“If you could tell me what it was I did to offend you and set my own sons against me, perhaps I can rectify the mistake?” Desor’s eyes gleamed. He took another step forward, his hawkish features malicious despite his beseeching tone.
Austin thought of Desor’s punishment. Not death or torturous vengeance, but rejection. Spoiled plans, foiled power plays through total ambivalence. Tristan and Hal didn’t want to give him the time or energy. Austin curbed his instinct for holy terror.
“You’re ugly,” he said.
Desor stopped. “What?”
“You’re ugly,” Austin repeated, adding a sweet smile as he leaned forward to peer closely into Desor’s face. “How could I be with a merman with such hideous kin?”
Desor looked at Austin like a man who had just realised he wasn’t getting something to which he thought himself entitled.
“You are an unreasonable creature,” Desor said stiffly.
“And what use have I for reason?”
“And far too arrogant, when your power is easily blocked.”
Austin’s smile faded. “You’re spared the command of my voice, but so what? It’s just as easy to have Reba fly you out into the storm and drop you in the ocean. Or perhaps I’ll have him fly straight up and let go of you?”
Desor’s eyes slid to the hall Reba had disappeared down, and his shoulders relaxed. At the same time, Reba’s failure to reappear registered. The rest of the Troop were in the city, engaged in keeping the two delegations apart. Tristan had gone to Hal, urgently summoned. A tingle of alarm alerted Austin to danger, and he stood very, very still.
“Sirens desire status and prestige in their partners, don’t they? Wouldn’t you rather have Tristan as a king? The Zatic Empire is strong, but we could make it fall. We could conquer it, and then you’d be mated to a far more impressive figure.”
“We?Tristancould conquer that nation.Youcan’t even earn the favour of your own queen. You could do nothing when I told you to shut your mouth in court.”
Desor’s open hand cracked against Austin’s cheek. A hot bloom spread across the side of his face, the blow shocking him silent. For a moment, he was thrust back in time. Cessair loomed above him. Whisky on his breath, drug-blown eyes all black pupil, his unknowable, bottomless rage focused on a single target.
Always Austin.
The wind howled.
Austin used to lower his eyes. The shame of how he’d cowered and yielded stung like a thousand needles.
Cessair had no heart to warm. No real affections to stir. The man looming above him now was the same sort. A revulsion so strong rose in him that he almost gagged. How could such people exist? Even Cessair’s psychotic henchman Rick had cared for dogs.
Austin raised his eyes.
Satisfaction glinted in Desor’s eyes. He caught Austin by the chin, yanking his face up. He stared at the cheek he’d struck, a repulsive eagerness in his eyes as he mapped out the handprint of red.
“Your kind always forget how weak you are on land.” Fingers dug bruises into Austin’s jaw. “I trained that weakness out of Tristan.Imade him strong. You should thank me for it.”
Austin felt a burn on the right side of his body, his power flowing away from whatever was in Desor’s pocket. But whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. “Don’t let him touch me.”
A gust racing past them in the room suddenly curved, whipping up Austin’s hair as it diverted around him like a wave crashing around a stone, and it smashed head-on into Desor. Desor’s feet left the ground as he flew backwards, the gust carrying him several feet before he fell with a crash onto the flagstone path. Something cracked.
Austin followed.
“He’s strong in spite of you, not because of you.” Austin’s blood roared as the winds whipped at his clothes and hair. Water crashed over his feet. The ocean engulfed the flagstone paths in furious, churning waves. In the courtyard, a whirlpool began forming, Charybdis making a hungry bid for life.
Desor rose to his knees, dazed and shaking. His eyes were as wild as the storm as his gaze flashed around in utter panic. “His throat!” he cried out suddenly. “Shut his mouth, and he’s powerless!”
Nothing happened. Austin followed Desor’s gaze to a trellised pathway, where a flash of lightning illuminated Reba’s bat wings arched wide, and Oran lunging for soft membrane with a sword. Reba’s boot connected with the back of Oran’s knee. Blackness. Thunder rumbled, and lightning lit them again. Reba on top, Oran beneath him. Eager waves raced to help.
“Is this how you took Hal from Tristan?” Austin asked. Tricked Tristan away, cornered Hal on land where he was vulnerable.
Desor scrabbled past Austin into the hall, but the water was as high as Austin’s knees now, and the building was quickly filling. Tables shook and fell, candles extinguishing in water and glow stones were swallowed whole. Everything went dark.
Austin slipped his fingers into the water, taking comfort in its presence. Tiredness pulled at his limbs, and he fought the urge to sink into the next wave and join Charybdis.
