Chapter 1 The Siren Call of the Sea

"The heart knows tides deeper than oceans, and sometimes, the wildest storms awaken the truest self."

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Virelle, perched on the edge of the world, was as much town as fog. The salt-wind whispered secrets along cobbled streets, and the sea, ever dissatisfied, bellowed with ancient memory. Merbel Tidebane paced at the edge of the cliff, her boots inches from the rocky edge where the sea wore stone like a wakeful beast.

She breathed deep. The gusts wrapped her black curls around her, and the scent of tempest and brine filled her lungs. Something moved beneath her skin. The moon, plump and silver in the battered sky, beckoned to her blood. Her fists were clenched. Not yet.

Merbel was the odd one out in Virelle. They called her strange, wild-eyed, touched by something old. She didn't care. Not much. Not until the dreams started-of a boy with silver eyes, a beach lit up by moonfire, and voices calling to her beneath the sea.

The tide was pounding the shore tonight.

She turned to walk home. Her cottage hugged the cliff, a crooked little place with sea-glass windows and driftwood beams. It was isolated. She preferred it that way. But as she approached the door, her keen ears picked up on something-something that wasn't there.

A groan.

She stiffened. Another one, nearer this time. It was coming from down the beach.

Without logic, she ran.

The tempest had burst into song-surf booming like cannonades, wind screaming, lightning splitting the air to reveal the tangled skeleton of a splintered wrecked vessel and the waves curling in to consume it. There was movement off it.

Something.

Someone.

Merbel struggled through the shallows, her breath harsh and laboring, her heart racing. There was a boy half-buried in water-drenched sand. No-a man, straight and narrow-hipped, moon-pale skin. Silver hair twisted with kelp. His chest was rising, then falling-a minute movement.

She crouched beside him. Her fingers brushed on his cheek and a spasm ran up her arm-as if lightning had taken direct hold there.

His eyes widened.

Silver. Not gray. Not blue. Silver, as if mercury lived and danced with starlight.

"You," he croaked. "It's you."

Merbel backed away. "You know me?"

He smiled, faintly. "I dreamed you."

Her wolf perked up. Not in warning, but recognition. Something in her soul leaned forward.

"Come on," she whispered. "We have to get you out of here."

She half-dragged him up the beach, her muscles shrieking, the wind battering at her. Lightning strobed across the water, and the storm keened like it was in grief. It didn't matter. The sea had given her this man, and she wasn't going to let the sea take him.

She led him in and settled him onto the pallet in front of the fire. Her fingers moved fast-pulling off soggy clothes, wrapping blankets around him, placing a warm cloth to his forehead. He muttered something, in a language she didn't know, and she soothed him like a child.

She stood guard over him as he slept. The angles of his face were sharp, good-looking. Foreign. Her heart beat too hard, too loudly.

She didn't even know his name.

But some voice inside her was whispering: This changes everything.

The storm outside continued to rage, but inside the cottage, there was a strange stillness.

And the sea, for once, kept its secrets.

---

She awoke to silence.

The storm was gone, and the world was slick with dawnlight. The sea glistened in the light of a pale sun, and the air was heavy with the scent of wet earth and salt. Merbel stretched from her chair by the fire, her joints stiff. The stranger slept undisturbed, chest moving up and down with an even motion.

She gazed at him again in the quiet light. No Virelle man had skin like that, or hair that reflected the sheen of moonlight. Even asleep, he possessed something primal, ancient. It drew on something deep within her-the back of her that had always been more tide than child.

His eyes opened slowly as he sat up. "Where am I?"

"My cottage," she said cautiously. "You nearly drowned."

He looked around. "Virelle. So it was true. The veil grows thin."

She blinked. "What veil?"

"Between your world and mine." He looked at her, and the weight of centuries seemed to hang in his gaze. "I am Anacobal."

She felt the name ripple through her like a pebble tossed into still water.

"You're not human, are you?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Half. Like you."

She stood, warmth flooding her face. "What do you mean like me?"

Anacobal smiled. "The sea calls to your blood, doesn't it? You hear the call. The wolf is just half of you. The other. is ancient. Deep."

She took a step back, her heart pounding. "How do you know that?"

"Because I saw you. In my dreams. Wearing moon-armor, standing at my side on a burning beach. You are the fulcrum. The key."

Her breath snagged. The visions. The dreams. "Why now? Why here?"

Anacobal stood with his back to the window. Outside, gulls screeched over choppy surf. "Because the tide is rising, and with it, the old war."

Merbel felt the weight of his words in her bones.

She wasn't ready.

But the sea does not wait for preparation. It simply rises.

---

That night, word of the shipwreck spread. Villagers congregated on the cliffsides, whispering of bad luck and sea-witches. Old Enna, the herbwife, gazed at Merbel but said nothing. Her silence was heavy with knowledge.

That night, Merbel sat by the fire again, Anacobal standing over her, a mug of hot cider cradled in his palms.

"What are you really?" she insisted.

"A prince," he said, not haughtily. "Of a kingdom beneath the waves. We call it Namereth. Once, it stretched from moonlit trenches to coral thrones. Now. it wears away."

"Why?"

"Because power breaks. And because we lost something that cannot be replaced. A queen. Your mother."

The room staggered. "My mother died giving birth."

"That's what they told you. But she didn't."

Merbel's breath froze. She remembered a lullaby, a voice as gentle as foam singing it, echoing in her sleep. Her eyes stung with tears.

Anacobal drew near. "She left you to the land to save you. But the sea did not forget. And neither have I."

Outside, the tide came in.

Inside, Merbel's heart broke and healed in one breath.

And deep, far down, something long dormant awakened to life.

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