He leaned forward, elbows braced on the table, closing distance without touching. His attention moved over me—not the way men’s eyes sometimes crawl, but like he was mapping something unseen. Measuring.
A pause. Then, softly—decisively:
“You can call yourself a mermaid if it makes you feel safer,” he said, voice dipping almost reverent. “But I know better. And one day, so will you.”
“Titles are funny things,” Veyrion went on. “They change depending on who’s speaking.”
He leaned back, studying me like a puzzle he’d already solved. “In Thalassia, they call you something else entirely.”
My pulse thudded.
“Traitor,” he said calmly.
The word rebranded me all over again—ink from Shadeau, now spoken like scripture. It didn’t matter that I didn’t understand why. What mattered was that he did. Or wanted me to believe he did. Either way, it tightened around my throat like a collar.
The word landed heavier than a blow. I swallowed hard, hating the way my chest tightened. “Why does it matter to you?”
His grin was slow and dangerous. “Because power like yours doesn’t come without a story. And I intend to know it—whether you tell me or not.”
As he spoke, it happened again—a flutter beneath my skin, faint but undeniable. The crescent on my forehead pulsed like a second heartbeat, my other markings catching the lantern light.
“They’ve priced you generously,” he added, almost conversational.
My head snapped up.
“Enough to buy a fleet,” he said. “Enough to tempt lesser men.”
A faint tension crept into his posture. “The world is full of those.”
I kept my face cold, but tension must have betrayed me, because his eyes narrowed with satisfaction—he’d noticed.
He shrugged, unbothered.
“The bounty isn’t for men like me,” he said. “It’s for desperate ones.”
“I already have everything coin can buy. I'm more interested in what it cannot.” Then he turned fully toward me, his expression hard as cut ice. “You and I—we could build something greater. Something powerful.”
I let the silence stretch, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a quick reply. “You’d be protected.”
For one treacherous heartbeat, my mind tried to imagine what it would feel like to stop running. To stop guessing what every stranger wanted from me. The thought was a sedative—soft, tempting. And that was how I knew it was poison.
He continued. “You’d have more than the sea can give you. More than Alaric ever will.”
The name hit like a blade, but I didn’t flinch. Alaric wasn’t safety the way walls were safety. He was the kind you chose—over and over—despite the risk. And the fact that Veyrion kept saying his name meant he’d already found the thread to pull. Inside, the ache was deep and unrelenting. I saw Alaric’s face when I left—like grief might swallow him whole. Like I was the last tether keeping him from vanishing beneath it. The memory of his touch, the rasp of his voice, the warmth of him in the dark—ignited in my chest, a spark hitting dry tinder. I curled my fists in my lap until my nails dug crescents into my palms.
I would not give Veyrion that fire to use against me. "What do you want from me?"
He let the silence sit before adding, almost casually, “Bind yourself to me.”
The words struck absurd enough that for a heartbeat I thought I’d misheard him.
My stomach lurched, bile burning the back of my throat. “Marry you?”
The word tasted unreal.
Veyrion didn’t soften it. He didn’t have to. “This isn’t about romance,” he said.
And there it was—the truth beneath the velvet. Not partnership. Not alliance. A declaration that the safest way to control a storm was to name it, crown it, and keep it where only he could reach.
