The Siren.

Nerisea Knox Hyde.

“When a siren shares breath with a drowning fool and uses power to drag him back, the magic leaves a mark. On him. On her. Your soul brushed mine. Now it knows the way.”

“That sounds intimate.”

“That sounds inconvenient,” she shot back. “For both of us.”

She was closer now. I could see the tiny scar along her lower lip, the way the wet fabric clung to the lines of her collarbones, the faint pulse beating at the base of her throat.

“Is that why I’m seeing you?” I asked. “Every time I close my eyes?”

“Partly.” She tilted her head, studying me. “Partly the pendant. Partly your blood. You’re a Drake. Siren curses stick to your line like burrs.”

“Not my choice,” I said.

“Saving you wasn’t mine either,” she replied. “Yet here we are.”

We stared at each other over the dark water, tethered by something neither of us had agreed to and both of us were already breaking rules around.

“You going to tell me your name?” I asked.

“You already know it,” she said.

She was right. I’d come up from the wreck with it lodged in my head like a splinter.

“Nerisea,” I said.

Her eyes softened, just a fraction. The water around us shivered.

“Try again,” she murmured.

“Nerisea Knox Hyde.”

That earned me a real reaction. Her lips parted, breath catching in a way that did things to my chest I didn’t appreciate.

“You shouldn’t know the whole of it,” she said quietly. “Not yet.”

“If it makes you feel better,” I said, “I don’t know what to do with it.”

“You will,” she said. “Soon.”

The water rose around us, climbing higher, licking at my ribs. The pendant pulsed harder, the sound of it folding into the sound of her voice.

“Next time you go diving,” she added, turning away, “try not to flirt with death and ancient curses. You clearly don’t know how to do either properly.”

The dream started to fray, edges going white.

“Will I see you again?” I called after her.

She glanced back once, over her shoulder.

“You’re wearing my heart, Niklaus Drake,” she said. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Then she vanished into the dark.

I woke with my hand wrapped around the pendant and the taste of sea—and her—still in my mouth.