Chapter Five
Bright light pierced his eyelids, discouraging him from opening them as he took stock of his painfully stiff body. He was lying face down on something warm and gritty. Sand? Small stones? There was a gentle lapping and the sound of seabirds. A shore, then.
His neck was on fire, even the shallowest of breaths aching.
Sand shifted to his left, and something heavy draped across Austin’s body from shoulder to calf, stopping shy of his feet, which were resting in the warm ocean. The ocean’s disobedience came back to Austin, stirring an energising anger that had him peeling his eyes open.
The world put a stop to any intended violent action at once.
The bright sky above left him squinting, and his body rebelled against quick movement, his muscles seizing.
With a groan, Austin got his weight onto his forearms, lifted onto his knees, then hinged his weight back to sink into a stiff child’s pose.
Muscles and joints creaked and snapped their protest. The sheet draped over him slipped forward, soft silk making him flinch as it touched his injured neck.
Austin grasped the edges of the sheet, arranging it so that as he sat up, it covered his front.
He peered through slitted eyes at the waiting man.
Bleached white sand clung to bare feet. He wore tan canvas trousers and a long-sleeved blue shirt, casually open at the collar, though Austin had seen enough expensive shirts not to be fooled by the casual style of this one.
Silky black hair was pulled back into a bun, a few strands escaping to frame a handsome, somewhat stern face.
Blue irises were framed by an even darker blue; merman blue, where an ordinary human had white.
Even without the eyes giving him away, Austin would have recognised the man as a merman.
It was something he could always feel. From the way he was being watched, it was likely that sentiment was returned, and that had him tensing.
The last merman he’d spoken to—flirted with—had sneered and called him a mongrel.
Humans and merfolk alike were repelled by him.
He didn’t have enough of either, his biology muddied waters that left people afraid of what lurked beneath the surface.
Where the razor shells at home didn’t dare harm his feet, the tiny grains of sand here dug painfully into his knees. And he was very, very aware that he was on his knees, that this man towered above him. Vulnerability was a sharp, terrifying thing.
Austin had promised himself when Cessair died that he would never bow his head to anyone again.
He reached inside himself for that power he was terrified to use on others, but rather than reassurance, he found the opposite.
The wild energy lay dormant, ignoring Austin’s internal prods like a cat refusing to rouse from its nap.
“You are the—” the merman began.
“Fuck yourself,” Austin cut in with a sneer.
He didn’t wait for mongrel to pass his lips.
His voice came out hoarse, and talking made his neck throb fiercely.
The merman didn’t speak English, and Austin didn’t speak his language, but a skill as innate as breathing bridged the gap.
Austin could understand any language he came across and make himself understood without conscious thought.
Surprise flitted across the man’s expression, followed by a small frown. He adjusted his shoulders, like he was shaking out annoyance. When his gaze settled on Austin again, it was as if he was considering whether they were going to fight.
Austin glared up at him.
He considered the shore out of the corner of his eye: a beach of white sand led to a series of spread-out buildings, squat and uniform—not at all like the mismatch of style and purpose that Austin had seen in the city.
A stone wall was dotted with many heads, onlookers a half-mile off.
Too far to see Austin clearly, unless they were monsters with superior vision.
Minutes passed. The tide advanced, lapping at Austin’s knees, stealing the sand from beneath him and destabilising his balance.
He put down a hand, cursing the now twice-treacherous ocean.
For an indulgent moment, he fantasised about someone coming to his rescue, but Austin knew all too well that there was nobody coming to find him.
Nobody even knew he could have done with a bit of help. He was on his own here.
The merman broke the silence. “You are here on behalf of the monarch?”
His head abruptly snapped down. Austin followed his gaze to a thin, white worm, long and curving, wriggling against his knee.
A visceral horror rose in Austin, and his power woke, something about it feeling separate from Austin for a half second.
As if the power was its own thing, with its own consciousness, and was as horrified by the worm as Austin was.
“Kill yourself,” Austin ordered.
With an ear-piercing shriek, it curved away from Austin, twisting around itself until it was tied into a knot.
The knot tightened so much that its body fractured, coming apart at the seams. Part of it was tugged away by the next receding wave, pale green insides spilling out.
The shriek ended on a piercing whistle. Austin’s power retreated, satisfied that the worm was dead.
Its absence left him even more tired than before, like he’d overexerted an already strained muscle.
Austin returned his flagging attention to the merman, who stood frozen with his hand outstretched, as if he’d been reaching for the worm. The sight of that softened Austin the tiniest bit. The merman had intended to get it away from him.
“I didn’t mean you,” Austin said.
At the merman’s questioning look, Austin gestured to the pieces of dead worm being dragged out in the tide. “I was talking to the worm. Not you. Do you understand?” He studied the merman’s eyes for confirmation that he wasn’t about to run off and take his own life.
“I do.” His hand returned to his side, and he considered the way Austin was labouring to stay upright. “Would you like to…visit?” He seemed to struggle over what word to use, though a small gesture to the houses further in made his meaning clear.
Austin cast him an incredulous look.
“As my guest,” the merman quickly added. “You can recuperate from your travels first, of course.”
Austin wasn’t in any state to get back into the water and swim home, and even if he was, Wilbur Riley had already tracked him down. Austin couldn’t go back. But even so…Liam. Would he be okay? He could easily take on one old man and his injured son, but were there others? People Austin didn’t see?
Austin considered the merman standing before him.
He didn’t seem to know what to make of Austin, and their interaction lacked the familiar antagonism he was accustomed to from other mermen.
Sam’s accusation that the mermen were unfriendly to Austin because he was unfriendly to them first echoed in his ears.
“I would like to visit,” Austin said, if not in a friendly tone, then at least not in an unfriendly one either. “As your guest.”
A hint of warmth softened the merman’s eyes. He hesitantly extended a hand to Austin, non-intrusive enough that Austin could have ignored it if he liked—as if he was taking extra care to show he didn’t think Austin needed the help but would like to offer it anyway.
Austin let his mind fold back in time to when he’d been Connor’s boyfriend: to when the way he got what he wanted was through honeyed words and smiles.
Austin placed his hand in the merman’s and smiled.
“Carry me,” he said sweetly.
The merman stared at Austin in total surprise.
Austin knew from practising in front of a mirror that he looked gentle and soft, apart from his eyes, which he’d always struggled to disguise the edge in.
Austin gave the merman’s warm hand the softest of squeezes. He let the request linger between them.
At length, the merman nodded and moved a considering eye over Austin, clearly figuring out how to lift him.
Austin leaned to the side, giving the merman the room to slide an arm under the back of his knees, bracing the other around his back, holding on to his waist. The blanket bundled around him, keeping it all modest with no skin-to-skin contact.
The merman straightened with Austin without any effort whatsoever, arms firm with muscle.
Austin hissed as his knees unfolded, the pains in his body annoyingly excessive.
Held bridal style against the merman’s chest, Austin’s head collapsed against the merman’s shoulder.
He managed to drape an arm over the opposite shoulder, intending to adjust his position, but all the arm did was dangle.
Pained breaths puffed out of him as they walked up the beach.
The sift of sand became a soft slap of foot on stone, and the blazing sun disappeared behind a thatched trellis roof. The merman came to a stop, and Austin wondered at how quiet it had gone. On their approach, he’d heard voices, which were now absent.
“Would you prefer to rest? Bathe? Eat? I do not have appropriate attendants on hand”—it seemed to pain the merman to admit this—“but I will request my brother to send some over.”
“Bath. And you can attend me.”
The merman tensed at that, and Austin wondered if he’d pushed his luck too far. But the man nodded, and they set off. Painted walls, slightly green windows, many trellises, fine brickwork—everything Austin glimpsed was carefully maintained. He zoned out.
The merman leaned forwards, and Austin’s heel lowered into frigidly cold water. He startled to full awareness, the arm that had been draped over the merman’s shoulder now hooking around his neck to cling on. “It’s freezing!”
The merman startled upright.
“What is wrong with you?” Austin glared, but strangely, the merman’s confounded expression indicated that he hadn’t tried to dump Austin in freezing water as an insult.
Austin peered at the bath—set in the corner of a room that was genuinely larger than his entire cottage—and saw a cart of oils and soaps laid out next to it in corked bottles of green and blue and red.
A privacy screen woven with the same large leafy green plant as the trellises outside separated it from the rest of the room.
The merman sat on the edge of the bath, arranging Austin on his lap, and tugged a chain that led to the bathwater draining quickly. He turned a spout that spat out water that steamed, and Austin clung on in genuine shock when the merman tried to lower him into that.
“Are you crazy? Put me down! Not into that, for Christ’s sake, you’ll burn my skin off.”
The merman lowered Austin carefully to his feet, and Austin had to set his hand on the edge of the bath to keep from teetering over. The metal lip of the bath burned hot against his palm. He glared at the merman, who had backed up, looking suitably chastised.
“I haven’t attended a siren before,” he said, a defensive note in his voice.
“You should attend a lesson in common sense,” Austin said acidly. “Nobody wants a bath that will give them hypothermia, and they want one that will burn them even less.”
The merman didn’t lower his eyes from Austin, but he didn’t argue with him either.
Austin gestured to the door. “Go. I’ll sort myself out from here.”
Austin glared at the merman until the man’s head inclined in a kind of submission—those eyes still didn’t break from Austin’s. “Very well.”
The merman left Austin alone. Austin stared at the shut door for a few minutes, waiting to see if the merman decided he wasn’t going to let Austin speak to him like that, but he didn’t reappear.
So Austin worked the dials to get the bathwater to a normal temperature and climbed in.
He carefully cleaned the cuts on the side of his neck.
They were open and raw, but there didn’t seem to be any blood.
The hot water was utter bliss on his taxed muscles, and Austin massaged himself as best he could until the water turned tepid.
When he got out of the tub, he unsteadily circled the large room in search of a mirror.
He found clothes for a large man, books, and even a selection of swords in what he first thought was a wardrobe.
But no mirror, or anything that could give him a reflection.
He briefly glanced at the door, but his feet refused to go in that direction.
Instead, he dragged himself towards the large bed. He just about had the strength to push back the top sheet before his legs gave out, muscles trembling in utter exhaustion. One worrying thought for Liam bloomed, and then he was out.