Page 21 of Siren Problems

LUNA

I sign the grant acceptance letter with a hand that feels like it belongs to someone else.

It’s temporary, I tell myself.

Just long enough to collect the last batch of data. Just long enough to take what I need and dismantle the machine from the inside. It’s strategy. Not surrender.

I send the email, close my laptop, and wait for the rush of pride I thought I’d feel.

It doesn’t come.

Instead, there’s just this low thrum in my chest. Like a leyline gone off-key.

Like something breaking quietly where no one can see.

Mira is thrilled.

“Smartest tactical pivot you’ve ever made,” she says, clapping her hands. “Access, funding, mobility—and when you pull the plug? You’ll have every artifact and data point they could ever try to bury.”

Kai’s more subdued.

She leans against the counter at The Gutter Mermaid, stirring her drink with a straw like it personally offended her.

“You’re walking a line, Wilder.”

“I know.”

“You sure you won’t get sucked in?”

“That’s the plan.”

She studies me for a moment, then says, “It’s not just the council you’re lying to, you know.”

I lift my chin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You haven’t talked to him since that night.”

I look away.

“It’s not avoidance,” I say. “It’s... boundaries.”

She snorts. “Call it what you want. But you’re both walking around this town like ghosts who died holding hands.”

Calder’s silence settles over Lowtide like fog.

He’s still around—I see him on the cliffs sometimes, or disappearing into the surf at dusk—but he never comes close. Never speaks.

We’re orbiting each other.

Too raw to touch.

Too scared to let go.

It bleeds into everything I do.

Every field report, every relic scan, every half-finished chart has a hollow ache stitched into its corners.

I try to focus. I do.

But every time I look at the data, all I see is him.

The way his voice broke.

The way his body held mine like a lifeline.

The way he begged me to leave him behind.

One night, I find a tideprint in the sand behind the lab.

Large.

Deliberate.

I kneel beside it, fingers hovering over the indent like it might still be warm.

I don’t call his name.

I don’t run after him.

But I sit there until the tide washes it away.

Because some part of me needs to believe he’s still watching.

Still wondering.

Like I am.

A week passes.

Then two.

I finish the final scans of the rift zone and prep a full spectral overlay of the altar structure. My hands move automatically. My mind doesn’t.

Because I’ve already made my choice.

I’ll give them the data.

Then I’ll give them hell.

And when I’m done...

I’ll come back here.

To him.

If he lets me.

If he hasn’t turned to mist and memory by then.

But I won’t chase a man who won’t fight for himself.

Not even if I love him.

Especially if I love him.

I’m elbow-deep in relic dust and artifact residue when Lyle waltzes into the lab uninvited.

He’s wearing a “Crabs Are Just Salty Spiders” t-shirt, carrying a smoothie, and wielding the emotional subtlety of a drunk selkie at open mic night.

“Hey,” he says casually, sliding up to the table with the energy of a seagull about to steal fries. “So... just wondering, are you and Calder, like... broken up or whatever?”

I nearly drop a rune shard.

I stare at him. “What?”

He holds up his smoothie like it’s a diplomatic offering. “No judgment! Totally chill. Just, y’know, the whole town is kind of on edge, and Calder’s been moodier than usual—which is saying something for a guy whose resting face screams ‘do not approach or you will die of emotional frostbite.’”

“Lyle—”

“He growled at a tide shifter for wearing a hoodie similar to yours. Also someone said he punched a mirror in the fisherman's cove? So. Context.”

I clench my jaw. “We weren’t a thing. We were just... adjacent.”

Lyle’s brows lift. “Adjacent?”

“Adjacent to something. Curse therapy with benefits.”

“So... situationship with trauma?”

“Pretty much.”

He slurps his smoothie.

“Still sounds like a breakup.”

I groan, dropping my head to the table with a muffled thump.

Mira strolls in at that exact moment, arms full of scrolls, eyebrows already raised. “He’s bothering you, isn’t he?”

“He’s doing that thing again,” I mumble, face still buried, “where he casually dismantles my emotional repression with questions wrapped in kelpie sass.”

Lyle beams. “It’s a gift.”

“Out,” Mira says, pointing toward the door.

“Fine. But I’m leaving the smoothie. It’s passionfruit and chaos. Just like this lab.”

He backs out dramatically. Mira closes the door behind him and drops the scrolls beside me.

“I pulled everything from the wreck overlay logs. You said you wanted to look again.”

I sit up, dragging my fingers through my hair.

“Yeah. I do.”

She spreads the materials across the table, careful and precise. Spiral glyphs. Fragmented binding sigils. Ley residue imprints from the altar stone.

“He won’t ask for help,” I mutter, picking up the spectral map. “So I’m going to fix this without him.”

Mira doesn’t argue.

Just starts sorting glyph translations like she already expected this.

“I’ve been thinking,” I say slowly, “the curse doesn’t just silence him. It turns his power inward. His voice—his gift—it’s not gone. It’s bound.”

Mira frowns. “Like a sealed frequency?”

“More like a looping command structure. The kind designed to contain a source of immense power and emotional volatility.”

She nods. “And his voice was both.”

I trace my finger over the spiral’s center, where the leylines fracture outward like ribs cracking around a heart.

“This isn’t just punishment. It’s a mirror.”

Mira’s brows lift. “A mirror of what?”

“Of guilt,” I whisper. “He believed he deserved it. And magic obeys belief like blood obeys gravity.”

She exhales. “That’s cruelly elegant.”

“Which means we don’t break it by overpowering it. We break it by changing what he believes. ”

I pause, staring down at the ink.

“It feeds on silence because silence is what he thinks protects the people he loves.”

“And it anchors itself in betrayal,” she says. “Because that’s what created it.”

I look up.

“Then forgiveness is the counter-charm.”

Her eyes widen. “You think if he forgives himself?—”

“It might unbind the loop. His voice, his magic, his freedom. ”

“But how do you make someone believe they’re worthy of forgiveness?” she asks.

I don’t answer.

Because I don’t know.

But I intend to find out.

I’ve seen the cracks in him. The fault lines between rage and sorrow. He’s held onto that guilt like a lifeline—like if he lets it go, he’ll float away.

But I won’t let him drift.

Not without knowing he could come back.

I start organizing the overlays, hands moving faster now. “We’ll map every sequence. Track the feedback loop. Build a counter-rhythm he can align with. If he sings into the structure willingly...”

“You think it might resonate,” she finishes. “Unlock what’s buried.”

I nod. “It’s not magic we need.”

“It’s a key.”

She places her hand over mine.

“Then let’s build one.”