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My body dissolved before I hit the deck.

Shadows tore through me, ripping flesh into darkness until there was nothing left of me but pain and will as the void took me.

For one terrible heartbeat, I was not a body at all. I was only the space between one breath and the next, swallowed by the dark that did not want to spit me back out.

I reformed behind Aldric just as his foot slipped from the railing.

My hand closed around his wrist, and I dragged him into the void with me.

Solas had already climbed down from the crow’s nest by the time I materialised from the shadows beside him, Aldric thrashing in my grip like a hooked fish.

Thank fuck I had just drunk Lyra’s blood, only a pang of cold pulsed through my chest.

“Tie him to the mast!” I yelled.

But Solas did not move. His eyes had gone glassy, his jaw slack, face turned toward the black water as though something beautiful waited for him beneath the waves. He took one slow step toward the railing.

The song curled through the rigging, soft and mournful, sliding beneath the thunder rolling closer with every passing moment.

“Fucking Sirens,” I snarled. They were supposed to be extinct.

Aldric twisted hard in my arms, nearly wrenching himself free, and Solas took another step. I dropped the prince against the deck and seized a coil of rope from beside the mast. The ship lurched beneath us as I dragged Aldric back by the collar, his boots scraping over the soaked boards, his hands clawing uselessly toward the sea.

“She needs me,” he whimpered, voice empty of agency.

“No,” I growled, shoving him hard against the mast. “She wants to fuck you until you drown.”

I wound the rope around him once, twice, then hauled it tight across his chest. He bucked against it, snarling, suddenly stronger than any Mortal had a right to be as the song pulled at whatever grief lived inside him.

Behind me, Solas had reached the railing. I dissolved before thought could catch up with me, shadows tearing through my body and spitting me back into shape behind him. My arm locked around his waist a heartbeat before he climbed over. He fought me.

Solas, who had stood beside me through war and death and a thousand ruins, fought me with a blind, desperate strength, his eyes fixed on the sea as if it had promised to return everything he had ever lost.

“Wake up,” I snapped in his ear. My shadows writhed beneath my skin, furious and half-starved, as I dragged him backward across the swaying deck and slammed him against the mast beside Aldric, tying him against it.

Thick coils of rope circled them both, biting across their chests, their arms, their waists, binding them to the soaked wood while the ship groaned and pitched beneath our feet.

“Let me go!” Solas roared, straining so hard against the rope that the fibres bit into his skin. “She is calling for me!”

I tied the final knot with shaking hands and hauled it tight until the rope creaked beneath the strain. The rum had made it far from my finest work, but it would hold.

Aldric thrashed beside him, while Solas fought the bindings as if the sea itself had reached inside him and hooked its claws around his heart. I turned toward the dark, angry swell.

The song rolled over the water, haunting and beautiful, calling them both to a watery grave.

Sea serpent scale. Siren tears. Sand from Stonebriar.

The list of things I needed to trade for Lyra, and one of them was swimming below my ship.

I sprinted across the deck, boots hitting rain-slick boards, and dove over the rail into the Dead Sea.

Chapter Twenty

Punishment

Lyra

One heartbeat, Helion wore that infuriating smirk. The next, he was lunging towards me.