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“A mermaid?” Aerik says in contemptuous disbelief.

I nod and take in a shaking breath.

I hold it and pull the cloth off the box.

And I scream.

CHAPTER15

Maren

My screams echoaround the room, deafening even to my own ears.

This can’t be real. This can’t be certainty.

The coffin is actually a glass tank, half-filled with murky, bloodied water, and inside the glass is a Syren. I can’t tell if she’s alive or dead by the emaciated look of her, by the way she’s partly-submerged with her eyes closed, a hand at her chest, her gray hair floating around her.

But what I do know is that this isn’t any ordinary Syren.

This is my oldest sister.

It’s Asherah.

It has been ten years since I last saw her. But then she had purple-black hair, not gray, with shimmering tawny skin, not this deathly white pallor. Her scales at the time were a gleaming silver and pink, not this dull, flaking ash, the length of her tail coated in algae film. She was beautiful and now she has wasted away to almost nothing, like she’s aged 300 years over the course of a decade.

“God Almighty, Jesus!” Aerik curses. “That’s a mermaid.”

I ignore him and press my hands on the glass. “Asherah. It’s me. It’s Maren.”

“Asherah?” Aerik repeats from behind me. “Maren, I think you’ve been with these pirates far too long.”

But my sister stirs. The tank is too short for her full tail to unfurl so it’s curled up beside her and the tips of her translucent decaying fins twitch.

I quickly tap at the glass, hope rising in my throat.

“Asherah!” I cry out.

Then I remember that beneath the surface we didn’t talk like this.

I go inside my head and speak there, for only she will be able to hear me.

Asherah. It’s Maren. Please wake up.I plead.

She stirs again and this time she opens her eyes. Her once violet eyes, the same color as our sister’s, have now faded to a pale pink. But it’s her. It’s her all the same.

M-Maren?she asks inside my head.How is this possible?

I can’t help but smile, tears spilling down my cheeks.I don’t know but it is. It is. And I have to get you out of here.

Where am I?she asks. She attempts to look around but can barely move an inch, her muscles trembling with weakness.What has happened? Why are you here?

I don’t know why, I tell her. I need to hold her hand, to let her feel me. I push at the glass on top of the tank but it’s heavy. It takes a lot of shoving with all my strength for it to slide off and drop loudly on the deck beside us.

She gasps, needing the air for both her lungs and her gills. I watch as the gills along the side of her neck open and close, trying to take in the dirty water.

I’m going to get you out of here, I tell her. I reach into the water and grab her hand. Her bones feel brittle and her claws have all broken off. The webbing between them has been shredded like a worn flag.

Maren, she says quietly.Do not do anything to endanger yourself. You’re the reason I’m here.