls cascading over her barely-covered skin. In this image, she had just risen from the water, wearing less than a bikini in coverage.
“She looks like a god,” I breathed.
Jesse lifted his eyes to me, and then jerked his head down to where there was more text.
The top line was in Atlantean script. I recognized it easily now and could even pick a few words like “goddess” and “child.” Neither of which was enough to read it, but thankfully someone had penned the translation beneath.
Queen Helene lent her body to Lotus, Goddess of Storms, to conceive the child who would save us all.
Holy mother…
I gasped, my breathing rapid and loud.What the fuck? What the actual fuck?Queen Helene was the Atlantean whotheybelieved birthed me. The one who had a child with a god. There was no legit evidence to support this, but hearing her name threw me.
“Am I that child?” I wondered out loud in a voice too high-pitched. “Could I be born of two gods? Or was it my mother that was the god, not my father?”
Jesse shook his head. “I have no idea. This is all the information I have in this book. The rest is about the other royals and their houses.”
Ilia appeared at my shoulder, bottle in hand, and I took another huge gulp. When Jesse shot me a side-eye, I glared at him and hugged the bottle to my chest. “I need it,” I said, only half joking.
His eyes ran across my face, and I fought the urge to hide my eyes from him. I wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but it made me uncomfortable. With a shrug, he broke the moment and snagged the bottle and took a long drink himself before handing it back. “That’s more like it,” I said recklessly, heat coursing through my veins. Jesse just shot me his cocky grin, that beautiful face looking a tiny bit less devastated. For a moment we both forgot we had lost the most important person to us and just enjoyed the heady sensation that only alcohol and love could bring.
We all went back to our research. I found myself drawn to the far back section of the shelves. It was darker here, the light from the water and magic that held this room not quite touching the back corner. My hands traced over the books. I hoped something would jump out at me. Mab appeared suddenly, and I hadn’t noticed until this point, but there was a faint glow surrounding her. “Are you making yourself light up?” I asked, fascinated by her.
The tiny fairy shook her head. “No. This is the natural glow from my power. The stronger you are, the stronger the glow. The upper gods … sometimes it’s hard to look directly upon them.”
I couldn’t remember anything like that with Shera. But then again, she wasn’t supposedly that strong. Minor deity of the sea, Axl had said.
