Chapter 9

Nicki rushed back to her stateroom, her heart squeezing in her chest.

Back off, back off, back off!she implored herself. Her deep breathing didn't help until she closed the door behind her.

Did Cyril know somehow about her dizzy spells? She put her hands to her face, willing herself to relax as she tried to recall exactly what she'd overheard. The girls wouldn't have said anything—she knew they wouldn't have. But if Cyril somehow had reached out to her parents…

No. No he couldn't have. There's no way he'd let her continue on the mission if he suspected her heart might go out on her. She was overreacting. Again.

"It's okay…it's okay." Nicki blew out a long breath, smoothing her hands over her head. Stefan hadn't pursued the question, so all she needed to do was stay out of his way. She'd tell him about her fears—eventually. There was no need to yet. Not so soon after Cyril's almost-bombshell. Especially since he'd just unloaded all the juicy details of his demigod status. He'd be uneasy around her, too, at least for a little while.

She had time.

Squaring her shoulders, she walked over to the small workstation in her stateroom and booted up her computer. As the screen lit up, she thought about what Stefan had said—and how she felt about it. She knew she should feel something beyond simply that it was super cool. The man could live for hundreds of years! Who did that? Nobody outside of O?ros, she was pretty sure. Hell, he'd outlive her by a lot?—

Even as those words hit her brain, she rolled her eyes. Who cared how long he could live? She barely knew the man, and they weren't a thing. They weren't even a half-thing. Well, maybe a half-thing. Demi-thing? She grinned. Yeah, that.

With a final chuckle, she shook her head and bent to her work.

They reached the tiny island off the coast of Turkey close to midnight, but a storm had blown up late in the day from the southern Aegean, and the sea was too rough to allow for diving. After she'd finished her blogs for the day, Nicki used the time to go over the gear. She'd need a wetsuit, even for snorkeling. It was only June, and the Aegean would be too cold for comfort if she and whoever tag-teamed with her stayed in the water for any length of time.

Stefan remained tied up with Cyril for most of the night, as far as she could tell. Despite his dismissal of the idea, apparently he was a necessary component to the functioning of the O?ros government. Either way, the following morning Nicki marched resolutely up to the deck, carrying her underwater camera in its case. She wasn't going to be underfoot, she wasn't going to be in Stefan's way. That was her promise, and she was sticking to it.

Stefan hadn't, however, specifically forbidden her from exploring underwater. So at least this glorious morning wouldn't be a total loss.

After checking her own gear, Nicki rubbed her sternum absently as she once more studied the last and most important piece of equipment, the underwater camera. As Kristos had promised, it was state of the art, featuring all the bells and whistles for shooting high-definition action. So if there were any really fast fish out there, she was ready.

"Everything up to your standards?"

Nicki jumped, though she'd been half-expecting Stefan to check in before he and his team left the boat for the scavenger encampment. Now his presence filled the small deck as he strode toward her. He was dressed in loose pants and a microfiber shirt, as always cool and unflappable, while she could feel her skin begin to prickle beneath her swimsuit and water pants, heat flushing through her in waves.

"It's great!" she said, too loudly, then modified her tone. "It's great. I thought you were gone already."

"I have two teams out already," he said. "Depending on what they find, I'll go—or we'll go." He eyed her. "Cyril contacted me again an hour ago, saying that the viewership of your videos was at a clip large enough to appear legitimate, and the more we could feed of every stop, the better, as long as we didn't run into any problems."

He delivered this information neutrally, and Nicki frowned. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing, that the posts are working?"

Stefan's lips quirked up. "For your role as cover, I would say it's a good thing." He gestured to the equipment. "And for the moment, it affords us a few hours to try out all the toys Kristos sent along."

Us?Nicki stared as Stefan slicked out of his shirt. She'd seen the man in swim trunks before, but he'd already been in the water at the time. For some reason, having him standing right in front of her, dry and half-naked was kicking everything in her body up a few notches. He stopped, seemingly concerned by her staring. "You didn't think I'd let you go in alone, did you?"

"What? No," Nicki blurted. "I mean, I thought you were gone, that one of the crew members would go with me."

He shrugged and she watched as the muscles rippled across his sun-bronzed skin. She wouldn't have expected his tan to be so deep, given his role in the royal family. She pictured him wearing tuxedos and sipping martinis, not diving off the side of boats. Then again, demigod. Maybe gorgeously perma-tanned skin came with the package. "You, um, dive a lot?"

"Not diving, usually. But snorkeling, yes. It would be difficult to live someplace like O?ros and not take advantage of all the ocean had to offer." He picked up a snorkeling mask and proffered it to her. "Unless you think we'll need the tanks?"

"No—not for this first outing, and probably not at all. How deep is the water?"

The conversation steered easily onto safer topics, and Nicki followed Stefan across the deck, inhaling and exhaling slowly and carefully as she watched his muscles stretch and work beneath his skin. Even his trousers seemed tailor-made to make her stare, the fabric stretching over the thick muscles of his legs. She'd seen the guy practically naked already, but…

"One thing," Stefan turned to her, then waited as she jerked her eyes up from his ass to meet his gaze. His smirk told her that he knew exactly what she'd been staring at. "Tamas, one of the men, will be going with us as well. It should appear as if it's only the two of you down there. I should not be in any of the video feeds. You should be in the water with a single subject, not surrounded by guards. And I shouldn't be in the water at all, merely tapped for this assignment as a political representative of O?ros. You understand?"

Nicki nodded. "I'll keep you out of the frames, or we'll catch it in the editing pass before I push the videos live." Inside, however, her spirits deflated a little. Stefan's warnings reminded her that this wasn't the joy ride it was being touted as. More importantly, however, she'd thought she could capture some video of the man in the water. He truly had the most amazing body, and if she could have some souvenir video clips, it'd make all of this last a little while longer.

Oh well.

Within minutes, they were in the water, the sudden shock of it a balm to her senses and a needed distraction for both her body and mind. As promised, Tamas proved to be a willing subject, and they spent the morning coasting over an honest-to-God sunken ship that was clearly visible through the water, shallow caves filled with brilliantly colored fish, and rock formations that glinted and burned with the reflection of the sun.

To the absolute shock of no one, Stefan's swimming abilities in the open sea were every bit as graceful as when he'd been in the palace lap pool, and she longed to capture him on video. With great effort she resisted—Herculean effort, she thought, which made her grin again. For his part, Stefan swam out and around, circling them in a wide arc, and some of the equipment he carried on his own weight belt looked suspiciously lethal. Another reminder that despite all appearances, this wasn't really a lazy afternoon in the Aegean.

Nicki was legitimately tired by the time they pulled themselves out of the water, gratefully accepting Stefan's help as he took her equipment and stacked it on the deck.

"Stay here," he said when she cleared the ladder. He was already stripping out of his wet suit, and she followed his lead. "There's food, and we can see what you recorded. It'll save time."

She watched him as he took the camera and popped the drive, transferring it to a large-screened laptop that had been brought to a shaded alcove of the deck. She grabbed a handful of grapes and a towel, then flopped down on a teak bench to dry herself off as Stefan reviewed the footage.

It was as spectacular as she'd hoped it would be when viewing it under water. The fish were large and exotic. The centuries-old boat—while no bastion of lost treasure—was charmingly authentic, and the O?rois guard Tamas was handsome and fit and truly at home in the water. There were shots of Nicki, too, taken by Tamas to continue the illusion that they were the only two down there, as she glided over a thick coral bed, then pointed the camera toward the glittering, glinting surface of the rocks.

Abruptly, Stefan's hand shot out and froze the screen. "What is that?" he asked, the impassive calm of his voice at odds with the urgency of his fingers on the trackpad.

Nicki stopped toweling her hair.

"That's great, isn't it?" she asked. "Something bright stuck into the coral. I assumed it was debris, but the way it's wedged in there is cool. It's obsidian, maybe—or some sort of thick glass. Something cut with facets to reflect all that sunlight." She pointed to two bright spots.

"Tamas." Stefan turned and spoke rapid O?rois to the other man, who stared from him to the screen, then stood and crossed the deck to scoop up his discarded snorkeling mask.

Nicki frowned. "What?" she asked. "What do you see?"

"The chunk of glass you're pointing out could be simply glass, nothing more. Rock. Debris. But it also could be glass that has been shattered into specific facets, such as the glass monitors of aircraft tracking equipment."

Her eyes widened. "You don't think it's part of Ari's plane?"

"I don't." he shook his head definitively. "It could be anything. If it's debris, it could be from any plane that has flown over this space and crashed in the last five years. It's unreasonable that it belongs to Ari's craft. But it's at least evidence that planes have crashed here—potentially recent planes. And that's a start."

He stood abruptly. "Go get dressed. I want you to go with us ashore after Tamas recovers a chunk of that glass."