“What?”
“Bee and Dew aren’t the only ones who enjoy your personality, Austin,” Tristan said. “I count myself among that number. You need not talk about your nature as if it is a disappointment because it is not.”
Eli popped out of the crowd before Austin could respond. “I told Reba you’d be bored up there within the hour.” He sat next to Austin. “Shall I share with you some actualentertainment now?” Without pausing for breath, Eli launched into an explanation of the ongoing scandals of Hal’s court, which, Eli was right, were far more interesting than the bickering at the high table.
A servant brought Tristan a plate of food, and Tristan ate idly as he scanned the room, his gaze sharpening on any who wandered too near.
As Eli paused for breath between scandals, Austin nodded toward the high table. “I was surprised to see the terrible beauty next to Hal.”
“Terrible beauty?” Eli cackled. “Got on your bad side, has he?”
“No, I like him.”
At the table, Kas startled.
“He’ll love that,” Eli said. “Kas has been Prince Hal’s only companion since he was stripped of half his fortune. Half the city claims that he has Prince Hal bewitched with his beauty, the other half claims he has Hal too afraid to so much as glance at anyone else. ‘Terrible beauty’ indeed. Kas. Kas. Kas. Kas.”
Kas turned his head and pointedly scowled at Eli.
“Kas has excellent hearing,” Eli explained. “His family’s a bit of a mixed bag in terms of monsters. You wouldn’t guess it looking at him, would you? But the Spears arealwaysbeautiful. I reckon there must be fairy in his line somewhere, not that they’d admit it.”
“Why not?”
“They’d get eaten.”
Kas stood. Austin turned to Eli. “What?”
“Fairies are extinct now. The Solas family ate them all.”
At Austin’s incredulous look, Eli continued. “Consuming fairies gave them long lives. Some of that family lived for almost five hundred years, but their children were born addicted to fairies—they’d die without them. More children, more eating, fewer fairies. By the time the Zatic family—now an empire—rose up against them, there were hardly any fairies left at all.”
“That family are all dead now?” Austin’s voice came out in such a way that Tristan’s attention snapped to his face, and Eli hesitated. Tristan’s lapse in vigilance allowed Kas to step up next to them without resistance.
“Yes,” Kas said. “They’re all dead. King Micythus’s ancestors burned their bodies so nobody could eat them and gain the power they were trying to destroy, but the ashes held a potent enough magic still. They sent out ships to the deepest trench of the ocean and dumped every last grain of that family into it.”
A deep northern trench…
“Is that where your academic wanted those shells dredged up from?” Austin asked Tristan. Unease crawled up his spine. Cessair’s impossible, manic dream took on the shape of somethingpossible.
Kas tensed. “Someone retrieved the ashes?”
“Their request was denied,” Austin said, staring hard at Tristan.
“I’d have to look at a map,” Tristan said. “Though perhaps their request was not as silly as it initially seemed… It’s a deep trench, Austin. I might manage going that deep, but I’m far more resilient than most. You or Hal wouldn’t be able to, nor would any other merfolk I’ve ever met.”
“And you won’t ever retrieve such a thing.”
“I won’t,” Tristan said.
Austin relaxed. Tristan truly seemed totally uninterested, even after learning something that could prolong his life lay somewhere he could access.
“Well, that doesn’t answer our question about…” Eli raised his brows towards Kas and received a fierce glare from the terrible beauty.
A defensive feeling flared inside Austin. He was far too accustomed to how it felt to have others think the key to immortality lay locked inside your body. It was a dangerous thing to have tied to your blood. “He doesn’t look at all like he has fairy blood,” Austin said, his voice taking on a biting edge.
Eli leaned back in surprise, though he didn’t flinch. He read Austin’s expression and nodded.
“No,” Eli agreed smoothly, “it’s the most ridiculous rumour I’ve ever heard, and I’ll be sure to never repeat it again. He’s pretty enough to be related to merfolk, don’t you think? If falling short of passing for a siren.”
