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His grip tightened around the looking glass before he slowly lowered it. He stared at the horizon with the kind of despair only a ruler who loved his kingdom could hold. “But why?” “Because I could not kill your sister,” I whispered, words misting in front of my face as if taunting me.

I gritted my teeth against the darkness rising inside of me, craving the death of the woman I loved.

I yelled for Solas to run the anchor. We were as close to the shore as we could get without running aground. Close enough to swim, if you had a death wish. Luckily for me, death could not touch me. Not yet.

From here, I could see the looming castle of Stonebriar. It was a grey fortress of stone as grey as the sky it reached towards, capped with white.

Behind us was the barracks where I had saved Lyra, or stolen, depending on which way you examined it.

“I will accompany you to the shores,” Bryony said from behind me. She walked on unsteady legs, as if she wasn’t sure they’d give out beneath her.

She wore one of the prince’s tunics, though on her it looked like a dress brushing the tops of her knees. She had fastened a piece of leather around her waist to keep it in place, and she padded on bare feet, seemingly unfazed by the cold.

“No.” I did not trust the creature, nor did I want her getting in my way.

She rolled her eyes before unfastening the leather around her waist and pulling the tunic over her head.

I looked out at the sea. I had no interest in looking at a naked woman that was not my bonded.

In my peripheral vision, I watched her drape the clothes over Aldric’s shoulder.

“Watch those for me, yes?” she said huskily in that thick accent.

Heat crept up the prince’s throat, staining his cheeks as he tried to look anywhere but directly at the naked Siren in front of him.

Bryony climbed onto the railing of the ship before jumping off into the glassy water below.

“Is not listening just a Siren trait, then?” Solas murmured from behind me, walking up and grasping a hand on my shoulder.

“I suppose it is,” I sighed. “Keep the ship and the Mortal safe. I won’t be long.”

Solas gave me a sharp nod, and I walked to the railing where Bryony had disappeared.

“I don’t need keeping,” Aldric demanded, obviously over his fluster. “I need to know if my people are okay.”

“No, you need to stay alive. So, you will fucking wait here and be babysat like a good princeling,” I snapped at him.

He took a small step back and looked down at his feet. Whatever he saw on my face was enough to make him back down. Good.

I launched myself over the railing headfirst, arms spearing above me as my body carved a perfect arc through the air.

My body split through the icy water, the cold swallowing me in a violent embrace, muting the groan of timber from the ship above. For one suspended moment, there was only the endless blue-black deep and the brutal beat of my heart.

As I started to swim, a vast shadow moved beneath me, drifting through the dark with a body too large to belong to any living thing. Tentacles unfurled like black ribbons through the current.

My pulse sharpened. It could not kill me—not truly—but even immortality had learned to fear the things it did not understand.

The creature began to rise from the depths, and I braced myself for a fight.

Bryony swiped in from somewhere far below, emerging from darkness below the creature.

Her song rolled through the water, low and ancient, vibrating through my bones and bending the sea around us. The monster recoiled, shrinking back into the darkness as if the sound itself had teeth.

Her moss-green scales shimmering with each powerful thrust of her tail through the dark waters.

Bryony’s kept singing as we swam, the song grating against my nerves and making me want to peel my own skin off to escape it. But it kept the creatures at bay.

I’d grown closer to shore, fighting the turbulent current’s vicious waves.