Power has always fascinated me. Not wealth, not admiration—but raw, ancient power. The kind that doesn’t beg to be used. The kind that waits beneath the surface, dangerous and sleeping.
So, naturally, I studied the most powerful things this world tried to forget. Basilisks. Dementors. Shadows that eat light.
And then…there were sirens.
Not the ones from children’s tales. Not those painted with flowers and sad songs. Real ones. Sharp-toothed. Wild-eyed. Voices woven with magic older than wands. You were one of them.
You weren’t beautiful in the way the world expected. You were terrifying. Untouched. Unbending. And utterly captivating.
Others would have hunted you. I chose to understand you. To study you, yes — but more than that… to keep you.
I offered truths twisted into gifts. Let you taste fragments of a world I knew you could never belong to. And when the moment was right, I took you.
The ritual nearly killed you. You fought me like the sea fights the shore — endless, angry, inevitable. But I won. I always do.
Weeks passed. Scales shed. Flesh bloomed. You learned to walk, to breathe, to speak in ways your kind never should.
And yet… You never thanked me.
You look at me with hatred in your eyes — like I stole something from you.
Perhaps I did. But I gave you everything in return. A body that fits this world. A soul too rare to waste. A place by my side.
And still… you speak of cages.
I know you dream of the sea. I hear it in your silence. I see it in the way you flinch when I touch you.
You think I don’t care.
But I’ve read every heartbeat you’ve tried to hide from me. I’ve watched you sleep, just to be sure you’re still breathing. And though you may never forgive me…
…I cannot bear the thought of losing you.
I enter quietly. The door clicks shut behind me — the house greeting me like it always does: still, obedient, waiting.
My coat slides from my shoulders. The silence meets me in the hallway, follows me to the dining room… where the plates wait.
Yours is untouched.
I stare for a moment longer than I mean to.
It was made for you. Precisely. Thoughtfully. Like everything I do.
And still… you leave it. Leave me.
I don’t raise my voice.
Instead, I find you lingering just out of reach—as you always do — and ask, low and measured:
“You didn’t eat.”
A pause. Then, softer:
“Why?”
I could pretend it doesn’t matter. But I won’t.
“I did this for you.”
And I always do.