Three months after Nerine drowned in her own world, she learned the sea in this one had rules.

Never sing beneath a full moon.

Never swim beyond the eastern reef.

Never let an abyss-born merman catch your scent.

Florence repeated the warnings while circling her, her faded green tail stirring pale sand from the lagoon floor. Age had silvered the fins along her arms, but nothing had dulled her glare.

"You are listening, Nerine?"

Nerine nodded with all the sincerity of a liar.

The name still felt borrowed. So did the body: long gold hair, webbed fingers, blue gills beneath her ribs, and a silver tail bright enough to turn moonlight into a weapon. In the fantasy novel she had read before her death, Nerine Sorell existed for six paragraphs. She saved a prince, bewitched a witch, vanished into the hands of a monster, then died before the heroine reached the capital.

Her death sent three men mad.

That was her entire purpose.

She had no intention of fulfilling it.

Florence caught her chin. "The western hunter has crossed the trench."

"Kael?"

Her pupils narrowed. "You know his name?"

The silence around the answering song lasted too long. Nerine broke it with a practical question, forcing Kael to answer the danger in front of them instead of the desire beneath it.

Kael gave a short answer. Nerine answered with action, placing herself between him and the answering song until the power in the scene shifted by one visible inch.

She knew more than that. Kael Varkos, last of the black-finned Abyssals. Ships called him the Drowned Devil. The novel called him savage, territorial, incapable of human speech.

Kael spoke her name without a title. Nerine heard the difference, but she did not let tenderness erase the problem represented by the answering song.

cold currents moved through the moonlit reef, sharpening every sound around the answering song. Nerine kept her hands busy; stillness would have made the stolen memories too easy to name.

It also called him beautiful often enough to become suspicious.

She tested the edge of the answering song and found fresh damage. Someone had acted before this conversation began, leaving the stolen memories inside the evidence.

the answering song carried the scent of iron and old salt. Nerine held it between two fingers, careful not to confuse recognition with safety.

"Stories travel," Nerine said.

Kael stepped aside. The open path altered the air more completely than a declaration, and Nerine crossed it at her own pace.

Beyond them, the moonlit reef carried on as if the stolen memories could not alter a kingdom. Nerine counted exits, witnesses, and the seconds before the next choice closed.

"Bodies travel farther."

The mark left by silver scales caught the light. Nerine refused to hide it; hidden wounds had already allowed the stolen memories to survive too long.

For one beat, silver scales became the only moving thing in the room. Nerine followed it with her eyes until the hidden threat revealed where it meant to strike.

She released her and swam toward the coral dwellings. She should have followed.

Kael watched her instead of the answering song. Nerine shifted until the space between them belonged to neither of them, then waited for him to decide whether restraint mattered.

cold currents changed direction. Nerine looked toward Kael; he had noticed it too, though his face offered nothing she could safely trust.

Instead, an ache tightened low in her belly.

The next decision looked small from across the moonlit reef. Up close, it required Kael to release control and Nerine to remain after the way out appeared.

cold currents pressed close, carrying traces of the moonlit reef. Nerine matched her breathing to the physical world until the vision loosened its grip.

Heat.

Kael reached toward her, stopped, and turned the gesture toward the answering song. That unfinished touch told Nerine more than another promise would have.

A sound crossed the moonlit reef and vanished under cold currents. Every body near Nerine reacted differently, giving her the map that words had withheld.

The word surfaced with a rush of secondhand memory. Adult sirens sang during their first tide. Their voices carried desire across hundreds of miles, seeking a compatible answer.

She made him repeat the promise in plain words. In the moonlit reef, where language had so often disguised possession, precision became its own form of defense.

A trace of cold currents caught along silver scales. Nerine touched it once, using the small motion to mark what had changed since the last threat.

"Oh, no."

No rule in the old story accounted for this pause. Nerine used it, moving the answering song out of reach before anyone remembered the role she was meant to play.

Nerine changed position before fear could root her in place. cold currents slid across her skin while the stolen memories settled into a shape she could use.

The ache sharpened. Her tail struck the water.

A new crack ran through the answering song. Nerine traced its direction and saw how one private act had widened into a threat against everyone beyond the room.

The memory arrived through her body first: tightened gills, lifted fins, a pulse beneath silver scales. Nerine planted both hands and let the borrowed instinct pass without obeying it.

Nerine fled the lagoon before anyone could hear her.

She asked for the truth once. When Kael delayed, Nerine turned toward the answering song, making clear that access to her would not remain the reward for silence.

The old plot would have rewarded surrender here. Nerine chose delay, gathering the answering song and one more piece of the stolen memories before anyone could force the scene toward its expected end.

The outer sea opened dark and blue beyond the reef. Nerine rolled onto her back beneath the moon, hoping cold water would quiet the fever. It only made her skin more sensitive. Every current brushed like a hand. Every silver scale caught fire.

That silence around the answering song lasted too long. She broke it with a practical question, forcing Kael to answer the danger in front of them instead of the desire beneath it.

A note slipped from her mouth.

She clapped both hands over it.

Too late.

The song rose through her fingers, soft at first, then vast. The water carried it beyond the reef and down into the trench. Fish scattered. Coral polyps folded shut.

Something answered.

The answering voice came from below—rough, deep, threaded with a hunger that shook her bones. It matched her melody, seized it, turned her uncertain call into a vow.

The sea went still.

Black hair broke the surface thirty feet away.

Then shoulders.

Then a face cut from storm-dark stone.

Kael's skin gleamed bronze beneath the moon. Scars crossed his chest. His eyes were not human eyes but narrow gold slits fixed on her with terrifying recognition.

He spoke one word.

"Sia."

The dead siren's pet name.

In the novel, he had spent years calling it into an empty ocean.

Her pulse stumbled.

"Wrong siren."

Nerine turned and swam.

Behind her, Kael smiled.

The flash of serrated teeth was the last thing Nerine saw before the hunt began.