January in Atlantis by Alyssa Day (cat reading book .txt) đź“•
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She sorrowfully shook her head. “You made the wrong choice, Scott. So many wrong choices. I’m so sorry for you.”
He threw his head back and laughed, a long, hyena-like sound. “You’re sorry for me, you stupid slut? Be sorry for yourself. I’m going to gut you for the power you’ll bring.”
He was so wrong, and he didn’t even know it. She raised her hand, prepared to do the one thing she’d never wanted to do, but Snake must have suspected something because he hurled his dagger, end over end, across the stone floor at her. She watched, paralyzed by the sight of her death advancing on her, but then an object hurtled in front of her.
No, not an object. A man.
“Flynn,” she screamed. “No!”
But it was too late. He’d somehow burst through the magic circle and thrown his body in front of the dagger to protect her. It struck true and sank deep in his chest, and blood bubbled up from his mouth as his body smashed down to the rocky ground.
She cried out and fell to her knees next to him.
“I protected you?” His eyes held an edge of desperation. “I saved you?”
“You saved me, my love,” she told him, wrapping her arms around his head so it didn’t touch the stone beneath him.
And then, as he gasped out what she thought must be his final breath, Eva looked around her at the hundreds of demons, reached deep, deep inside herself, and pushed. Every single one of them snapped to attention, frozen in place but with eyes locked on her. Waiting for an order to obey.
“Kill Snake,” she told them. “Destroy him.”
The demons shuddered with unholy glee and swarmed Snake, who screamed and screamed and screamed as he died. Eva, holding Flynn’s dying body in her arms, found that the sound didn’t bother her at all.
That realization, though, bothered her more than a little.
“You can control demons?” Griffin stood over her, and she thought she saw fear in his eyes, quickly masked.
She turned her head slowly to look at the demons, who were now dancing along the rim of the pit of fire. “It turns out it was no harder than offering a bit of hot dog.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” she told him, cradling Flynn’s body. She pushed again and, as one, the demons all turned toward her again.
“Begone,” she ordered, and they bowed to her and then jumped, tens of them at a time, into the fire pit.
Jake ran over to her. “Flynn! Eva! Are you okay? You—” He stopped speaking when he saw Flynn.
Eva blinked up at him, feeling the world go hazy around her. “We saved the girls?”
Jake knelt beside her. “We saved the girls. And I happen to have a little bit of healing magic from my mother’s side of the family.”
She didn’t understand his words though, because by then the power that had swept through her from the demons had drained out of her body. She didn’t need it anymore anyway. Flynn was gone.
January was as good a time as any to die.
Atlantis, two days later
“He’s lucky to be alive, the idiot,” a man growled, and Flynn opened his eyes to find his brother Dare glaring down at him.
“Not feeling lucky so much right now,” Flynn muttered, trying to sit up but then falling back against the pillows in the— He looked around. Huh. Healing temple He must have been worse off than he’d thought after he’d jumped in the path of that knife to protect—
The memory smashed the breath out of his lungs. “Eva,” he shouted. “Eva! Where is she? What did you do to her? I’ll—”
“You won’t do much since you can’t even sit up,” another voice drawled. His brother Liam—Mr. Perfect—strolled into Flynn’s view. “Eva’s fine. She’ll be back in a minute. And nice tough talk, dumb ass, for somebody we thought was dead.”
“I almost was,” he admitted, wincing, but his entire body relaxed, muscle by muscle, at word that she was safe. And—back in a minute?
“She’s here? In Atlantis?”
“Where else would I be after you go and almost get yourself killed trying to protect me, you idiot?” Eva’s voice held fondness and relief, and when she appeared, gently easing her way between his brothers to get to him, Flynn’s entire world righted itself.
Flynn drank in the sight of his brothers as they stood at the side of his bed. Dare and Liam were both almost mirror images of Flynn, wild, dark hair and deep blue eyes, tall and strong, bold and confident—nothing like the scared boys they’d all been when his father was alive.
“You have a lot to answer for—” Dare began, and Eva rounded on him like a spitting cat.
“Don’t you even think about blaming him for leaving Atlantis,” she said, poking his very large, very muscular, pirate brother in the chest, making Flynn blink and Liam gape at her. “Your horrible father would have killed him, and you know it. I’ve been talking to people, and there are a lot of long memories around here, and a lot of folks couldn’t wait to fill me in about how many times your drunken father threatened to beat Flynn to death. So don’t you do it!”
Flynn almost laughed at the expression on his brother’s face as Dare backed up a step, holding his hands in the air.
“Hey. No. I was only going to say he had a lot of nerve not letting us know he was back. He could have, I don’t know, told us he was alive before he went jetting off to save the world.”
“Save the girls,” Liam put in, always correct, before grinning at Eva. “We’re going to love you, aren’t we?”
Eva flushed and then backed toward the bed and grabbed Flynn’s hand. “Oh. I mean, I hope you like me, if you—if we—if I—”
Flynn stopped her babbling quite satisfactorily by grabbing her and pulling her toward him for a hard, possessive kiss. “You’re mine now,” he told her. “You’re not going anywhere.”
She looked like she wanted to argue, but she glanced at his brothers and shook her head. “We’ll talk later. I’m going to find you some food.”
“I’m sure somebody will bring me something,” Flynn began, but she kissed his forehead and ran off before he could stop her.
“I like her,” Liam said, raising an eyebrow at Flynn. “Are you going to run off and be too stupid to keep her?”
Flynn could feel a hot flush burning through him. “Never. She’s mine. But we need to talk. I… I need to talk.”
He struggled to sit up again, but this time his brothers—one on each side of his bed—helped him. For a moment, it was like they were kids again, huddled in their shared bedroom, crouched against the drunken, angry words coming from the other room.
“Look. I… I’m so sorry I left you,” he managed to say past the boulder suddenly lodged in his throat. “I was wrong. I should have stayed and protected you from him. I should have—”
“Flynn,” Dare broke in. “No. Eva was right. If you’d stayed, he’d have killed you. From the moment Grandfather gave you that sword, you bore the brunt of his drunken rages. We managed. We got through it. We’re good.”
A kernel of something that felt almost like hope started to warm in Flynn’s heart, but then Liam scowled at them both and the hope shriveled and died.
“I disagree,” Liam said, frowning. “We’re not good at all.”
“I know,” Flynn said, his mouth dry. “I can never make it up to you. If you don’t want me to be part of the family, I understand.”
Completely out of the blue, Liam smacked him on the back of the head. “No, you moron. We’re not good because we haven’t had you around for so long. I want to get to know you and for you to meet Jaime, the most amazing woman in the world.”
“And Lyric,” Dare put in, smiling smugly. “The most amazing woman in the galaxy.”
“You forgive me then?” Flynn was dazed, and not just by his injuries. He could be part of a family—his family—again? A huge weight rolled off his shoulders—a weight he’d been carrying for so many long years. “Brothers?”
“Don’t be a girl,” Dare said, rolling his eyes. “I’ll kick your ass when we get out of here, and we’ll be good.” Then he put a hand on Flynn’s shoulder. “Brothers.”
“The
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