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“Eat me?” she repeats. “W-why?”

“Why did you eat your husband’s heart?”

Her frown deepens. “Because I…because it was my revenge. I wanted vengeance for the way he treated me for so long. I wanted to show him what I really was.”

“You could have ripped out his heart. You didn’t have to eat it.”

She swallows uneasily, a flash of shame coming over her expression before it turns cool. “I ate it because that’s what we do. We are vicious beasts, you said so yourself. We eat the hearts of men, not just because it tastes good—believe me it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted—but because it’s in our nature. It sustains us, more than the liver or the kidneys of men, or the brains or heart of any fish.”

She says all of that with defiance, as if daring me to be disgusted by her.

Naturally, I’m not disgusted in the slightest. I only call her kind vicious beasts because they are, and in my eyes it’s the highest compliment you can give a woman.

“What if I were to tell you that me and my Brethren are the same?” I venture. “What if I told you that your blood provides us with the same things.”

“Blood?” she says, bristling. “You mean mermaid blood? Yes, I know, it gives you magic.”

“No, luv. I mean any living creature’s blood. Human’s preferred.”

“What, you mean like a lamprey?” she asks, her mind going to our underwater equivalent.

I give her a quiet smile. “Lamprey. Bats. Mosquitos. Every village in every corner of the world has a story about creatures like us, creatures that must drink blood to survive, just as they have stories about creatures like you. The thing is, both of us are so easily dismissed by a world that doesn’t want to believe in the supernatural and magic, and yet we exist. We exist very much.”

“What do they call you?”

“They as in the humans?” I say, appreciating her otherness. “They call us many things depending on where you’re from. Around these parts we’ve been called Mandurugo. Back home we were called Dearg-Diulai. But we call ourselves the Brethren of the Blood.”

“But I’ve seen you eat food.”

“We can eat food,” I tell her. “Some of us enjoy it too. And rum and wine, of course, we couldn’t do without that. We just don’t need food to survive. Though I suppose that’s not exactly true since we can’t die.”

“You can’t die?” She looks aghast.

I lick my lips. I certainly don’t want to tell her how to kill me, however I don’t wish to lie. Not when she’s been so honest with me. “As you’ve noticed, we don’t need to breathe all that much. We’ll grow weak without blood, and it would be pure torture for our bodies, but going without won’t kill us. The only way you can is if you remove our heads or hearts, light us on fire, or blow us to smithereens. Other than that, though,” I cluck my tongue against my teeth and grin at her, “we’re immortal.”

Her brows go up, eyes wide as blue moons. “You mean you’ll live forever?”

I lift a shoulder. “That’s what they say.”

Her mouth carefully forms the next question before she says it. “How old are you? When were you born?”

“Not in this century.” I wait a beat. “And not in the last one either.”

“So you were born in the 1500s?”

“Just made it. 1596,” I tell her.

She whistles. “That’s mighty impressive, Captain Battista. Us Syrens live for about three hundred.”

“And how old are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Nearly too young for me.”

She gives me an unsure smile which quickly fades and touches her necklace. “Your daughter. Was she not…one of you?”

I knew that question would come. “Aye. She was. As long as one parent is, they are part of the Brethren. But the problem lies in how we become one. Females don’t turn until they’re twenty-one. Males turn when they’re thirty-five. After that, we are immortal and frozen in time. But before that we are human and, tragically, we can die like them too.”