The door swung open.
Nerissa stood in the doorway, her iridescent eyes—green fading to silver in the light—sweeping over them with polite curiosity. Her smile was warm, welcoming, utterly false. “Miss Gale. And the young dragon. What an unexpected pleasure. Please, come in.”
The cottage’s interior matched its exterior—quaint furnishings, ocean-themed decor, everything arranged with careful attention to detail. Too careful. Too perfect. The home of someone playing a role rather than living a life.
“Tea?” Nerissa gestured toward a sitting area near the windows. “I was just about to make a pot.”
“We’re not here for tea.” Cassia remained standing, her magic coiled and ready beneath her skin. “We’re here about the weather anomalies.”
“Ah.” Nerissa’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered behind her eyes. “Yes, those have been quite concerning. The surge effects, I assume?”
“The surge doesn’t explain the ocean current changes. Or the sabotaged equipment. Or the energy signatures that match siren manipulation.”
Silence.
Nerissa stood very still. The smile remained fixed on her face, but the warmth had drained from it, leaving something cold and sharp beneath.
“That’s quite an accusation.” Her voice was soft. Controlled. “Do you have proof?”
“We have patterns. Evidence. Witnesses that your Voice couldn’t quite reach.” Cassia took a step closer, her heartpounding. “We know you’ve been manipulating Haven Shores’s weather. What we don’t know is why.”
“Why?” Nerissa’s laugh was low, musical, and utterly devoid of humor. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Enlighten us.”
The siren’s mask cracked.
It happened slowly—a fracture spreading across her carefully constructed facade. The warmth bled away. The polite smile twisted into something bitter and ugly. And her eyes… her eyes went cold with three centuries of festering rage.
“You want to know why?” She stepped forward, and the temperature in the room plummeted. “You think you can justtakehim? An eight-hundred-year-old dragon elder, and he choosesyou?”
Cassia’s stomach dropped. “This is aboutAero?”
“This is aboutthirty yearsof watching him wander the supernatural world like a ghost. Thirty years of waiting for him to realize what he’d thrown away. Thirty years of convincing myself that he was broken, incapable of feeling anything for anyone.” Nerissa’s voice rose, the musical quality sharpening into something dangerous. “And then you appear. A mortal witch who’ll be dead in fifty years. And suddenly, he canfeel. Suddenly, hewants. Suddenly, everything I was told was impossible is happening right in front of me.”
“He rejected you,” Cassia breathed. “Thirty years ago.”
“He didn’t evennoticeme.” The words dripped with venom. “I am three hundred years old. I have had emperors begging at my feet. And that cold, emotionlessbastardlooked through me like I was furniture.”
Cassia held Nerissa’s gaze and understood, suddenly and completely, the depth of what she was dealing with. This wasn’t wounded pride. This was three decades of a wound that hadnever closed, nursed in the dark until it curdled into something unrecognizable.
Delos shifted his weight, moving slightly in front of Cassia. “So your brilliant plan is to destroy an entire town because you got rejected? That’s pathetic even by villain standards.”
Nerissa’s smile returned—cold, cruel, nothing like the warmth she’d worn before. “My plan is to destroy everything he might care about. If I can’t have him, I’ll make sure there’s nothing left for him to want.”
She raised her hand.
The cottage exploded.
TWENTY-EIGHT
CASSIA
Not literally—the walls remained standing. But water erupted from every surface. From the pipes, the faucets, the decorative vases. From the very air itself, as if Nerissa was pulling moisture from the atmosphere and weaponizing it.
A wave slammed into Cassia’s chest and threw her backward.
She hit the wall hard, pain detonating through her spine, and then water was everywhere—filling her mouth, her nose, her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. Could only feel the crushing pressure of the ocean closing around her, even though she was nowhere near the sea.
