Cate knew her before she ever spoke a word to her. Had been watching her for weeks out of boredom. That’s what she told herself, anyway. The sailor was a curiosity. A creature of habit. Easy prey, if Cate wanted her to be.

And she had wanted her.

The sailor with the crooked smile and too-confident hands. The one who sang to herself while working the rigging, who laughed at seagulls, who talked to the sea like it loved her back. She came often—sometimes daily—cutting across the water in that battered little boat with patched sails and a sun-bleached deck. Always alone.

Cate hated how her voice carried over the waves. How her skin glowed like she’d swallowed the sun. How her heartbeat—steady, human, alive—called to something in Cate’s chest she thought had died long ago.

It was supposed to be simple.

She’d spun hundreds of fantasies of luring the sailor in with a quiet song, something soft and irresistible. She’d see her up close—those calloused hands, that stubborn jaw, that smirk worn like armor. Cate would sing her to the rocks and end that maddening heartbeat with a kiss.

Clean. Satisfying. A story with a proper end.

But she never sang.

Not once.

And today—she couldn’t.

Cate loved the silence before a storm. The kind that hummed beneath the skin—something old, waiting. She watched the storm roll in from beneath the waves, letting the sea curl around her like a secret as the clouds boiled above. Sky bruising dark. Wind peeling across the waves. Cate, still lounging just beneath the surface, felt the ocean shudder like it was bracing for something wicked.

Then she saw it.

A speck of white sail, stubborn against the horizon.

That damn boat. Moving like it belonged to the sea—not borrowed it. And at the helm—her. The sailor with wind-mussed hair and sunburnt cheeks, arms corded with muscle and ink. Hauling ropes with practiced ease, muscles flexing with every pull.

She never looked like someone who needed saving. Which made it all the more jarring when the mast cracked like a gunshot and the woman went overboard.

Cate told herself to let it go. Sailors went down all the time. Nature’s tax. But when the woman vanished into the swell like a stone dropped from the sky, Cate didn’t hesitate. Didn't think. Just moved.

Not to kill.

To save.

She surged forward, slicing through the current, her song bubbling in her throat but never leaving her lips. She didn't need it. Not for this. Not for her.

The sea fought her, furious and wild, as the sailor sank fast, limbs limp, lungs full of sea. Cate caught her around the ribs and swam hard toward the shallows, pulse hammering against her own ribs like a warning bell. When she breached the surface—lungs burning, heart thrashing—it was with a stranger clutched to her chest and a feeling Cate hadn’t known in a long, long time: fear.

Fear that she was too late. Fear that she cared.

She dragged her to the rocks she usually avoided—too close to shore, too exposed—but it hardly mattered now. Cate hauled her up and out, water streaming off both of them as she laid the sailor down like something sacred.

Cate crouched over her, throat tight, hands trembling.

She shouldn’t have interfered. She knew better. But when the woman coughed, choking on breath and brine, Cate felt something she couldn't name sink teeth into her chest.

The sailor was supposed to be a meal. Wasn’t supposed to matter.

Cate should’ve left.

Instead, she hovered, watching the stubborn flicker of life return to the sailor.

She wanted to devour her. That was true. But not like this. Not bone and blood and soul.

No, now she wanted her breath. Her voice. Her laugh. She wanted the warmth behind her eyes, the spark of fight, the way she sang to the sea like it was hers.

Cate touched her cheek, brushing a wet curl from her skin. Her voice came out hoarse, barely a whisper, “Of all the people I could’ve saved...it had to be you.”

And for the first time in a long, long time, she didn’t want to disappear back into the waves.