Alexandra Christo

Hearts are power, and if there’s one thing my kind craves more than the ocean, it’s power.

“His face makes no difference.” I drop her hand. “It’s his heart I’m after.”

“So many hearts.” Her voice is angelic. “You’ll soon run out of room to bury them all.”

I lick my lips. “Maybe,” I say. “But a princess must have her prince.”

I will not falter. It’s a key part of my image: never upset or angry or deterred. Always in charge of my own life and destiny.

“Lies aren’t answers.”

“But they sound so much better than the truth.”

“It’s you.”

My eyes shoot upward. The Prince of Midas stares down at us, horrified and awestricken. His lips tilt a little to the left.

“Look at you,” he whispers. “My monster, come to find me.”

I regard him with as much curiosity as he regards me.

To them, the sea is never the true danger. Even crawling with sirens and sharks and beasts that can devour them whole in seconds. The true danger is people. They are the unpredictable.

“That’s the thing about risks,” Kye says. “It’s impossible to know which ones are worth it until it’s too late.”

I have a plan; the least you can do is have faith.”

“Except that your plans always end in scars.”

“The ladies love them.”

“Not when they’re shaped like bite marks.”

When she turns to me, the first thing I notice are her freckles, shaped like stars. Constellations dotted across her face like the ones I name while the rest of my crew sleeps. Her hair sticks to her cheeks, a deep, dark red. Muted and so close to brown. She looks young – younger than me, maybe – and, inexplicably, when she reaches for me, I allow myself to be pulled into her.

She bites her lip, hard. It’s cracked and furiously pale, just like her skin. There’s something about the action and how wild it looks on her. Something about her ocean eyes and the way she strokes my collar softly. Something familiar and hypnotic.

Human pettiness knows no bounds.