Jordana glanced down, her brow knitting. “He’ll come around. He understands it’s something I have to do, not only for my family here in the Order, but also for the people in the colony. They’re my family, too, even if I’ve never met any of them yet.”
Savannah reached over and squeezed her hand. “That male of yours is as unbreakable as they come, but not when it concerns you. He must know Selene would give anything to bring you back to Atlantis.”
“Even if she has to bring you there kicking and screaming,” Jenna said.
“I know,” Jordana murmured. “My grandmother already tried to have me abducted once. But that was before I understood my Atlantean power and how to use it. I’ve only gotten stronger since my blood bond with Nathan. I’m not afraid. I know how to handle myself, and anyone else.”
“That may be true, but none of us have personally gone up against Selene or her legion,” Jenna reminded her.
Savannah nodded. “There’s only one thing Selene wants more than the crystals or vengeance for the fact they were stolen from her. And that’s you, Jordana.”
“That’s true,” Jenna added. “We don’t know what she might be capable of, or what she might be willing to do in order to get you back.”
Until now, Gabrielle had been quiet, listening in pensive silence. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, her brown eyes haunted with an unspoken dread. “Let’s hope none of us have to feel Selene’s wrath for ourselves.”
CHAPTER 4
Blood and fire. Smoke and screams. A world gripped in darkness, choked with violence and ruin.
Selene had never witnessed such chaos, such sharp, nightmarish terror.
Then again, yes, she had. So long ago, it had faded into myth . . . but not for her.
Never for her.
She could still taste the bitterness of that other, older attack in the back of her throat, where even now she had to bite down on her tongue to keep her remembered fury from erupting through her gritted teeth.
But this time it was the mortal world in flames. Human and Breed lives being spilled in the streets. Not her realm. Not her people.
So why did the sight of all that carnage and suffering make her stomach seize? Her heart felt squeezed in a vise, a stranglehold that made her draw in a sharp breath.
“Your Grace?” The Atlantean seer who stood with Selene in the royal palace’s salon glanced up anxiously from the scrying bowl. In the shallow basin she had conjured a window onto a horror-filled corner of the eastern United States at Selene’s command. “If it please Your Grace, shall I illuminate a different location instead?”
“No.” Selene’s tone was as curt as her dismissing wave. “I’ve seen enough. Go, Nuranthia.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Timid as a mouse desperate to avoid a cat’s claws, the petite brunette skittered out of the chamber.
Selene stared at the large bowl of hammered gold seated atop its carved marble pedestal. Now that Nuranthia had left, the vision the seer had called up was gone too. Nothing but clear, pure water glistened in the shallow basin.
She didn’t need Nuranthia’s bowl to tell her the blood-soaked edges of the outside world were seeping ever closer to her shores. She had known it was coming for centuries. It had begun the moment the first of her people had lain down with a human and produced a female who could bond with the savage, blood-drinking progeny of the Atlanteans’ most hated enemies.
For a while, she’d been content to let the Breed and humans prey on one another. Lately, however, things had escalated to a point she could no longer ignore.
Selene walked past the pedestal, her diaphanous skirts floating at her sides as she continued through the dome-ceilinged, open-air salon. A pair of pillar-flanked arches served as gateways to the beautiful garden courtyard outside. After glimpsing the darkness of the mortal world in its current state of chaos and destruction, she needed to breathe fresh air, needed to feel the cleansing heat of the Atlantean sun on her face.
The palace was a soaring fortress of smooth white stone and elegant, peaked turrets perched on a raised hill in the center of a lush, tranquil island. Selene’s personal chambers occupied the topmost floor of the tower, high above where she stood now, in the garden off the grand throne room and salon on the main floor. Living quarters for her attendants, advisers, personal guards and palace staff took up the several stories between.
There were other towers and buildings within the palace grounds as well, and, beyond that, spread out in all directions was the gleaming citadel of the realm’s general population. Or, what was left of it. The thousands living there now was a number vastly reduced from the original metropolis, and minus the handful of defectors and rebels who’d fled the rebuilt realm to make their own way on the outside.
Selene had yet to forgive those losses, too.
Surrounded by turquoise water and clear blue skies, this second Atlantean settlement was nearly as breathtaking as the one that had been stolen from her people.
To Selene, it was home. She would defend her realm to her last breath and heartbeat . . . and kill anyone who so much as imagined its ruin.
Pushing her dark thoughts aside, Selene walked farther into the garden. Bright sunlight canopied the whole of the island; above it were skies of purest blue. She drank it all in, the sun and sky, the surrounding turquoise waters that ringed the island, the air perfumed with the scents of the sea and citrus and countless flowers that bloomed throughout the garden.
There was a time when being among the calm here was enough, but not anymore. Not for a very long time.
