January in Atlantis by Alyssa Day (cat reading book .txt) 📕

hands. “Oh, I see it. There it is on the bench. Thanks though!” With a parting smile, she retrieved her book and headed off toward the palace, still followed by the children.

“Well, now I feel too stupid to live for getting involved with this fight,” Flynn told Denal when he could wrench his gaze from the woman and her flock of children. “But I’m no coward either. If you still want to go through with this idiocy, we should move it to a more secluded location.”

Denal’s gaze whipped back to him, and the warrior smiled again. This smile though held no glee, evil or otherwise. Instead, it was one of the most bitter expressions Flynn had ever seen on an Atlantean face.

“I have a better idea,” Denal said. “You’re coming with me. We’ve got a mission.”

Flynn blinked, wondering when he’d fallen down a hole out of Atlantis into The World Is Insane land. “You are very mistaken. I’m not one of Poseidon’s warriors. That’s my brother Liam. And, from what I hear, maybe my brother Dare now as well. I’m just—”

Denal threw his head back and laughed. “Boy, are you wrong. I just drafted you. Welcome to Denal’s Doomed Dozen. Man, were you in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Flynn had absolutely no idea what was going on, so he guessed his best idea was to follow Denal and keep quiet until he could figure it out. Ten minutes, two KEEP OUT signs, and a guardhouse later, they arrived at the warrior training grounds.

Flynn had been there before, of course. All young men of a certain age wound up there as teenagers, eager to prove their mettle and beat each other into pulp for fun.

It was a guy thing.

But he’d never once gone there with any real idea of becoming one of Poseidon’s Warriors. He wasn’t the law-and-order kind. He wasn’t a rule follower. He definitely wasn’t a person to take orders or commands, even from kings or princes.

Or so he’d told himself. But long years away from home had led him to perhaps a slight recognition of a few painful truths. Just the smallest bit of self-awareness.

It hadn’t been that he wasn’t interested—he’d been sure he wasn’t good enough.

Why wait for someone else to tell you that you don’t measure up when you can take yourself out of the running? He’d managed to figure out a way to slip through the enchanted portal that used to be Atlantis’s only connection with the world above the ocean. He’d been barely twenty, but he’d figured things out. He’d learned about Earth, and humans, and jobs, and money. He’d learned about girls.

He’d learned about crime and getting caught. He’d learned about jails when he came very close to being put in one. He’d come into his powers of transforming to mist much earlier than most, maybe as a way to avoid his father’s fists, and had used that magic to escape what had been very well-deserved punishment for a stupid, petty crime.

He’d escaped the town, the country, and that entire side of the world. A few months later, in a dockside town in Europe, he met another wandering soul. Someone as lost as Flynn had been. Kian had become closer to him than the brothers Flynn had left behind.

But it didn’t matter now. Kian would never forgive him for leaving, especially the way he’d done it. Kian would never forgive him for Kyla.

Flynn would never forgive himself.

He suddenly realized Denal had stopped, and managed to drag himself out of his mental ramblings before he stumbled into the warrior again and caused another brawl. One unplanned beating in a day was really his limit. His head was still ringing from that kick.

“Why are we here?” He looked around and saw that the place was mostly empty. “And where is everybody?”

Denal swept an arm out, indicating the large, empty space. “We have it all to ourselves for the moment. Aren’t you special?” Then he stalked off toward the armory, which had always held real weapons as well as training ones back when Flynn was a kid, shoved open the door, and vanished inside.

Flynn decided he’d had enough of blindly following Denal around, Poseidon’s Warrior or not. He walked over to a wooden bench on the perimeter of the square marked off for sword bouts and sat down. He turned his face up to the sun shining down on Atlantis, which he hadn’t felt on his skin in more than a decade, closed his eyes, and decided to wait and see what happened next.

When he heard footsteps approaching from the opposite direction in which Denal had gone, he opened one eye.

The newcomer was tall and lean with the sun-streaked blond hair and lanky build of a surfer. “Hey, man. Do you know what we’re here for? Poseidon told me—”

“Wait.” Flynn opened his other eye. “Poseidon told you. Are you telling me the actual sea god is talking to you? Man. You may need some kind of mental help or a brain transplant or something.”

Instead of taking offense, the man threw his head back and laughed. It was an easy, open laugh. The laugh of someone who had nothing to hide and no dark places in his background. Flynn decided he hated him.

Unfortunately, Laugh Boy wasn’t picking up Flynn’s Stay Away From Me vibes because he sat down on the bench next to Flynn and stretched out his long legs.

“I’m Jake. I spent several years exploring the real world outside this bubble—although I guess it’s not a bubble anymore—and was doing a stint on a deep-sea fishing boat off the coast of New Zealand when we caught a mermaid in our nets. I got her untangled and let her go, in spite of some fairly intense opposition to that plan from the other guys on the boat, and Poseidon showed up and thanked me. Then whoosh.”

Flynn turned his head to look at the teller of this preposterous tale. “Whoosh?”

“Whoosh. It was just like going through the portal, but without the portal. Next thing I know, bam. Here I am.”

Whoosh and bam. The guy was clearly an idiot. Also… “You do understand there’s no such thing as mermaids, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. They were water Fae. I know that, and you know that. But the idiots on the boat with me didn’t know that, and they were planning to sell her to the highest bidder.”

Flynn shook his head. “Humans. They never learn.”

“And yet we keep protecting them. Which of us, then, are the fools?” The voice came from behind them, and both Flynn and the mermaid rescuer jumped up off the bench and whirled around to meet whoever had managed to sneak up on them with such stealth. Flynn was disgusted with himself. After several years of living with dragon shifters, he knew better than to let his guard down. Even, apparently, in Atlantis.

The newcomer bowed slightly but had a look of such disdain on his aristocratic features that Flynn didn’t make the mistake of taking the bow as any sign of respect. He wasn’t quite as tall as Flynn, but he held himself ramrod straight. He also had long hair as white as the snow on the top of Mount Everest, although he looked no older than Flynn, and eyes that were silver rather than blue or gray. He was Atlantean, but there was definitely Fae somewhere in his genealogy.

“I’m Griffin. I was ordered to be here. I have no idea why. I intensely dislike not knowing the reasons behind actions I’m commanded to perform.” The man narrowed his startlingly silver eyes, gaze weighing and measuring both Flynn and the mermaid rescuer and clearly finding them wanting.

Beside Flynn, the friendly guy did a kind of casual salute. “I’m Jake. Poseidon told me to be here after I rescued a mermaid. Cool hair, man.”

Flynn groaned.

Griffin’s assessing gaze turned sardonic. “Of course you rescued a… mermaid. However, the temple of healing is on the other side of the palace. I believe you’ll be looking for the brain-injury rooms.”

Instead of shaking Jake’s hand, Griffin turned to Flynn. “And you?”

“Flynn. I have no idea why I’m here either.”

“No? Not another rescuer of mermaids? Released any krakens lately?”

Before Flynn could think up a withering response to the arrogant ass, Denal came striding back out of the building. He had a sword sheathed at one hip, a dagger at the other, and a bow slung over one shoulder. Whatever was going on, Denal’s expression convinced Flynn of one thing: this was no training exercise.

Denal stopped when he was four or five paces away and nodded at them. “Good. You’ve all met. It’s like a party, but without the drinks or food. Or fun, for that matter,” he said grimly. “Here’s the deal. The king has made an alliance with certain human organizations. Since we’re part of this alliance, I’m going to send some of you off on missions to help local law enforcement, infiltrate groups of really bad actors, and generally save the day.”

With that, he closed his eyes, grimaced, and then shook his head before looking at them again and continuing. “And for that, according to the mental bombardment Alaric has been dumping on me ever since I left the war room, I get a dozen of the most useless misfits ever to grace Atlantean shores. Everybody with any talent, skill, sense of responsibility, or ability to function in a team is already busy. Lucky me. But Poseidon and King Conlan evidently think you’re good for something, or at least you’re so useless you make good cannon fodder. Either way, I don’t really give a damn. All I’m asking is that you don’t embarrass me, yourselves, or Atlantis.”

When Denal was done with his speech, nobody said anything for a few long beats. After that, all three of them started talking at the same time, and for a minute or two it was conversational chaos while Denal just stood there, clutching his bow, looking like he wanted nothing more than to shoot them all.

Flynn finally held up a hand and whistled, a sharp, piercing noise that brought