Page 72 of Siren Problems
“It’s not drunk texting if you mean it,” Kai offers from the counter, where she’s perched like a caffeinated sea sprite. She’s wearing her ‘brainstorming’ hoodie—oversized, threadbare, and absolutely smothered in embroidered charms and pinned-on sigils that have long since lost their original purpose.
Mira snorts without looking up from her array of bones and crystal shards. “It’s not a breakup if neither of you everadmittedyou were together.”
“Guys,” I groan. “Not helping.”
Lyle pipes up from the floor, where he’s half-curled around a pile of enchanted driftwood. “Actually, I think this is going great. For once, nobody’s bleeding.”
“Give it time,” I mutter.
But beneath the sarcasm, I’m grateful. We’re all exhausted—emotionally, magically, academically—but they showed up anyway. No questions asked. Just friends who would literallyhelp me reverse-engineer a siren curse using duct tape and questionable runes.
Kai swings her legs, mug balanced on her knee. “You said the curse was fueled by grief and betrayal, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say, brushing my hair out of my face. “The spell matrix was saturated with old magic. Stuff tied to Calder’s voice, hisheart.”
“So we reverse it,” she says. “We flood it with something else. Something newer. More human.”
“Love?” Lyle suggests, half-mocking.
I freeze. Mira stills. Even Kai pauses.
“Yeah,” I say after a long beat. “Love. But not the pretty kind. Not hearts-and-flowers or first-date flutters. I’m talking about the messy kind. The holy-shit-I’d-bleed-for-you kind. The kind that doesn’t flinch when you’re ugly and broken and pissed off.”
Mira’s voice is soft when she says, “You’re in love with him.”
I roll my eyes, but my heart’s beating way too fast. “Congratulations. We’ve all caught up to the plot.”
“Then stop writing this like a term paper,” Kai says, hopping down. “We’re not gonna crack this by being clever. We need to be honest.”
“Iambeing honest,” I protest, waving my notebook. “This is the most honest I’ve ever?—”
“No.” She takes the notebook gently from my hands and sets it aside. “This is cautious. It’s intellectual. It’s safe. You wanna break a love-curse? You better bleed for it.”
Mira clears her throat. “Metaphorically. Please. No more blood on my quartz.”
“Seriously,” Lyle says, holding up a rune stone. “These things areporous.”
I sit down hard in the rickety chair. The legs groan like they’re judging me.
Kai leans forward. “Luna. What would you say to him if he were right here?”
“I’d punch him first,” I mutter. “Then I’d... I don’t know. Tell him to stop hiding. Tell him I see him, and itdoesn’t scare me.”
“Writethat,” Kai says.
So I do.
The words come slow, but true.
I write about the first time I saw him in the moonlight, cursing the sea like it owed him something.
I write about the sound of his voice when he’s not trying to be mean—but trying not to care.
I write about how it feels to look at someone and know they’ve been drowning for centuries, and still want to throw them a rope.
I write aboutlove.Real, terrifying, get-under-your-skin-and-haunt-your-bones love.
And when I read it aloud—just once, soft and shaky—Kai wipes at her eyes with her sleeve and mutters, “Okay, yeah, we’re cursed too now.”
