Page 33 of Tempest

“Sea-Father!” A young siren swam into Iason’s vision, a little boy with a glimmering blue tail and braids in his hair. “There’s a ship following you. The elders think the captain wants to spear you. Shall we sink it? We can break the hull apart and drown the sailors if you like.”

“Show me,” Levi said in the vision, and Iason saw a ship lined with harpoon guns, sirens swimming after it like remora clinging to a shark. The sirens scattered as Levi approached, and Iason flinched when Levi ripped a gash in the hull with his teeth. Sirens crowded into the ensuing chaos to drag sailors from the sinking ship and down to the depths, but Levi just kept swimming, ignoring the death he left in his wake.

Iason’s fingers were starting to tremble. “Cut me off,” he warned, and Levi wrenched him away from the core of their connection. Iason threw the rest of the magic into the garden and opened his eyes to a jungle of overgrown herbs rising almost two feet high.

“I need a drink,” he said, and got up. There were new flowers mixed in with the herbs—Mislian plants with stems that could be mashed and strained into a serum that could paralyze someone if injected in the right area or, with the right base, be a simple painkiller. There were pale blue berries that could sterilize or increase fertility, depending on how they were prepared, and a prickly plant Alistair liked to smoke at night to see visions. All it ever did for Iason was make him nervous and frightened, and he avoided it. He pulled it out by the roots and tossed it into an ancient compost pile on his way inside.

“You didn’t have to make a tree this time,” Levi said, as Iason stripped new mint leaves and chipped away at the ice block in the kitchen. “That’s progress.”

“But it’s still not enough.” Iason pressed the mint just enough to express the oil inside the leaves, then set them in the glasses before filling them with cold water. “If I had a memory of magical training, that would be something, but I don’t think anyone ever trained me. I’m fumbling around in the dark. Take poisons, for example.” He handed Levi a glass.

Levi stared at it. “Is this a practical lesson?”

“What? That isn’t poison, it’s ice water with mint.” Levi raised his brows and drank, paused, and poked at the wet mint leaves. “I mean that there’s a process to testing and extracting poison or medicine. You can allow room for guesswork if you understand the process, but I don’t know that, here. It’s like walking the hills and shoving plants in your mouth to see which ones make you sick.”

“That’s a valid option,” Levi said, chewing on one of the mint leaves.

“Don’t eat that—you already swallowed. All right.” Iason watched Levi grimace as the aftertaste hit. “If a mortal goes around eating everything they find, they’ll die. The same goes for testing volatile magic, I expect. I need to get my hands on some literature.”

“Books?” Levi kept moving his tongue around his mouth, probably trying to get rid of leftover mint. “Okay, then. Go steal some.”

“I’m trying to be discreet.” Iason sighed. “With a god as a fake husband and Sophie running around with a dragon in a bucket.”

“Yeah, might as well give that up,” Levi said, and ducked his head under the faucet. “Mint is strong.”

“It is if you eat it, you animal.” Levi turned on the tap, and Iason covered his eyes with his hand as the god burbled under the stream of water. “Do you often eat things without checking whether they’re good for you?”

Levi straightened, water dripping from his face and hair. “Can’t die. Why not?”

“So that entire metaphor didn’t mean anything at all to you.”

“I understand: it would be different for a human.” Levi shook his head, scattering water droplets across the kitchen. “So we get a book on magic. Simple enough.”

“If you have money.” Iason glanced at the overgrown garden and smiled, mouth catching at the scars crisscrossing his cheek. “But I have a way to obtain that.”

Sophie came home that afternoon with a gust of salt air, jarring Iason out of his thoughts. Levi was draped over the windowsill, staring dead-eyed at the frame while Iason worked at the table, which was covered with flowers, berries, leaves, and other plant material as well as a number of bowls and jars, all laid out on a thick cloth. He’d already arranged several powders, essences, and cuttings in neatly labeled jars in a basket, and despite Levi’s one, near disastrous, attempt to help, had kept the work area free of spills.

“I know what that is,” Sophie said. Her cheeks were slightly sunburned, and loaves of bread poked out of the bag on her shoulder. “You aren’t planning on killing anyone, are you?”

“No. Don’t set food down near the workstation,” Iason snapped, and Sophie sighed and dropped her bag on the counter instead. “We don’t mix food and work. I technically shouldn’t even be doing this at the table.”

“He said that already,” Levi moaned. “Three times.”

Sophie giggled. “You’ve been stuck with him all day, huh? He used to be at this for hours in Staria.”

“I’m sure he was,” Levi said, in the voice of someone so utterly bored he was on the verge of death.

“You told me you’ve slept on the bottom of the ocean for decades at a time,” Iason said, packing away the rest of his work. He didn’t trust Argo around his supplies. “A few hours won’t kill you.”

“Maybe it’s a complex spell, and you’re sapping my soul out through my skin.”

“You’ll survive, dragon.”

Levi hissed. Iason hissed back, and Sophie laughed when Levi blinked at him in alarm.

“Did he say something offensive in dragon?” She started unpacking her bag. “I met some of the others today, doing spell nets. They didn’t mind that I don’t know magic, and I realize this will surprise you, but no one turned into an ogre and tried to devour me whole.”

“Good to know,” Iason said, meeting her gaze. “But ogres don’t live near the beach. You’ll find them on the cliffs, in the north.”

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