The sailor’s calls interrupted our sleep, I could not hear what they said, but there was a call and answer to their tone, a sense of rhythm. “They’re dropping the sails so they can anchor,” Rivyn observed. I could feel and hear the change in the ship, the sense of movement slowly easing. “We must have arrived.” Daylight spilled down the stairs into the galley - it was morning and we had slept late into it.   We dressed and ate what was left from the sailor’s breakfast, before joining them on deck. Valhared hailed Rivyn immediately, and I watched them peer over the balustrade and into the water below. Rivyn returned to me and framed my face in his hands.   “Stay on the top deck, my wife,” he said, brushing his lips over mine. “And out of the ocean. This will not take long.”   I watched him scatter spell components into the water before stripping down to his trousers and diving neatly into the waves. I leaned against the b

I felt someone lift me to sitting, and a warm, salty liquid dribbled into my mouth. I swallowed. “Good girl,” a woman spoke. “Strong girl.” She continued to feed me small amounts of the broth, its ingredients unfamiliar to me. “Your man will be back soon, don’t you worry.” She lowered me back against something soft. I heard movement, felt the brush of feathers against my arm, and water being poured. “We’ll give you a nice wash whilst we wait,” she returned to my side and used a cloth to wash my hands and arms, neck and face, lifting the cloth that lay over my eyes before lowering it quickly. I realised that I was naked as she washed down my chest, and then my feet and legs. She covered me with a blanket. I felt her fingers in my hair, shaking something in and rubbing it through the strands before brushing it out. “There you are, beautiful again,” she

I closed my eyes. I could understand why that secret would be closely kept by the sirens. If the brethren knew that half-sirens could sing brethren to death, sirens would be hunted by both mankind and brethren alike. It would be motivation enough for a woman to kill her child, or herself. In mankind’s hands, a half-siren could sing mermaids to land, Fae ships to wreckage, dragons into man-form... In mankind’s hands, a half-siren was a weapon. “We want you to sing,” the Queen said softly. “We want you to make this ogre take his own life.” I looked at the man. “I am more than happy to sing a wind for you, my Queen, because that is within my powers, but I will not even attempt that.” “Sing them to death,” the half-ogre growled at me. “Sing them into jumping through the windows to their own doom.” One of his armoured guards backhanded him, and the young

I woke alone to a bright morning with no sign of dragons in the sky. The city was eerily quiet, the residents still hesitant to venture out of their houses for fear of the Dark Elves that had terrorised the castle overnight. I wondered what remained of the castle and the mages’ college. Hopefully, very little.   My mouth felt much better. There were no sharp spots of pain, no feeling of swelling as result of injury, but it felt delicate and fragile, as if the wounds were closed, but only just so. I touched my face trying to determine how badly the tears on my lips had scarred, frightened to find out. There was no surface within the room that would show me my reflection.   “She can smell magic, and she walked through a mage spell as if it were a stroll around the garden,” Rivyn had left the bedroom door open when he had left, and his voice drifted up the stairs to me clearly. “I know very little about sirens, even less about half-sirens...”

We stepped out of the portal, and Rivyn drew in a deep breath. I looked up at him. The expression on his handsome face held confliction - joy and trepidation. He was glad to be home, but the culmination of the past three weeks risk and strain lay ahead of him, and, even after two peaceful days in Benal reading Isyl’s book, he was weary from our adventures.   “Rivyn,” I wrapped my arms around his waist, trying to offer him reassurance, where my own heart raced in fear for him. “You have faced dwarves, ogres, mages, Dark Elves, pirates, mermaids, a dragon, and you have torn a city apart in your anger. You can do this.”   He pressed a kiss to the crown of my head. “Thank you, my wife,” he murmured. “I appreciate the encouragement.”   We stood before an arched fortified gate build of the white stone that seemed to be used throughout the city and castle beyond, the portcullis raised, points frighteningly lethal overhead, and