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I pulled myself up the netting beside her, rolling over the railing and onto the wooden planks.

She hit the planks beside me hard enough to rattle the wood. A strangled scream tore from her throat as her tail convulsed, scales splitting apart with a wet, sickening crack. Her spine bowed off the deck. Blood slicked the boards beneath her as the fin tore down the middle, bone shifting, flesh reshaping. Her tail broke itself into two trembling legs.

She clawed at the wood, gasping through the pain, her scream swallowed by the snap of the sails above us.

I walked to one of the barrels at the stern of the ship, grabbing a blanket out of it and throwing it towards the naked woman. It landed in a heap next to her.

Not one bit of her flesh interested me. She was not Lyra.

“Tell the other Sirens not to lure the males from this ship,” I ordered. “They are important to your goddess.”

She was still gasping, each breath ragged and shallow, as though the air itself scraped her throat raw, as though lungs were a thing she had only just remembered how to use.

But she crawled the short distance to the railing, dragging her trembling legs behind her, deep red blood streaking over the boards in her wake. Her fingers curled around the wood as she began to sing.

Her voice weaved through words I could not understand, though it was beautiful in some primal sort of way.

The Sirens below answered in a haunting call. She turned back to me, pale and shaking. “It is done. They will not drag your males overboard unless I tell them to.”

She planted one trembling hand against the deck and tried to push herself upright, her newly formed legs folding uselessly beneath her. A sharp breath tore from her as she collapsed back onto the blood-slick boards, naked and too weak to stand. I did not thank her, nor did I help her.

I turned my back and stumbled to where I had tied Solas and Aldric to the mast. Behind me, the Siren dragged in a broken breath and tried to stand again, only for her body to hit the deck a heartbeat later, the sound wet and heavy against the boards.

“Do not go near the edge of this fucking ship again,” I said to Aldric, my voice low and lethal as I worked at the knots binding him, careful not to touch him with my wet hands. “Do you hear me?”

But his eyes were trained on the creature behind me.

I was not sure if I was one step closer to getting to Lyra, or if the Siren would prove to be another fucking problem.

His ropes thudded against the deck, and I moved to Solas’s knots.

“I thought Sirens were extinct,” Solas mumbled, eyeing the creature with open suspicion. “I wanted to drown for that creature.” He paused, swallowing hard as if the song were haunting him. “Thank you,” he said solemnly.

“You can thank me by sleeping,” I replied, a bone deep exhaustion dragging on me. How many days had it been since I had slept?

The prince had already moved past us. He shrugged out of his white button-down as he approached the Siren where she lay trembling against the deck.

The scars over his back were an array of angry puckered lines covering coiled muscle I was not expecting him to have. I thought he would be as soft as the pillows he had slept on his entire life.

She hissed at him, sharp teeth bared, dragging herself backwards until the railing bit into her spine.

“Come any closer and I will eat your heart,” she seethed, fingers curling like claws against the blood-slick wood.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Aldric said softly, holding up his hands in surrender. “My name is Aldric. What is yours?”

Compassion would get him killed. How would I explain to Lyra that it was not my fault, but his idiotic heart that ended him?

“I am a Siren, Mortal. One that has been denied the taste of the flesh of men my entire life,” she hissed, baring her teeth in a vicious display.

“I asked your name, not what you are.”

“Bryony,” she rasped, almost hesitantly.

He approached her as if she were some wounded, wild thing that would bite if he moved too quickly. Which she most certainly would.

“Leave it alone, Aldric,” I warned.

Of course, the stupid Mortal ignored me, and I ground my teeth together. He crouched in front of the naked Siren, keeping his movements slow, his hands visible. “I’m going to help you stand, okay?”