Nathiri soberly shook her head. “You were an infant when . . . when your father took you away to live in the outside world.”
“You were going to say when my mother died.” Jordana tried not to think about the awful way her mother had chosen to end her life. Zael had told her enough when she first met him, but many of the details of her mother’s life in Selene’s court remained questions Jordana didn’t know how to ask.
Nathiri exchanged a sympathetic look with the other colony members before meeting Jordana’s gaze once more. “Your mother was beloved by everyone in the realm, including those of us here in the colony. News of that horrible tragedy hit us all very hard. We mourned the news of Cassianus’s death more recently too.”
“My father was a good man,” Jordana murmured, earning a confirming nod from Zael. “I only wish he’d trusted me with the truth of my origins from the beginning. He cheated me out of knowing either one of them.”
Anaphiel rested a tender hand on Jordana’s arm. “Sometimes, people do things out of love without weighing all of the ramifications.”
“What about my mother’s father?” Jordana asked, curious now. “Who is he?”
“Only Selene knows that answer,” Nathiri said. “The queen has never taken a mate or acknowledged a consort.”
Harroth scoffed under his breath. “There was one man who found his way into Selene’s bed. Endymion.” He spoke the name like a curse.
Baramael’s expression was filled with contempt as well. “He’s the traitor who played Selene for a fool and cost the realm everything when he gave two of our crystals to the Ancients. But Endymion is not your grandfather, Jordana. That man was fully human, and you are pure-blooded Atlantean.”
“Selene and Endymion.” As Jordana said the names, her thoughts whisked back to the sculpture that had been in her exhibit at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. That piece had been an elaborate fake, a clever ruse her father had used to hide the crystal he’d taken from the realm the same night he’d stolen her away.
“What happened to Endymion?” she asked.
Zael was the one who answered. “After the theft was discovered, Selene summoned her legion and hunted him down personally. She took her time killing him with Atlantean light, not satisfied until there was nothing left of him but ashes.”
“Not that it mattered,” Harroth said. “The damage had already been done. Because of her, the crystals were lost to our enemies. Within days, the entire settlement of Atlantis was swallowed up by the great wave they unleashed on us.”
Jordana pressed her hand to her stomach, sick with the thought of both Endymion’s betrayal and the massacre of the Atlantean people that followed. There was even a small part of her that felt a little sympathy toward Selene for having placed her trust in the wrong person and then been forced to live with the devastating consequences of her mistake every day since.
“For obvious reasons,” Anaphiel interjected, “we all have cause to be wary when it comes to Selene, but I can’t help but wonder if perhaps she is the lesser existential threat than others. Rumors are swirling even among our people about the power of this terror group in the mortal world that calls itself Opus Nostrum.”
Zael nodded at the female. “Opus is a problem, yes. But the Order is handling it even as we speak.”
Harroth made a low, skeptical noise in the back of his throat. “Another thing you have yet to bring up since you arrived is the recent disturbance that occurred on the Asian continent. Every Atlantean around the globe felt the explosion that occurred in the region of Siberia. It could have only been created by an Atlantean crystal.”
Baramael’s bi-colored gaze was deadly sober. “More than one crystal, based on the sheer force of the detonation it caused.”
Zael glanced at Jordana and cleared his throat. “I can assure you, we are also aware of the event in the Deadlands. That, and the escalating trouble with Opus Nostrum are both of utmost concern to the Order.”
“As they should be,” Baramael replied. “In the meantime, we’ve sent a group of colony sentries to the region to investigate the disturbance.”
Jordana drew in a breath. “You sent people into the Deadlands? Do you think that’s wise?”
All four Atlantean council members looked at her in confusion--and no small amount of suspicion.
A scowl furrowed on Harroth’s dark brow. “Why do you ask? What is it you and Zael haven’t told us about--”
He didn’t get a chance to finish speaking.
A hot breeze kicked up out of nowhere, followed by a burst of white light.
In the next moment, a female shape appeared inside the center of the large, blinding orb that hovered barely an inch off the ground.
“Fuck.” Zael’s curse exploded off his tongue as he reached for Jordana, thrusting her behind him.“Selene.”
He didn’t have to say the Atlantean queen’s name aloud for Jordana to understand the threat that had just become very, very real.
Her sandaled feet touched down on the soft earth of the garden, all of her surrounded by the halo of pure white light. She wore a pale peach gown that looked as fine as gossamer, with figure-skimming long skirts and a similarly diaphanous cape that flowed off the back of her shoulders. A braided circlet of gold rested around her slender waist.
She was, in a word, breathtaking.
