A dragon, Saina thought. She hadn’t expected Bastian to be a dragon. This changed everything.

She had finally felt like maybe she could take this place at face value, had even felt badly for her first instinct to try to control the people here who had been nothing but kind and generous.

She turned away, more disturbed by this revelation than she ought to be. She shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t care in the slightest for this man, let alone should she care what his shifted form was.

But despite her care, he’d gotten under her skin, she’d trusted his boyish smile and softened to his chivalrous actions. Dragon honor could be a tricky thing, she should know.

“Saina?” Even his voice sounded innocent.

“What family are you from?” she asked, chin high as she looked out over the turquoise ocean that lapped along the beautiful beach.

He hesitated so long that she made the mistake of looking back at him.

His face was so terribly dear to her already, and the pain on it now made her want to comfort him.

“I am from the Santa Rosa dragon family,” he said, and he said it with so much guilt that Saina knew he had to know. He had to know what his family had done to hers.

“You knew,” she said. “You knew all along. Did Keylor send you after me? I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe…”

“Keylor?” Bastian said in surprise. “You know Keylor?”

Saina paused in her rant. His disbelief felt genuine, however much that didn’t make sense.

“Who are you to Keylor?” she asked, taking one angry step towards him. She put music into her words, and added:

“Tell the truth,

Say it fair,

Speak it clear,

Don’t lie, don’t dare…”

It was one of her strongest songs, and backed by her betrayal and anger, she could feel it bind Bastian like iron as she held the last note.

“He is - was - my brother,” he gasped, as if he were being squeezed.

Saina let the last note go and he blinked at her in consternation. “I am not accepted as family any longer, and I am not allowed to claim kinship or mention their name.”

Saina furrowed her brows at him. “Explain,” she said firmly. She drew in a breath and held it, in case he needed a second verse.

Bastian sighed. “I am… mentally unfit for the family. I was cast out when my deviance was discovered. The only way I would be permitted to return would be to marry dragon royalty.”

“Deviance?” Saina pressed.

Bastian gestured with a hand, out to the ocean. “Water. I am a fire dragon, a creature of air and flame and fortune. But my treasure sense is… flawed, and I have an aberrant love of water that my kin could not accept. Worst of all, though I come from a proud lineage of warriors, I wanted to save people, and learn healing. I am in every way a perversion of dragonkind; they could not allow me to pollute the purity of the family with my association.”

Saina chewed on this. “And Keylor?”

“My younger brother,” Bastian said. “A proper dragon of fire and temper. He took my place as heir when I was thrown out. I haven’t seen any of them in three years.”

Saina turned back to the ocean to digest these revelations.

“What was that?” Bastian asked quietly. “Saina? What are you?”

Saina turned back to him. She believed that he’d told the truth about his exile, and she knew that her song had been unnecessary. He would have been genuine without her magic, she realized, and it shamed her that she had used it.

“Haven’t you guessed?” she mocked gently. “I’m a siren.”

He looked at her blankly and Saina sighed. “A mermaid, Bastian. I’m a mermaid.”

He continued to stare.

Did he have to be so handsome and innocent? Saina wanted to brush his unruly hair back from his high forehead and plant a kiss there. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

She took one unresisting hand and led him out into the water. She didn’t bother undressing, but waded out with him until the swells were chest deep, then she fell into the saltwater and shifted.