Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Leave,” Austin repeated, the word harsher, sharper. Sam didn’t flinch, but Hal, after a disgruntled exhale, followed the rest of his party guests out. The great hall was empty now, save for Austin, Tristan, and Sam.
“I will, I promise,” Sam said in his pleasant Irish accent. “I’m not here to bother you.”
Austin didn’t remember standing, but he was on his feet. Tristan stood close at his side, just shy of touching him. The last time he’d seen Sam, Austin had claimed they were friends in front of those who hated him. In front of Laurence. And Sam had looked at Austin as though he was crazy.
The control Austin had spent months slowly building disintegrated completely. Since then, most words out of his mouth had hurt anyone listening, when before that, he had been hurting no one.
Freckles dusted Sam’s cheeks, a faint sunburn marking where he must have been wearing sunglasses. Work-calloused, paint-splattered fingers opened in a submissive gesture. Sam never sat still, whether for work, drawing, errands for his family. Earnest green eyes fixed on Austin.
Austin believed Sam before he even opened his mouth.
Liar.
Austin despised Irish boys.
Sam’s voice stayed calm. “I’ve texted and called.”
Tristan took a threatening step forward. He towered over Sam, who went pale beneath his freckles.
“Okay,” Sam said. “I’ll cut to the chase.
I’m just here to give you this.” He pulled a blue stone, burned with grey lines, from his pocket.
A headache bloomed behind Austin’s eyes.
Sam reached out toward him. With every inch, the headache intensified.
So did Tristan’s quiet menace. Sam hesitated, then carefully placed the stone on the table between them.
Austin didn’t take his eyes off Sam, even though he itched to pick the thing up and check it. “Do you expect me to wear that?”
Sam flinched, his shield gone. There was a faint tremble in his hands, and he buried them into his pockets to hide it.
“I don’t know what you want it for,” Sam said.
“Kit and Laurence—wait, wait—it’s okay, Austin.
Laurence was in the wrong. I know you didn’t have Kit kidnapped, and Kit even said as much.
” When he said “you”, Sam’s eyes flicked to Tristan.
“You wanted the spell to shield from your voice? My boyfriend’s aunt is the one who designed it.
I asked her to make another one. It’s a gift from me, no strings attached. ”
A beat of silence passed.
“She said it’s not really protection, but more like a counterattack.
Sorry, I didn’t really understand. I don’t know how to explain it.
” Sam’s cheek indented, then he blasted the silence with a deluge of words.
“I was attacked by a ghoul, and it ate my memory of becoming friends with you. I didn’t mean to snub you.
I’m sorry, I genuinely didn’t remember some of our meetings.
Vi restored my memories, and since then, I’ve been trying to contact you to explain..
Do you know what a ghoul is? They’re monsters from this world. One was living in my house, and—”
Unbidden, concern sizzled in Austin’s blood. “I don’t want one of those things bringing attention to the town,” he said magnanimously. “Where is it? Still at your house? I’ll kill it.”
Tristan’s head tipped ever so slightly toward Austin without abandoning his intimidating pose.
“Tristan will kill it,” Austin amended.
“My house burned down, actually.”
“It burned down your house?” Austin said, alarmed. He knew from the state of the place and what he’d overheard from Sam’s conversations at the docks that his family had no money. Austin had a lot of money. Maybe—
“No, we decided to do that. We killed the ghoul, but Gary’s body—” Sam cut off, eyes widening with sudden realisation.
The great hall closed in around Austin, the air spoiling as though the food lining the tables were rotting. “Gary’s dead?”
“The ghoul killed him,” Sam said honestly.
The gaps didn’t need filling. If the ghoul was at Sam’s house, then Gary was only in danger because he had been stalking Sam.
Because Austin had touched his arm and called upon all that beguiling the book on the table described and seeded a desire Gary could never hope to sate.
Maybe Gary had felt as Austin had about Connor, stuck with an intolerable need he couldn’t get rid of. Driven mad and manic by it.
“You didn’t mean for him to get hurt,” Sam said with soft certainty.
“Connor accidentally caused the Infinite to capsize, and three people died. I don’t hold him at fault for something he didn’t mean to happen.
And you told me you didn’t mean what you did to Gary either. That it had been an accident.”
Austin’s breaths were shallow.
“Look,” Sam began, but Tristan had apparently heard enough.
“Leave,” Tristan said. Sam’s eyes flashed toward the merman, but whatever he saw in Tristan’s expression stopped the budding defiance.
Sam sought out Austin’s eyes once more. “I still want to be friends. This doesn’t change that.
I’ve been looking for you forever. Not in a creepy stalker way.
I hope…” His brow creased, as if, in retrospect, he found his own actions dubious.
“Anyway, I’m staying at that villa just across the bay, and you know what my boat looks like.
I want to hang out, so send me a message when we can do that.
Just me, I know you and Goldilocks didn’t really hit it off. ”
Sam rocked back on his heels several times, as if he had a million more things he wanted to say, but on a long sigh, he let it go. “Goodnight.”
He left.
Time pressed in and squeezed. The next thing Austin knew, he was in the carriage with Tristan, face pressed to the glass as he mindlessly watched the city pass by.
Waves of guilt rocked through him, swells high enough to choke him.
He doubted his body was capable of morphing to survive this type of drowning.
A strange pressure against his legs drew his attention back inside the carriage. Tristan’s large body was folded awkwardly on the floor, Austin’s bare feet in his lap, his sandals gone. Tristan was massaging his calves. Austin watched blankly, unable to feel his touch, even though he could see it.
“Did you say something?” Austin’s voice sounded as though it came from far away. He couldn’t tell whether it was the kind that hurt or not. Only Tristan was here, and he rarely flinched even when it did bite.
“I asked you to take a deep breath. Your breathing is too shallow, and your gills are going pale,” Tristan said.
Austin obeyed sluggishly to keep Tristan happy.
He became aware of the wild, gasping flutter of his gills and how the flutter eased when he breathed deeply.
Something was biting into his palm. He looked.
His fingers clutched the stone in a vicious grip.
The runes on its surface were burning his skin.
Tristan’s touch began to make sense in Austin’s mind, the connection between brain and muscles firing again.
“I thought nothing I did was that bad,” Austin said.
“Nothing tipped the scales too far, not enough to make me totally unforgivable. I always thought I’d find a way to undo what I did to Gary.
I wanted to protect Liam first of all, but then…
then I thought I could…” His voice and cheeks felt wet.
“I ruined him. Even if the ghoul hadn’t killed him, I’d already done it. ”
Tristan’s massage stopped. He simply held Austin’s calves, staring up into his face with steady affection.
“Even by Hal’s justice, you would be charged with nothing.
Gary was the first time you truly used your power, and you did not know what it would do.
You have not used it in such a way since, and you go to great effort to make sure you never do.
You won’t use your voice when touching anyone, just in case.
You remove yourself when it’s biting because you hate hurting others.
” Tristan reached up to cup Austin’s cheek, wiping away the tracks of tears with his thumb. “You are far from unforgivable.”
Austin leaned into Tristan’s hand, letting his eyelids flutter shut. He breathed in his smell, pleasant brine and lingering incense, and then he slid forward into his arms. Tristan gathered him up and sat once more, Austin on his lap, gently held.
There was a pit in his stomach that he feared would never fill.
And yet.
“I want to live. I want to have good things.”
“I want that too,” Tristan agreed.
The pit in his stomach yawned wide, as though a gaping mouth. Its teeth pressed dangerously close to his heart. One good carriage jolt would end him.
Tristan’s hand moved slowly up and down Austin’s spine, as though he could see the mouth and was trying to calm it shut. “You told me that Liam once left Connor behind to die, bleeding out, on a ship.”
Austin’s forehead rested against Tristan’s neck. Beneath his ear were the corded muscles of Tristan’s shoulders, hard beneath the silk shirt. “He said the boat was too small for three. And Connor didn’t die. He was fine. It isn’t the same.”
“Liam didn’t know he would live, yet you would not let me so much as imply culpability in the man. You have forgiven him, unconditionally. I have killed, too. In the course of my childhood with Desor, and beyond it.”
“Your job is to protect people. Obviously, that would involve people dying now and then.”
“Not all of those deaths have been necessary,” Tristan replied.
“I would kill for you too. If your father lived, or those scientists, I would find and kill them without hesitation. If Gary still lived, and his existence caused you pain, I would get rid of him too. And you would forgive me, because your heart will stretch for others. Allow it to stretch for yourself, too.”
If it stretched, the teeth might cut it.
The carriage rocked to a stop. Neither of them moved for an age. Austin finally tugged at Tristan’s shirt. “I’m tired.”
A relieved exhale tickled the top of Austin’s head. “Bed, then.”
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