Chapter 1

To stop the merfolk from being slaughtered, I went ashore to seduce the boy I grew up with — Lucian Voss, now one of the world's top scientists.

He still had feelings for me. He kept me in his bed for seven days and seven nights, refusing to let go.

I woke from the haze of pleasure to a pair of pliers prying the scales off my back.

Lucian watched me arch in agony, his expression ice-cold.

"Mermaid scales can repair genetic defects. You don't mind sharing a few, do you?"

"After all, what your kind owes me is worth far more than a handful of scales."

Two years. For two years I watched him marry another woman.

He held my kind's lives over my head and forbade me to leave. Every few days, he'd pry the scales from my spine, grind them into powder, and feed them to his new wife Vivienne to strengthen her body.

He shackled my ankles and ordered me to stay up all night washing his bedsheets. I had to kneel outside their bedroom door, motionless, listening to them together until dawn.

When Vivienne got pregnant, she started complaining about the color of the scale powder.

"Honey, these last few have been so dull. Is she running out?"

Lucian glanced at me.

The look on his face — he was counting. Calculating how many scales I had left.

He hated me to the bone, yet every time I nearly passed out from the pain, he was the one who pulled me off the floor. Forced medicine down my throat, fingers clamped around my jaw until I swallowed.

"You're counting on the fact that I still care about you. So tell me — where are my parents?"

I stayed silent and let the contradiction hang there.

It wouldn't matter soon. I wouldn't have to keep that secret much longer.

A mermaid who stays on land for three years without returning to the sea will die. No exceptions.

And I had three days left.

...

Three in the morning. The storage room door was kicked open.

Someone grabbed me by the hair, hauled me upright, and slapped me across the face. Once, twice, three times.

My lip split. Blood ran down my chin and dripped onto the floor.

Lucian's assistant dragged me down the hallway, cursing the whole way.

"Mrs. Voss is hurt and you're sleeping? You've got some nerve."

Salt wind carried the smell of the sea through the corridor, thick and sharp.

A trail of blood followed me all the way to Lucian's bedroom.

He glanced at the blood on the floor and frowned.

"Vivienne's finger got bitten. Go fix it."

I looked up. Vivienne was propped against the headboard, cheeks flushed and glowing, a pinprick wound on her fingertip.

Below that, her swollen belly.

Slap.

Lucian's hand cracked across my face.

"I told you to heal her. Who said you could look at her?"

I dropped my gaze immediately.

"I'm sorry."

Then I crawled to the bed.

I pulled up my shirt and dug my nails into my own back, feeling for a scale. Sweat soaked through my clothes. When the scale finally tore free — flesh and all — I heard my own bones creak.

I pressed it to Vivienne's fingertip. The wound sealed shut before my eyes.

Lucian watched the entire thing, his tone flat.

"Seren, cut the act."

In his mind, I was putting on a show.

Because a mermaid's voice could heal just as well.

But my voice was already gone.

Vivienne stirred awake with a soft cough, and Lucian immediately gathered her into his arms.

"Still hurting?"

Vivienne bit her lip and glanced my way.

"Babe, ever since I got pregnant, the smell of blood makes me so nauseous."

Lucian kicked me aside.

"Get out."

I crawled out of the bedroom, inch by inch. Behind me, his voice turned gentle.

"Viv, you haven't been sleeping well lately. Is the baby keeping you up? Let me listen."

My back — still raw and open — caught the doorframe on the way out. I bit down on my tongue to keep quiet.

A maid came with a bucket of filthy water and threw it over me.

"Freak. I thought you people healed fast. Why are you still bleeding? Disgusting."

She hurled a mop at my head. It struck my temple.

"Clean this floor. Or I'm getting Mr. Voss."

I spent the rest of the night bent over that mop.

The wound on my back split open and closed, closed and split open, over and over again.

Through the bedroom door came the sounds of them together — soft, unhurried, intimate.

One tear fell.

I couldn't stop replaying the disgust on Lucian's face. It just kept getting worse.

Soon. It would all be over soon.

Even an immortal mermaid can die.

In three days.