Page 83 of Siren Problems
I curl my hand around the back of his neck, pulling him down until his breath hitches. “Then let’s be terrible at it. Let’s be reckless. Let’s?—”
His kiss swallows the rest, salt and desperation and something greener, older—the first bud cracking through winter ice. Outside, the ocean exhales.
CHAPTER 28
CALDER
They said it couldn’t be done.
Hell,Isaid it couldn’t be done. The tidepool cove—mytidepool cove—once barred to everyone but ghosts, sea-worn secrets, and my own bitterness… is now teeming with laughter.
I stand at the edge of the rocks, arms crossed, boots wet with spray, and watch Lyle attempt to give a “magically immersive” tour in flip-flops and a tank top with a seahorse that readsSiren or Nah?
“See here?” Lyle waves dramatically toward a glowing crack in the stone where ley energy pulses like a heartbeat. “This fracture once split open during a storm curse so fierce, even the kelpies peaced out!”
The kids crowding around him oooh and ahhh like he’s a bard from the old court instead of a former bartender with a penchant for glitter and high drama.
Beside me, Mira’s tapping furiously on a tablet she’s rigged to a piece of kelp tech. “Ley flux is stabilizing. Again. That’s the third reading today.”
I grunt. “That a good thing?”
She looks up, pushes her glasses higher on her nose, and gives me a sly grin. “It’s aLunathing. Your girl rerouted the whole damn web using her voice and love or whatever. The sea’s basically got a crush on her.”
My chest does this stupid soft thump at the mention of Luna. Not because I’m surprised. But because Mira’s not wrong. The water knows her now—like I do. Like itowesher.
“You’re sure about this?” I ask, voice low. “Opening the cove? Letting the ley markers stay visible?”
Mira shrugs. “I’m sure that guarding your trauma in a tide shack for two centuries wasn’t exactly an educational experience for the next generation.”
I scowl, but it’s half-hearted. She’s not wrong. Again.
It wasn’t easy, pulling the wards back. Unbinding the silences I’d stitched into the sea itself. But I kept Luna’s hand in mine the whole time. I sang. And it stayed still.
No magic backlash. No curse.
Justpeace.
Now, instead of solitude and fear, there’s curiosity. Research interns. Kids with sand in their pockets asking about sea sprites. Mira cataloging echo frequencies from relics I once hid beneath stone.
And for once, I’m not watching from the shadows.
I’mhere.
Mira elbows me. “You’re brooding.”
“Thisismy face.”
“Well, change it. You’re a public figure now.”
I groan. “Gods help us all.”
Across the beach, Luna waves from where she’s perched on the hood of her Jeep, boots kicked off, hair wild in the sea breeze. She’s talking to a reporter from some paranormal anthropology journal who keeps blinking like he can’t quite believe she actually tamed Lowtide’s myth.
She catches my eye and winks.
Damn woman could unravel me with a blink.
Mira catches it and sighs dramatically. “I take it back. You’re not brooding. You’repining.”
