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The sea screams on days like this where the late evening fog dims the mirror surface, disrupting the lapping waves beneath a lone paddle boat. Kabru laid still, a book open and draped over his face as the sunlight was chased away to introduce a clear sky of stars. He kept his eyes closed, focusing on the sound of the boat’s soothing rocks, the water shifting around it in a natural coil.
He could hear them in his ears: the beckonings of his mother, his neighbor, the townspeople crying out, begging him to help them onboard, pleading with him that they didn’t know how to get to the boat, to hurry or they’d die, and whatever else nonsense he chose to ignore. It wasn’t minutes longer that the screams, the gulping begs, became silenced. It was only then that he pulled his book off and faced the open ocean. He fed his lantern flame, then sighed as he stared out at the sea.
No time like the present, he thought begrudgingly. He unstrapped his knife from his hip and brought it to his arm. With one clean, decisive motion, he cut a small slither into his forearm, then held it over the water. He allowed it to drip five times before pulling back to wrap it with the gause he prepared long ago. When he was done, he sat up and waited, staring into the water.
Time passed quickly, it seemed, because he began to notice the waves dance a different tune, different in their rancour. He felt something touch the bottom of his boat and steeled himself, staring ahead as the sensation returned with a dull tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. The thing travelled down the center of the boat before disappearing. Just as Kabru began to dread he had a different predator on his hands, it emerged.
Kabru turned his head only slightly to watch the thing rise, first the top of his head, then its eyes and long, pointed, webbed ears, then slowly it kicked up until he was bare and visible up to the tops of his shoulders. As he had anticipated from all he read and learned, this creature was beautiful despite its true nature. Dainty, pale pink lips curved upward in a shy smile, its doe-like silver eyes wide and curious. Its long, silvery hair was way at his shoulders or brought into a halo braid shone under the stars like an angelic glow to accompany this cherub-faced stranger, set apart from human appearance not only for their ethereal appearance, but their long, pointed ears.
Kabru didn’t jump or flinch—not even when the siren’s fingers curled over the wooden edge of the boat with a soft glide, water trickling down his pale wrists. The creature blinked up at him through a curtain of silver lashes, his smile sweet enough to rot teeth.
“Poor sailor,” It whispered with a knowing smile, lilting with an unearthly melody. It wasn’t singing yet, but a tune like that was enough for some to be entranced. Best to approach with less effort as to not over-expend the calories of your meal. Sirens are intelligent predators. “Are you lost?”
Kabru offered a feeble smile. “It looks like it. I must have come undone from whence I was tethered, and now I’m dreaming of mermaids of all things.”
The siren’s head tilted. “Mm. You’re very calm for someone stranded.”
Kabru catalogued every detail in the water: the way the waves distorted around the creature’s submerged torso, the angle of his arms, the slight narrowing of his eyes when Kabru didn’t immediately swoon. Good, Kabru thought. Stay curious. Stay near. And to further his own luck, it appeared there were no other sirens in the water. They tended to hunt for themselves, but one could never be too cautious within enemy territory– and grasp.
The siren drifted closer, water slicking along the boat’s underside. “You’re injured,” he murmured, eyes flicking to the bandaged hand bracing on the other side of the boat to keep the scent further from it. Kabru shrugged one shoulder.
“I was quite surprised when I noticed my predicament.”
The siren’s lips quirked, expression charmed with restrained amusement. “I saw you cut yourself on purpose.”
“…Did you.”
Another soft smile, lips hiding jagged teeth. “Mhmm.”
Kabru clenched his jaw, then nodded noncommittedly. How long was he tailing the boat if he noticed that? The siren hummed, and the sound appeared to vibrate the boat. “You don’t seem very frightened. Did you come out here wanting to find me, poor sailor?”
“Would you rather I cry and beg?” Kabru asked.
The siren blinked. Then—unexpectedly—a soft laugh escaped him. Light. Musical. Genuinely delighted, not hooked with the elements of their most powerful weapon: their song. “Oh, you’re fun. My name is Mithrun, and yours, human?”
“... It’s Kabru.”
He floated closer, kicking up to leave his chin resting on crossed arms over the boat’s edge. His tail swished in the inky water behind him, though Kabru couldn’t make out the color in the fading light. Well, fading with an exception toward his own lamp, which only left certain details without question. For example, those silver eyes widened, slant pupils dilating in a way Kabru recognized instantly from his limited research into the sea’s beasts.
“So,” the siren purred, voice dipping into something more coaxing, as he ran the tip of his finger up and along Kabru’s undamaged wrist, “why don’t you come swim with me? I’ll keep you safe: It’s safer than clinging to a sinking board.”
“The boat isn’t sinking,” Kabru said flatly.
“It could be,” Mithrun murmured, flashing a too-sharp smile.
Kabru kept his face impressively neutral for someone whose heart was beating a little too fast after that. He reminded himself of the simple facts: he was safe so long as he didn’t indulge too much. This was the only time he could reasonably come away from this situation unscathed: he had to take advantage of the grace window he was provided due to siren’s nature. Mithrun wasn’t going to eat him outright, nor was he ever intending to capsize the boat.
The siren lifted himself a little higher out of the water—exposing the elegant taper of his waist, the ripple of pale, streamlined muscle. His tail swished below, sending gleaming waves of silver-blue across the surface. Mithrun ran a hand through his dripping hair, twisting a strand around his finger before letting it fall in a glistening sheet across his shoulder.
“You really won’t come in?” he asked, his tone dripping coyly. “Not even to test the temperature? Just a finger… a hand…”
Kabru swallowed. The charm brushed him again—this time curling around the base of his spine. It would be so easy to lean forward. So easy to fall in.
“Sorry,” Kabru said, strained. “Not tonight.”
“Strange human,” Mithrun murmured, leaning close, almost nose-to-nose. “Most who come seeking want something. I’m willing to listen.”
A Scale, Kabru thought. I want several, actually. “Company, I suppose.”
There was an obvious dull gleam from the creature’s filmy eyes, distrust reflecting in the waning flickering fire. Its chin tilted upward a fraction, assessing, then sighed, its sharpened teeth just viewable between those plump, soft pink lips.
“You want something else,” Mithrun murmured, narrowing his eyes. “I’m not foolish enough to pretend you don’t. You aren’t that sly.”
Kabru smiled with as much of his goodnaturedness as he could allow to something he hated. “Company is not a lie: it is simply not the whole truth.” When Mithrun only stared, waiting for his explanation, Kabru set a hand over Mithrun’s wandering one still dragging a nail over his rapid pulse. His eyes dragged lazily along the siren’s jutting throat, his sunken collarbones, his bare chest– And with quiet, knowing certainty, Kabru muttered, “I heard rumors of a creature like a fallen star, with winding silver hair and comets in his eyes. I had to see it for myself, and what a sight.”
Mithrun didn’t move for a moment, his tiny frown persisting for only a blink before his ribs flared, opening a soft, rippling cascade of his translucent pectoral fins spreading like a blooming flower. A shiver ran through the creature, and he shrunk further into the water until it lapped over his gills at his waist. His face flushed with ginger dust.
The season clearly loosened his guard in ways he found not entirely agreeable, and Kabru knew that was only to his advantage. Sirens were territorial, possessive, jealous creatures, but they were not unlike their predecessors, the rarer beast: mermaids, and even their selkie cousins. They craved intimacy, especially when greeted so kindly and without the danger of sharp teeth threatening them if they so much as breathed a way a duplicate of their kind finds offensive. It wasn’t uncommon for sirens to pick mermaids from their shoals or kelpie from their tribe, kidnapping them to become their mate. As aggressive as they could be, they could be equally romantic when given their way– their way being a forced entrapment you’d placate them through to save your own skin.
Kabru’s touch slid up Mithrun’s arm, his dull nails dragging up the creature’s tough skin. Mithrun’s gills fluttered, his chest slightly puffed. He licked his lips. “But you didn’t come just for a pretty sight, did you? You wanted more.”
Kabru’s thumb brushed along his skin. “... Something like that.”
Mithrun’s pupils widened faintly. His fins fanned again in a clear display, the reflecting lines of membrane spreading, glinting like coins. Mithrun let his arm slide down, brushing Kabru’s hand down his forearm until their wrists brushed. “And that tells me,” Mithrun ventured, “that you might actually understand what you’re implying.”
Kabru only smiled, but that was enough for Mithrun to flick his tail, spraying a droplet of water onto Kabru’s face. He brushed it off with his other hand and a wrinkle of his nose; Mithrun appeared charmed enough.
“Then let me entice you properly.” Mithrun’s lips parted and a lulling chime emerged. The charm licked down Kabru’s spine again, a pulse of a buzzing sensation spreading through his limbs and causing his eyelids to droop a fraction, but he resisted, gripping the edge of the boat far from Mithrun. Mithrun watched that grip, not pausing in his spell as he witnessed the strain in Kabru’s shoulders.
“You feel it,” he whispered. “You feel me calling.”
Kabru didn’t deny it. “I do.”
“And yet you stay.” Mithrun drifted closer, his tail brushing the hull. “…You really won’t come in?”
Kabru’s fingers twitched against the boat’s edge at the pitiful tone, every instinct screaming at him to lean back, to keep distance. But he couldn’t stop the smirk tugging at his mouth.
“Not yet,” he said, deliberately vague. He bit his tongue to prevent himself from spilling more, already aware that even if he resisted the beckoning, the spell compelled people. It brought out the worst in them, and it brought out the truth. It wasn’t long before Mithrun realized his endeavor would never garner the reaction he hoped for: he sank deeper into the water, his fingers sliding down Kabru’s wrist in a slow caress until their hands met palm to palm, tough to warm skin. Mithrun’s fingers curled around his, but they didn’t pull, only suggested.
“Come with me,” the siren breathed out like an airy melody.
“Not in the water,” Kabru said. He gingerly pulled his hand away, then raised it to brush a stray strand of silver hair from Mithrun’s cheek. “Not tonight.”
Mithrun lowered himself until only his eyes hovered above the surface, staring up at Kabru with a wounded softness, but nothing in the area of temper rose as he watched, no bubbles rising from his lips or nose as he lurked, thinking. There wasn’t a coil in his body: he must have been wanting. Kabru took that assumption and ran with it, leaned forward until their foreheads almost touched.
“Come up here,” he whispered. “Be close to me without dragging me under.”
Mithrun’s expression flickered. His eyes darted up, narrowing just a fraction before relaxing once more. His lips curved in a slow, knowing curve with intelligence rather than the instinct of a beast.
“Oh?” the siren purred.
Kabru shrugged lightly. “If you’d like, I offer it.”
Mithrun gave a thoughtful hum and tipped his head, silver hair drifting in a gentle wave from where he laid back in the water, trusting the sea to keep him afloat with an ease no one human could muster. “Get rid of your knife.”
Kabru didn’t hesitate: he picked up the blade and flicked it into the water. It sank with a quiet plunk, but Mithrun didn’t chase under the waves after it.
“Good.” Mithrun appeared pleased, and as if that was all he truly needed, he lifted himself onto the boat. Kabru braced himself on the other side to avoid tipping over and, well, screwing himself. Luckily, the siren didn’t beach himself entirely. The weight of his tail would have surely caused an issue, but his body shifted halfway though, scales retreating and legs forming with effortless grace. He settled himself with the control of someone who had done this many, many times, his knees together and to the side, covering his nudity.
“There,” Mithrun hummed, the inklings of his song tugging at Kabru’s brain. “Much better.”
With equal daintiness as his poise, he raised a hand, his fingers dipping down in a familiar way that led Kabru forward, careful of rocking the boat as he glided his hand beneath Mithrun’s, then guided it up toward his lips. He settled a deep, charged kiss whilst looking up at the creature through his lashes, then trailed his lips up to settle a kiss to Mithrun’s wrist. This was accepted as well, and so were the few Kabru settled, climbing up Mithrun’s arm and to his collarbone and neck. Even when Kabru trailed his blunt teeth along the skin, Mithrun only sighed in delight at it lacking a pinch, craning his chin aside so he could continue his lavishing.
Mithrun’s eyes fluttered half-shut, his lips parting at Kabru’s touch to soak in every brush and breath. Kabru brushed his lips along the sharp curve of his ear, “I can see why sailors don’t come back.” He licked along the cartilage, causing Mithrun to shudder. His legs began to part as Kabru crowded him, coming closer until he managed himself between the lithe man’s pale thighs, his pants brushing the angel-soft skin there, uncommonly exposed and not weathered.
Already in the biological drive to be doling himself out for partners, or giving them his own seed, Mithrun wrapped his legs around Kabru’s waist, his hands coming to settle on Kabru’s back, mindful of his claws. Kabru built a cold sweat at the brief sensation of sharp talons, then figured a better way about this dangerous dance. He pressed a searing kiss into its neck, nipping dully at the two slanting gills to the side of his Adam's apple, and Mithrun chirped, soft clicks echoing from his throat from each of Kabru’s kisses. He knew that sound, had researched it enough: he was in a good place. The siren was excited.
With as much casualness and care he could muster, Kabru brought his hands down, petting Mithrun’s bare midsection and settling with a tight grip on Mithrun’s arms. The siren’s trills stopped momentarily, his thighs coiling at the gesture, but when Kabru seized his wrists and forced them above Mithrun’s head--- This, almost surprisingly, started louder purrs from his partner, whose legs squeezed him, portraying his pleasure at the rougher treatment, but it dispersed quickly when Kabru braced both wrists into one hand, then hit.
Mithrun’s eyes fell blank. Kabru peeled his stiff hand from Mithrun’s neck, checking with his fingers to ensure his subject was alright besides the whole being forcibly pulled from consciousness with the brachial stun technique. He would be fine. Maybe cranky when he woke due to the pain, but Kabru was also certain that’d be the least of his concerns when it came to dealing with Mithrun.
Kabru patiently binded his captive’s wrists, then knotted his waist to the wood bench of the boat to prevent him from an easy escape should he try to jump into the ocean upon waking. Kabru fastened the final knot, double-checking its tension against the wood bench before letting his hands rest. Then, with a slow exhale, he tied a second line around his own waist — a safety tether that had him stuck, sitting upright on the bench across from the sleeping siren. It was a necessary precaution; he was a sitting duck unless his crew came as planned.
For a while, the only sound was the creak of the oars and the wet drag of wood cutting through the sea while Kabru rowed in silence, his pulse still elevated from the encounter, his mind steadying itself against the temptation to look at the creature he’d bound. When Mithrun stirred, Kabru forced his heart to calm. The siren’s head lifted, hair clinging in damp strands against his flushed, scared face. His eyes snapped open, pupils narrowing into pin-like slits, and for a heartbeat Kabru saw every ounce of restrained fury.
“You—” Mithrun’s voice came low, building like a tide. His gills flared, pointing tongue peeking behind bared, snarling teeth as he spit, struggling against the rope. Not that his legs would aid him well: They weren’t close enough to land for Kabru to believe he was used to those appendages, and it appeared he was right based on Mithrun’s uncoordinated kicks. “Die! Drown! Jump in the water and drown!”
Kabru flinched as the words struck him— not merely from the sound, but the vibration hitting his ears. His teeth clenched; the charm crawled beneath his skin, compelling him toward the water. His fingers spasmed against the oar handle, every muscle in his arms screaming to let go, to dive overboard, to submit to the call that began to fog his brain unlike his past attempts at seduction through his cry.
“Drown,” Mithrun hissed. Kabru’s jaw locked as his body lurched forward, knees bending, every nerve screaming toward obedience. The rope around his waist strained, fibers biting into his coat, keeping him pinned. “Kill yourself!”
He forced a breath—then another—and spat through gritted teeth a teasing remark, “With what knife, Mithrun?”
Mithrun’s eyes gleamed with disbelief of his own planning failing him. His song pulsed again, harder this time, washing through the air in dizzying waves that made the lantern sway and the water tremble under the barely concealed wrath. Luckily the rope held, and Kabru, sweating and shaking, forced himself to row, stroke after painful stroke, until the sound began to falter and the siren’s voice cracked with exhaustion and overexertion. His foot kicked once like a fish inching toward water, but then aborted the motion.
For the first time since waking, Mithrun looked truly startled as he laid there, eyes locked on Kabru and body limp in defeat. “How can you resist me?”
“I came prepared.” Pausing his rowing, Kabru wiped the sweat from his brow. Mithrun responded with a pitiful cough, a noise that began to frequent the more the minutes of tense silence passed until Kabru raised the oar and nudged Mithrun’s leg. The siren batted his eyes, squirming against the wet sheen of the wood.
“Please,” Mithrun whimpered. Kabru paused, watching as the siren’s expression softened into something weak and trembling. The fury that had burned in Mithrun’s eyes dimmed into watery desperation, his cheeks turning pink as he hiccuped.
“Please,” Mithrun cried again. “It hurts. I need the water.”
His tone lilted sweetly, each syllable trembling with that instinctive musical cadence that could only be done by a siren, even if they weren’t trying actively to use their voice to charm or maim. It painted a convincing picture: a tragic beauty now a caged creature, pitiful and disarmed and at the mercy of a tyrannical captor. Kabru wasn’t moved. He shifted the oar, leaning forward just enough to tap Mithrun’s leg again—harder this time, enough to stop the whimpering noise.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Kabru said flatly, “but that was not to comfort you; I just wanted you to be quiet.”
The soft, pleading eyes hardened, his lips peeling back again in a raging song. Kabru sighed as he felt the barrage of commands and mana hit his brain over and over, his body convulsing as it tried to obey. His breathing turned ragged, his head swimming from the pull of the sound, but he managed to sit through the rolling pain and dizzying loss of control, “You really don’t learn.”
The song rose in volume, wild now, the sea answering with a violent slap against the hull from Mithrun’s resumed rocking and his futile attempts to bite from two feet away at a minimum. Water sprayed over the edge of the boat, droplets catching the lantern light and almost extinguishing the flame.
And when Mithrun’s voice finally broke into silence again—when the last echo of his furious command died in the salt-heavy air—Kabru laughed breathlessly. “Giving up now?”
“Die.”
“Not yet. There’s much to do.”
When daylight came, Kabru could see a ship bobbing in the distance. It steadily grew closer and closer until it had to pause and allow for Kabru himself to paddle over. Mithrun had been quiet for hours now, lying on his stomach to avoid the sun’s offensive rays. He squirmed with discomfort typical of a nocturnal ambush predator, disliking the extended exposure on his pasty skin that had begun to fry a tint of red. Kabru hardly had enough clothing to offer that would cover the creature, nor did he or Mithrun have the available limbs or movements to get those clothes onto the siren.
But, at long last, they reached home. Rin lingered above deck, sending Kabru a rope down to tie to his waist which he did without fanfare. Once it was secure, he undid his own tether— only to vault himself over the side of the boat the moment Mithrun saw him stand, yelling “drown” the instant it’d most hurt him— If Rin and Daya didn’t immediately fish him out. Kabru sent a glare through his soppy black bangs to the bored, glowering siren as he was hoisted up.
“Kabru, can you secure him too?”
He looked up toward the other end of his rope. “Yeah: send them down.”
The struggle was typical, and Kabru only jumped in the sea twice more before Mithrun was being hoisted up like a deer to be gutted. The siren’s arms were limb, his gaze cast on the waves he was pulled further and further from. Kabru joined him, using his rope to climb up and throw himself over the wooden railing.
Rin met him from where he squatted to catch his breath, her boots thudding lightly against the planks as she reached out to steady him with a wrinkle in her nose.
“You look like hell,” she said dryly, eyes flicking to the red marks circling his waist where the rope had dug into him when he undid the rope, lifting his shirt to ease it off. “Hold still.”
Rin’s palm came up to his temple, and he felt her cold fingers brush his head. The air around them shimmered faintly from the magic she uttered, her staff drooping a fraction to rest on his shoulder. Kabru felt a tear in his chest, but the pain dissipated as quickly as it arrived. He staggered as she drew back, his breath hitching as a faint golden haze rose from his chest like a thread being pulled free and dissolved into the air. Kabru blinked, pressing a hand to his chest before straightening, trying to shake it off.
The instant it left him, the world seemed sharper. His pulse raced as though catching up to him and the absence of the spell leaving a strange emptiness in its wake.
“...There,” Rin murmured, lowering her hand. “It’s gone now. How do you feel?”
Kabru nodded. “Better than I thought. It’s really all gone just like that?”
“Yeah. Your heart should stop skipping every time Holm looks at you now.” At the mention of the name, Kabru’s head turned instinctively toward the stairwell that led below deck. As if summoned, Holm emerged, his gaze flicked between the two of them, then to the dripping siren being tied down near the mast. “So, it worked?”
Kabru blinked, lips pressing into a wry line. He stepped forward, readying his arms as if to entrap, but he paused, bursting out laughing when Holm slammed the door. Kabru approached, rapping his knuckles on the door. “Holm, I was only joking. I have completely normal feelings for you again.”
Holm let the door open a crack, his brow arched. “You sound disappointed.”
“Not disappointed.” Kabru wiped his face with the back of his wrist, smearing saltwater and crusting blood alike across his cheek. “But it was an interesting experience! Who knew a love spell like that could negate a siren call? That’s incredible!”
Behind them, Mithrun gave a faint, guttural hiss. Mickbell and Kuro knew better than to get close after heaving him onboard, but Kabru didn’t share their same hesitation as he headed back and stooped down to a crouch beside the angered siren. Rin, who had just finished her most recent spell on their prisoner, stepped back, holding her staff behind her back.
“That was your trick,” the siren rasped, voice cracking under the dry air. He lurched to try and kick him, but there was little he could do. If he managed to get into the water again, that’d be a different story. The barbs at the ends of his fins could tear his binds, or his tail could slip free of them; however, they weren’t going to afford him a chance to try. As he was, Mithrun was as weak as any unarmed man, trapped. Even his razor teeth were beginning to dull the longer he remained dry, his naturally built disguising system seeping deeper into the frame of pretending to be something he wasn’t. It’s what made sirens impossible to catch outside the water unless you fell for their song.
Kabru rested his elbows on his knees and let out a slow, weary sigh. “Look… I really am sorry, but I needed your help.”
Mithrun’s lip curled, fury flashing across his sharp features. Kabru lifted his hands defensively, palms out, but his stance was relaxed, not intimidated in the slightest.
“You’ll be let go once you comply,” he added. “I don’t want a dying siren’s curse on me. Bad luck.”
The mention of a curse made Mithrun’s pupils slit. His nostrils flared, and the faintest hiss curled from his throat. Kabru offered a sheepish smile at his misstep, shaking his head as if chasing the idea of misfortune from him. For a long moment, Mithrun simply seethed, his jaw working, fingers twitching in little tremors. His skin looked paler by the minute, the drying air leeching color from him, making the faint veins under his skin more visible, more human. Finally, the siren hissed, “…What do you want?”
“Three scales.”
The reaction was immediate. Mithrun recoiled as much as his restraints allowed, his eyes going wide. “Three?” he barked, his voice cracking between outrage and disbelief. “Do you know what that will cost me?”
Kabru raised an eyebrow. “Is the cost higher than your life?”
Mithrun froze.
The siren’s throat fluttered, his lips parting and closing rhythmically. His chest trembled once an involuntary pulse of fear or fury, Kabru couldn’t tell. When he finally spoke, it was a predictable response. “You dare barter my life for pieces of my body.”
Kabru shrugged gently. “I dare. You tried to drown me twelve times today.”
Rin made a quiet snort behind him. Mithrun’s eyes snapped toward her, then back to Kabru. “You will pay for this insolence.”
“And you’ll live long enough to collect the debt,” Kabru said.
Holm arrived at Kabru’s side with a sloshing wooden bucket, the familiar stench of brine rolling off it. Kabru nodded for Holm to set it down. With that, Kuro came and braced Mithrun under one arm while Kabru loosened one of the restraints just enough that Mithrun could sit but not strike; however, the next rope Kabru tinkered with was Mithrun’s wrists. He freed one of them, then held Mithrun’s other one in a tight grip.
With that, Kabru dipped his freed hand into the bucket, then guided it toward Mithrun’s waist. Before he could touch the siren’s bare skin, Mithrun slapped Kabru’s hand away and seized the bucket himself, splashing the water over his hips and lower abdomen. The transformation wasn’t instantaneous, but it was unmistakable: a faint shimmer first, then a ripple, then scales pushing through drying skin like embers rising through ash. It looked almost painful, but the siren didn’t appear distressed from the shift.
His tail didn’t fully return—he wasn’t submerged enough—but the mosaic of scales across his waist glittered, the difference obvious between that and human-like skin, the silver deepening as the water soaked in.
“Three,” Kabru reminded softly.
The siren’s hand hovered over the glistening scales, then he gripped one and ripped. A choked hiss burst from him, his whole torso bowing forward before careening back to rest against Kabru’s sturdy shoulder. The scale came free with a sickening crackle, but only a thin trace of watery fluid followed: blood mixed with seawater. He didn’t wait to recover before tearing out the second. Holm winced, stepping back to return to the cabin as Kabru held still, watching.
The third was the worst. Mithrun’s hand trembled from the stinging sensation, and when he yanked it out, his head dropped, shoulders heaving, eyes burning holes through the boards as he stared at the red tinting his fingers. He thrust the three scales toward Kabru with a trembling hand.
“Take them,” he rasped. “And pray you never fall into my hands.”
Kabru accepted the scales carefully, his fingers brushing Mithrun’s for only the briefest moment—enough to feel the twitches of pain still coursing through the monster’s nerves. He tucked the scales away and shifted his grip, easing Mithrun upright onto his feet. The siren, unsteady on his half-dried limbs and stripped of partial mobility, leaned only as much as needed against the human as Kabru walked him toward the rail, step by step. When they reached the ship’s edge, he turned sharply toward Kabru.
“You’re not going to untie me?” he spat.
Kabru’s lips curved, not quite a smirk—something lighter, something sincere enough to irritate more than smugness. “No, I need all the time I can buy if you’re planning to kill me. Consider it insurance.”
Before Mithrun could hiss another threat, Kabru shifted his grip—one hand at the siren’s back, the other guiding his bound wrist—and with one swift, clean motion, he tipped Mithrun over the railing and into the sea. Mithrun hit the water with barely a splash, vanishing instantly beneath the waves, pulled under by instinct and biology alike. Kabru stood at the rail for a moment, watching the roiling water settle before heading to Rin to have another charm placed on him for the remaining voyage.
And one might think that's the end of it. Kabru has never had a way with monsters: what's one siren hating his guts when he tried to limit his interactions with them anyways? He sailed calm waters, he evaded their changing hunting grounds with the seasons. He needed those scales: that’s the only reason he dared go near the things. It seems, though, that Mithrun wasn’t through with him in the end. It took a year, but he saw the siren again, but this time it was standing before him in a tavern along the mainland. Mithrun’s lips pressed into a thin line.
Kabru’s heart stuttered in panic, but it was hardly in fear of repercussions. In fact, he hardly recognized the siren at first due to how… wrong he looked– not merely a change stemming from extended exposure to the land life, but altered, worn down in ways Kabru had never imagined seeing on a siren, much less this siren. One of his eyes sat half-lidded, the pupil drifting lazily off to the side. His hair, once long and meticulously perfect in each effortless curl, had been shorn unevenly just below his jawline, hacked off in jagged layers that his nature curls eased the harsh look of if only for a second. And the tops of both ears appeared bitten away, rough scar tissue lingering where they once stood proud and long…
Kabru masked the cold coil of unease wrapping around his spine and leaned back casually in his chair as Mithrun approached the table, his billowing shirt held back by belts cinching his waist enough to expose how thin he was, though the skirt like fabric over his trousers gave a bloom to his figure. The siren’s lips pressed into a thin, humorless line—expressionless in that eerie way only an apex predator could manage. Even in a human disguise, in human form, he was unmistakably still a monster.
Without a word exchanged between them, Mithrun sat down across from the sailor and set a small, burlap bag on the table between them. It was tied with a red ribbon.
Kabru’s brows lifted. He didn’t move at first, eyes flicking from the bag to Mithrun’s altered face, trying to read something along the lines anger, threat, accusation, disgust, but finding nothing but a steady, unnatural blankness.
Finally, resisting the nerves from overtaking his body, Kabru hooked a finger toward the bag, dragging it across the table to him. He unwound the ribbon, letting it fall onto the tabletop, then peered into the bag. Inside were scales. Dozens. More than dozens. More than ought to be given without a hefty cost, and, more worryingly, all consisted of a silver and opaline gleam, shimmering in the tavern light. They couldn’t have belonged to anyone else.
“With each scale given,” Mithrun uttered, voice hoarse and very unlike his old siren call that had tried to entrap Kabru long ago, “the closer we come to losing our tails forever.”
Kabru glanced up from the treasure, and Mithrun tapped his broken nail on the wood tabletop. “I would like to join your crew. There’s something I must find.” He nodded to the bag. “That pay should suffice, correct?”
Kabru had a sinking feeling about this, but he nodded. “This should be fine.”