Back to Atlantis by Bar Sagi (best book reader txt) 📗

Yasmin couldn’t believe his words. Did he care about her that much? Her eyes nearly filled with tears. It felt really nice when someone told you just how he felt. She opened her mouth, to say what she didn’t know, but at that moment her stomach grumbled. Loudly.

Yasmin squeaked and pushed herself away from Lucas, turning red. That had to be the worst way possible to ruin a romantic moment! She sneaked a peek at Lucas from underneath her eyelids. Surely the kind, sweet Lucas wouldn’t laugh at her right? Wrong.

Lucas clutched his stomach, bursting with laughter. Yasmin had never seen him so carefree.

“That was…” He laughed again. “The funniest thing ever! I…” He kept laughing, making Yasmin turn even more red.

“Stop it!” she said, snorting.

His laughter was contagious, light and catching. “Was it really that funny? You’ll probably forget it soon anyway.”

He stopped laughing at once and met her gaze, completely serious. “I’ll never forget a single moment I spend with you, Yasmin.” His green eyes shone with unspoken feelings.

Yasmin felt her heart thudding in her chest. That was almost a confession of love, wasn’t it? And she wasn’t sure she was ready to give a reply. After all, no matter how hard she tried, her heart was still in pieces.

Lucas took her hand and grinned that infectious grin at her. “You promised me a date, remember?” His eyes twinkled with happiness. In that moment, all Yasmin wanted to do was protect it.

“What, now?” She was surprised. She had made that promise a few hours ago, barely!

He smiled as his hand moved to a more comfortable position. “What better time than the present?” Lucas asked, his eyes wide and inviting.

Yasmin bit her lip in anticipation. Lucas made everything seem fun. “Okay,” she agreed, smiling back at him. “But no buying tomatoes.”

He pouted. “There goes my plan for our first date,” he said as they started walking away from the orphanage, toward the city.

Yasmin laughed, meeting Lucas’s eyes again. She discovered she couldn’t look away from them. They were filled with so much life, it made her feel happy too. At that moment, Yasmin felt it didn’t matter how sad life was, if she was with Lucas it would be okay.

Lucas grinned again. Well, he had never stopped grinning, but he grinned even wider. “I love it when you laugh. It’s contagious.”

Yasmin blushed. Was her laugh really that amazing? She felt really happy. She had never felt his way with David. There was always someone to save. David was never about himself. He was about other people, about Atlantis. Maybe that’s why their relationship didn’t work. How could you have a boyfriend who never put you first?

Yasmin shook her head hard, choosing to focus on the person right in front of her. The one who actually cared for her. Why, after all this time, did her heart refuse to stop beating for David?

Well, it didn’t matter. Lucas was amazing, kind, funny, and best of all, he didn’t have a secret fiancée. That was better than David any day.

They had reached a garden. A sign was nearby, telling them it was called Edrich Gardens, and it was the city garden. It also said, in bright red letters: Don’t pick the flowers!

The garden was beautiful, even beating the royal gardens. While the royal gardens were perfectly tended, these gardens had a wilder look, where growth was left to grow, without being trimmed.

A dirt path leading into a hill of bluebells grew far in the distance, and a beautiful blood red flower grew nearby. Yasmin knelt beside it, taking in the beauty of nature. Standing up again, she marveled at the freedom she felt, only a few steps into the gardens.

The beautiful blue sky was cloudless and cool, and the green gardens were scattered with fresh, green leaves and early flowers, along with hundreds of flower buds. There wasn’t anything but flowers growing, and the garden seemed to stretch far into the distance. Yasmin loved it.

Yasmin took a deep breath, inhaling the perfume of the flowers around her. “Wow,” she said, looking around in wonder. “This place is amazing.”

Lucas grinned and took her hand again. “Well, you said no tomatoes, so I thought of the next best thing.” He waved an arm around him. “Nature!”

Yasmin laughed. Lucas was so funny, even when he wasn’t meaning to be. He had a storyteller’s air, the kind that whenever he told something, and it could be anything, he made it seem interesting.

“Well, I’m interested.” She leaned against him as they walked down the path. “Show me more.”

And that’s what he did. Lucas led her around, teaching her about the flowers. Well, sort of. He taught her a town tall tale that the blood red flower was a favorite food of the vampires, and they only ate human blood because they ran out of flower juice. Of course, that wasn’t true, but it was funny all the same.

Lucas told her a tale of the fairies who had lived here a thousand years ago, and how they had never been willing to make an alliance with Atlantis because they had always believed it was their land. Then, humans came with their magic and conquered the land for their own. The fairies, so insulted and hurt, combined all their magic to put Atlantis in a drought. But the spell went wrong, and caused a worldwide flood that almost flooded Atlantis.

But the humans didn’t want to die, so they pleaded with God for help. He sent them the first mage, the human who stopped the flood with his life force.

Rumor has it that he used his magic as a magnet, gathering the magic of all the other spellcasters in the land. With that amount of magic, he was able to stop the flood.

Ever since then, fairies and humans haven’t exactly gotten along, but now they might have an alliance. Lucas finished his story and looked at Yasmin, who was staring at him, openmouthed.

She had never known