Chapter 1 Predator’s Lullaby
I dragged myself onto the jagged black rock, my fingernails scraping against the barnacles until they bled. The ocean crashed against the stone below me, a violent, churning grey that looked nothing like the vibrant blue home I remembered from childhood.
"Go," my father had said. He hadn't shouted. He hadn't raged. He had just looked at me with dead, shark-like eyes. "You are the rot, Nerissa. Leave before you kill us all."
I gasped, choking on the dry air. The transformation was starting.
It didn't happen like it did in the fairy tales the humans whispered about. There was no magical sparkle, no graceful shedding of skin. It was agony. pure, structural ruin.
A scream tore out of my throat, but it came out as a broken gurgle. My tail, covered in scales the color of midnight and bruised sapphires, began to convulse. I felt the bones snapping. The long, flexible spine of my lower half shattered and knitted itself back together, splitting down the middle.
I curled into a ball on the cold, unforgiving rock, shaking violently. The sound of wet tearing filled my ears as the scales receded, dissolving into slime that coated my new, raw skin. My fins retracted, the cartilage dissolving and reforming into ankles, feet, toes.
It felt like someone was taking a hammer to my hips.
"Just breathe," I whispered to myself, my voice raspy and foreign in the open air. "Just breathe, you exile. You monster."
I lay there for a long time, naked and shivering, the slime drying sticky on my pale skin. My hair, heavy and wet, draped over me like a freezing blanket. I couldn't move my legs yet. They felt like dead weights, alien things attached to my body.
I was vulnerable. I was weak.
And then, I smelled it.
I lifted my head, my neck muscles straining. Through the thick fog rolling off the water, lights cut through the darkness. They weren't the warm, yellow glow of a lighthouse. They were harsh, blinding white beams that swept across the waves like accusing fingers.
A ship.
It was massive, its hull painted a matte black that seemed to absorb the moonlight. It moved silently, cutting through the water with unnatural speed, no engine hum, no creaking wood.
A silver flag snapped in the wind at the top of the mast. A hawk gripping a bleeding moon.
Falkenstein.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage. The Vampire Navy.
They patrolled these waters, harvesting anything with magic in its blood. To them, siren blood was the primary ingredient in the elixirs that allowed them to walk in the sun. If they caught me, they wouldn't kill me. They would drain me, drop by drop, keeping me alive for decades just to milk me dry.
I should have been terrified. I should have slid back into the water and taken my chances with the sharks.
But a cold, dark anger coiled in my gut. My father had thrown me away. The ocean had rejected my song. I had nothing left to lose.
I forced myself to sit up. My new legs screamed in protest, but I locked my knees and stood. I wrapped my hair around my body, standing tall on the slippery rock.
"Target sighted!" a voice shouted from the deck. It sounded tinny, distorted by the wind. "Starboard side! Biological signal confirms—it’s a Royal!"
"Net launchers! Load the tranquilizers!"
I watched them scramble on the deck. They looked like ants.
"Come get me," I whispered.
I closed my eyes and reached deep into the well of power that had poisoned my kingdom. If my voice was a curse, then I would curse them.
I opened my mouth and let the sound out.
It wasn’t a song. It was a command wrapped in a melody. It started low, a vibration that hummed in the chest, deeper than the roar of the ocean.
Sleep. Drifting down. The water is warm.
The frantic movement on the deck stopped instantly.
One by one, the sailors froze. The gunner manning the harpoon cannon let his arms drop to his sides. His eyes, glowing faint red in the dark, went dull and glassy.
I pushed harder. I wove the magic into the air, invisible tendrils wrapping around their minds.
Your weapons are heavy. Put them down.
The clatter of steel hitting the deck echoed across the water. Rifles, nets, and swords dropped from limp fingers.
The sea is calling you. Can’t you hear it? It wants to hold you.
A vampire near the railing climbed up. He moved stiffly, like a marionette with tangled strings. He stood on the edge, swaying.
"Yes," I sang, the note rising, sharp and sweet. "Come to me."
He stepped off.
Then another. And another. They walked off the ship like lemmings, sinking into the dark water without a struggle. They wouldn't drown, they were already dead but the pressure of the deep would crush them, or the salt would burn their eyes until they were blind.
I felt a surge of intoxicating power. I wasn't useless. I was lethal. I could empty this entire ship without lifting a finger. I would sink their fleet. I would make them pay for every siren they had ever harvested.
I took a deep breath, preparing to screech the final note that would crack the ship’s hull.
And then, someone clapped. The sound was slow. It cut through my song like a butcher’s knife through silk.
I choked on the note, my eyes snapping open.
On the upper deck, standing near the helm, was a shadow.
He hadn't moved. He hadn't dropped his weapon, mostly because he wasn't holding one. He was leaning casually against the railing, watching his crew commit mass suicide with the same mild interest someone might have while watching paint dry.
He stepped into the beam of the searchlight.
The air left my lungs.
He was huge. Not just tall, but imposing, with broad shoulders encased in a fitted military coat that swirled around his calves. His skin was the color of moonlight on snow—flawless, pale, and completely unblemished. His hair was jet black, swept back from a face that was too sharp, too symmetrical to be human.
But it was his eyes.
Every vampire I had ever seen had eyes of crimson or muddy burgundy.
His were blue. A shocking, electric sapphire blue that seemed to glow with its own internal light. They locked onto mine across the turbulent water, and I felt the impact physically, like a punch to the gut.
He stopped clapping. He tilted his head, a smirk playing on his lips.
"A solid performance," he called out. His voice was deep, rich, and smooth like velvet dragged over gravel. It carried effortlessly over the wind and waves. "A bit pitchy in the second verse, but the emotional delivery? Top tier."
I stared at him, stunned. My song was still active. The air was thick with my magic. He should be on his knees. He should be drooling.
"Who are you?" I screamed, my voice laced with command.
He didn't even blink.
"Me?" He pushed off the railing and walked toward the edge of the ship. "I'm just a critic."
He vaulted over the side.
I flinched, expecting him to plummet into the water like the others. But he didn't. He landed on the jagged rocks ten feet below the ship, then leaped again, covering the distance between us with terrifying, supernatural speed.
He moved like smoke. One second he was on the ship, the next he was landing in a crouch five feet away from me.
He rose to his full height slowly. He towered over me, at least six foot three of lethal predator. Up close, the smell of him was overwhelming.
I stumbled back, my bare feet slipping on the wet stone. My legs were still weak, trembling under my weight.
"Stay back!" I shrieked. I unleashed a sonic blast, a concentrated wall of sound meant to shatter eardrums and liquefy organs.
It hit him. I saw his coat whip back from the force of it. His hair blew back from his face.
But he didn't fall. He didn't bleed. He just took a step forward, walking through the sound wave as if it were nothing more than a stiff breeze.
"Impossible," I gasped, backing up until my heels hung over the edge of the rock. "Why aren't you listening?"
"I am listening," he said, closing the distance. "It’s just that I’ve heard better."
I lunged, desperate, swiping at his face with my nails, which were still sharp and glass-hard from the transformation.
He caught my wrist.
His grip was iron. Immovable. His hand was large, his leather glove cold against my skin. He didn't squeeze, but I knew with absolute certainty that he could crush my bones into dust if he wanted to.
He yanked me forward. I crashed into his chest. It was like hitting a wall of marble.
"Let me go!" I thrashed, kicking at his shins, biting at the air.
"You're very squirmy for a fish," he murmured. He wrapped his other arm around my waist, lifting me off the ground effortlessly. My feet dangled uselessly in the air.
He held me there, pinned against his hard body. I looked up, breathing hard, wild panic finally setting in.
His face was inches from mine. I could see the pores in his skin or rather, the lack of them. I could see the faint, spiderweb veins of glowing blue light pulsing beneath the skin of his neck.
"My name," he whispered, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, sending a violent shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold, "is Lord Peregrine Klaus Falkenstein."
I froze. The name was a legend. The Scourge of the Tides. The vampire who had sunk the Western Mer-Kingdom single-handedly fifty years ago.
"And you," he continued, pulling back to look me in the eye. His pupils were blown wide, black holes swallowing the blue. "You have caused a significant amount of paperwork for me tonight."
"My song..." I stammered, the fight draining out of me as the reality of my situation crashed down. "Why didn't it work?"
He smiled then. It wasn't a nice smile. It was sharp, predatory, and revealed the tips of two elongated, needle-sharp fangs.
"Because, little fish," he said softly, his thumb tracing the pulse that hammered frantically in my throat. "You can’t hypnotize a man who has no soul left to steal."
"That's a lie," I breathed. "You're... you're wrong."
"Am I?"
He shifted his grip, holding me tighter, possessive and inescapable.
"Captain!" A screeching voice echoed from the ship. "The nets! Use the nets!"
Klaus looked up, annoyance flashing across his features. "Quiet!" he barked without turning around. The sheer authority in his voice made the air vibrate. The shouting on the ship ceased instantly.
He looked back down at me. His gaze dropped to my nakedness, wrapped loosely in my hair. I expected lust. I expected the hungry look I had seen on the sailors before I enspelled them.
But there was no lust in his eyes. It's something else. Something that looked disturbingly like curiosity.
"You're freezing," he noted flatly.
"I hope you rot," I spat.
"Charming."
He shrugged out of his heavy military coat with one arm, somehow managing to keep me pinned against him with the other. He draped the heavy wool and leather over my shoulders. It swallowed me whole, warm and heavy, smelling entirely of him.
"Cover yourself," he ordered. "I don’t like sharing my spoils."
"I am not your spoil," I hissed, clutching the coat despite myself. The warmth was agonizingly good.
"Look around, Princess," he said, gesturing to the dark water, the silent ship, and the empty horizon. "You are on my rock. Surrounded by my fleet. Wearing my coat."
He leaned in again, his sapphire eyes burning with a dark, terrifying intensity.
"You are whatever I say you are. What's your name?"
"Nerissa."
He scooped me up into his arms, bridal style, as if I weighed nothing more than driftwood. I stiffened, my hands instinctively pressing against his chest to push him away, but feeling the hard muscle beneath the silk of his shirt made my breath hitch.
"Where are you taking me?" I asked, my voice trembling for the first time.
He leaped from the rock, soaring through the air back toward the ship’s deck. For a second, we were flying, suspended between the dark sky and the darker sea.
"To the Citadel," he said, landing on the deck with a heavy thud that rattled the timber.
He looked down at me, and for a fleeting second, the cold mask slipped. He looked... tired. Ancient.
"Welcome to the Empire, Nerissa," he whispered, using my name—a name I just given him. "Try not to die. I’d hate to lose such a pretty voice."