Chapter Eight
They passed the point where Austin could touch the bottom, but the water was friendly here, unlike the disobedient wave that had torn him from his cottage shore and refused to listen when Austin ordered it to stop.
Tristan waited until Austin let go of him, then dipped beneath the next wave.
His trousers and shirt floated to the surface, then sank as Tristan’s transformation bubbled through the water beneath them.
Austin watched Tristan swim by, an immense shadow catching him off guard.
Austin was so accustomed to seeing Bee and Dew with their perfectly proportioned tails that the wavy sight of one four times their length threw him.
Adonis’s tail dwarfed them, but Tristan’s was larger again, in length and bulk alike.
Tristan brushed his tail fin—his fluke—against Austin’s ankle as he passed, causing a swell strong enough to spin Austin in place.
When Austin didn’t follow him out, Tristan circled back, breaching the waterline with a disquieted expression.
His black hair was secured back in a knot, but errant strands stuck to his temples, water sluicing down his tanned skin.
“It is difficult for me in the shallows.” Tristan grasped his wrist, and when Austin—busy studying Tristan’s gills flaring beneath his jaw—didn’t object to the touch, Tristan pulled him along, diving when it was deep enough.
Even underwater, the pristine white shore continued in every direction, disappearing into the blue haze of the ocean.
Tristan brought him out to about ten feet deep, then fifteen, then perhaps twenty.
At thirty feet, he slowed, releasing Austin’s arm, and swam a slow circle around him.
Austin breathed out, letting himself sink as the pressure of the water snuffed out the pain in his muscles. He spun, studying Tristan.
Though clearly an apex predator, Tristan’s tail moved up and down like a whale rather than side to side like a shark.
It was emerald green, bar around his hips, and down his sides, and another patch just before his fluke.
It was some sort of irregular pattern? It seemed more like mismatched smudges.
Austin swam forward, cutting off Tristan’s slow circle. Tristan watched as Austin caught his fin and held him still.
Up close, he saw the smudges were actually discoloured scales, and Austin released an agitated hum as he realised what he was looking at.
Teeth marks. Large, jagged and slightly irregular.
Whatever it was had torn on the way out, though the way the scales were now healed, it had been a long time ago.
Sunlight dappled through the water, lighting up Tristan’s tail enough that Austin could make a thorough investigation.
On his fluke, there was a series of serrated cuts along the edge with scarring, but like the teeth marks, the wounds looked ancient.
Austin worked his way up, inspecting every scar and discolouration until he was at Tristan’s sides, where scale merged with skin and gills fluttered across his ribs.
He felt Tristan’s chest as he had his tail, the merman allowing the inspection with the same confident feeling as his yes to Austin’s question of whether he was stronger than Adonis. Austin supposed he understood the confidence. Every inch of Tristan was firm, strong muscle.
A querying hand touched his wrist. Fingers crept beneath the braided strap of his sleeve and tugged. Despite the glint of eagerness in Tristan’s eyes, his touch was restrained enough that it was may I? Not my turn.
It was then that Austin reached the end of his ability to hold his breath. He eyed the surface above as he touched the slits under his jaw. He looked at Tristan’s gills on his neck, flaring regularly. He thought of the bath, and the relief that came from breathing in the water.
Austin shut his eyes and breathed in. Cool ocean water filled his nose, slid down the back of his throat.
And here it stopped its descent, jetting suddenly out of his neck instead of flooding his lungs and drowning him.
The relief of oxygen filled his body, lightening his head.
He did it again and again, but the relief and peace did not change.
He could breathe. His neck wasn’t cut open but had morphed to form gills.
A gentle touch on his shoulder. Austin opened his eyes to find Tristan’s questioning gaze on him.
Austin waved it off. Breaking away from Tristan, he swam down.
Deeper than he’d gone before. Deeper than even he could have made it back to the surface on a held breath.
The ocean darkened. Austin sensed the seabed, the sand turning slowly to rocks, where fish flitted between hiding spots.
Amongst the rocks were clumps of seaweed and ocean flora; Austin felt their life in the current, but only a few more metres of descent and the plant life was gone once more.
He came to a cold spot and stopped. He sensed the seabed dropping suddenly away and felt for the edge.
A cold pit stretched on forever. Austin strained his eyes staring into the black, imagining shadows swimming in the dark.
Perhaps a shark, or a great beast of some sort—something vicious enough to have tried eating Tristan.
Austin thought of Cessair, rotting in a hole like this at the bottom of the ocean.
But a less certain part of him reminded himself, as it always did, that despite several explorations of the wreck of Cessair’s research tanker, the Infinite, the man’s body was never recovered.
Austin sensed Tristan swim by.
The pressure of the water above was enough to counteract Austin’s natural buoyancy, making him fall.
The ocean wanted to sink him into its depths.
Very tired, Austin sat on the shelf. His limbs shook, the muscles spent after swimming under so much pressure.
Even able to breathe underwater, he wouldn’t make the swim back to the cottage. He’d sink.
Tristan circled back. For so large a creature, he moved quietly. He took hold of Austin and pulled him along, guiding him back the way they had come.
Austin must have passed out. The next thing he knew, his cheek was cushioned on Tristan’s shoulder and the merman was carrying him across land. Austin blinked awake as he was lowered onto a bed, managing only a sleepy, questioning, “Hm?”
“Your energy faded.” Warm fingers brushed a few fallen strands of hair from Austin’s face. “You have not eaten much since you arrived. What would you like? I can obtain anything that will please you.”
Tristan sat on the edge of the bed. He’d tucked the blankets over Austin, and the mound of them hid Tristan’s nakedness. “Anything?” Austin asked, voice bleary.
“I command a city,” Tristan said as answer, though in a gentle enough tone.
Anything. Austin’s thoughts went to Liam.
Not to his immediate worry for the man, but to one beyond that.
To the one thing he so desperately wanted, and had no way of getting.
“I command more than a city,” Austin said tiredly, bitterly.
“But an empire and more money than I can ever spend isn’t enough to get me what I want. ”
That lit a fire in Tristan’s eyes. He leaned closer. “Tell me.”
“I want something to block a siren’s power. My power. Something I can give to someone that protects them from my voice.”
Surprise flitted across Tristan’s face, followed by a considering look. “Not an easy task. Nevertheless, I will search. But for food, what will you eat?”
Austin’s lashes shuttered down, and he rolled away from Tristan. “Don’t be annoying,” he muttered.
Tristan leaned over him, speaking directly above the ear Austin buried beneath a shield of blankets. “You will not recover if you do not eat.”
Austin ignored him.
“Starvation might lessen your power.”
Austin’s irritation revived him enough to get him sitting up, albeit supported by shaking arms. His muscles were just so sore. He glared at Tristan. “I am not weak.” It came out too thready to be a snap, too shaky to maintain a growl. And he felt weak. Physically tired and mentally drained.
Tristan’s predator eyes gleamed. “You are hungry. Tell me what food you like, and I will—”
Austin’s composure cracked. “I don’t know! I like—I like—” Austin could not think of a single food he liked. Nor could he think of anything he’d ever eaten in his life, until Liam sneakily slid him a tray of—“Toast! With butter. Irish butter.”
Tristan paused. “Irish?”
“Through the Tear. The butter from that land.” Austin glared. “And I want Irish white bread too.”
“I will have it ready when you awake.”
A warm hand cupped Austin’s cheek, and a soft kiss against his cheek surprised him into silence. “Forgive me for aggravating you, and please rest,” Tristan said, his voice now all gentleness.
Austin surmounted his surprise. “I was trying to rest when you, when you—”
“When I disrupted you.”
“Yes.”
Tristan blinked, head canted slightly to the side in a supplicating manner.
But the sorry had yet to come. Forgive me was more of a demand, was it not?
There wasn’t repentance for his actions in that phrasing.
Austin’s top lip shook, but even his facial muscles deserted his control now in his tiredness. He couldn’t muster a full snarl.
Tristan must have seen the utter exhaustion in him, and the fight. His expression remained guiltless. “Forgive me this as well.”
Before Austin could issue a demand, hands cupped either shoulder and a modicum of weight sent him flat onto his back, head landing harmlessly on the pillow.
His glare was cut off as Tristan pushed him onto his side and righted the blankets over his shoulder.
“Sleep well.” He wisely left the room before Austin mustered the energy to bite his head off.
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