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It is beautiful. Tears taste salty on my lips, and I open my mouth to scream. Nothing comes out but a choked, wretched cry.

The jungle thins out before me, and I put every bit of my strength into throwing my arms around a thick, rough tree trunk. I must break through the haze, because my body complies, my breath punching from me as I land in a heap on the ground.

The song fills me so completely it battles with the oxygen I need to breathe. It is haunting, notes wandering, the voice powerful enough to render me completely helpless.

We are raised on warnings about the siren song. As soon as the sirens hit puberty, they are fitted with a custom muzzle—a vocal filter—they wear whenever they swim. It keeps their song contained and filtered through some magic I have never had explained to me.

The cenotes have always been the place where they could go to swim and sing freely without the vocal filter.

Or it was supposed to be.

In all the years I have spent around sirens, I have never heard any of them sing.

I was never supposed to hear them sing.

Without loosening my desperate grip on the tree, I force my eyes to focus on the cenote below me. This one opens to the sky unlike some of the others, which are almost entirely enclosed. Thick vines trail down over the exposed limestone into the shadowed cavern.

At first I do not recognize the siren below. All I can see are dark ripples on the surface of the water, and the flash of scales.

But when I do, I am hit with a staggering wave of pain.

Alejandra.

Alejandra Parthenope. One of the daughters of Alina, head of the colony. Alejandra is on my team. One of the sixteen-year-old girls I coach. Her fins and scales are an almost-mint green I would recognize anywhere.

Gods, what have I done?

I stay there frozen, afraid to let go until she finally climbs out of the water and her song fades, leaving a heavy silence in its wake. I close my eyes, grateful I landed so far from the path. My breath burns in my chest, the reality of what I have done sinking in.

By hearing Alejandra sing, I have condemned her to death.

Chapter 1

Twatwaffle

Aleks

EIGHT YEARS LATER

“Get up.”

Damian groans, rolling over where he lay sleeping on the couch. “Leave me alone, Aleks.”

“No.” I nudge him in the thigh with my foot. It’s after ten in the morning—I don’t feel bad for waking his lazy ass up to share my news.

“You’re a brat,” he mutters.

I grin, pleased by the accurate character assessment. “I know.”

Finally, Damian sits up, pushing his ashy brown hair back from his face. “Remind me why I let you move in?”

“Because I’m your brother and you love me.” We’ve had this conversation a million times in the six years since I moved in with him. Even though he gives me shit, my older brother has never shown me anything but support since I first stepped off the plane, hundreds of miles from our childhood home. I kick him again, harder this time. “Now get your ass up and read the letter I got back from IASA.”

That gets him up. I’ve been waiting for this letter from the International Artistic Swimming Association for months.

“Oh, shit. You finally got something back?”

I hand him the letter and watch as his eyes—dark brown, unlike my own pale green—skim across the words.