Return to Atlantis: a Fantasy Romance (Kingdom in the Sea Book 1) Read online

  Return to Atlantis

  Domino Taylor

  Vivienne Savage

  Return to Atlantis

  Kingdom in the Sea

  By Domino Taylor

  All material contained herein is Copyrighted © Lady Raven Press 2018. All rights reserved.

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your preferred e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Contents

  1. The Sea Angel

  2. Surface Bound

  3. Girls’ Night

  4. A Scientific Nightmare

  5. Port Bermuda

  6. Home is Where the Heart Is

  7. Of Sacrifice and War

  8. Sink or Swim

  9. Perpetual Failure

  10. Love is War

  11. The Suitable Suitor

  12. Distressed

  13. Fare Game

  14. Leilei

  15. Divine Privilege

  16. Loyalty to None

  17. Never a Break

  18. To Lead by Example

  19. Standing Ground

  20. A Light in the Dark

  21. Jumping the Shark

  22. Closure

  23. Family Matters

  24. The Accord

  25. A Taste of the Forbidden

  26. Perseverance

  27. To the End

  28. Blood and Gold

  29. Doubt and Fury

  30. Elysian Waves

  31. Hope Flows Eternal

  32. Currents of Change

  33. Out of Thought, Out of Mind

  34. Bared

  35. All or Nothing

  36. Checkmate

  About the Author

  1

  The Sea Angel

  On a typical spring evening, the rocking motion of the waves would have comforted Kailani.

  But this wasn’t a typical evening. Their mission as conservationists had yet to place her in peril, aside from an occasional close brush with the law. Yet now, as she stood at the starboard rail, it became abundantly clear this was how it would end for her and the rest of the Sea Angel’s crew: death in the middle of the Atlantic while doing what they loved best.

  All the while she waited for her life to flash before her eyes, nothing played before her vision but mediocrity—always decent, but never outstanding. In the Navy, she was a good sailor. As a student, she’d had passing grades. Throughout her childhood, she’d been an obedient daughter and a decent older sister.

  Reviewing the twenty-five years of her life that she could recall actually bored Kai until the final moments that brought her where she stood now, ready to throw her life away to save the whales.

  No. Not throwing it away. Sacrificing it. Because out there in the distance, one of their choppers videotaped every moment of the encounter with a telescopic lens. At least, she hoped the Zeus 2 had it all.

  They should have been two passing ships in the afternoon, the Sea Angel a smaller scouting boat designed strictly for surveillance, the Cristóbal sailed by poachers guilty of murdering the endangered North Atlantic right whale. At the last minute, the other ship had made a dramatic change, altering its course head on for them.

  It had seemed like an intimidation tactic until Captain Johnson changed course and the Cristóbal adjusted to remain in their path.

  “This is going to be hairy! Everyone hold on!” Johnson cried from the helm.

  There wasn’t enough time. No amount of evasive maneuvering or skill could pull them out of the monster ship’s path. They’d realized their enemy’s intentions too late, and the Sea Angel, while swift, wasn’t fast enough to avoid the much larger whaling ship. They were David against Goliath.

  The intentional ramming would leave every member of the Sea Angel stranded in the frigid open water of the Atlantic Ocean. If they survived at all.

  Kai didn’t have much hope.

  While their captain made a hard right to evade the threat before them, Kai gripped the rail and braced for impact, staring down the illegal whaling vessel set on a direct course for their ship’s bow.

  The Cristóbal’s crew must have reached peak desperation to attempt sinking them, perhaps tired of paying the enormous fines levied against them for poaching. Every member of the Sea Angel’s crew volunteered as a member of Clear Shores, an organization devoted to monitoring the Atlantic and reporting crimes against ocean animals.

  Kai’s team had already gotten the other vessel into deep shit once.

  Despite Johnson’s attempt to remove the Sea Angel from their opponent’s path, the other ship clipped their stern. The deafening shriek of metal against metal punctuated the crash of ships coming together in a powerful collision. They rocked back and forth, and bits of the Sea Angel splintered into the water. As the stern split, a great wave of water lapped over the portside bow.

  A woman’s scream joined the tearing metal, drowned out by the screech made by shattering wood. The rocking ship capsized, sending the crew sliding to the starboard rail. Cries of pain filled the air and bodies toppled over the rail.

  Everything after that moment happened quickly. Her body slapped against a wall of chilly water, and then waves engulfed her, surging up her nose, into her mouth and throat, and over her head.

  But naval training kicked in along with instinct and she surfaced moments later, bobbing on the turbulent and choppy waves while desperately searching for any other survivors.

  Their scouting vessel had been reduced to sheets of ruined metal and splintered wood. She swam to a nearby piece of debris as the Cristóbal left the Sea Angel’s wreckage in its white-capped wake without concern for the injured, the stranded, or the dead.

  Yards away, their undamaged lifeboat drifted out on the current created by the crash.

  Thank goodness for small miracles, though that appeared to be the only godsend she spotted at a glance.

  One of their researchers, a gentle man who had signed on due to his love of dolphins, floated face down beside her. Blood streamed from the back of his shattered skull in a frothy, pink river. When the waves tossed his corpse further away from her, she had no choice but to let him go. What good was there in saving a dead man?

  Kai discovered another unconscious researcher among the ship’s ruin while Collins recovered the lifeboat. The big and tanned Royal Marine was their muscle, but they’d never needed him for more than infrequent intimidation tactics.

  Another volunteer heaved herself into the boat, then helped Kailani and Collins to get the unconscious man inside. Rose touched two fingers to his pulse point and sighed in relief. “He’s alive and definitely breathing, but what if they come back to finish what they started?”

  “Then we die. We have to hope that Zeus 2 captured it all on video, otherwise it’s our word against theirs. All of our video footage of their illegal activities will be at the bottom of this fucking ocean by now.”

  Gods, they needed the chopper. Sooner, not later.

  One by one, she and the other able-bodied survivors guided the injured to the life boat. It happened over the course of m
inutes but felt like hours before everyone but she and Collins huddled in the boat for safety. And warmth. But too much adrenaline pumped through Kai’s body for the cold to affect her.

  “Where’s Franco?” Collins asked. “He’s shite in the water…should have been wearing a vest from the bloody start. Do you see him? Franco!”

  “Antonio!” Rose called from the boat, a young marine biology major who had joined them earlier that year. “Antonio, are you out there?” She turned to face Kai, who treaded water alongside the boat. Rose’s lips were blue, and her teeth chattered. Thin strands of white-blonde hair stuck to her pale face. “How many are we missing?”

  Collins glanced at her. “Too many.” He found a body, grimaced, and pushed his way through more of the wreckage.

  A quick headcount determined more of them remained among the missing than found or alive, including Johnson. Shit.

  “Keep looking,” Kai said, sifting through debris. “We have nine men unaccounted for and—” Vibrations in the water churned the ocean beneath them. Though she saw nothing immediately below her in the twilight depths, she sensed something was there and dared to hope it was one of their people desperately struggling to swim to the surface.

  It could be a shark attracted by the commotion or the blood in the water. Or some other fish hoping for a nibble. A school of them, perhaps. The moment those thoughts danced through her mind, a calm voice of reason and logic said otherwise, telling her to trust her instincts.

  Heart slamming a frenetic drumbeat against her ribs, Kailani took the less sensible option. She dove under and searched the black water, leaving the oblong shape of the lifeboat behind as she delved yards below the surface. The Atlantic welcomed her with a sense of tranquil comfort, like soaking in a warm bath with a sweet glass of champagne. It invited her in, urging her to swim deeper.

  The others shivered from the cold. She did not. Something told her she was different. That she could take what they couldn’t. Her mother had always called her a water baby, a child born for swimming and more comfortable in a pool than on two legs.

  Within seconds, she put yards between herself and the surface.

  Where could they be?

  Something disturbed the water to her left and sent micro-ripples toward her. She jerked that way and saw the silhouette of a man’s motionless body drifting through the near pitch-black veil of the fathomless deep far below her. What little remained of the dwindling sun penetrated the ocean and cast diffuse silver ripples over Antonio’s jacket. Kai curled an arm around his broad torso and kicked to the surface.

  Moments later, when she’d dumped him with Collins and Rose, something told her if she returned to the deep, she’d find another.

  Without questioning that tiny voice whispering in her subconscious, Kailani dove under again and resumed the search.

  2

  Surface Bound

  The Gift of the Sea glowed.

  Manu had been a child when its light dimmed twenty-five years ago, signaling an end to the royal line of Atlantis. On that day, mers across the Atlantic Ocean mourned the loss of their compassionate monarchs, but more than that, Manu had grieved the death of his own mother.

  Commander Malie had traveled as a guard in the king and queen’s personal escort, but her body wasn’t among the remains at the site of the ambush. Sea life was a cruel life, and any number of hungry scavengers could have taken her away.

  That was the infinite nature of energy; one thing died and gave life to another.

  But on today, the stone affixed to Queen Ianthe’s scepter shone a deep golden-orange. It flashed, held its gleam, but then dulled anew.

  Had he not been paying his respects at the memorial, it would have gone unseen. He stared at it for a time, convinced it had been a figment of his imagination or a trick of the light, but then it sparked one more time.

  That stone hadn’t so much as flickered in a quarter of a century.

  Two guards were to stand watch over the Chamber of Heroes at all times, but their men had been stretched thin during the past season by the encroaching rise of the darkness. Recruitment was at an all-time low.

  With no one present to send for the high priest, Manu went to fetch the man himself. He pushed up to his feet and launched himself toward the palace corridor, long legs crossing the marble floor at a fast clip. His footfalls echoed beneath the vaulted ceilings when he reached the entrance hall and the great stone doors. A pair of armed sentries stood watch, holding spears and shields they’d hopefully never need to use on the palace grounds.

  Manu sent one to fetch the regent, then he hurried onto a lantern-lit, paved road leading to the temple devoted to their goddess. That was where he would find their high priest, as the man rarely left these days, having shut himself away in seclusion under a vow of silence, emerging for no one.

  Now it was time to drag the hermit from his cave.

  A literal cave.

  The Temple of Thalassa stretched as tall as the royal palace, several stories of chiseled rock sculpted from the ocean floor into a place of worship able to house thousands of the citizens who dwelled within the city’s protective glass walls.

  Manu’s gaze scanned upward to the colossal dome stretching far above Atlantis. The magic-imbued, nigh-indestructible barrier played two roles: it divided the dry streets of Atlantis from the ocean and protected their city from creatures of the Gloom. Though actual aberrations had not approached within a hundred leagues of Atlantis in centuries.

  The temple claimed credit for the peace, basing the years of silence from the shadowlands as proof of Thalassa’s love for her people. No one believed it. Many had lost their faith—lost their hope—since Queen Ianthe and King Neptune’s deaths. What good was there in believing in deities of the earth, sky, and sea, when the people of their colonies and rural homesteads were slaughtered by the dozens each day?

  He walked through the temple’s tall arches, passed between marble pillars, and strode through cold and empty echoing caverns with polished floors gleaming silver beneath the gemstone torchlight. Though he visited rarely since his childhood, he knew his way around.

  High Priest Hipponax knelt before a radiant statue of the goddess, all five meters carved from luminescent white stone. Some considered the sculpture to be one of the temple’s greatest treasures, though the object of real value—according to the priest—was the gilded bowl at the base by her feet. That vessel held the purest, most pristine water in all the realm, a magical fluid that never evaporated and never moved.

  Legends claimed the water was Thalassa’s tears.

  Manu snorted. And seahorses flew. He’d believed that nonsense when he was a child; now, as an adult, he knew better than to trust fairy tales. Their goddess, if she even existed, had long ago forsaken Atlantis and left them to be overtaken by the Gloom.

  “Excuse me, Commander Manu,” a young priestess said, intercepting him the moment he stepped into the chamber. “High Priest Hipponax has asked for privacy and—”

  “I’ve come bearing important news.” He gave her a tight smile, the kind that didn’t reach his eyes. Happiness, or even pleasure for that matter, wasn’t an expression Manu often wore.

  “If you could tell me your news, I’ll relay it to him—”

  Manu thrust out one arm and pressed the woman aside, parting her from his path with the ease of opening a curtain. Gently. “High Priest, forgive my interruption, but your attention is needed at the palace.”

  Hipponax waved toward him with one hand in the universal gesture of “hold on a moment,” but Manu had the patience of a ravenous mako shark.

  “High Priest Hipponax is not permitted to speak,” the priestess insisted, fighting her way between them. “I must ask again for your patience.”

  “He’ll speak to me.” Manu clenched his jaw. “I understand he’s taken a vow of silence, but does he not receive a half hour of respite each day?”

  “He’s used it. If you want a discussion, perhaps his assistant or I can grant you
a moment—”

  “A moment won’t do.” Manu raised his voice to be heard, letting it echo throughout the chamber. “I need you now, priest. Day after day, you kneel here praying for a miracle, hoping for some sign from Thalassa. Well. She’s answered you. Someone has answered you. While I paid my respects to my mother in the Chamber of Heroes, Queen Ianthe’s scepter glowed as if she were still among us. Several times.”

  The priestess fell back a step, staring at him with alarmed eyes. “Truly?”

  While the woman’s mouth fell open, Hipponax stared at him with the shrewd gaze of a man expecting to hear the punchline of a joke. When one didn’t come, he rose to his feet with aid from his staff. “You speak the truth to me?”

  “I wouldn’t lie about this.”

  “Then we must return to the palace.”

  Some mers disagreed with placing a regent on the throne, but they’d little choice in the matter when Atlantis required formal leadership.

  Twenty-five years of political conflict had boiled across the city, tearing families apart and turning brother against brother. One faction, the Loyalists, wanted to adopt a modern state of governance for their kingdom. They claimed to owe allegiance to the kingdom and capital city itself, not the highborn mers who controlled it. Others, the Royalists, longed to continue the monarchy and officially crown Regent Aegaeon and his wife as the new king and queen. After all, hadn’t enough time passed without someone sitting on the throne?