*You’re sure this is the place?* Dai’s telepathic tone was dubious. His horned head dipped, his eyes narrowing as he peering down at the apparently featureless waves below. *I don’t see anything.*

*This is as far as you will be able to take us, kin-cousin,* John sent back. *Atlantis is protected by powerful magics, which prevent either shifter or human from crossing the city’s borders.*

Neridia straddled Dai’s broad red-scaled neck in front of him. Overhearing their telepathic communication, she turned her head to catch his eye. She shouted something, but the wind whipped her words away.

John shook his head at her, gesturing between their foreheads. *Mindspeech, my mate. You must learn to become comfortable with it, since you do not yet know our spoken language.*

She grimaced, screwing up her face in concentration. Wobbly and ill-formed, her halting psychic projection brushed against the edge of his mind. *We’re…getting…off?*

*Yes,* he replied. *We must make our own way from here.*

She swallowed hard, her face tight with apprehension. He tried to send her encouragement down the mate bond, but his silent reassurances washed around her without effect, like water swirling around a silent stone.

Last night, their bodies had been as close as it was possible to get. Today, he had the terrible sensation that her soul was further away from him than ever.

She is simply nervous, he told himself for the thousandth time. When she is embraced by the sea, her fears will be swept away. All will be well.

He tightened the straps across his chest, checking that both his sword and his pack were secure. He’d worn his armor, of course—there was no need for human clothes any more.

There would never be need for anything human, ever again.

He tapped Dai’s scaled shoulder. *If you would oblige me by swooping low to the water, kin-cousin?*

Dai curved his head to look back at him. A dragon’s face was not capable of expressing emotion like a human one, but John could tell the sorrow behind Dai’s burning green eyes.

*This is really goodbye, then?* Dai asked.

John laid his palm flat on the red dragon’s hot neck for a moment. *If all goes well, then yes. The Empress must stay in Atlantis, and I must stay by her side. We will not be free to leave the sea.*

*And if all does not go well?*

John shrugged one armored shoulder. *Then I will not be alive to leave the sea, kin-cousin.*

Dai blew smoke out of his nostrils in a long sigh. *Then, much as it pains me…I wish you the very best of luck.*

The red dragon swept his wings back, dropping into a dive. John swung a leg over Dai’s broad neck, holding on with one hand to the curving spines running down the dragon’s back. With his other, he gathered Neridia close.

“Hold your breath,” he shouted into her ear, not trusting her erratic telepathic abilities. “Are you ready?”

Wide-eyed with fear, she nodded. She grabbed hold of the straps of his harness, clinging to his chest.

Dai’s crimson wings flared. The dragon had managed to swoop so low to the ocean, the tip of his tail cut a furrow through the waves as he leveled out.

Holding tight to Neridia, John jumped.

He was shifting even as he hit the water. Exploding into his true form, he swirled in a tight coil around Neridia, bearing her back up to the surface. She spluttered, spitting out sea water as she scrabbled to sit astride his neck.

Dai’s shadow swept over them. John sang a farewell in his own language, the notes shaking the water, and the red dragon dipped a wing in response. Then he was gone, beating his wings hard to spiral back up into the sky.

He couldn’t see Neridia, perched as she was behind his head, but he could feel her shiver as the wind blew across her ocean-drenched clothes. She huddled against his scales, drawing her feet up out of reach of the waves.

Despite the salt water soaking her to the skin, she was as human as ever.

“Now what?” she asked out loud, looking around at the empty sea. “There’s no one here.”

John hid his disappointment, not allowing even the faintest tinge to taint his mental voice. *To human senses, perhaps. But not to mine.*

In the water, sound was a matter of touch, felt with the whole body. He stretched himself out to his full length, luxuriating in the sweet vibrations whispering along his scales. Only the need to keep Neridia above the surface stopped him from diving and rolling, wrapping himself in music.

Oh, I have missed this. I did not know how much.

A sea dragon song could carry around a quarter of the globe. This close to Atlantis, the entire ocean shook with their voices.

The martial chants of knights patrolling the border, the sweet piping calls of infants playing; the duets of lovers and the call-and-response of hunters; some singing for purpose and others simply for the pleasure of being alive. It all blended into one great tapestry of song, the song of his people.

He could not put his head under the water to add his own voice to the chorus, but his presence had not gone unnoticed. The nearest knights were several miles away, but they had seen Dai fly overhead, and heard the splash of their entry into the water. Their deep voices shook John’s bones as they focused their songs on him in challenge.

“Identify yourself,” one of the unseen border guard sang to him, in harsh notes as warning as a bared fang. “Who seeks to enter Atlantis in silence? Why do you not sing?”

“Peace, peace, honored Knight,” sang a higher, much closer voice, in rippling melodies of delight. “They are known, they are expected, and oh, they are welcome!”

Air did not carry sound as well as water, but John called out anyway, his heart unable to contain his song. “Little sister!”

Her familiar, beloved head broke through the waves, sea water streaming from her indigo scales. “Little brother!”

He rumbled in delight at the old joke, curving his head down to rub his cheek along hers in greeting. Hatched from the same clutch of eggs, it had always been a matter of debate which of them was actually the eldest. She claimed to have cracked her shell first, while he had always countered that he had fully emerged before she had. In any event, he had not been "little" compared to her since their seventh year.

They had been inseparable as youngsters, and even though the tides of duty had carried them far apart since then, they would always share a bond deeper than words. He had missed her greatly.

“You have not changed,” he said fondly. Her strong, graceful coils were as beautiful as ever, and her song still sparkled with her irrepressible zest for life.

She studied him for a moment, her turquoise eyes troubled. “You have.”

Before he could ask what she meant, she lifted herself higher in the water, curving her neck. “Is this really her? Your mate?”

“Yes.” John’s chest swelled with pride as he bowed his head to display Neridia. “This is the Empress-in-Waiting. But we must use mindspeech. She does not yet fully understand our tongue.”

“She is very small,” his sister said doubtfully. “Smaller than I expected. How can someone so tiny truly be the Empress-in-Waiting?”

He was glad she hadn’t said that in mindspeech. “There can be no doubt, my sister. The very sea proclaimed her status.”

His sister gave him a rather dubious look, which was understandable given that the sea certainly wasn’t doing so now. The waves rolled unconcernedly about their business, to all appearances utterly ignorant of the fact that their ruler perched above them. Had John not heard for himself the ocean’s first greeting to Neridia yesterday, he too might have thought that she was nothing more than any other human from its current lack of reaction.

“The sea is wise,” he said firmly, ignoring his inner human’s uneasy silence. “It hides its devotion now, so as not to reveal Her Majesty’s presence to unfriendly observers. It does not wish the Master Shark to find her. Once she takes her throne, her full glory will be revealed, I assure you.”

His sister clicked her fangs, still looking less than convinced. “Well, if the Knight-Commander is willing to allow her into Atlantis, then I suppose she must be more than she seems.”

Neridia flinched back into his neck-ruff as his sister bent to peer at her more closely. *What’s she saying?* she asked him privately, down the mate bond.

*It does not matter,* he sent back. He widened the mental contact to include his sister. *Sister, you are being rude. I told you that we needed to use mind speech.*

*I am sorry,* his sister told Neridia, still inspecting her in fascination. *It is just that you are the first human-ah, that is, the first dry-lander I’ve ever met.*

*Oh.* John felt Neridia lean back a little, craning her neck up to examine his sister in return. *Well, you’re only the second sea dragon I’ve ever met. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you’re smaller than I expected.*

His sister’s iridescent neck-ruff bristled with laughter. *And I hope you will not judge us all based on my brother’s sole example. In brute size, or any other respect.*

Neridia laughed too, her nervous tension easing a little. *John didn’t say which one of you was older, but I’m guessing you’ve got to be his big sister, right?*

His sister shot him a triumphant look. *I like her already.*

John bared a fang at her, though his own neck-ruff betrayed his amusement. *I did not summon you merely in order to disparage me to my mate. You are here to perform a duty, if you recall.*

She flicked water at him with the tip of her tail. *That’s my brother. Always duty first. Especially if it allows him to avoid an embarrassing conversation.*

He growled, neck-ruff flattening in real irritation, as Neridia giggled. *I am not avoiding anything except sharks. It somewhat defeats the purpose of flying to Atlantis if we then bob about on the surface all day like foolish baby seals.*

*Oh, very well.* His sister blew a stream of bubbles impudently at him as she sank back down beneath the surface. *But don’t think this is anything more than a temporary reprieve. Your mate and I are going to have a nice long chat once we’re all safely in Atlantis. I have many stories to share with her. Many, many stories.*

Behind his head, Neridia chuckled. “I was nervous about meeting your sister,” she said out loud, in human speech. “But now I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

*And I was not nervous about you two meeting,* John replied. *Now…I am not quite so sanguine.*

Still, at least his sister’s jibes had lightened Neridia’s mood. John would happily endure days worth of teasing for that. Which was just as well, seeing that he probably would have to. His sister had never been one to make idle threats.

Neridia giggled again as she sensed his resignation, patting his scaled neck in sympathy. Then she leaned over, looking down through the glittering waves. “What’s she doing now?”

*What I called her here to do.* Even without being able to put his head underwater to track his sister’s position, he could sense the swirling currents of her movements. *She is dancing.*

In a spray of sea foam, his sister broke the surface some way off. Her body hung in a breathtaking arc for a moment, the tip of her tail coming clean out of the water with the force of her leap. Her webbed forefeet spread wide, as if she sought to gather the entire sky in her embrace.

With an ear-splitting crash, she dove back under the water again. Trails of silver bubbles rose in her wake. Twisting elegantly, she swirled her body around them, herding them together. Beneath the water’s surface, a delicate, gleaming sphere of air started to form.

Leap by leap and twist by twist, she captured the sky and coaxed it under the sea. John sang his sister’s name in admiration, saluting her artistry.

He could tell Neridia was equally impressed. “Oh, she’s so beautiful. I’d never have imagined something so big could move so gracefully.”

*My sister is a master of her art,* John sent, pride filling his mental tone. *This form of dance does not come naturally to most of our people, but she has always had an affinity for air.* His jaws parted a little in a wry smile. *Do not tell her this, but I sometimes think that she would have made a much better Walker-Above-Wave than I.*

His sister had finished trapping a glimmering sphere of air within her coils. Carefully, as if putting on a complicated necklace, she manipulated it so that it rested between her shoulders, at the base of her neck. She made a few experimental loops and turns, checking that it was secure, then looked back up at them both.

*I’m ready,* she called up mentally. *I’d normally draw down a much larger quantity if I was restocking Atlantis’s air, but that would take too long. This will be enough to get us there, at least.*

*Hold your breath, my mate,* John told Neridia. *And keep a firm grip.*

She wound both hands into his neck-ruff, taking a deep breath. When he sensed that she was ready, he dove. He could still taste the panic rising in her throat as the ocean closed over them.

*Only a moment,* he reassured her.

Swimming as fast as he could without risking unseating Neridia, he joined his sister. There was a slightly awkward moment transferring Neridia from his neck to hers, but at last his mate was safely settled in the bubble of air.

Neridia gasped, drawing a huge, shaking breath. She said something, but the words stayed trapped in the air around her. From the relief pounding down the mate bond, John suspected it had been something she would not care to repeat telepathically.

“What approach are we taking?” his sister asked in song, once Neridia was secure. “The Pearl Gate?”

John shook his head, answering out loud since there was no need to include Neridia in this particular conversation. “Much as I would like to bring the Empress-in-Waiting home in glory, we must take a less visible route. The Knight-Commander does not want rumors of her existence to get out before she has been presented to the Sea Council.”

“He’d better not hope to keep it secret much longer than that. The screams of outrage will be heard across the entire city.” She flicked her tail, propelling herself through the water. “Let’s take the Broken Road, then. It’s usually only used by us dancers, and there are no air runs scheduled for today. It should be empty.”

John hummed a note of agreement. Dropping back a little, he curved to bring one eye level with Neridia. *I must range ahead, and check that our path is clear. I may need to move out of your sight, but do not fear. I am always but a thought away.*

Neridia nodded, though her racing heartbeat pounded down the mate bond. The bubble of air surrounding her seemed very small and fragile. He could sense her fearful awareness of the cold water pressing down all around.

He wished that he could comfort her, but he had no words to do so. How could she find the ocean claustrophobic? To him, it was freedom.

Rolling away from her, he dove. And at last, at last, he could swim unhindered.

Chase and Dai had occasionally teased him about the way he had to be carried on their backs whenever Alpha Team had to race to the site of an emergency. The pegasus and red dragon could not help pitying anyone who could not fly as they did.

He’d always smiled, and said nothing. They were like children proudly hoarding a shiny piece of glass, having never seen a diamond.

Now, John flew with a freedom that his winged colleagues could not even imagine. No ungainly flapping, no constant fight against gravity; he moved as easily as thought. With the merest twist of his tail, the slightest flick of a webbed foot, he could stoop faster than a striking hawk, or hover more gracefully than any hummingbird.

The entire sea was his, and it was vaster than any sky.

He closed his nostrils, holding his last breath of air safe in his vast lungs, and spread his neck ruff to better taste the water through the hidden gills underneath. He had been forced to breathe the harsh air and chemical-filled waters near human cities for so long, he had almost forgotten how sweet the sea could be. The pure water was like a benediction through his gills, washing him clean of the reek of humanity.

But he could not allow himself to become distracted by the ecstasy of being home again. Alert for any danger, he probed into the dark depths with short, wordless notes. The echoes bounced back to him, allowing him to feel the shape of the unseen ocean floor as easily as if he ran his hands over it.

His echolocation revealed nothing larger than a tuna for half a mile around. The tumbled rocks of the sea bed hid no lurking sharks. Nonetheless, he stayed on high alert, circling under and around his sister and Neridia as they too descended.

Down the mate bond, he sensed Neridia’s fear rise the deeper that his sister carried her. Although the ocean was fairly shallow around Atlantis, it was clear her human eyes were struggling to cope with the dim sunlight filtering down from the mirrored surface high overhead.

*All is well,* he reassured her yet again. *Look, I am here.*

He concentrated for a moment. A tingle ran over his scales as his phosphorescent patches lit. The glowing lines swirled over his shoulders and down his flank in twining spirals, more intricate than any human tattoo.

*Oh!* Neridia gasped.

*Try to look impressed at how sparkly he is,* his sister told her, dryly. *Males do so love to show off.*

*I am not showing off. I merely thought to light the way.* Nonetheless, he was unable to help feeling a certain masculine satisfaction at Neridia’s reaction to his markings.

Schools of small fish swirled around him, drawn by the shimmering blue-green glow. Normally a knight on patrol would swim dark, so as not to alert enemies to his presence, but at the moment Neridia’s fear was a greater threat than any hypothetical lurking shark. He could feel her imminent panic retreat a little as her eyes fixed on his luminous form.

*Look.* Seeking to distract her further, he curved down so that he swam only a few body-lengths above the sea floor. He brightened his glow as he twisted around a jagged, broken pillar of stone.

*That looks carved.* Neridia’s mental tone was startled. *Is that writing?*

*Yes. We are swimming over what was once a coastal village.* John wove in and out of the ruins, the wake of his passing stirring the seaweed blanketing the shattered buildings. *All this was once part of Atlantis. When the island sank, our ancestors were able to keep the capital city intact, but the outer parts of the land had to be sacrificed.*

She stared at the irregular lumps and rocks of the sea bed with new eyes. *How long ago was this?*

*Many thousands of years, as humans reckon time. I do not know the exact count.*

Neridia was silent for a while, as his sister carried her over the ruins of millennia. *We have legends of Atlantis,* she said eventually. *Humans, I mean. A lost island, sunk by some ancient disaster.*

*Your legends hide a kernel of truth,* he sent back. *But it was no disaster. Our ancestors sank Atlantis deliberately.*

*Why?* she asked.

*Fear,* his sister said.

*War,* he corrected. *The Dragon Wars, remembered by humankind only as whispered legends of battling gods. The dragons of the land grew jealous of our beauty, our wisdom, our treasures. They allied with humans and sought to invade our home. Our ancestors retreated beneath the waves rather than see all that they loved laid waste by flame.*

*They chose to hide from the outside world instead of learning to live within it,* his sister added, her mental tone sad. *And so they divided our people. Not all inhabitants of Atlantis were shifters. Our human kin were forced to flee to other lands, exiled from their own home.*

John shrugged, the motion making his light ripple over the sea bed. *They made new homes. Some of the greatest human civilizations owe a debt to sea dragon blood. It was a necessary sacrifice.*

His sister snorted, silver bubbles trickling from her flared nostrils. *I am sure that is what our honored ancestors told our unfortunate kin. Strange how the sacrifice is always judged necessary by the one who is not making it.*

*Funny, that,* Neridia agreed, a hint of bitterness darkening the thought.

There was not much John could say in response. With a sweep of his tail, he moved ahead again, scouting out the way.

The ruins around them became larger and more complex as they swam onward. John led his sister along the sea floor, so that the ancient structures hid them from any unfriendly eyes. He kept alert to the background murmur of sea dragon song, listening for any hint of warning from the knights patrolling Atlantis’s borders.

None came. The knights’ songs were routine, speaking only of passing fish and idle gossip. Much of this latter was speculation about their own presence. From what he could overhear, the Knight-Commander had not informed even the Order of the First Water that the Walker-Above-Wave was returning, let alone who he was bringing with him.

It felt wrong, all wrong. The Empress-in-Waiting should have been greeted with a sea-shaking chorus, every inhabitant of Atlantis calling out to bid her welcome. She should have been coming home in triumph and glory. Not like this, creeping through the mire like a crab scuttling into a hole.

John clamped his own jaws shut on the song that wanted to rise in his throat. The Knight-Commander knew the political currents of Atlantis better than he did. Much as it went against the whispers of his own heart, he was honor-bound to trust in his superior’s judgment.

Still, he could at least try to make the moment more appropriate. Deliberately, John picked a route that followed ancient, twisting roads overhung by coral-encrusted ruins. The sunken land was starting to slope upward, the waters brightening as they became shallower.

Though they were not yet within sight of the city itself, the sea teemed with life. Fish scattered at their approach, darting into empty windows to hide from the greatest predators in the sea. A giant octopus shifted color to match the carved wall it clung to as they passed by, faded hieroglyphs rippling across its skin.

John sensed the delight rising in Neridia’s heart, her innate joy in the wonders of nature overwhelming even her apprehension. *Oh,* she exclaimed, head swiveling as if trying to see everything at once.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” his sister sang to him privately, in laughing notes outside human hearing. “You always did have a taste for the dramatic.”

He bristled his neck-ruff at her. “Do not spoil the surprise.”

*It’s more beautiful than I could have imagined,* Neridia said telepathically, oblivious to the exchange. She twisted round on his sister’s back, following the flight of a brilliant school of fish as they swirled around a once-proud dragon statue now worn soft by time and tides. *Is this Atlantis?*

*No.* John rose, his sister following, allowing Neridia to at last see what lay ahead. *That is Atlantis.*