Chapter Nineteen
Austin had sleepily eaten two mysterious mouthfuls of something before becoming aware of his body.
He opened his eyes as Tristan pressed a third, plain cracker to his lips.
The merman jolted when Austin’s teeth sank into his fingers.
The cracker vanished, and Tristan rumbled a forgive me purr, nuzzling Austin’s hair.
“You’re not sorry,” Austin groused. He peered around the room through slitted eyes.
Grey light filtered in through the windows, and a soft glow from the fire lit the other side of the room.
Austin couldn’t see where the food had come from, but he guessed it rested on the bedside table on Tristan’s side of the bed.
“You didn’t eat enough yesterday,” Tristan said. “And you were very active.”
“I spent most of the day in bed.”
“Without eating.”
Austin’s eyes narrowed further. He twisted in Tristan’s arm to study the man and was appalled at the glow he discovered. Gazing at him was a self-satisfied, pleased fat cat. Tristan responded to Austin’s glare with delighted affection, leaning in to nuzzle his cheek and pepper him with kisses.
“Don’t be so smug. As if you’ve won some victory.”
“I am happy,” Tristan corrected. “Not smug.”
“Well, don’t be that.”
“Not even your siren song could grant you that request, my dear,” Tristan said. “Will you join me for breakfast? I’m hungry, but when I tried to leave the bed, I found it quite the impossible task…”
“If you’d eaten whatever is on that plate you’re hiding instead of trying to choke me in my sleep, you’d be fine.”
Tristan nuzzled Austin again. “Please?” It was that impish tone from yesterday!
Austin rolled away from Tristan with a growl and sat up. He stretched, reaching his arms to the ceiling, letting his spine decompress with a groan. He felt so…solid. In his own body. Grounded.
Austin’s escape to this estate rose to the forefront of his mind, but now he could grasp the problems and turn them over without them overwhelming him. Thoughts came so calmly it was like he was still underwater. Tristan remained reclined in the bed, watching, pleased and attentive.
“I’d like you to do something for me,” Austin said.
“Anything at all,” Tristan promised. “But ask me over breakfast?” Their eyes met. Austin inclined his head in agreement.
Tristan rolled out of bed and went to the tall dresser, pulling on fresh clothes.
His clothes. Austin realised all at once that the room he’d claimed for himself belonged to Tristan.
“I’ll send Eli in and meet you in the dining room shortly.
” Tristan paused in the doorway, a small crease appearing between his brows.
He came back to the bed and bent down, pulling something out from beneath it.
His white lace garter, with the sapphire lariat drop.
It was under the bed?
“I didn’t put it there on purpose.” Austin tried to remember, but he was so tired after the trip to the city that he didn’t even recall undressing. “I think I kicked it off in my sleep.”
Tristan accepted that with a nod. “May I?”
“If you can remember where it goes.”
Tristan cast the silk sheets aside. “I’ll be ash and dust and still remember that lesson.” He met Austin’s eyes, lips curled up, and then knelt on the bed to slip the garter on. Austin reclined, relaxed, resting his weight on his palms, wearing nothing but the piece of jewellery.
Tristan stared at the whole of him, his trousers tightening unmistakably.
Austin let him look. “Your taste is rather similar to your brother’s.”
“I’m beginning to understand,” Tristan replied. His eyes darted towards the rack of body jewellery. “You were wearing that one the other day.”
“I was.”
Tristan glanced from it to Austin. “I’m not entirely sure how to put it on.”
“You mistook a garter for a necklace. I’m hardly surprised.”
The glow in Tristan’s eyes grew. He met Austin’s eyes, his own flaring with want. Austin smiled his sweetest of smiles. “I’ll see you at breakfast.”
Tristan breathed out hard. He tore his eyes from Austin with visible difficulty. “I’ll have your favourites.” His voice was carefully controlled. He left the room.
Austin already had shorts and a shirt pulled on when Eli joined him, and he sat still as Eli plaited his hair, Eli’s nimble fingers turning the task soothing.
“I thought we were going to get washed away,” Eli said as he carefully slid a pin into Austin’s hair. “I suppose you would have been fine with that.” He met Austin’s eyes in the mirror, a cheeky grin in place.
Austin met Eli’s eyes in the mirror. “I’d save you.”
Eli blinked at him in surprise, his grin fading. The look made Austin reconsider what Eli had said, and he realised Eli had meant Austin would have been fine with being swept away himself, not fine with watching the household dragged out to sea.
“You would?”
Austin’s efforts to ‘save’ others in the past had neither been appreciated nor particularly successful. “I could just tell the ocean to bring you back.” Though the last time he’d commanded the ocean, he’d been exhausted afterwards, and it hadn’t exactly listened very well.
A look of awe crept across Eli’s face. “You can do that?”
“If I feel like it.” Perhaps his alarm and fear on the beach as he’d fled from Wilbur had lent him the strength to issue such a command?
A feat of self-preservation. But he felt strongly that if Tristan’s household were swept to sea, he’d manage a similar command again.
The trick would be making sure the ocean kept their heads above water.
He doubted any of them were waiting for the right catalyst for gills to spontaneously erupt.
“You could conquer the world,” Eli said, awe-struck.
Austin thought of the empire Cessair had left in his hands back home. Resources and riches so vast there was nothing he couldn’t have if he wanted it. And yet he had felt empty. Brittle. Crumbling at the seams.
Right now, he felt neither empty, brittle, nor crumbled.
Austin tilted his head to check the braid. Not a single strand fell out of place, silver pins catching the light, the same as his monstrous, alluring silver eyes. Austin didn’t hate them today.
He felt the sapphire stones through his shorts, tracking their snug band around his thigh.
“I’d rather conquer Tristan.”
Staff were sweeping sand from the flagstones between buildings.
Troop members were nailing outdoor sconces along the other walls, sacks of glowing blue stones waiting to be mounted.
The wind had died down, but the grey sky hinted that the bad weather was not done with them yet.
Austin detoured to see his nest and scowled when he found it halfway down the beach, almost entirely buried.
The dining hall was set for four. Tristan sat at one end of the table, an empty place setting waited at the opposite end, and Inx and Char occupied the other two spots. They were reporting the damage from the storm. A staff member stood at the wall, hands folded at her back.
Austin indicated to her, striding past his spot and dropping into the chair nearest Tristan.
Tristan looked at him in surprise, followed closely by delight.
“Why would you invite me to breakfast and then have me sit so far away? I might as well eat in another room,” Austin challenged.
“An oversight on my part, forgive—” Tristan caught himself. “I apologise.”
Austin leaned back as the staff member efficiently moved his plate in front of him. He didn’t have the same hearty meal as the other men, but instead a selection of plain, carefully chosen foods. He sipped his tea, took a bite, and indicated for Char to continue his report.
Char obeyed the cue. “Prince Hal has requested that we clear the main road and help dispose of the debris in the lower quarters of the city.”
Inx frowned. “There’s another storm surge in a few hours, isn’t there? I can’t imagine he isn’t aware of that.”
“Indeed. But an Asar delegation is expected to arrive today, and he wants the way clear.” Char gave Tristan a particular look, and Tristan grimaced.
“Chancellor Desor will be among them. As it happens, the delegation from the Zatic Empire is to arrive tonight as well. I think Prince Hal wants them to get to their assigned lodgings as quickly as possible so they don’t meet en route. ”
Tristan caught Austin’s questioning look. “The Zatic Empire borders Asar. They have trade agreements and peace treaties, but they have been tumultuous neighbours for many years.”
Austin summoned the map Eli had shown him of Tristan’s home. He tipped back his head, recalling. “They’re landlocked?”
Tristan nodded.
Austin released an unimpressed hm.
“They are incredibly rich,” Char put in, casting a somewhat exasperated look between the two of them. “In natural resources and in, well, riches. The family the Zatics inherited the empire from were incredibly powerful.”
“Overthrew,” Inx corrected. “And what a fight that must have been.” There was a twinkle in his eye, a gleam of eagerness. “Though that was a good century or two back. I wonder how well they train their soldiers now? Are there many guards in the delegation?”
“We’ll know when they arrive,” Char said.
“Why would they come here?” Austin asked.
“Officially, they are consulting on justice practices,” Char explained.
“Though everyone who wants an invite from Prince Hal says that—he never refuses a chance to discuss the function of his justice system. Unofficially, there can be any number of reasons. He receives requests for everything from soldiers to seashells.”
“Seashells?”
Char nodded. “An academic wanted to find a rare kind supposedly hidden in a deep trench in the north. Apparently, if one were to grind these seashells into a fine dust and eat them, the ageing process would stop.”
Austin’s hand froze midway to his mouth. Tristan’s eyes cut toward him, catching the hitch in his movement. Feeling like a robot, Austin forced himself to take the fruit slice into his mouth. He chewed mechanically, tasting nothing.
“Did he go?”
“No,” Tristan answered.
Austin’s voice sounded oddly hollow to his own ears. “Where is this academic now?”
“Likely returned to the northern academy,” Tristan said. “Do you want to meet them?”
Austin stared at Tristan. “If they ever return to the city, I’d like you to break their neck.”
Of all the things that had surprised Tristan over the past day, an unreasonable, erratic request for murder was apparently not among them. Tristan nodded. “Very well.”
Austin leaned back in his chair, not touching his food as Inx and Char gave the rest of their reports. Char finally paused to take a bite. He reminded Austin of Tammy: shuffling papers, eating and working all at once, no rest taken for anything.
Char handed a stack of papers to Inx that needed to be read and signed.
Inx didn’t notice the offered sheaf and stood, announcing that he had to dispense troops into the city.
Urgently. Char muttered under his breath, chair legs scraping against the floor as he stood and flew after the captain in hot pursuit.
Tristan and Austin sat in silence and, surprising himself, Austin pulled himself back together enough to continue eating.
“Could you get Liam?” Austin asked. “If he’s gone, that’s fine, but if he’s still hanging around waiting for me, I need to talk to him.
But…” Austin recalled his last trip across the ocean with a grimace. “I’d rather do that here.”
Tristan nodded his assent. “I can do that.”
Austin would tell Liam to go home to America, for good this time.
Tell him he was staying here. Maybe knowing that he wouldn’t be able to get updates from Tammy any longer would be enough to set the man free.
A low ache suffused his chest at the thought of losing him, but Austin remembered the determination he’d gathered when he first sent Liam away.
It had come much easier the second time.
Surely the third time would be nothing to Austin.
He just needed to see Liam was safe and unharmed first.
“I’ll accept Hal’s dinner invitation,” Austin said. He would be nice to the man this time.
“I’ll let him know.”
“Is everyone busy getting ready for the storm?”
“Reba is assigned to you. If Char catches up to Inx, then he’ll remain at the estate, and you can put him to whatever use you like. Do you require more people?”
Austin twitched his fingers. “Those two will do.”
Tristan left, and Austin, filled with energy and the sense that he needed to be doing something, went in search of his guard.
Captain Inx was by the road, sullenly seeing off a handful of men to the city, and Reba sat on the trunk of a newly downed tree, eating a sandwich.
He was staring intently into a nearby field at Austin’s ugly horses.
His wings flapped every few seconds. The ugly horses didn’t seem to care.
Austin watched for a moment before approaching. “They aren’t afraid of you?”
Reba leapt to his feet. “Sir.”
Austin waited.
Reba glanced back at the grazing horses.
“They don’t seem to be. I wondered if I could ride one.
Ah, I mean, they’re yours, I wouldn’t presume to—I just…
” He trailed off, eyes flashing from Austin’s face to the calmly grazing, hideous horses.
Reba let out the same sort of shaky breath as he had when planting himself in a furious Adonis’s path.
“May I have permission to ride one of them?”
“Sure,” Austin said.
Reba’s gaze leapt up from between his feet.
“When you’re done here, meet me on the beach.”
Reba gave a quick nod. “Ready to go.”
“Finish eating. I’m making you work; you’ll need the energy. Bring Inx, too.”
Austin went to his half-buried nest. The black rocks didn’t look nearly as shiny as they had last night.
He ran his fingers over the nearest one, displeased to find a layer of dried slime covering the entire surface.
He quickly went to his porch, where Eli was setting out drinks.
“Can you get sponges? And some of the soap that’s used for cleaning the pathways. And a bucket of hot water.”
Eli nodded and scuttled off to obey.
When they all joined him at his nest, a drizzle began to drift down from the heavy grey clouds above. Inx, Reba, and Eli stood at a healthy distance from the nest, something about the way they looked at Austin hinting they anticipated anger if they got any closer.
“Help me dig them out.”
Reba beamed, trotting forward to begin at once. Inx cracked his knuckles and joined him. Eli set down his bucket of cleaning supplies. “I’ll fetch shovels,” he said, and took off up the beach.
Austin picked up a thick-bristled brush from the bucket and started scrubbing.