Jabir sat up slowly, watching the water settle. He scanned the lake, catching only a fleeting flash of silver disappearing into the deeper currents.
He lifted his wet hand to his chest and pressed it over his heart.
His pulse thundered beneath his palm.
“What do you think it means?” he whispered aloud.
I don’t know, his dragon answered, a rumble of unease and fascination mingling in its voice, but I want to know more.
Jabir stared out across the lake, the moonlight dancing on the waves like stardust.
A slow smile curved his lips.
“So do I.”
The twin moons cast long beams of light through the water, turning everything they touched into a shifting tapestry of magic and shadow. The water was clear as spun glass tonight and just as fragile under the moonlight. That had been part of the problem.
The rest was that she wasn’t supposed to be here.
Beyond the kelp ridge was forbidden. The boundary marked the outer edge of her mother’s territory. The Queen of Sirens had made it clear: Nothing good waits near the docks. Nothing kind lives above the surface. Nothing soft survives long in their air.
But tonight, a call had reached her—not a siren’s song, but something else. Something foreign. Something… pure.
A voice.
A boy’s voice.
It had threaded through the still night air, rippling across the lake like a warm current. She’d heard land-songs before. They were usually loud, coarse things—barking chants full of pounding rhythms and brash melodies. But this song had been different. It was gentle, raw, and aching. It had reached into her chest and wrapped around something quiet she didn’t know lived there.
So Jewel had crossed the boundary and then eased closer until she could see the singer from under the surface. The moonlit seagrass had been a living veil she used to conceal her slender form, her pale limbs weaving silently through the gentle sway, each blade shimmering with silver as it rippled around her. Her tail, sleek and iridescent, had twitched nervously as she watched the boy above her.
And now… here she was.
Hiding beneath the dock like a hatchling, her heart beating a panicked rhythm against her ribs.
Jewel pressed her webbed hand over her chest, flattening against the lake floor behind a curtain of reeds. Her long hair drifted in a fan behind her, catching flashes of moonlight like captured stars.
He should not have been able to see me.
Her kind were near invisible in water, especially at night. But the moment their eyes had locked—stars above—she had felt the world tilt.
His eyes had found hers.
And they were… gold.
Not just brown with flecks, but burnished gold, like sunfire. She had always thought land-dwellers ugly, clumsy beasts with dull skin and strange legs. But this boy—he was beautiful. His hair was dark and unruly, falling over his brow like storm clouds over sunlit peaks. His features were soft yet strong, carved with kindness, as if the wind and water had shaped him together.
And his smile…
The moment he smiled, her fear had faded like seafoam on the shore.
She’d darted under the dock, her heart slamming. Her breath came fast and shallow as she hovered in the shadows, unsure what to do. She should flee. Her mother had warned her—‘If a siren is captured, she will not return. If a siren touches one of them, it will break the spell of protection. They will have power over you.’
But she had felt no threat in his soothing voice.
Only longing.
A longing that matched her own.
