Instead, a chest washed up on the grotto’s shore—dark wood, barnacle-encrusted. Inside: a midnight-blue silk robe embroidered with the constellation Orion, reversed (as seen from the sea floor). Linen shirts that smelled of salt and lavender. Shoes soled with sharkskin, silent as a fin.
"You said you were lonely." He capped his pen. "Someone has to keep the courier company after I’m gone."
She did not cry—sirens couldn’t, not salt water—but the grotto’s tide rose three inches that night, and when Elias woke, her hair was tangled with his, and the black pearls around his neck had turned a soft, mortal gray.