I threw off the blankets—
—and froze.
Cold air struck my skin like a blade. My tail twitched—and then it spasmed.
Agony lanced up my spine. Flesh rippled and pulled tight, shrinking around bone. A thousand invisible needles stabbed beneath my skin. I gasped, biting down on a scream as my fins convulsed, scales sloughing away like wet petals in a storm. The sound of tearing muscle filled my ears—wet, raw, horrifying.
Then came the crack.
Bone shifted, splintered, reformed. I felt every movement—tectonic, violent—like I was being dismantled and rebuilt all at once. Skin split at the seam of my tail, revealing pale, foreign flesh. Veins throbbed. Nerves screamed. My hands clawed at the mattress, desperate to anchor myself to something—anything—while the pain shattered through me in waves.
Salt turned metallic, stinging with the tang of blood. My vision blurred. A scream tore out of me before I could stop it—raw, primal, bloodcurdling. It echoed off the wooden walls, bright as a blade striking hull.
When the worst of it passed, I collapsed onto the damp bedding, gasping, slick with sweat. My tail—my tail was gone. In its place, two trembling legs sprawled beneath me, foreign and shaking and utterly human.
There were no songs for this. No stories, no warnings, no rites whispered in the currents. Mermaids did not grow legs.
Whatever I was now, I was unmade from every name I had ever known.
“No,” I whispered, tears spilling hot down my cheeks. “No, no, no—”
I barely heard the pounding of boots on the deck above me. The door slammed open as Alaric burst in, weapon drawn, eyes wild.
He froze in the doorway.
His eyes dropped to the bed—where I lay trembling and sweat-soaked, cloth tangled around a pair of human legs.
Legs.
Not a tail. Not fins. Not scales.
I watched his face shift through disbelief, confusion—then something eerily close to awe. He took one cautious step forward, as though I might vanish. Or strike.
“Saints,” he whispered.
Then something hardened behind his eyes.
The moment didn’t vanish. It locked itself away.
“You have…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. The silence filled in the rest.
I pulled the cloth tighter around me, suddenly ashamed and burning with pain and fear. I felt exposed—stripped bare not just of my tail, but of everything I’d ever known myself to be. My voice came out hoarse. “Don’t look at me like that.”
But he couldn’t stop. He stared as if I’d undone the laws of the sea in front of him.
And maybe I had.
Alaric blinked once, then looked away, scrubbing a hand over his mouth. When he spoke, his voice was lower, steadier—calculated.
“I’ll get you something to clean up with. You’re… covered in blood.” His mouth pressed into a line. “And you’re shaking like a half-drowned wraith.”
“I’m fine,” I lied, not bothering to mask the tremor in my voice. He nodded once, jaw tight.
And then he was gone again—quieter this time—closing the door with surprising gentleness.
I stared at my legs, foreign and trembling, unsure where to begin. The room swayed with the rhythm of the sea, and I pressed my palm into the mattress to steady myself. Gritting my teeth, I swung one leg over the edge, then the other. The floor felt like ice beneath my bare feet, every nerve screaming that this wasn’t right.
But I stood anyway.
