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All the wonderful, blissful feelings I had moments earlier abruptly fade away. “Yes, I do,” I say, my voice hard.

“Still?” he asks with wide eyes, indignant. “Why?”

I pause, feeling venom in my veins again.

“You killed my sister.”

CHAPTER22

Ramsay

I stareat her beautiful face, completely dumbfounded.

“What do you mean I killed your sister?” I ask, my brain going over all the people I’ve killed over the years. There’s so many, I wouldn’t even know where to start, but because of our trade, we’re usually taking merchant men and naval sailors on board theNightwind, not women.

She glowers up at me through her lashes, pulling her shirt back down over her body. “The mermaid.”

“That mermaid was yoursister?” I blink. She’s joking, is she not?

Then she lifts her hair off her shoulders, gathering it into a knot behind her back and turns her head so that her neck is exposed. She points to the three faint lines I only recently noticed on the side of it.

“Scars?” I ask. “What about them?”

She gives me a pointed look, like I’m supposed to figure this out. I think back to the gills on the mermaid’s neck and…

“You’re a mermaid,” I say slowly.

“A Syren,” she corrects me, raising her chin.

I give my head a shake. Though it all makes sense, it still remains unbelievable. “But you don’t have a fishtail. I would know, I was just between your legs.”

She averts her eyes, gazing over the horizon. “It’s a long story.”

“Well, lucky for you, we have a lot of time.”

“We don’t,” she says. “You said yourself you have to make plans.”

“I have time for you, luv,” I tell her. “I have time for this.”

I mean, a mermaid. She realizes how valuable she is, doesn’t she?

Think of what you can do with her blood, the devil on my shoulder hisses.

I’m trying not to.

“Do tell your story, Maren,” I encourage her before my mind gets carried away on me and I do something I shouldn’t.

She lets out a low breath and closes her eyes briefly.

“When I was sixteen…” she begins, trailing off. I stay silent and give her space to find her words. “I left my home. The Kingdom of Limonos. I was tired of being overlooked and undervalued. Really, I just felt ignored. Looking back, I don’t think I was any of those things, but I was young and I had all these big feelings inside of me that I didn’t know how to explore, how to let loose. My mother disappeared when I was young and I couldn’t turn to my father or sisters with anything. I thought the best way to deal with it would be to leave home and start anew somewhere else where I would be appreciated, where people would see me for what I really am. Not just a Syren, but what I am in here.” She presses her hand against her chest.

Then she takes in a deep breath, still searching the waves, as if they’re helping her to remember. “I traveled far with only my shark, Nill, to protect me.” My eyes drift to the shark-tooth necklace I noticed on her earlier. “And one day I looked above the surface and found myself in the bay of a strange land. On shore there was a strange man and something possessed me at that moment. The need to make him mine. I wanted him, something to call my own, and I wanted him so madly that I swam to the canyons in the sea and I called to the sea witch to answer me.”

“Edonia,” I whisper, the realization dawning over me.

Maren nods, sucking on her bottom lip. “Yes. It was Edonia. We were taught to fear the sea witches and to revere the sea witches, and I knew she could grant me my wish. I wanted to be able to be on land, as a human, and make the man, the prince, fall in love with me. I wanted a life that didn’t seem attainable in Limonos.”

My eyes widen. So that’s how she met that pathetic prince.