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I bowed my head slightly in gratitude.

“What do you know of thisAryagirl?” Arthur was never one to beat around the bush.

“Who?” I wasn’t sure if I was more baffled that my father had come all the way to ask about the new girl in school, or that Arthur actually knew thenameof that new girl.

“The mermaid Caesar recently found,” Arthur clarified with a wave of his hand.

“Only the gossip that has been circling around the school,” I said with my chin held high.

“And what gossip is that?” Arthur’s thick eyebrow arched toward his widow’s peak.

“Just that she somehow never knew she was a mermaid until Caesar contacted her. And that her mother died in some shifter or vampire attack?”

The muscles in Arthur’s stern face relaxed slightly.

“Why? What should I know about her?” I knew I was inching toward the line where my father would snap and put me in my place, but I couldn’t help it. I was curious. And I’d been out of the presence of my father for so long that my manners were out of practice.

But Arthur didn’t snap or even silently disapprove. Instead, his features softened as they often did when he was deep in thought, and then he placed both hands behind his back.

“Intelligence tells us that she could be the siren from the prophecy.”

Arthur wasn’t the type to joke or tease. I was pretty sure I’d never even heard him use sarcasm. So, though I was dubious, I knew my father would never talk lightly about something as serious as the prophecy.

“You think she’sthe siren?” I had to make sure I heard him correctly.

Arthur nodded once.

“But she’s a teenager. And she thought she was human only hours ago. How could she possibly—?”

“Tobias,” Arthur interrupted sternly, but not condescending like I was used to. Still, it silenced me. “It is imperative that we find out if she’s the siren from the prophecy before anyone else.”

I didn’t dare ask what would happen if someone else found out first.

“This is your chance to prove yourself, Tobias.” Did Arthur actually just smile?

“You want me to find out?” I hedged. “But how? If she didn’t even know she was a mermaid, how do you expect her to know she’s not only a siren butthesiren? It’s not like the prophecy is common knowledge.”

I wasn’t even entirely sure what a siren could do. I knew they were sort of a type of mer, and that they could compel others somehow. But they were so rare that hardly anything definitive was known about them or their powers. Not to mention that the mer were a very secretive species and didn’t like to share their knowledge.

How was I going to be able to find out if this girl was a siren if I didn’t know what a siren’s powers were? How would I recognize them?

“Befriendher, Tobias. Gain her trust.”

“Befriend her?” I knew that wasn’t the word my father meant. “You mean seduce her?” I hid the slimy feeling of disgust from my expression.

Arthur shrugged uncharacteristically. “If that’s what it takes to get close to her, then yes, seduce her.”

“I’m not charming some poor girl into thinking I’m interested in her.” I folded my arms over my chest and stood up straighter, so I towered just a bit more over my father.

“I’m not asking you to fall in love with the girl,” Arthur said, laughing once. “We all know where that gets a Dracul. Just get close to her and find out if she’s the girl we’ve been waiting for.”

I wanted to punch him in the face for speaking so casually about the very pain I saw on my mother’s face every day—or at the very least, slap him upside the head. But I refrained. And here he was, asking me to do the exact thing to Arya that he’d been doing to my mother for decades.

Arthur might not have said the words, but seducing Arya was exactly what he intended me to do. I had no intention of obeying that order. In fact, I now had every reason to stay as far away from that girl as possible.

“I won’t do it,” I said firmly, turning my back and reaching for the door. I was willing to do almost anything for my father—mostly out of fear rather than love—but this was the one thing I could never agree to.

“You willnotturn your back on me, boy!”