“So,” I said, sitting up and bouncing slightly on the mattress, “what now? We’ve escaped your parents, found shelter for the night, and I’ve thoroughly debauched you in public. The night is still young.”
“I don’t know,” Teddy replied, his eyes holding mine. “We could order room service? Watch a movie? Just... talk?”
“Talk?” I raised an eyebrow. “About what?”
He shrugged, looking suddenly vulnerable. “Anything. Everything. I feel like I still don’t know that much about you, Nerion.”
I swallowed hard. This was dangerous territory. The more he knew about me, the closer we’d become. And the closer we became... well, I’d promised myself that wouldn’t happen.
“What do you want to know?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.
“Tell me about your family,” he said, his voice soft. “You’ve met my parents, as horrible as that was. But you never talk about yours.”
The request hit me like a punch to the gut. Of all the things he could have asked... I looked away, focusing on the generic hotel artwork on the wall.
“Not much to tell,” I lied. “They’re dead.”
“Oh,” Teddy said, his face falling. “I’m sorry, I didn’t?—”
“It’s fine,” I cut him off. “It happened a long time ago.”
A heavy silence fell between us. I could feel Teddy’s eyes on me, patient and kind, waiting for me to continue. Against my better judgment, I did.
“They died when I was thirteen,” I said, my voice sounding hollow even to my own ears. “They were both sirens. Full-blooded, like me. My father was from the Mediterranean, my mother from the North Sea. They met in Greece and fell in love.”
“What happened to them?” Teddy asked gently.
I took a deep breath. I hadn’t talked about this in years, had buried it so deep that sometimes I could almost pretend it hadn’t happened.
“They broke the most sacred law of our kind,” I said finally.
Teddy’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. What law?”
“The one that makes certain things impossible,” I laughed bitterly. “Sirens are made to enchant, to lure, to destroy.”
I stood up abruptly, needing to move, to put some distance between us. I walked to the window, staring out at the city lights without really seeing them.
“There’s a curse on our kind. And it killed them both,” I continued, my back to Teddy. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
“That’s...” Teddy seemed at a loss for words.
“Fucked up?” I supplied. “Yeah, it is.”
“So you’ve been on your own all this time?” he asked, shifting the subject just enough to give me some breathing room. “Did you grow up in the ocean or on land?”
“On land,” I replied, thankful to talk about something else. “The pollution in the ocean has been getting worse and worse. Between the oil spills, the whaling, and the Great Pacific Garbage patch, my parents decided to move to land before they even had me.”
“Is it really that bad?”
His question was genuine, but I couldn’t help scoffing. “It’s worse than anyone thinks it is. The water is dead in a lot of places. There’s no fish, no whales, and empty reefs that are as white as bone. It’s horrifying.” I turned back to him. “I’m glad I’m land. I love being in the ocean. It feels like home. But living there… well, it would be too hard to watch it all die around me and know there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
“Fuck… That’s horrible.” He pushed himself off the bed and came up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Is there a place you still love to go? A place that’s not dead?”
I nodded slowly, savoring his touch. “The Aegean Sea is still beautiful. It has its problems, but I’ll always look upon it with an appreciative eye. It’s the waters I was born in and it calls to me.”
“That’s why you paint them so much.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I can’t get them out of my head.”