“But you’re not a siren.”
“No, shit, I almost died trying to prove it to you,” he practically spits, throwing his hand in the air.
“Then how are you here? How is it that—”
“Is it because I’m not trustworthy enough?” I watch him cringe, and it makes me sick to my stomach. “Have I ever stolen anything from you?”
“That’s not—”
“Don’t say ‘point’ to me,” he berates. “I’d never do anything to you—ever. I’d never let anyone find you. I’ll never hurt you. You’re just too much of a coward to face what we dreamed of. You’re worse off here—” he waves his hand in the air. “—than you were in the sea. Maybe you don’t belong here.”
He gives me his back once more, his strides longer and more meaningful in his escape to leave me, so he can get back onto his ship, where he feels more like himself.
“You promised you’d never leave me angry.”
He responds with a loud, annoyed sigh but turns back around and stalks toward me again.
Stopping right in my space, he drops his head and gives me a long, stilled kiss to my forehead. His soft lips press into my skin, and I feel his bothered state, how he wishes I could be who I was before.
I can’t be her anymore.
“You take care of yourself, Princess,” he utters.
Then I let him leave.
I don’t know if he’ll come back like he said he would or if the days he’s away will change his mind.
All I know is that I want him to because I let my selfish side win with him every time.
I can’t stand the way she looks at me now—like a stranger. An intruder in her world that shouldn’t be there, and yet, I am.
The first time I laid eyes on Davina, we were on different sides of sea level. She was a beautiful creature that lived under the sea, and I was a young lad that ran with my uncle’s bunch who trailed and preyed on her kind—Hunters. A growing group of men who either sold, killed, or raped sirens.
Thankfully, my Uncle Declan wasn’t very good at it.
Except for that night.
When he first spoke about the women who sang men into rocks, off ships, and ripped their heads clean off, I believed his drinking habit had worsened.
That, or his mind went adrift off the deep end because he sailed the Black Sea a million times over and had no concept of the real world on land anymore.
Hunters were just superstitious pirates that liked the quest of something challenging and alive. Sirens were worth quick gold on the market, though, again, I’d never seen one at Port Royal, where I grew up with my Uncle Declan. Half the time when he got word of sightings, he would leave me alone with some money to fend for myself, and while I spent a lot of my time at the fishing docks, no magical creatures ever showed up dead or alive at the pier.
Until the night Davina and her sister, Rohana, hung from that net, I didn’t believe they existed.
Then there was the slice on my cheek Davina landed that really set in the reality that they were real.
Looking into her eyes, I felt the fear. She looked around my age, determined and strong while hanging onto the net, attempting to cut through the thick threads of the rope.
It was the evening everything changed for me.
Sirens were real, not a made-up drunken tale my uncle believed, and I wanted to protect them.
I wanted to conserve her.
I never would’ve stayed with my Uncle Declan if Lorne hadn’t disappeared. Three years younger than me, my uncle fed me a line of bullshit that he got up and left me behind, wanting to search for treasure and a new world.
He’d never abandon me.
Lorne disliked my uncle probably more than I did and never in a million years would he leave or desert me.
Someone kidnapped him, I was certain of it. Pirates were always looking for deck boys and forcing young children into their trade. I’m afraid my brother fell victim to it, and I’ve been following leads for years only to come up short.
He’s a grown man now, and I fear with the amount of time that has gone by, I won’t recognize him anymore. His face is starting to dim with time inside my head, and I beat myself up with more years that pass. But until the leads dry up, I’ll continue to search for him and try to hold on to the thread of hope that still dangles within me.
“We’re ready to board when you are, Cap'n.” I glance over to my skipper, Ashton, an older gentleman who used to run with my uncle. The gray hairs on his head display all the close encounters of death he’s almost succumbed to, while the wrinkles on his face tell stories of how many years he’s been at sea.
He’s like a father to me, the only other person besides my uncle who remembers my brother. Even though he didn’t see him but a few times, his knowing reminds me that I’m not imagining things.
Port Royal is a busy trading town, and this isn’t the first time my brother has been mentioned being here. The stories about him range high and low, that he’s a merchant, a Hunter, a dirty pirate who’s running from the Banishian Navy.
While all of these could be true, they don’t bother me as much as thinking that Lorne is no longer alive.
I want him to meet Davina.
I want to know if he’s met a woman and if he’s happy.
If he even remembers me.
As every wish and fantasy starts to build in my mind, the moment I step off the ship they crash just as quickly.
The minute the informant tells me that this alleged Lorne lookalike left last night on a ship heading south, my heart falls for over the hundredth time, igniting the repetition of anger and frustration.
I’m tired of coming to this port, where everyone knows his name. Not because he’s famous around the sea but because I come here practically once every three months searching for him.
“One day, lad,” Ashton conveys, the moment he recognizes my obviously fallen face.
He slaps me on the back as I make my way into my corridors, knowing the repetitious drill when I come back empty-handed—leave port as quickly as possible and don’t fucking ask me where we’re going until I come back out on the deck.
My bottle of whiskey is the first thing I reach for the moment my door closes. It’s enough to know that he’s gone, but with every glimmer of promise to find him, I’d rather stop looking altogether because it only ends in one conclusion—self-loathing.
How can someone like me find Davina every time on an invisible island that no other man can see, but can’t find his own brother. I have men all over the southern hemisphere under my command, but Lorne escapes me every time.
Just like Davina is trying to do—avoiding and evading our friendship.
Her defenses are up, she doesn’t trust anyone, and she’s scared, while there is a limit to what I can do about it. I can’t give her the answers she needs on how I’m able to step foot on Merindah let alone locate it.
It was naive of me to think her being in my world would change the dynamic of what we are. How I’ve lived in a fairytale of wanting to make her my wife one day and have children of our own.
I don’t need the sea as much as I need and want her, but Davina is a siren, the sea is within her and what makes her who she is.
And I can’t compete with it.