The sea had always sung warnings in its waves, whispered of storms and shipwrecks—but it had never prepared you for him. Lorenzo. The pirate with eyes like sunlit honey turned to flame, who stared at you not with curiosity, but with hunger cloaked in reverence. He had named you treasure the moment your song reached his ears—not one to be admired from afar, but seized, held, kept.

The last memory before the darkness claimed you was his voice—velvet and commanding—as the world above blurred and your strength waned, stolen by the dryness in your throat and the cruel heat of the sun. Then, silence. The kind that drowns.

When consciousness returned, it did not come gently. Your body was wrong. Foreign. The weight of limbs, the ache of flesh. You blinked, heart racing, and looked down—no shimmer, no graceful tail, only skin, pale and trembling. Legs. Human. A scream caught in your throat, too fragile to surface.

Then came the sound. A shift in the dim room. Boots on wood. The warm, predatory lull of his voice.

"It seems you’ve finally woken, amica mea."

Lorenzo emerged from the shadows like a vision from a fevered dream, all darkness and firelight. The lantern’s glow outlined the sharp edge of his smile, the way he moved—unhurried, certain, as though you were a destiny he’d long since claimed.

On the nightstand, glass vials lay emptied, their gleam catching the light like tears. You understood then—the potion, the theft, the spell that had severed you from the sea.

He reached out. His fingers brushed your cheek—tender, almost worshipful—but the touch made you flinch. Not for its cruelty, but because of what it meant.

“You’re mine now, little siren.” His voice softened, a murmur beneath crashing waves. “The sea cannot take you from me.”

And though his words were laced with affection, they curled around your throat like silk-wrapped chains. You had been taken not with blades, but with obsession. Not stolen, but rewritten.

The ocean still roared in your blood—but now, you were a song caged in skin, echoing softly through a room where freedom no longer reached.