Escaping the Siren Prince

Things Unmapped

Luka's home sat beyond the busiest part of the village, higher on the hillside where the buildings thinned and the sea surrounding the island filled nearly the entire horizon.

Cora had expected something old.

She hadn't expected this.

The house was large without being ostentatious, built partly from pale limestone that looked as though it had occupied the hillside for centuries. The oldest section had thick walls, deep-set windows and heavy wooden beams visible beneath a terracotta roof, but newer additions had been integrated around it with glass, warm wood and wide doors opening toward the sea.

It shouldn't have worked, and yet somehow it did.

“This is yours?”

Luka unlocked the door.

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

He glanced back smiling.

“Real subtle.”

“Thank you.”

Inside the house was even stranger.

The main room opened toward the sea through enormous glass doors, modern furniture arranged around an old stone fireplace that looked original to the house. But Cora barely noticed the furniture because her eyes were too busy focusing on everything else.

A brass navigation instrument sat on a shelf beside a stack of old leather-bound books. An enormous wooden ship's wheel occupied part of one wall. There were maps framed behind glass, pieces of pottery, old coins, carved wooden figures and a rusted diving helmet that looked like it belonged in an actual maritime museum.

Cora moved farther inside.

“Luka.”

“Hmm?”

“Why does your house look like you robbed six museums?”

“I didn't rob them.”

“That is a concerningly specific answer based on technicality.”

He disappeared into the kitchen.

Cora approached one of the maps.

It was old.

Not reproduction-old.

Old old.

She leaned closer.

“Please don't touch that.”

She straightened.

“I wasn't going to.”

“You were.”

“I was considering it.”

“Which usually precedes doing it.”

Cora turned toward him.

He'd rolled the sleeves of his linen shirt to his elbows, exposing his forearms as he worked the cork from a bottle of wine.

Cora's attention snagged there longer than it had any business doing.

It was ridiculous, really. She'd seen him half-naked. She'd seen him underwater very much not human. A man rolling up his sleeves shouldn't have even registered.

And yet, watching Luka move around his kitchen with his shirt open casually at the throat and his sleeves pushed back, looking unfairly comfortable and effortlessly masculine in his own home, was doing something entirely different to her.

Something considerably less scientific.

Which was exactly why Cora decided it was time to steer the conversation back toward something that required her brain instead of whatever the hell her hormones were currently doing.

“How old are you?”

Luka paused with the corkscrew in his hand.

Cora folded her arms.

“No photographs to hide behind. No memorials to walk me toward. No convenient dead relatives. How old are you?”

He pulled the cork free.

“Wine?”

She laughed once. “Seriously. You are not distracting me with alcohol.”

Luka poured two glasses.

“Three hundred and twenty-seven.”

Cora stopped. Her brain seemed to need several seconds to process the number.

“You're serious.”

“You asked.”

“Three hundred and twenty-seven?”

“Yes.”

“You were born in…”

He set the bottle down. “1699.”

Cora stared at him.

“You were born in the seventeenth century.”

“Technically.”

“There is no technically.”

“There usually is.”

Cora took the wine glass he held outstretched to her. She needed it now.

Luka's mouth twitched.

“Don't look pleased with yourself.”

“I said nothing.”

“You're very loud when you say nothing.”

She took a long drink.

Three hundred and twenty-seven.

Her gaze drifted around the room again.

The maps.

The instruments.

The pottery.

The books.

Not collected from antique shops.

Collected from a life.

“Oh my God.”

“Would you like dinner?”

Cora looked at him incredulously. “You just told me you were born in 1699.”

“I thought I'd prepare fish.”

“How are those things related?”

“They aren't.”

“What kind of fish?”

“Sea bass.”

“From where?”

“The sea.”

“Thank you, mister marine expert.”

“I caught it this morning.”

She paused noting the emphasis on I.

“Of course you did.”

Luka headed toward the kitchen while Cora followed with her wine.

“How?”

He looked at her.

"How did you catch it?"

“Yea … no.”

“I asked a perfectly reasonable question.”

“You're picturing the tail. Me underwater catching the fish.”

“I am absolutely picturing the tail.”

Luka turned back toward the counter, and Cora could have sworn he was smiling.

Dinner took longer than it needed to because Luka kept giving Cora information that distracted her from the questions she'd intended to ask.

It started with the fish.

Then the fishing grounds.

Then the depth beyond the island.

Cora found herself leaning forward as Luka described a submerged limestone formation several kilometers offshore where the seafloor dropped sharply into a narrow ravine.

“How deep?”

“About ninety meters at the entrance. Considerably deeper inside.”

“Inside?”

“A fissure runs beneath the western shelf.”

Cora frowned. “That's not on any of the bathymetric maps I've seen.”

“It wouldn't be.”

“Why?”

“Because they haven't mapped it accurately.”

“Who is they?”

“The people making your maps.”

Cora stared at him.

“How do you know?”

Luka took a drink of wine.

There it was. Cora pointed at him. “That's exactly what I'm talking about.”

“What?”

“You just casually described an underwater fissure ninety meters below the surface that supposedly isn't accurately mapped.”

“Yes.”

“How do you know it's there?”

“I've seen it.”

Cora slowly lowered her fork.

Right.

She took another drink.

“What does it look like?”

And that changed everything, because Luka actually answered.

He told her.

Not vaguely, either.

He described the limestone shelf, the way sediment gathered along one edge but not the other because of the current, the narrow opening where colder water pushed upward from below. Cora started asking questions, and for once Luka didn't avoid them.

Soon she was telling him about AUV mapping systems and the problems with navigating underwater caves. Luka countered with currents that could move through rock formations in ways surface measurements failed to predict.

Cora argued.

Luka argued back.

She told him about a project she'd worked on junior year involving autonomous navigation near reef structures. He asked questions that were annoyingly intelligent.

The second bottle of wine appeared at some point.

And then a third.

Cora wasn't entirely sure when.

By the time their plates were empty, she'd forgotten twice that she was supposed to be interrogating him.

“You know,” she said, pointing her wineglass at him, “you could actually be useful.”

Luka leaned back in his chair.

“I'll try not to be offended.”

“No, professionally.”

“Much better.”

“You know things nobody has mapped.”

“I know many things nobody has mapped.”

Cora narrowed her eyes.

“That sounded arrogant.”

“Oh, it was.”

She laughed.

God, she was drunk.

Not boat excursion cherry liquor drunk.

But definitely past responsible decision-making.

Luka eventually stood to clear their plates, gathering them from the table before disappearing into the kitchen. Cora heard the quiet clink of dishes and running water behind her while she finished what remained in her wineglass.

A few minutes later, music drifted through speakers hidden somewhere in the room. It was slow and warm, built around an acoustic guitar and a low, slightly rough voice that fit the fading light outside almost too perfectly.

Cora settled deeper into her chair, listening for a moment before her attention wandered to the screen controlling the sound system.

The playlist was called Current Company.

Cora read it once, then again, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as the double meaning registered. Of course it could have been innocent. Current as in present. Current as in the ocean Luka seemed to know far too intimately.

But after an afternoon spent with him, she was beginning to suspect Luka didn't do nearly as many things accidentally as he pretended.

She glanced toward the kitchen just as he came back into the room.

“Seriously. Current Company?”

His mouth curved. “Something wrong with it?”

“Just trying to decide how committed you are to the pun.”

“Very.”

“That's unfortunate.”

“I thought you liked questionable decisions.”

Cora lifted her wineglass. “Apparently I'm spending the evening with one.”

He smiled.

Cora stood and the room shifted pleasantly.

Definitely drunk.

She walked toward him.

Luka watched her approach, and this time he made no attempt to disguise what was in his expression. His gaze moved slowly over her before returning to her face, lingering there with a warmth that had nothing to do with the wine.

The faint amusement he'd been wearing disappeared, replaced by something decidedly more interested.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to dance.”