She pulled out a handful of silk and leather.

He had to be kidding.

This was what Atlantean warriors considered useful battle gear for empaths? Silk camisoles and her one and only miniskirt?

She rolled her eyes. The skirt was the only leather in her closet, so biker-look man must have thought it was the thing to wear. At least he'd shoved her favorite pair of boots and a blue sweater in there, too, so she wouldn't freeze to death.

By the time she dressed, Conlan was gone. She spent about five seconds thinking about how she so didn't want to face the warriors, when everybody would know what she and Conlan had been up to all night, but the scent of coffee overrode any shyness and she wandered down to the kitchen, chin raised.

Only to find the room empty. But a full pot of coffee-fresh, from the smell of it-sat there tempting her. She selected a m.u.f.fin from the enormous, half-empty box on the table to go with it and sat down at the table, prepared to enjoy a quiet breakfast before she saved the world.

Heh. Social worker takes on the Primus. Film at eleven.

"Of my detached body parts, most likely," she muttered.

Somebody cleared his throat behind her, and she nearly dropped her coffee mug.

"I beg your pardon, Lady Riley?"

She turned to find Denal standing in the doorway to the hall. "Nothing. Just mumbling to myself, which is never a good sign. Come in. Do you want some coffee?"

He bowed to her and, oddly enough, it didn't faze her. She must be getting used to it. Great .

Add swelled head to the list of things she needed to worry about.

"No, thank you, but I would avail myself of another of those blueberry m.u.f.fins, if I may?"

She laughed. "Denal, seriously, we have to work on your language. Bring it into this century. And, sure, avail away. Pull up a chair."

He bowed again and took a seat across the table from her, back to the wall. Then he took a m.u.f.fin and sank his teeth into it, a look of bliss spreading over his face.

She grinned; she couldn't help it. He looked like a nine-year-old kid like that. Which made her wonder. "Denal, exactly how old are you? You guys keep throwing out words like 'centuries' when you're talking about stuff, but I had too much to wrap my brain around to go there before."

He swallowed and wiped his mouth with a napkin, then looked at her seriously. "I am soon to celebrate the anniversary of my birth, Lady Riley. Do you celebrate such times?"

"Yes, with cake and ice cream and balloons. And, please, just Riley, okay? So how many candles will be on your cake?"

He looked puzzled. "Candles?"

"One candle per year. So my next cake will have twenty-eight candles, which is way too close to thirty for my liking," she said, shuddering at the thought. "And you?"

He grinned at her. "I am afraid my cake would give rise to a conflagration, Lady...Riley . My candles would number two and twenty."

She laughed. "Right, junior. Twenty-two is hardly enough for a conflagration. You couldn't even roast a marshmallow with twenty-two candles."

Denal finished his m.u.f.fin and selected another, then shook his head. "Two hundred and twenty. Perhaps enough to roast a chicken or two."

She blinked. "Oh. Well. You look great for your age," she said weakly.

Two hundred twenty years old? And he was the young one? But...

"Denal, how old is Conlan?"

He looked surprised. "He has not shared that with you? But I thought you and he... Um, rather-"

It was her turn to smile, even though she could feel her cheeks turning pink. "It's okay, Denal. We're still... feeling our way through things."

He looked down at the table, which suddenly must have become fascinating, since he wouldn't raise his gaze to meet hers. "I offer my apologies. I did not mean to cause you discomfort."

"Trust me, this is nothing. You should have been around for some of the things my sister did to embarra.s.s me when we were kids."

He finally looked up, mischief gleaming in his eyes. "I was the youngest of eight, and have seven older sisters. I can imagine full well how things must have been between you. Mine used to dress me up like a doll and make me sit through interminable tea parties."

"Oh, I am so gonna use that against you, kid," Bastien's good-natured rumble of a voice cut through the room. "Maybe we can set up a tea party for you on our next mission?"

Denal jumped to his feet, crumbs dropping to the floor. "If you ever tell anyone that story, I'll-I'll-"

Bastien laughed. "Might want to stop there, until you grow a little bit, youngling. Besides, I'm tired from being out on patrol all night. Wouldn't be a fair fight, would it?"

Riley fought to keep from grinning at the idea of Denal going up against Bastien. The older warrior towered over him by nearly a foot and was as broad as the side of a small hill.

But the conversation brought her back to her earlier point. "Good morning, Bastien. So, if Denal is a youngling, how old are you?"

"Good morn, my lady. I have nearly four hundred years, praise be to Poseidon." Bastien ambled over to the coffee and poured the rest of the pot into an enormous mug that looked like a doll cup in his hand.

"And Conlan?" she asked, not sure she even wanted to know the answer.

Bastien c.o.c.ked his head and gave her a quizzical grin. "Prince Conlan is merely a few weeks away from the age of his ascension to the throne, of course. He will celebrate five hundred years on that day, when he meets his lady wife and becomes king of all Atlantis."

Riley dropped her coffee mug and stared, unseeing, as coffee ran in rivulets across the table. "When he meets who ?"

Chapter 25.

Riley shoved her chair back from the table and stormed down the hall in search of one lying, deceitful, soon-to-be-neutered Atlantean prince.

She found him in the dining room with Alaric, both of them bent over a large map spread over the table. Her treacherous body tingled a little at the sight of him, dark hair pulled back from his face with a leather tie, muscled legs just wide enough apart that she could imagine fitting right in between them, lying back on the table- -and turning into human bimbo of the week while his fiancee waited back home at Atlantis.

"You're a dead man," she began, then faltered when Alaric lifted his head and pinned her with that scary green glowing gaze of his.

But not even facing Alaric at full steam would stop her. Not this time. "Back. Off. Alaric." She bit off the words. "You and I are going to go around about whatever it is you did to my sister, but I need to talk to your prince for a minute."

Alaric's lips curled back from his teeth and the flashlight behind his eyes strobed up about a thousand degrees, but Conlan held up a hand. "Enough. What is this about, Riley?" He held a hand out to her, sending warmth and confusion through their emotional bond.

She slammed down her shields. Hard. Enjoyed the sight of his flinch.

"Forget to tell me anything when you were undressing me last night, Prince Conlan?"

He drew his eyebrows together, confusion clear in his eyes. "What-"

"You. Half a millennium old. Which is way, way too old for me, anyway, by the way. The throne. And, hmmm, what was it?" She tapped a fingernail on her teeth, looked up at the ceiling.

"Oh, right. Your queen . Ring any bells, a.s.shole?"

She heard somebody gasp behind her, but was way beyond being embarra.s.sed. Humiliated, sure. But it wasn't like everybody in the house didn't already know she was the prince's s.l.u.t du jour.

Riley's face burned at the thought, and she was glad that Quinn was gone. Conlan took a step toward her, and she pulled one hand back in a fist. "I've never punched anybody in my life, but if you take one more step, you can be the first. Did you know that it has been years for me? Years since I trusted any man enough to take that step with him?"

Tears ran down her face, and she brushed them away with one hand, hating her weakness. Her stupidity.

"Riley, I swear to you-"

"Oh, yeah. This should be good," she said bitterly. "Tell me all about how it's not what I think. That you weren't cheating on your fiancee with me last night. That the feelings you showed me weren't a pile of astonishingly putrid lies ."

With that, the pain finally worked its way through her anger. Seared through her defenses and scorched its way through the center of her being. She faltered, nearly collapsed from the intensity of the pain.

"How could you?" she cried. "How are you able to lie to me with your heart?"

Conlan blurred into motion and caught her, his arms steel bands around her. "Everyone leave us," he barked out, eyes feral with rage.

She shoved at his chest, tried to get away from him, crying now. Hard, wrenching sobs that felt like they'd rip out her throat.

He'd already ripped out her heart.

She dropped in his arms, dead weight, hoping he'd let her go. Unable to force her legs to hold her up. He went to the ground with her, falling to his knees in front of her, still holding her. She felt the waves of his anguish buffeting her. The waves of his emotion pushing at her, peddling their false claims of honesty and truth.

She screamed. "Get out of my head! It's all lies. You are going to marry... what's her name?"

"I don't-"

She snarled in his face, driven to jealous anguish beyond anything she'd thought she had in her. "Tell me her name !"

Conlan dropped her arms, released her. Shoulders slumping, he looked her right in the eyes. "I don't know her name. We've never met."

She fell backward, mouth falling open. "What? I don't understand. Why-"

"Why, indeed?" Conlan said, visibly drawing power into his body. His skin glowed with a faint blue-green iridescence and the flame was back in his eyes. "If I'm fit to be the king, then I should act as king, should I not?"

With that, he took Riley's hands in his and looked back over his shoulder at Alaric, who'd never left the room. "As king, I should have the right to choose. Because the ancient breeding program has been the way of the Seven Isles since the beginning does not mean it must continue as such."

Conlan looked at Riley, who sat, tears still streaming down her face, wondering what he was talking about.

Wondering why she cared.

Though she told herself she hated him, she could see the royalty in him, even kneeling on the floor. A position that would have rendered any other man subservient did nothing to diminish the kingliness in him.

The command.

She tried to breathe through the weight pressing on her chest-through the knot lodged inside her throat.

His next words knocked any remaining breath out of her.

"I, Conlan of Atlantis, high prince of the Seven Isles, therefore decree that the ceremony of mate-choosing shall no longer apply to any who do not wish it. And I renounce it. As king, I will choose for myself."

The gasps from behind her were louder this time, and her own echoed them. Alaric went dead white and clutched the edge of the table with both hands. Riley noticed it all only on the periphery of her senses; Conlan's face filled her vision.

She couldn't form a single word.

He stood, drawing her up with him, and put one arm around her waist. "I make my choice now. I choose her. I choose Riley Elisabeth Dawson, aknasha , human, to be my lady wife and queen."

He turned to Riley, joy fierce in his gaze. "If she will have me."

Before Riley could say a word, Alaric cut in. "No, you do not. You renounce nothing. Or else you doom Atlantis and the human world to a second Cataclysm."

Alaric smiled bitterly at her, then swung his gaze back to Conlan. "And your human will die."

As if to echo his proclamation of doom, the crashing sound of thunder ripped through the room and a lightning bolt of energy smashed into Alaric.

Conlan gasped and dove on reflex across the room toward Alaric as another bolt of energy scorched through the air at the priest.

"What in the nine h.e.l.ls?" he shouted, but he wasn't fast enough.

The pure green burst of fire smashed into Alaric dead center. The priest lit up as though electrified, arms jerking like some demonically possessed marionette.

Conlan heard Riley screaming behind him, but he was trapped in the elemental current driving through the air and into Alaric.

It lasted for hours, or for mere seconds. There was no way to tell. Time suspended itself on the cusp of energy gone rampant.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the paralyzing beam of power vanished. Ven and Justice ran into the room, shouting, as Conlan leapt forward and caught Alaric as he fell.

He lay the unconscious form of the priest on the table and turned, breathing harshly, to help Riley.

She stood, trapped, between Ven and Justice, who each held one of her arms and whose grim expressions signaled a major need to hurt somebody.

Conlan was allover that idea.

He started toward Riley. "Take your hand off her or the next thing you'll feel will be my boot up your a.s.s," he snarled at his brother.

"Yeah? And what exactly are you protecting? The woman-the empath who had the power to shut you down on the beach and now took Alaric out?"

Riley gasped. "What? Are you kidding? How could I do that?"