Prologue

Melodia

I 'm the first one here I realize as I pop up into the lagoon the others refuse to come into since it's fresh not salt water. I don't care that it's not salty, that there's not as much buoyancy in here as in the ocean. I prefer the water here anyway. It's calm and peaceful, compared to the ocean. Warm whereas the ocean is frigid at the depths where we live. It doesn't bother the others but for Celestia, Serenia and me, it's like breathing in ice.

I don't know if it's because we're not full-fledge sirens yet, or if it's because none of us want to become full-fledge sirens. If there's the slimmest chance that I can avoid becoming a full siren, I'll do whatever it takes to do make it not happen. I'm hoping my best friends will want to do it too, because I know for this to work, we have to do it together.

The water ripples just beyond me and I smile watching as Celestia's and Serenia's heads appear. Their hair shimmering in the sunlight, reflecting off the color in it more than it ever does beneath the water's surface. Celestia's is a grayish-blue with pops of golden sage, while Serenia's is a deep turquoise blue with pops of burnt red. Mine is the complete opposite, pink with pops of white. Our looks reflect our ‘gifts' although I don't know that I would call our powers ‘gifts' when they're meant to lure men to their deaths so that we can live forever by consuming their souls.

"Okay, what was so urgent you'd risk sending a message to meet you here through someone else?" Celestia asks, her eyes silvery shimmers as the light reflects off them.

"Yeah, my mother almost got to it first and you know that woman would have flipped her tail to know we're still speaking," Serenia adds, her gold-green eyes slipping around the space with a smile. Of all of us, Serenia loves this place the most. Says it reminds her of the time she spent with her father before her mother found her. She's the only one of us that ever knew a father's love and maybe that's why she's been able to resist the pull of the cold so well, even beyond Celestia and me.

"What would you all say if I told you I found a loophole that could keep us from becoming full-fledge sirens? That if we do this, we can leave the ocean entirely behind us?" I ask them. Both of their faces fill with hope, but they quickly squash it down as fast as it hits.

"I'd say if you're lying it's the cruelest joke ever," Celestia replies and Serenia nods in agreement.

"I'm not lying," I promise, and they come closer, the hope filtering back into their eyes. "I've been sneaking over to the records hall in the mornings before anyone else is awake," I explain knowing that like most sirens, Celestia especially is a night person, whereas both Serenia and I both love the morning dawn. "I hoped to find something in the histories that would show at least one other siren managed to stop the cold from overtaking them, but I didn't."

"You said you weren't lying about finding a loophole," Celestia says, her eyes turning to a glittering silver mist and the clouds begin to block out the sun without her meaning to. Her powers like all of ours are affected by our emotions, especially the ones that fill us with cold like anger and fury.

"I'm not, I promise," I tell them, explaining what I did find before the cold begins to attack all of us. "In my research I found a single line of text that I think will help all of us though. It said that if a siren passes their twenty-first birthday without taking a mortal life, they are allowed one chance to find love, given to them by Aphrodite."

"That's it?" Serenia asks, the hope in her eyes fading quickly.

"That was all that was in that text, but I finally found another mention of Aphrodite in the ancient texts when I went to the historical site," I admit. "It said that after Hera and Athena tricked the original sirens into competition with the Muses that Aphrodite offered them a chance to find love once more. She gifted them with beauty to go along with the original sirens' songs and allowed them to transform when on land back into women."

"But they ended up luring men to whatever water was nearest and killed them instead," Serenia says, and I nod.

"Yes, that much of what we were told is true. What they never told us was that the men that they first killed were the same men that laughed and mocked them when the muses plucked out their feathers. They were the same men that then tied their feet together, so they'd drown when they threw them into the water. Aphrodite was angry that they wasted their chance, that they allowed the coldness to consume them so easily, but she also understood the desire to get revenge against the men that made them that way. Which is why she didn't take back the gift of beauty she gave them. Instead, she offered the chance to those who didn't have a cold heart to find happiness."

"Meaning what?" Celestia asks sharing a confused look with Serenia that makes me smile a bit.

"Meaning that if a siren doesn't kill a mortal man before the end of their twenty-first birthday, when our powers reach our full peak, then that siren gets the chance to find love. For seven days, the same time that our ancestors had been on land, we will transform completely. We'll have seven days to find a man and get him to fall in love with us—without the use of our powers. If he does, then we cannot become full sirens. Our mortal half will not die and turn to stone inside us. We'll get to keep our powers, the ability to transform back into a siren when in the water, but the cold won't drag us to the depths with the others," I tell them with a smile as both of their jaws drop.

"So when you say transform completely on land, you mean have legs for real and not just the mirage that men see when they're lured to the shore to mate," Serenia asks, and I nod. "I could go run through a field of flowers again? Go deep into the forest and breathe in the untouched air?"

"And not just for the seven days if we find love," I add with a nod at her. "We'd be able to go swim whenever we want but we'd always return to mortal form when on land."

"Sounds great, except in order to maintain it, we have to make someone fall in love with us in seven days," Celestia says a bit sarcastically.

"I know it's not much time, but it's not impossible. We've seen real couples fall fast when we sneak up to the beaches at night. It can happen," I assure them, not about to let myself think it can't. I won't survive in the cold for the rest of my life—an immortal life even if I don't personally ever kill and consume a man's soul at that.

"But we have to get through our birthday to get the chance and you've heard that the urge that day is greater than anything else. It's why we're encouraged to kill before then, so the thirst isn't as great and we don't do something stupid and draw real attention to us," Serenia warns.

"Which is why we'll need to do this together. We've made it this long without giving in," I remind them. "Our birthday is in three weeks. It should be easy to get to that day ignoring the others urging us towards it, and if we come here or to the other lagoon early on our birthday, together we can keep the cold from finding us. There are never any men that come out here, so they won't just accidentally come across us and make the bloodlust worse."

"I guess it's a good thing we all have the same birthday, isn't it?" Celestia says when Serenia agrees it's the only possible way to manage it.

"Really lucky for me since it meant my dad was able to find me before my mother made it into the ocean with me," Serenia says with a sigh. "Although I think it'd be better to not remember that first transformation and I seriously hope it doesn't hurt that much to do it now."

I give my friend a little hug, sensing her pain came more from seeing her father die than the physical transformation into her siren body. Unlike fully mortal babies, sirens have to be born on land in order to be able to breathe outside of the water. If we're born in water, we're nothing more than vicious sea creatures. None of the beauty granted to our kind comes through which makes it harder to lure men in to feed upon their souls.

It's uncommon for more than one siren to give birth to a child in a year, let alone to have three come on the same day. Serenia was the only one of us that was born on our actual due date. Celestia was nearly a month early, while I was over six weeks early. Being early didn't harm either Celestia or me. Our siren half gave us strength and once we'd drawn our first breath on land, we were whisked straight into the water and brought to our home where the rest of our siren powers helped to complete the transformation.

Us being early though left Serenia's mother with only one of the birthers to support her. Her labor was longer, but easier than Celestia's mother's or mine and no one thought there was any danger in leaving them.

No one gave a single thought to the fact that Serenia's father managed to escape her mother's first attempt on his life. He was what we would have called a warrior in ancient times, which is what drew her mother to him to start. He tracked her and when she was giving birth to Serenia, he managed to knock out the birther once Serenia was here, and he took Serenia inland quickly, keeping her away from the ocean until she was four. Which meant she didn't transform fully, had legs and looked like a normal child until then. Her first transformation didn't happen until her mother stole her back, and when Serenia first came to us, her terror was clear. Something about it drew Celestia and me to her, and since then, we've been the best of friends.

Each of us has a different power, ones that the others want to exploit because they're greater than theirs—more accurate and likely to work. Until we were teens, we didn't really understand the full depth of them, of what the others wanted from them, but once we did, we agreed to never use our powers to kill. That it was wrong. That even harming or luring someone made a coldness that we hated attack us.

The idea of sinking into that coldness for eternity makes the terror Serenia felt that first day she was with us seem minor. I'll do whatever necessary to keep it from happening to us. Even if it meant having to kill the siren half of myself, because I'd rather live a mortal life than ever take one.

"So are we in agreement? The three of us, here, on our birthday?" I ask them and their nods calm my worries enough that I can return to our oceanic home, hoping the next time I leave the lagoon, it's for something much better than the dark, cold, hate that lives here.