Chapter Twenty-One
Someone’s footsteps followed him.
Austin whirled on his heel, glimpsing bat wings, and sympathy already formed on Reba’s face. He wanted to tear it right off his face. “Until you learn to fly properly, the only meals you’re allowed are those cooked on a beach campfire!” He didn’t want to see Reba’s reaction. He marched away.
Austin collapsed in the middle of his nest and hugged his knees to his chest. His body felt far away, and though he could see the marks his fingers dug into his legs, he didn’t feel them.
He wished, bitterly, that the pendant had belonged to people who didn’t despise him.
He didn’t move except to bow his head, shielding himself from the oncoming waves as they broke over him. Soon, the ocean was black, and Austin lay buried in its depths.
Tristan emerged abruptly from the dark and swam straight for him, brave or foolish enough not to slow.
A snarl tore from Austin’s mouth, ripping through his throat on the way out.
The surrounding water thrust away with enough force to shove Tristan back, and the sand shot out, cratering Austin’s nest.
Tristan’s warning cry registered too late.
The dislodged rock fell steadily down, hidden inside the billowing sand. He noticed it only as it struck his leg. The ocean muffled the snap.
His shin. His shin. His shin!
He swallowed a mouthful of ocean water.
Starting to feel—
Tristan reached him, fingers brushing his shoulder, just as Austin cried out.
A fierce current ripped Tristan away. The underwater world became bedlam.
Whirling currents ripped up the seabed, churning the sand until it spun around Austin like an underwater tornado.
The rocks of his nest were being drawn into the vortex.
The one pinning his broken leg shifted, but it was the heaviest of the lot and didn’t lift.
Austin shoved at it, crying out, making the madness around him worse.
He couldn’t dislodge it. Sand clogged his gills.
Panic clawed through him as he struggled to breathe.
White-hot agony tore across his ribs, and Austin grabbed them, fingers finding newly formed and flaring gills.
The relief of oxygen hit his bloodstream, and then the churned-up sand clogged the new gills.
I’m drowning.
Austin squeezed his eyes shut against the grit and shoved against the rock. The world swirled around, manic and wild and far from how he’d expected his life to end. That, he’d grown up knowing, would be an end like his predecessor’s: clinical dismemberment.
Austin’s panic reached a crescendo and flashed to defiant anger. He hadn’t survived Cessair only to die before he actually got to live. He wasn’t going out now, when things were finally getting good!
He opened his mouth and screamed.
The weight of the rock vanished. Austin shot out of the underwater whirlpool, the need for oxygen burning through him.
Tristan grabbed his arms and thrust him upwards.
Austin breached the surface and sucked down a breath, spluttering as the air dragged against the inner workings of his throat like sandpaper.
Austin opened his eyes and then immediately sealed them shut. “Tristan,” he croaked.
“Let me.” Tristan guided Austin’s hands onto his shoulders. It was awkward and painful, but the merman helped clear the gunk from his eyes. Austin’s gills in his throat remained clogged, but the ones on his ribs cleared themselves.
“I hate sand.”
“I’m not terribly fond of it myself currently. Can you try opening your eyes?”
Austin did so with extreme caution. When a squint didn’t burn, he blinked and gazed at Tristan. He could just about make out the shape of his features and odd smudges on his cheeks.
“What happened?”
“My siren summoned a whirlpool, and it was rather powerful. You might have noticed it?” Tristan’s tone was light.
The smudges were scrapes. “I hurt you.”
“I chose to ignore your warning to leave you alone.”
“Leave me alone to drown? With a broken leg?” Austin cradled Tristan’s face gently. The merman didn’t so much as flinch even as Austin’s palms brushed injured skin. Instead, he leaned into his touch. “Despite everything…” Austin’s voice caught. “I don’t think it’s the ending I deserve.”
He kissed Tristan.
“Certainly not deserved,” Tristan grumbled into Austin’s mouth.
When they parted, Austin hugged the merman, his face buried in his sandy hair.
Salt water lapped against his chin, and Austin’s awareness spread to his surroundings.
Tristan had guided them away from the shore, where swells large enough to capsize a small boat lifted them harmlessly up and down in a gentle rocking motion.
Currents pulled at them, but Tristan’s tail swished to hold them in position.
When lifted by the swells, Austin saw the blue glow of the estate in the distance.
Shafts of moonlight pierced the grey clouds and lit the violently whirling ocean.
A tremor of apprehension seized Austin, and his eyes widened.
A whirlpool. Not just an underwater one, but a violent, churning mass of seawater that spun on the surface as if Charybdis had come forth from her myth to wreak havoc.
Tristan cupped the back of Austin’s head, fingers massaging his nape and the base of his skull.
“Your power is impressive.” Unmistakable pride warmed his voice.
“When you told me you could command the ocean, this is not quite what I envisioned. Not even the greatest siren I heard about ever commanded the elements.”
Austin’s horror at the monster in the bay lessened. He pulled back enough to examine Tristan’s face, squinting, trying to see whether it matched the pride in his voice. “You don’t think I’m a monster? Even seeing this?”
Tristan gently tucked wet strands of hair behind Austin’s ear, and then he leaned in to nuzzle his cheek. “You’re a powerful merman. No more a monster than I, or my brother.”
“I could ruin you if I wanted to. You think you can resist my voice, but you can’t. Being in the splash zone isn’t the same as being the target.”
“I could ruin Hal,” Tristan said. “That doesn’t mean I ever would.”
The feeling of being watched prickled up Austin’s spine. He turned sharply and saw the upper halves of two shadowy mermen heads peering at him from a mere arm’s length away. They chuffed out odd, friendly sounds.
Austin’s grip tightened on Tristan.
Tristan held him securely. “It’s Bee and Dew.”
Their heads tilted into the water, looking pointedly in the direction of Tristan’s tail.
Austin glared at them. “What do you want? Did Laurence send you?” He knew they were a bunch of co-conspirators.
They replied with negative huffs.
Tristan looked down into the water as well. “If you would tolerate their presence this once, their guidance would be useful to me. Northern merfolk don’t polish their scales like southerners do, so I have never learned how.”
“Oh.” Austin only recalled Tristan’s scales as glittering and bright. “Okay.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll help.” Austin pushed back from Tristan and peered into the water. “Did it get dirty in the whirlpool?”
Tristan’s green tail blended with the surrounding ocean water well enough. The grey tail swishing in perfect sync with it did not. Austin stared in shock, reaching abruptly for his abdomen, sliding his hand down to find—scales.
“Oh God.”
Further cursing was swallowed by the ocean as he thrust his face into the water to see without the distortion.
A tail connected to his body where his legs should be.
It came up far, far shorter than Tristan’s—matching in length and size more closely to Dew’s pale blue tail when he swam in, circling Austin, examining him.
Austin did not have broad flukes. Instead his tail forked, lined with spines like a caudal fin of a fish tail, so flexible it cupped water like a parachute catching wind.
His tail was not a wall of solid scales like the others, either.
Decorative, spined fins ran down both sides, pectoral fins that fluttered like flags of silk.
He twisted, peering at his back where a matching dorsal fin ran down the back line of his tail, sweeping out at the start, then narrowing to an elegant finish where his caudal fin began.
Bee darted to the ocean floor and grabbed handfuls of sand, offering a clump to Dew.
Overwhelmed with shock, Austin watched in a daze as Dew pressed the sand to his tail and began to gently rub in small circles.
The muscle beneath his hand released a measure of tension, heightening Austin’s awareness of how naturally he could feel his tail.
He could flex the length of it as he would his arm, and the fins moved as if he were twitching an incredibly flexible finger.
Dew dropped his hand, and the three mermen peered at his work alongside Austin. Encircled by scales the colour of tarnished metal was a spot of luminous silver. Austin’s polished scales glowed as if backlit by a soft, cool light.
Austin’s gaze slid to Tristan, a surge of insecurity passing through him. The darkness of the water made it difficult to read his expression. He swam up, lifting his face above the water. Tristan took his time rising with him, a questioning tilt to his head when he did.
“Southern,” Austin said. “And small.”
Tristan dismissed that at once. “You’re too powerful to be southern.” He paused, considering. “I have never seen any like you. Neither have they. But I should have expected this.”
Austin just made out the glimmer of a smile.
“You were always bound to be the most beautiful creature in the ocean.” He leaned in, attacking Austin’s cheeks with fond kisses. “Hal will be beside himself with envy. Let me learn from these two southerners. I will have you gleaming, my dear.”
Tristan ducked below. Austin let himself descend too, watching the mermen as they polished his tail until the whole of it glowed a soft silver.
Over the course of the treatment, he relaxed, beginning to hum as he let himself enjoy the massage.
Bee quickly lost interest in polishing and no less than three times darted off into the whirlpool, his copper tail flashing through the sand-churned water as he was thrown around.
Dew shot him a look of disgust the first time he returned, skin reddened in a rash by churning sand.
The second time, he snorted and shook his head.
The third time, he watched Bee disappear into the whirlpool with open curiosity.
The fourth time, he abandoned his work on Austin to join him, and pale blue churned alongside copper.
Tristan gave Austin a look that said, You see why I do not like these southerners.
Austin hummed, personally very amused. He liked that they found enjoyment in the Charybdis he’d summoned.
He liked that they had polished his scales and seemed to—dare he even think it?
—accept his presence. He was among them in the ocean, his tail unlike theirs, yet he was not being rejected for it.
They laughed, Austin recalled. They laughed when he threw the egg at Adonis.
Austin swam up, indicating for Tristan to rise as well. He wrapped his arms around the larger merman, kissing him sweetly. “I like them now.”
“You like that they aren’t afraid of your power.”
“I like that they enjoy my—my—” He glanced at the whirlpool. Thought of the egg. “My personality.”
Tristan sighed. “You wish them to join our court?”
“I didn’t say that. But maybe they’re not as bad as I thought.” And maybe Sam had been right all along. Maybe all Austin had to do was stop being an unfriendly, snarling nightmare for five minutes and mermen wouldn’t hate him. “Dew was gentle,” he said.
Tristan’s shoulders softened. He caressed Austin’s side, his warm hand sliding over the place where skin transformed into scale. “He was.”
Austin gazed at the whirlpool. “When will it stop?”
“You can say better than I. How much power did you use?”
“I was drowning.” Which meant, a lot. “But…I was underwater. My voice was muffled. It’ll probably dissipate when the tide goes out. And—my leg.” Austin shivered. “It’s broken.”
“Now mended,” Tristan said. “I have done such injuries to myself before, and the wounds healed when I transformed. In the legs, anyway. Sometimes the ribs mended. Arms remained broken.”
Austin’s full attention snapped back to Tristan, who spoke in the faraway tone of one recalling distant memories. “You broke bones?” Given the scars decorating Tristan’s tail, he wasn’t altogether surprised. “Who? Your father?”
“Indirectly. He was typically instrumental in setting in motion the tests and training that caused damage.” There was only a hint of distaste, as though Tristan were recalling something merely unpleasant rather than brutal.
His attention slipped elsewhere. “If we go around the edge, we can get on to the beach and walk to the estate. There.” He nodded toward a stretch of beach a mile clear of Charybdis.
“You are too spent to swim. Unless you’d rather take shelter in a cove until the storm ends? ”
“A cove?” Austin repeated, unimpressed.
“Or we can go to the city. There are many rooms directly connected to the ocean there. I wished to set up the same here, but…” Tristan shrugged. “The men with the skill to build the tunnels passed years ago, and the beach makes it very difficult. What would you like to do?”
Austin was tired, but he didn’t want to go to the city, and he didn’t want to go hide in an uncomfortable cove. On the other hand, the estate held witnesses to his humiliation. He couldn’t stomach the thought that they now believed him an obsessed stalker.
Tristan saw his hesitation. “Oran has been removed.”
Austin looked at him in surprise. “What?”
“Inx is deciding the punishment for the two who helped him, but I think he is correct that they were roped into the endeavour by Oran,” Tristan continued.
“Oran knew he’d lost favour with Inx. I think he feared removal if he didn’t do something to win my approval.
Forgive me, I did not intend for you to shoulder the blame for my men’s misconduct.
” Another pause. “If you wish for their punishment to be greater—”
“No,” Austin said. “No. Just do what you see fit. I’m hungry,” he added, quickly changing the subject. “Let’s return to the estate.”
Tristan accepted the change with a nod. He caught Austin’s hand and led him to shore.