“Anything?” I asked.
Dilly sighed, closing the book.
As if sensing conflict, Blackbeard appeared next to me, hopping onto the ledge of the ship. He rubbed his head against my hand, a gentle purr rumbling from him.
“Maybe whatever is wrong with me is wrong with Blackbeard, too,” I said.
“Nothing is wrong with you, Rose,” Dilly grumbled.
I arched an eyebrow at her as I continued to pet the weird cat who came and went as he pleased on a pirate ship and only liked me.
“Fine,” Dilly conceded. “You are different, but it’s not necessarily wrong.”
We would have to beg to differ on that point.
The air shifted, and my skin prickled with goosebumps. Something–otherworldly wrapped its claws around my throat.
“Do you feel that?” I gasped out, running my hand over my throat.
“Feel what?” Dilly asked, standing and tucking her books into her satchel.
A song hummed from the deep, vibrating over everything like it meant to consume all it touched. It was sorrow, and it was pain. It was a loss that made my eyes prick with tears.
I turned to face the sea, and white waves drifted past us, but no sign of who was responsible for the mourner’s song.
A tear drifted down my chilled cheek just as bright red broke the surface.
“Oh, Seas,” Dilly whispered, pulling out her drawing notebook. “I’ve never seen one before.”
The creature lifted above the sea, and I held my breath. Sunlight caught in her hair—long, floating strands of green-gold that shimmered like kelp stirred by a gentle tide. It clung to her cheeks, framing eyes too large, too luminous, a glass-bottle blue that seemed to hold entire storms behind them.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“A merrow,” Dilly said, awestruck.
“Is that a mermaid?” I asked.
I stared at the creature as it swam through the waves, mesmerized by the way it moved through the water like it was air.
She wasother—a creature carved from the sea’s imagination, not a man’s.
Her skin had a faint sheen to it, almost pearlescent, as if scales lay just beneath the surface. Webbing stretched between her fingers when she reached for the boat, thin and silver as a dragonfly wing. Barnacle-white freckles dotted her shoulders, drifting down her arms like constellations mapped from tides instead of stars.
And her lips—gods—the color of coral newly broken by a storm.
She came closer to the boat, hand outstretched.
“Not a mermaid,” Dilly whispered, staring below. “She’s a creature of the deep, but one that is filled with longing and sorrow. She takes what the sea demands.”
“She is touching our ship,” I said, pulling out my pistol.
I didn’t care how beautiful she was; if she was a threat to the Wraith and those on it, we were about to find out just how sorrowful she could be.
“Wait,” Dilly said, stilling my hand. “Listen.”
Large eyes lifted to mine, and she began singing once more, her coral lips moving in a haunting pattern.
“Look,” Dilly whispered, pointing out to sea.
