Page 16 of Siren Problems

CALDER

T he bar doesn’t have a name.

It’s carved into the side of the cliff, half-submerged at high tide and illegal in three magical jurisdictions. Most don’t know it’s here unless they’re invited or unlucky. Tonight, I’m both.

The kelpies call it The Sinkhole.

It’s exactly what I need.

The glowroot cocktails burn like sea acid and regret. The music vibrates through the floor in low, rhythmic pulses, like some ancient thing breathing just below the surface. The smell is salt and moss and sweet rot.

Perfect.

I’ve downed four drinks before the bartender—Osha, all gills and no patience—cuts me off. She replaces my glass with a chunk of driftwood carved with binding runes.

“You need water.”

I grunt. “I need to forget.”

“Then you came to the wrong place, curse boy.”

I glance around the room.

Kelpies lounge in tangled piles on furniture that shifts between driftwood and bone. A selkie in a leather duster is slow- dancing with a siren who has blood in her hair and no concern about it. Everything pulses with too much color. Too much noise.

I hate it.

But I can’t leave.

Because if I leave, I’ll go back to her.

And if I go back to her... I doubt I’ll have the strength to let go again.

I close my eyes, and Luna’s face floods the dark.

The sound she made when she came undone in my arms.

The way her voice cracked when she said she wasn’t afraid.

The way she looked at me, like I was worth the storm.

I slam the driftwood down and mutter, “Fuck.”

“That’s not gonna help,” says a voice beside me.

I turn—slowly, because the room tilts—and find Lyle. Tall. Soaked. Somehow simultaneously glowing and disheveled. His seaweed hair is braided into something tragic and his eyes are far too sober for how drunk he smells.

“What do you want?”

“To drink,” he says, flopping into the seat beside me and waving for a glass. “And to ask why you look like a thundercloud fucked a heartbreak poem.”

“I didn’t ask for company.”

“And yet, here I am. Like a barnacle on your emotional hull.”

I groan.

Lyle takes his drink, sips, and winces. “Ugh. Who made this? My regrets taste better.”

He leans on the bar, eyes too sharp for a drunk. “So. Let me guess. You slept with her.”

I don’t answer.

“You did ,” he crows, too loud.

“Keep your voice down.”

He ignores me. “And then you bailed. Classic cursed man-child maneuver. A+ commitment issues. Truly vintage.”

“Lyle.”

“No, no, I’m invested now,” he slurs, wagging a finger. “You let someone in , and it felt good , and now your trauma says, ‘Flee!’ like you’re some ancient sea deer dodging affection.”

I stare at him.

He stares back.

“I hate you.”

He smiles. “Everyone does. Except Mira. And she mostly tolerates me because I make good tea.”

I lean back, arms crossed. “You don’t get it.”

“I do get it. Because I am you. Just wetter. And with better cheekbones.”

I snort.

He nudges me. “Look, I’m not saying you’re not cursed. You are. You’re basically a romantic horror trope with a six-pack. But Luna’s not afraid of your darkness. She’s afraid you won’t let her walk beside you through it.”

I go still.

“She’s not asking you to be safe, Calder. She’s asking you to stay. ”

My throat tightens.

Lyle finishes his drink in one dramatic gulp and stands. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go scream into the surf and maybe romance a tragic seaweed god. You should go apologize to the woman who didn’t run when you showed her what you are.”

He pats my shoulder. “Let her love you, asshole.”

Then he’s gone—wobbling toward the back of the bar, shirt half-unbuttoned and mumbling something about fate and snails.

I sit there for a long time.

Long enough for the tide to rise.

Long enough to realize I can’t drown out what she gave me.

And I don’t want to.

Not anymore.

I’m halfway to the exit when I hear her name.

Luna.

My spine locks up like I’ve just touched live leywire.

“She’s considering it,” someone says, just behind the curtain that separates the bar’s main room from the back alcove. The voice is sharp. Familiar.

Council envoy. Juno.

“I heard she’s applying for the Westwind Fellowship. Full funding. Artifact authority. Field access beyond the Bluffs.”

I step closer, staying just in the shadows.

“She’ll leave,” Juno adds. “Once the grant comes through. Can’t blame her. No real future here. Especially with him hanging around.”

My stomach drops.

“She’s the best we’ve had in two decades,” someone else says. “We can’t stop her. We shouldn’t.”

Laughter.

Agreement.

And then the sound fades as they move deeper into the alcove, taking their drinks and their casual dismantling of my entire fucking world with them.

I stand anchored to the floor like something ancient and immovable.

She’s leaving.

Not maybe.

Likely.

And gods, it shouldn’t hurt like this.

But it does.

Because this time, it’s not the sea stealing something from me.

It’s me.

My silence.

My absence.

My fear .

I wanted to protect her. To keep her safe from the storm I carry inside me. But all I did was convince her I’d never choose her back.

And now?

Now I’m the reason she’s packing up the pieces and preparing to walk away.

The idea slices through me deeper than any curse flare ever could.

Because Luna didn’t just crawl into my bed.

She opened me up in a way I didn’t think could be touched anymore.

She made me want again.

And I let that want drown under guilt.

I turn toward the door.

The tide’s coming in fast now.

And if I don’t move soon...

I might lose the only person who’s ever looked at the monster and reached for the man instead.