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I can’t help but give her a tepid smile. “You’ll never have my heart, little fish.”

Besides, I’m not even human.

The funeral service and the sermon that followed were just what I needed to get myself back on track. Being so wrapped up with the Syren, I’d forgotten what it was like to really perform my role. It’s not just about my relationship—or lack thereof—with God; it’s about my relationship with the villagers. They look to me for guidance, especially in times of stress and fear. Death may be no stranger to these parts, but gruesome accidents, like the ones that had befallen their neighbors, are few and far between.

Yes, there is the occasional skirmish with the native population who live on the outskirts of the settlements, and every now and then, there is a situation of abuse and brutality between a husband and his wife, or two drunks at the ale house, but for the most part, violence isn’t common here, unless it came on the deck of a pirate ship.

These people needed to hear God’s words of wisdom, to feel hope and make sense of the world around them. I needed to remember why I am stuck in this outpost. It’s not just because I deserve isolation—it’s because I have something to offer.

But even though I felt recharged by the time the worshippers left the church, I can’t say my mind was completely focused on my flock, for I kept thinking about the wolf I had behind closed doors. While I gave my sermon about living with sin and finding the courage to rise above it with grace, I was wallowing in the muck and the mire by holding that creature captive for my own gains. Though I kept telling myself I needed to do this for my own sake, it didn’t stop the urges and shameful thoughts from sinking in.

It didn’t stop the truth.

I acted like a man of God when, in truth, I was a man of the Devil.

I was no man at all.

What I really wanted from the Syren wasn’t her blood, and it wasn’t my survival.

It was her.

Just her.

She’s been my captive for less than a week, I don’t even know her name, and I can’t imagine ever letting her go.

If you’re going to have an obsession, make sure it’s the right one. Abe’s words ring in my head. He meant for the monastery and religion to become my obsession because if I was fixated on that, then I wouldn’t have time to think about the beast I was trying to escape. And it worked.

But the last thing he’d want is for my obsession to turn to something physical.

At that thought, my skin prickles anxiously. I quickly walk down the aisle and shut the doors to the cold wind, hoping everyone is done with God for the day. I know I am.

My gaze sweeps over the church, making sure everything is in its orderly place, and then I unlock the back room and step inside.

She’s where I left her, strapped to the cross. Her eyes are closed, and she looks listless, her tail even paler than earlier.

Pitiful, I can’t help but think. The longer I keep her here, the less of a vibrant, ferocious predator she is.

I know I’ll have to refill the bucket from the well and wet her down again, but first, I need to take off my cassock robes so I don’t get them wet. Things take forever to dry out here.

“Father Aragon,” the Syren says in a low voice as I place my robes on the chair. The sound of my name snaps my gaze to hers.

I frown, about to ask how she knew my name when she adds, “I have especially good hearing.”

Figures that her senses are better than most. If she’s like me in that way, she also has a superior sense of taste, sight, and smell.

“Do you actually believe what you’re telling those people?” she asks. Her voice is rough, and she licks her parched lips.

“I tell them what they want to hear,” I say, walking toward her while adjusting the collar of the black shirt I wear under the robes. “What they need to hear. It’s not easy to be a settler in these parts. All these people and those who came before them moved from a land much more hospitable than this one. They need God to give them faith, to remind them that everything they’re doing is for a reason.”

“Is that so? What is the reason?”

I tilt my head as I look at her. Despite how sallow she looks, those eyes of her spark with antagonism. “For their country.”

“And what country is that? Is that a kingdom?”

“Yes, the kingdom of Spain.”

“Is that where you are from?”