Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed by authors_sort

laughingly told Justice that she planned to solve. Justice had played along, at first. Pretended to have defected to her side, claiming violent hatred of his brother‟s regime. All those years of playing subject to Conlan‟s prince. Forced to pretend that he, too, was not royal by way of blood flowing through veins that were only half Atlantean. Forced to deny his Nereid mother.
    Closer.
    He ran and ran and the entryway appeared to grow in size as he approached it. Closer and closer. She came closer, and the sight of her nearly knocked his feet out from under him.
    Pharnatus was forgotten behind him.
    Anubisa was forgotten.
    There was nothing but Keely, with her red hair and green eyes and soft, luscious lips. He screamed her name.
    She looked at him—directly into his eyes—and she flinched. Even so far away as he was from her, he saw her reaction, and for an instant he hated her. He hated her and yet he did not; she was his. No matter what it took, he would claim her.
    Reason called out to him, flickering in the darkness of his soul. Sanity tried to force its way through the scar tissue on his psyche. She could save us, it claimed. She could save us from ourselves . But the pact of peace that had long ago been settled between his Atlantean half and his Nereid half had shattered when he‟d broken his geas in that dank cavern underneath the mountains.
    The two sides of his nature—both alpha, both dominant—battled for control of his mind. He knew the scope of his powers as Atlantean, but was only just coming into the range of his powers as a Nereid. He would either become stronger than he had ever been, or sanity would self-destruct on the rocky ground of the battlefield fought entirely inside his mind.
    “Keely,” he screamed. “We are coming for you.”
    Still running, still screaming, he caught and held her emerald gaze with his own. She was afraid, he saw. She was terrified, and some small, foreign part of him almost reveled in her fear. Self-disgust choked him. Had the Void turned him so far from himself? From duty?
    From honor?
    But she wasn‟t backing away. She wasn‟t backing down. She didn‟t run, as if she realized flight would trigger his prey instinct.
    Perhaps she thought that his fellow warriors would protect her. Perhaps one of them had already claimed her. The thought of it slammed into him like a spear in his stomach, and he stumbled and fell onto the rocks, hard, feeling the skin in his hands and face as it shredded.
    Ignored the pain. Ignored the blood. Both were irrelevant.
    Scrambling to his feet again, he ignored Pharnatus‟s attempts to catch up to him, checking only that his grip on his sword was still firm.
    The Nereid side of his soul howled wordlessly, and searing fury built in him until it reached explosive force. Not knowing or caring what could happen, Justice ripped loose the wards he‟d held so tightly against the Nereid side of his nature for so very, very long.
    Nereid magic, so long denied, blasted forth. Nereid power, claiming him for its own, nearly destroyed him. Hurricane-force winds whipped around him in the stark landscape, lifting boulders the size of blue whales like a youngling‟s toys and then dashing them to the ground with percussive force.
    Behind Justice, Pharnatus screamed with fear but kept running, ever faster, to catch up to him.
    Justice realized this in the periphery of consciousness, in some part of himself that was not wind, not power, not rage. He ran, warm blood dripping down into his eyes from the cuts on his forehead. Must reach her. She was real. She was reality.
    She was his reality, and if he could only claim her, he would be healed.

Chapter 12
    Keely‟s heart thundered in rhythm with the pounding feet of the madman racing toward her through the twisted landscape that looked like it had come from a cheap graphic novel. He was gaining ground, and he was coming for her. It was in his eyes, swirling in the madness of colors that couldn‟t exist.