Chapter Twenty-Five
Even with Tristan’s attentive help, the sun was high in the sky by the time they finally left their room. On the porch, Eli was telling a story in heavily accented English, his head turning to follow Liam as he paced. Reba listened with a furrowed brow, likely not understanding any of it.
Austin’s gaze fell to the breakfast table as they stepped out, where platters had been arranged with his preferred plain nibbles. His stomach gave an unhappy grumble, and he turned to Tristan, touching his elbow. “I’m very hungry.”
Tristan’s eyes brightened. “I’ll fetch more from the kitchen.” He left quickly.
Eli and Reba glanced their way, and Liam turned sharply on his heel. The dark circles beneath Liam’s eyes had worsened overnight, and he seemed terribly pale without the orange glow of a fire giving him colour. At least he was wearing fresh clothes.
Austin studied him. “Did you not sleep well?” Liam’s hair was still caked with sand, which was far more obvious in the daylight. He looked from Liam’s hair to Eli, who immediately raised both hands in supplication.
“I tried to get him into the bath. Apparently he likes smelling of seaweed and brine.”
Liam crossed his arms. There was something distinctly unimpressed in the stare he fixed on Eli. Eli met Liam’s eyes and grinned.
Tristan’s admission about the skills Eli possibly possessed flitted through Austin’s mind, and he studied the young man in a manner he hadn’t considered before.
His thick auburn hair framed a golden face, eyes dark but alight with mischief, full red lips shaped with a perfect bow on top.
His limbs were lean, covered with a neat layer of muscle, and Austin knew from his braiding how nimble his fingers were.
Eli’s dark eyes slid to Austin, a question lighting in them as he found himself under inspection.
“Do you like working for Tristan?”
Eli jutted his chin towards Reba. “You’d have to ask him that; I’ve never worked for Tristan. Only you.” He grinned. “Which I enjoy very much.” It struck Austin as an entirely genuine response.
Austin turned back to Liam. “Have you eaten yet?”
As he turned, a disturbance in the sand caught his eye.
He stepped to the side and looked past Liam, eyes widening in alarm.
The storm surge had retreated, and the ocean was once more a mile down the beach, though what it had left behind was far from the gleaming white shore it had risen to cover the night before.
The beach was cratered, large gouges torn into grey earth and dark stone.
The centre of the crater, the deepest, darkest spot, was halfway down the beach where Austin’s nest had been.
From there, it spread out, spiralling upwards and outwards to form an uneven, jagged basin.
Even when it levelled off, the environment was changed; nowhere down the beach was there any sand.
Instead, it was a broad rock face dotted with boulders, spread out as if they’d been haphazardly tossed.
The porch steps ended at the edge of the basin, so perfectly aligned that it boggled the mind to imagine it as anything but deliberate.
Charybdis.
Austin looked over his shoulder, but Tristan had gone, so he looked left, to Liam. Liam gazed steadily back at him and said nothing. Austin turned the other way again as Eli sidled up to him, sliding both arms around Austin’s, a gentle smile in place.
“I thought it might be fun to host a game. Fighting on the sand is one thing—the Troop trains in that sand pit all the time—but fighting down there?” Eli gazed into the crater. “Now that would be entertaining. We have the green tea you like. Shall I pour you a cup?”
Austin made an indistinct sound in reply. As Eli poured it, Austin glanced at Reba, who had been sitting silent and wary. “Have you eaten?”
Reba nodded.
“From the kitchen?”
Reba’s great wings trembled slightly.
Austin started to look accusingly at Tristan, but he was still gone. “I said you could eat from the kitchen,” he said, voice sharp, but not quite hurting anyone yet.
Eli put aside the teapot and unceremoniously shoved a cracker with cheese into Reba’s mouth. “I told you.” He looked to Austin. “He was told. I think he needed to hear it from you, though.”
Reba struggled with the mouthful, chewed, and swallowed in a lump so large it was visible in his throat on the way down.
Austin stared until Reba picked up another cracker and bit into it, his eyes flashing quickly toward Austin and away.
Austin went to his chaise lounge and sat, releasing several long, calming breaths.
Austin didn’t look at Reba. He stared instead toward the crater, the end result of the destructive force he’d unleashed last night.
“I didn’t mean what I said. I was upset after Laurence.
” Austin hated admitting that Connor’s stepbrother had got under his skin.
Yet somehow, the idea of Reba not getting to eat Lassie’s cooking because of him itched beyond skin, into bone.
“You can eat whatever you like whenever you like, and you don’t have to learn how to fly to do it. ”
Austin kept his eyes pointedly away from Reba. His pride wouldn’t bend enough for eye contact.
“Laurence?” Liam questioned. He leaned against the porch railing, arms still crossed.
Austin picked at the silk sheet of his chair, the pace of his heart rising.
He’d rather not think of that mess from yesterday, but the loss of the pendant that blocked his powers hurt.
Liam could have been wearing it this very second.
Reluctantly, he said, “His friend had a pendant that blocks my power.”
Liam stiffened. “He attacked you?”
Austin shot him an annoyed look. “Why would he attack me? I asked Tristan to get something that shields against my voice.”
“You’re not wearing anything like that,” Liam said, stern.
Austin blinked. Wearing it himself hadn’t occurred to him. Would that contain his voice from all, rather than just one? “It was going to be for you.”
Surprise flashed across Liam’s face, then a peculiar expression Austin couldn’t identify. “I don’t need something like that.”
“No! You’d rather I give you headaches every day instead?” Austin burst out.
“Your voice only hurts when you’re genuinely upset,” Liam replied.
“Like now!”
“No, actually. You’re fine now.”
An indescribable annoyance swept through Austin. He sat up from his reclined position, teeth bared. “Only yesterday I banned Reba from eating unless he learned to fly.”
Liam stared back, unerringly calm. “Which you just apologised for and took back.”
Dammit.
“Well, I untake it back!”
Reba froze mid-chew. He couldn’t understand Liam, but clearly he’d gathered the meaning from Austin’s side of the conversation.
Austin was practically growling now. “Just eat!” he snapped. And yet still, still his voice did not harm. I am tired. I just terraformed an entire beach. Austin needed only ignore the way his power was comfortably stretched out through every limb, ready to go, and he could believe his excuse.
Tristan returned with a tray of piping hot pastries, the smell of savoury meat making Austin’s stomach clench with ravenous hunger.
He plucked the nearest one from the tray before Tristan even set it on the table and burned the inside of his mouth, swallowing it down in greedy bites.
Instead of the tea he’d poured, Eli handed Austin a glass of cool juice.
“I ruined your beach,” Austin said, reaching for a second meat pie.
“It’s yours to ruin,” Tristan said. At Austin’s unhappy look, he added, “Not that I consider it ruined. It will be more comfortable like this. Less sand thrown up as we swim.” Tristan lifted Austin’s feet from the chair, settled himself beneath them, and carefully arranged the silk to cover his toes and ankles.
Austin ate the second pie, gazing out at the newly exposed bedrock.
There was a shallow pool of ocean water left behind in the crater.
“The water will go stagnant like that,” Austin said, recalling basins of salt water that had been in the lab and the stench they’d begun to emit over time.
Once the storm surges were over and the water became stagnant, it would putrefy.
They’d smell it everywhere in the estate.
“We can fill in the crater,” Reba suggested. “With rocks and shale.”
“I think we should chisel seats into the outer rings,” Eli said, “then pump out the water, and host fights.”
Austin looked more closely at Eli. “You’re very eager for there to be fights.”
Eli grinned. “Family blood,” he explained.
“What do you think?” Austin asked Tristan, half expecting to hear him say he’d like whatever Austin liked.
“I’d rather keep the crater you went to the effort of creating,” Tristan said, surprising Austin.
“And I was thinking perhaps I might expand that scar there.” He pointed to the furthest point of the crater, closest to the water.
“Create a deep enough path that the crater is one with the ocean.” His eyes focused on the bottom of the crater, on the pool of water.
Austin looked too and realised that what he’d initially taken for shadows were black, solid rocks.
His heart lightened. By some miracle, his nest, though far lower than it had been before, remained intact.
“Yes,” Austin said at once, and his power shimmered in his voice. Reba and Eli let out matching sounds of pleasant surprise as Tristan leaned over to press a kiss to Austin’s cheek.
“Do that. Please,” Austin murmured, for Tristan’s ears alone. The shimmer of warmth drew a low hum from Tristan.
“As soon as the delegations are gone, I’ll get to work,” Tristan promised.
Throughout the exchange, Liam hovered like a spectre. Austin paused with a third meat pie suspended in mid-air and looked his way. “If you don’t sit down and eat something…”
He threateningly lowered the pie.
Liam sighed as he straightened from the rail. He sat in the remaining chair. Austin didn’t take another bite until he saw Liam do the same.