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Breathe. Calm your mind.

Instead, he started babbling, distracting himself from the fear and her scent.

“Why do you come here each day? There are better views elsewhere.” Silence. “Why don’t you swim?” Silence. “Do you miss home?” Silence. “Why is the Lure not as strong as it was that first day?” Silence. “Do you want to be miserable for the rest of your life?”

Mer twisted to look at him, something haunting in her gaze that he’d seen in his own eyes after visiting a funeral pyre. He longed to reach for her, to soothe the pain from her face.

It’s the Lure.

“What is misery but penance?”

That struck a chord. “What do you have to pay for?”

She stayed silent, her mesmerizing magenta eyes holding a wealth of pain before she shuttered them and looked away. A broken soul if he’d ever seen one.

“And yes, I do miss home.”

He gestured to the water. “Then go. No one is stopping you.”

A hollow laugh fell from her lips. “If only that were the case.”

The Sirenidae dropped to her knees in the tidepool, the water rising to her waist. She hissed out a breath but bowed her head and closed her eyes.

Conversation over.

Raziel stared down at her short silver hair, and his fingers twitched at his sides. Her Lure swelled, and he almost dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her body, maybe to even taste the skin of her neck right by her gills...

Warning bells went off in his head, and Raziel forced himself to take one step at a time back from the deadly alluring female he’d married.

He finally pried his eyes from the Sirenidae and turned his back to her, striding down the jetty.

“When do we leave?” Mer called.

Raz peered over his shoulder. “As soon as I settle matters with Keventin.”

Mer bared her teeth, her incisors slightly longer than his own. “Be quick about it, or I might kill him.”

He grinned back at her. “So bloodthirsty.”

“You have no idea.”

Turning back around, he clambered down from the rocks, the smile slipping from his face. Raziel didn’t know if he should take that as a warning or not. Even though she hadn’t tackled him into the ocean and drowned Raz... or fed him to her pet beasties he’d seen swimming around the jetty at night... it meant nothing.

She rarely showed him her true self.

Raziel snorted.

They really were quite the pair.

When was the last time he’d been honest with anyone about what he wanted? Or who he was?

Chapter Twenty-One

MER

Phia hadall but disappeared from the keep.

Mer had questioned Sienna, but the young duchess had not seen her friend since Duke Keventin had beaten her. She’d even asked the duke outright where the girl was, and he’d told her she’d been dismissed for her incompetence and sent home to her family.