Elodie clutched onto the ropes—but she could already feel it, the all-too familiar pull of the music. Her heart races as she tried to fight it, to force herself to stay where she was, to keep her heart and mind as her own. 

“Elodie!” His voice was like a gentle current, pulling her back to shore, back to what was safe and what was real. 

She felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked up to see Ventus’s teal-gray eyes. 

“Elodie, follow my voice, okay? We’ll get you down, and then—“ He glanced over his shoulder, back at the origin of the siren song. “Something’s wrong.”

“How do you know?” Elodie hated how her voice shook. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just. . . do.” 

He then shook his head. “I’ll keep talking, okay. Just.  . . just try to listen to my voice, alright, and we’ll get down from here.”

“Alright.” Elodie steeled herself, and pushed off of the netting. 

“We can get down faster if we use the ropes—do you know how to climb down?” Ventus climbed onto the nearest beam and offered her a hand. 

“No, but I suspect now’s a great time to learn.”

“That’s the spirit, I suppose.” He paused, and grabbed one of the long ropes with several knots tied into it down several yards. “Then again. . . You can hold on tight, right?”

“Yes, why?”

“Now’s the time to hold on tight.” He pulled up a length of rope and looked to her expectantly. “Hold onto me, alright?”

Elodie’s breath hitched—she knew where this was going. “I don’t think this is a good idea, Ventus.” 

Then came the high notes of the siren, piercing through the whistling winds and the rustling sails. Elodie could hear what Ventus had, now. This was not a beguiling song, so sweet and alluring. No, for how sweet the song was to her ears, she could hear the pain, the fear, the lament before its time. 

“You’re right,” she murmured, clinging onto the dangling ropes around the mast and beam. “She’s hurt, I think.”

“Wait, you can hear that?” Ventus blinked, only to shake his head and return to attention. “Sorry, I. .  . I got lost in my thoughts. I’m not used to talking so much. I—I just don’t know what to say, in times like this.”

“But your voice, it somehow—it distracts?” Elodie tilted her head. “How do you do that?”

Ventus shrugged. “I don’t know. All I k now is that like my old man, I’ve always been able to keep my head clear when the sirens roll around.”

He then looked at her askance, after a quick look at the rope in his hands. “You might be the same.”

“What do you mean?” Elodie didn’t understand. 

“If you heard her well enough to understand what she’s really singing about, then you should’ve tried to jump by now.” He gestured as best as he could without dropping the rope. “You might have some immunity.”

“But that’s not right at all.” Elodie frowned. “I can feel it pulling, a little, like a rope tied around my waist.”

“But you’re able to talk about it, and fight it,” Ventus pointed out. “Look at us, having a calm conversation about it and all.”

“But still, what about the narwhals?” Elodie remembered the trance that their song had put her in all too well. 

“Now’s really not the time to be discussing this,” Ventus pointed out as he glanced around. “Or the place. Especially if that siren’s in trouble. We should help her.”

“Should we?” Elodie couldn’t help herself from questioning. She’d heard the stories, of sirens luring sailors and passengers on the high seas and low skies all the time to their deaths. 

“We should.” Ventus stated it so matter-of-factly, like the closing of a tomb. “It’s what’s right, and they’re a living creature in pain as much as any other.”

He paused, noticing her apprehension. “And also, she’s still going to be singing her song, whether we help her or not—and she could still put other sailors in danger.”

He had a point, Elodie had to admit. 

“Then let’s go help her.”

By the time that they’d descended onto the deck, most of the Albatross’s night crew had cleared it. Only a handful of sailors, were working, and Kas and Carina were waiting for Ventus and Elodie when they finished their descent. 

“Is she immune to then?” Ventus asked, looking to Carina.

“Most of us Voyagers are,” Carina declared, lifting her chin. She glanced off into the distance, where the siren’s lament was coming from. “I’ve heard songs like this before, when I’ve been out on my canoe. She’s trapped in a fishing net.”

Her stoic expression gave way to anger as she curled her bangle-clad hands into fists. “This is supposed to be their waters, their sacred areas. But the soldiers and the so-called governor from Albion wouldn’t listen. They just want more money, more fish—and they don’t care where they get it from or who they’re hurting.”

“We’ll help them, my lady, don’t worry.” Kas smiled at her, and Elodie once more had to quell the rising leviathan within her chest. He looked to Ventus and Elodie, something flickering over his expression as he grew more serious. “I’ll go let Mr. Heyin know to steer us toward the siren’s song.” 

“Mr. Heyin’s taking over for the helmsman, then?” Elodie asked.

“He’s immune.” Kas paused. “Captain and Jade aren’t, though. They’ll be below-decks with the others, barred in until the danger passes.”

Elodie nodded. “Godspeed, then.” 

Kas grinned and saluted her as he ran off. 

It didn’t take long for him to deliver the message. Which, Elodie had only realized when he returned, was what she should have done. But then again, she supposed all the usual rules and roles flew away in emergencies such as this. 

Luckily, the siren in the net was easy to spot as they drew nearer. In spite of the situation, Elodie could not help but marvel that she had been so lucky as to see a siren in-person, and would hopefully be one of the rare few to tell the tale. 

The siren was beautiful, with the longest, silkiest black hair that Elodie had ever seen, with glowing pearls strung all throughout, a finned headdress framing her ethereal face. The siren thrashed within the net, tangling her worse in the thick rope netting. The thin shimmering layers of fabric around her body knotted around the netting, further entrapping her. Then there was the tail, long and iridescent, with flowing fins. 

She was a creature of beauty. Upon looking at her and hearing her song, Elodie could understand all-too-well how so many threw themselves overboard for the sirens. She could feel that pull, that magnetism—but it was not so strong that it could not be resisted. 

The siren was deadly, she reminded herself as the Albatross dropped its anchor. 

“We’ll lower a canoe,” Kas decided once all had been said and done. “Since she’s stuck, we’ll need to work to get the netting off.”

“I’ll go down,” Carina volunteered. “I’d bet all the gold in the King of Albion’s vault that I’m a stronger swimmer than the rest of you.”

“I’ll accompany you.” Ventus drew his pocket-knife, a silent endorsement. 

Kas nodded. “Elodie and I will lower you down, you just shout up when you’re ready, alright?”

Ventus nodded. 

“You can help with that, right?” Kas glanced at Elodie.

“Of course.”

So that business was conducted, and Carina and Ventus were lowered into the water beside the Albatross. The siren stopped her singing at the arrival of the two rescuers. But what else was happening, Elodie could not hear. 

Clearly, the siren was talking to both Ventus and Carina as they worked to free her. But about what, Elodie wasn’t certain. 

“Jealous, are we?” Kas’s voice cut through her attempt to try and listen in.

“Of who?” Elodie was confused. 

“Her, Carina.” He nodded down at the canoe. “I saw your face, when I called her ‘my lady.’” He paused, his tone turning more bitter. “And I saw how you looked down at her, being with him.”

In spite of herself, Elodie felt her whole face turn afire. She looked away, if just to grant herself some dignity. “It doesn’t matter. What I thought does not matter. You’re far too charming for your own good, and I was a fool to believe that meant anything.”

“Then maybe I shall have to come up with my own name for you.” Some of the glamour had returned—but there was something still quiet, uncharacteristically sentimental in his voice. “Darling, sweetheart—“

“You do not have to do anything.” Elodie looked back to him, finally having schooled her features into ladylike serenity. 

Only to be disarmed by the way he was looking at her. Oh, there was the same smirk that revealed that he thought himself the favorite of the gods, but there was something in those golden-rimmed hazel eyes that had some way of stealing her breath. It wasn’t fair. 

Still, she somehow found breath enough to continue. 

“You needn’t spare any charms that you do not mean,” she finished primly.

“And what if I do mean them?”

She shook her head. “Then you really are too charming for your own good.” 

“What I’m hearing is that you find me charming.”

Elodie rolled her eyes, but found herself laughing all the same. “You truly are incorrigible.”

“But you like it all the same, don’t you?” When she looked to him, there was something pleading in his expression, something much more vulnerable. 

She was ready to shoot back like a cannon, that she wasn’t, but Jade’s words to her in the dining hall held her in place. 

“I guess I do.” It felt like waving a white flag, of sorts.

“Maybe there’s hope for me yet.” 

Before Kas could elaborate on it any further, Ventus shouted for the ascent. 

It didn’t take long to recall the rescuers. 

“The job is done,” Ventus declared as he helped Carina step out. “She’ll let her friends know that she was rescued by our ship—they won’t bother us.”

“She was awfully chatty then,” Kas teased, folding his arms over his chest. “Anything else that you talked about?”

Carina’s eyes widened, and she looked to Ventus, who sighed. 

“I’m not sure if I believe her, but she claimed. . . “ he trailed off, looking troubled. He looked out to sea—but the siren’s glowing shape had already disappeared. “She claimed that we share the same mother. She even had the right name, something only my father told me the first time I met him—Corisande.”