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My siren had an idea, and she wasn’t polite about it. She insisted. She was clinging to something Serena said. That I was able to defy her, unlike other sirens. So that meant I could challenge her. And if I defeated her, I could become the new siren queen. I could have the powers of a goddess.

My mind was silenced. It screamed no in the back of my head, but it was silenced by the siren’s overpowering commands. She was right. Serena didn’t deserve the Crown. She didn’t wield her power properly. If she had, sirens would still rule the seas.

Find her. Kill her. Take the Crown.

I had to follow. I had to.

I went to dive under, but something caught my arm. I hissed, my head snapping around to face my captor as I thrashed against him. It was Milo, who’d snuck up on me in a dinghy. But his voice and gentle eyes did nothing to calm my fury and power-mad desire. I hardly recognized him. And my siren wanted him out of the way.

52

Sweet Sailor Bold

Katrina

“Katrina…listen to me!” Milo shouted as I ripped my arm from his grasp. He was trying quite desperately to tell me something but everything he said became muddled. Something about the siren magic surge under the moonlight strengthening my siren. But I didn’t care why she was suddenly so powerful. I just needed to let her take control. I was tired of him and those mortals ashore holding me back when in reality, I was something so beautifully powerful. How dare I suppress it any longer!

I opened my mouth to sing a song I’d never heard before, but my siren was more than happy to teach me the words. From my lips came an ancient melody, the preferred siren song of old, used to lure sailors to their deaths. It flowed from me as naturally as breathing air into my human lungs. This song, not heard on these seas for centuries, now filled the air and Milo’s ears.

"My heart searches for a sweet sailor bold,

Out on these seas and the depths untold,

A sailor who’ll love me and follow me down,

A sailor to kiss is a sailor to drown."

Something primal in my blood boiled over, taking complete control. Milo had fallen under my spell. He leaned over the dinghy, his gaze helplessly entranced on me. I placed my hands on either side of his face as if to kiss him, and then, just before my lips touched his, I yanked him down and dragged him into the deep with me.

Finally.

He wriggled and struggled against me, but my strength easily overpowered his as I pushed him deeper and deeper. This was what it meant to be a siren. To commit such an act of irony so fitting on this perfect night of vengeance. I smiled as I thought of it—the last of the sirens, drowning one last worthless man.

But then something stopped me, and a flash of Katrina broke through. Warm lips against mine, and a gentle hand on my face. He was kissing me. He’d stopped fighting me and was kissing me. At first I recoiled, but he embraced me harder and deepened the kiss. And that was the moment I broke free.

This man—this was Milo. I loved him. What was I doing? Oh my god. Immediately I wrapped my arms around him, shooting upwards as fast as my fins would allow, back to the surface. No sooner had we just approached the surface of the water did I feel Milo’s eyes on me. I’d expected him to be sputtering and coughing up seawater, but then I remembered the power of a mermaid’s kiss.

“Milo, I’m so sorry!” My voice quaked frantically as I released him from my grip. “I didn’t mean to—’’

“I know,” he said calmly as he caught his breath. “That’s why I came to warn you. So you didn’t just leave us all to disappear into the sea.”

“Did you know kissing me would let you breathe underwater?”

“No,” Milo’s breaths were still short from wrestling against me. “Must’ve missed that bit of folklore somehow.”

“Then why did you kiss me?” I blinked away some salty droplets from my wet lashes.

“Because it was the only way I knew to bring you back to me.” He smiled that crooked half smile and I wanted to melt right into the water around me. “I’m just glad it worked.”

“Me too,” I swam near him and he flinched, making my heart twinge with guilt. “How…how did you know I would lose myself out here?”

Milo’s eyes grew heavy and he turned his head away as if searching for his words. “Your mother…she couldn’t resist the call of the sea. We tried to stop her but it happened so fast. She swam out and we haven’t been able to find her.”

“She just found out she was a siren. Of course she wasn’t strong enough to fight it.” My heart sank as I thought about what I could do to find her. I tried to use my song-call, but she didn’t respond to it. She could be anywhere in the open ocean by now. The siren magic influence was too great for her to resist.

Neither of us said anything for a moment. There was too much to say, and too much to think about. I’d just almost killed Milo. My mom was a runaway mermaid. And that stupid siren song still kept ringing in my ears.

It was the last of siren songs I wanted to hear. It was unsettling, and gave me a twisted feeling in my gut. A feeling that reminded me why my siren side was just as much a curse to me as the power of Davy Jones was a curse to Bastian. The difference was, Bastian embraced it. He used it to magnify who he truly was at heart. But mine was a constant conflict. And the more time passed, the more I wasn’t sure which side of me was stronger. But what happened tonight had brought an answer to that question once and for all. And I didn’t like it.