25. Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter 25
D ante knew the exact moment Rieka left the gala, but following her out would be equivalent to announcing he had a weakness.
It was disconcerting how quickly he’d become accustomed to Rieka’s presence, how often he looked forward to seeing her, or using any excuse to touch her. An antithesis to everything he was used to. He watched as she weaved through the crowd unobtrusively. Talik followed a short distance behind.
“You are distracted,” Anhur stated, amusement in his voice.
Dante turned his attention back to his uncle. If anyone else had said that to him it would be insulting, but it was Anhur. While it had taken centuries to acknowledge the truth, he was far more alike to Anhur than to either of his parents.
The crowd beneath them surged; the ball was in full swing. People loitered on or near the dance floor. Every so often, they would glance up to where he and Anhur stood, half-hidden within the enclave. No one would hear their conversation. Most guests were smart enough not to approach them without an invitation. “Kai wanted to discuss New Atlantis.”
Anhur snorted. “The floating monstrosity.”
“A business merger were the words used.” Dante picked up a glass of champagne. The light golden liquid swirled as he surveyed Anhur’s guests. “It was open to interpretation if the invitation was for House Mneseus, or for me.”
“There is greater interest in New Atlantis than I was expecting.” Anhur nodded to a passerby. “I am hearing murmurs of questions asked about why the contents of the vault haven’t been transferred. They note it will be another five hundred years before there is another opportunity.”
Dante surveyed the ballroom. Countless bodies moved as one, as allegiances were simultaneously broken and created throughout the course of the evening. “What do you think?”
Anhur shrugged coolly as he kept a watchful gaze on Frankie as she mingled in the crowd. Her bodyguard trailed behind her discreetly. “It is a dangerous game to want to recreate the past.” He looked down at his arm. A hint of a glowing tattoo peeked out his shirt cuff. “We benefit far more when we forge an alternative path and share a collective vision with humans. Or, as Frankie bluntly reminds me, we are in danger of inbreeding and dying out.”
Dante chuckled. He’d been on the receiving end of many of her discussions. “It will be interesting to observe New Atlantis’s reception once the newness of the island fades. It has only been fifty years.”
“House Euaimon has started construction on an underwater city,” Anhur sighed as he pinched his nose. “Too many of the Houses’ focus is on recreating the past, perhaps to the detriment of the future.”
Frankie smiled up at them from the crowd, her brown eyes laughing mischievously.
“But I have taken too much of your time.” Anhur smirked, his yellow eyes giving no emotion away. “You have a guest to entertain. And I have to ensure my consort hasn’t agreed to a restructure of the House.”
D ante found Talik as he left the ballroom. The corridors were silent and appeared empty, but in reality, they were never far from a watchful guard’s gaze. Or the spies who had infiltrated the House. It had been centuries since he’d felt comfortable in Egypt. Every set of eyes belonged to a possible scout, and every action or interaction was reported to anyone who could afford it. Atlantean or human.
“Rieka went to the vault.” Talik stopped in front of Dante, fixing his cuff links. Amusement flashed in his dark eyes. “But not before she informed me she didn’t need a babysitter.”
Of course, Rieka would take this opportunity to work. He should have known she would not have been distracted by pretty artifacts and the ball. At one point, he’d sensed her almost relaxing, but that was before the encounters with Chaucer and Kai. He had also noticed that Rieka had been skittish around the larger crowd—that had been unexpected.
“Monitor Chaucer. There is something odd about him.” There was a scent he hadn’t recognized surrounding the younger Atlantean. An underlying hint of something muted but menacing. It had not been there when he’d spoken to him last.
Talik laughed. “That is normal.”
The music was barely audible. Soft tendrils echoed through the hall. This far away from the noise and the bodies, it was almost soothing.
“They will notice your departure,” Talik pointed out. “Would you like me to provide a distraction?”
And Rieka’s.
“I trust you can come up with some justification for my lack of attendance,” Dante said as he strode toward the vault. Justifying his departure was not high on his priority list. Finding Rieka was. He looked back at Talik. “No meetings.”
Talik looked affronted. But his eyes shone with mirth as he shook his head. “One time. And you have never forgiven me.”
“It was four hours of my life I will never have back.”
It didn’t take long to find Rieka. The rustling of her dress gave her away.
He stopped a few feet from her, remaining in the darkness. Rieka leaned over the table, looking at an artifact. Sometime between the ball and now, her hair had found its way into a ponytail, stray curls revolting in all directions. In the quiet moment, the light highlighted the tattooed lilies that spilled over to her back; disappearing under the dress. He wanted to know how far down they went.
A flash of silver flew past him with no warning.
Dante didn’t flinch as the knife embedded itself into the wall behind him with a thud. He didn’t turn to look at it. “Is that how you normally greet visitors?”
“Only when they are uninvited or unannounced,” Rieka answered nonchalantly. “I told you that you should have a bell.”
Dante hid a smirk. Rieka was full of surprises. “Noted. You may want to work on your aim.”
“I didn’t miss, Delacroix,” she said confidently.
And he believed it. “Throw a lot of knives at people?”
Rieka laughed darkly. The tension eased slightly from her shoulders. “No. There isn’t much to do on an excavation after hours. Card games, hours of darts, and throwing knives kept me sane.”
Dante calmly removed the knife from the wall, careful to only touch the hilt. “The blade is coated in coral venom,” Dante said. A brief memory flitted across his mind, but he pushed it back. “Paralysis is instant and can last for hours. The pain is excruciating.”
Rieka narrowed her eyes at him. She glanced at the knives and then back at him.
“Am I in danger of having another knife thrown at me?” Dante asked. He carefully placed the knife with the others. “One experience with the venom is more than I want in a lifetime.”
Rieka didn’t move, standing like a goddess of old. The silver blades laid on the table next to her glistened. Rieka would have an ample supply of knives if she continued her target practice.
Her anger was palpable, almost rolling off her in waves. The fury of a wildfire that would destroy anything in her path. It masked the hint of desire that had edged her scent since he had first met her.
Whoever triggered the emotional change in Rieka would not be left unscathed. It was taking all his control not to reach out and drag her closer to him. It wasn’t lost on him that at some point, Rieka herself had quickly become an obsession. And so much more. “Why did you leave the ball?”
Her pain sliced through him.
Rieka flinched at the question as she turned to walk away. “Atlanteans are not very welcoming to hybrids. Even when they are your guest.”
Dante reached for her before she could take more than a step away, drawing her closer until she was pressed against him and the table. He traced the curve of Rieka’s spine, enjoying the soft smoothness of her skin and the way her breath hitched at the contact. Even annoyed, he could sense her desire.
“Don’t think you can distract me.”
“Why did you leave?” Dante softly asked again.
There was something she wasn’t telling him. It had been subtle, and if he were not so attuned to Rieka, it would have gone unnoticed. It happened before Kai interrupted them.
“Nothing.”
He’d trained himself to limit the number of emotions that trickled through his constructed barrier. Instead, he often chose when to open his heightened senses, in situations when he could use it to his advantage. But with Rieka, he wanted to know everything. Dante stilled; Rieka’s pain slammed into him. The anger had just been the top layer.
“How do you deal with the heightened senses?” Rieka asked. She leaned into him, placing her head against his chest. “It was like someone had turned the tap on, and all these emotions and scents just bombarded me. It was overwhelming.”
Dante wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer, as if he could protect her from the world. The emotion should have horrified him, but Rieka triggered a primal urge within him—one that he needed to learn to control before he lost everything else.
He tucked Rieka into his body and breathed in her scent. She should not have been able to scent anything within the room. Every single Atlantean at the ball was well versed in controlling their emotions. A consequence of their accumulation of power and wealth. One that the elite excelled at. In a world where any weakness could be exploited, they had all learned how to mask their desires and their wants until they unleashed them. He had barely sensed anything at the gala. That Rieka had did not bode well.
The Atlanteans who had directed their anger and disgust at Rieka would be dealt with accordingly. “Who were they?” Dante asked. It would not take long to confirm.
Rieka pulled back, her brows furrowed. “What are you going to do? Get them to apologize?”
“Along those lines,” Dante vaguely responded. The sweetest hint of violence edged his tone.
“Delacroix, that is a bit much.”
Dante was going to ignore the protest. At the airstrip, Rieka had been adamant that she had no heightened senses, but what she had described to him was extremely rare, even within their species. “When did it start?”
Dante reluctantly released her. She moved to stand next to the table, just out of his reach. The bottom of her skirt added more space between them than he liked. “When we arrived. It started off with migraines, but now I’m getting flashes of scents and emotions; they come and go. And in there, as soon as I started walking through the hall, I felt them all.” Rieka shivered. “How do you stop it?”
Dante would need to consult Aadya. Perhaps his grandmother would know what had triggered Rieka’s heightened senses. There were records of Atlanteans who had been driven mad because of their hypersensitivity, individuals who had never delineated between their reality and the world around them. He would not let that happen to Rieka. “There is no way to stop it. You will learn to filter it. But it will always be at the periphery.”
Color returned to Rieka’s face. “Always the fount of good news.”
He watched Rieka cautiously. “Would you rather I lie?”
“No.”
Dante was far more curious about the extent of her senses. “What do you sense from me?”
Her flame-gold gaze focused on him. Red bled into the whites. “Coldness. Power,” Rieka said as she licked her lips. She traced her bracelet as she concentrated. “And beneath it, a tendril of desire.”
“What does that feel like?”
Rieka stared at him as she bit her bottom lip. The image sent a bolt of desire through him. “A cold flame.”
Dante smiled. It was somewhat fitting, as Rieka’s lust reminded him of wildfire. All-consuming, with the potential to become a raging inferno.
“When I’m around you, the overload is quieter, as if it’s just an echo of what it could be.”
The intensity of the protectiveness he felt toward Rieka almost brought him to his knees. He would destroy anyone who would dare hurt Rieka. That he could be the reason she lost everything was not something he was going to dwell on. Not now. He could have what he wanted, and Rieka. The two were not mutually exclusive.
“Can I touch you?” Her words were a whisper.
He could feel her heart racing. “Be careful what you ask for.”
“You don’t scare me,” Rieka whispered, her voice husky.
Looking at him with clear eyes, she tilted her head, studying him as her right hand came up to his face, tracing the outline of his jaw.
The touch was more intimate than anything else he had ever experienced. Rieka was his.
Dante raised a hand, sliding it around her nape, and dragging her closer until her body was flush with his. “I should.”