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round apple, and the horse he‟d already finished lay on a square of Atlantean silk on top of his folded saddle blanket.
    Bastien crouched down beside him, a plate of roasted meat and the ever-present beans in one giant paw and nodded his head at the block of wood, plastering an exaggerated leer on his face. “How about a nice, full-figured woman?”
    Justice laughed and shook his head. None of the settlers who tended to run from the sight of Bastien would believe his penchant for joking around with his fellow warriors. The mere sight of the nearly seven-foot-tall warrior was often enough to stop any trouble before it began. At least any human trouble. It took more than the sight of a few Atlantean warriors to make any of the native shifter folk raise so much as an eyebrow.
    And the vampires? They were already dead, and probably figured they didn‟t have much to lose.
    Ven tossed another branch into the fire. “Are you saying the only way Justice can get a woman is if he carves his own?” he called out.
    Justice ignored them, letting the ebb and flow of their banter wash over him as he tried to see inside the wood. Tried to feel and hear what it was telling him.
    He wasn‟t carving a woman. It was something far more basic.
    Simple.
    Something that felt like home and resonated with the cool depths of the sea. A memory of belonging, held captive in the mind of a warrior bound by duty to patrol this dusty, rocky barrenness.
    He closed his eyes and traced the outline of the chunk of wood with his fingers. Suddenly, he knew, like he always did.
    A fish. It was a fish .
    He could almost feel his ears turning red. Poseidon‟s balls, they‟d mock him to death for this one. A godsdamned fish, of all the ordinary things.
    But it was what it was; he‟d learned long ago not to try to force a carving into a shape different from the one shown to him by the wood itself. This fish was different, in any event.
    One that traveled the deep vastness of the trench where Atlantis lay, hidden and waiting.
    Waiting these long millennia for a day that might never come.
    He‟d focus on the fish, though. Not politics. Not now. This fish had never seen even the barest sea-filtered glimpse of sunlight. Schools of them swam near the dome, and children loved to watch them swirl into view. When the lights from the Seven Isles touched them, they glowed a rich, translucent green.
    Emeralds infused with moonlight.
    As if summoned by his thoughts, a face appeared in his mind. A woman. Laughing, but carrying a weight of sadness in her eyes.
    Her emerald-colored eyes.
    Bastien nudged his shoulder, jolting him from the vision. Justice didn‟t know whether to feel relief or regret. Settled on neither.
    “Dreaming about that wooden woman, my friend?”
    “Not a woman. Just a fish.”
    Tuning out their laughter, he bent his head to the wood. He could see it now. See the elegant curves and angles of her face.
    No. Not her face. The fish. Just a fish.
    And yet . . .
    And yet somehow far more. Somehow, something—some one —who gleamed like emeralds in the corner of his mind.
    He‟d finish it in the next several days and then perhaps gift it to one of the native children.
    No point to keep it. No reason to carry it back to Atlantis.
    After all, fancies of emeralds aside, it was just a fish.

Chapter 6
    Present day, the Void
    Sound grated through darkness to ears grown unused to listening. A distant bellow, a nearness of shambling sighs. Something large stirring in the dark.
    The Void. Justice knew those words held meaning, meaning he could not decipher. He was Justice of . . . of Atlantis.
    But what Atlantis might be crouched slyly under the mist inside his mind.
    The geas was broken—he had broken it. Centuries of being bound by a curse never to reveal the circumstances of his birth unless he immediately killed anyone who had heard him do so.
    Cursed forever to be separated from his two half brothers. He‟d shattered that curse in those final moments