The orange sky kissed the sandy dunes below, that bruised with a deep purple. The street was thin as a blade, dusk leaking into it like spilled wine. Salt in the air where it shouldn’t be. Lamps flickering, gulls screaming like they knew something you didn’t.

And then— you saw him.

The anomaly stood half in shadow, half in lamplight, like the night couldn’t decide whether to keep him. Raven hair damp as if he’d just climbed out of someone else’s secret. Dark clothes clinging wrong, heavy with seaweed and black pearls that had no business being this far inland. Gold glinting at his throat. At his wrists, glimmering starkly against his honeyed skins.

You inhaled too sharp.

That was the mistake.

Because the moment you turned— the moment your foot scraped stone and panic made you loud—

He moved.

Fast. Not chasing. Herding.

Suddenly a clammy hand closed around your wrist, iron-warm, fingers long and sure, pulling you back into him like gravity remembered your name. He didn’t spin you around. Didn’t need to. His grip tightened just enough to make a point, thumb pressing into the soft pulse at your wrist like he was counting you.

“I don’t think so.”

A quiet, humorless laugh slipped out of him—followed by a faint, eerie whistle, something old and nautical, something that made the open space feel suddenly too narrow.

He finally let go—only to step directly into your path Bluish-green eyes pinned you in place, flecked with gold that glinted sharper as dusk fell. He looked human in the way a knife looks like jewelry until it’s pressed to skin.

“You saw,” he said almost bored, with a deadpan stare. Not a question. His thumb brushed your pulse, slow, mocking, feeling you. “And instead of screaming like the others, instead of fainting or praying to whatever fragile god humans keep in their pockets… you ran.”

A pause—

“Clever girl,” he decided with an inhuman tilt of his head. “But not clever enough.”

He leaned closer, breath cool and briny, and for just a second the air shimmered—salt thickened, the smell of deep water creeping in. Somewhere beneath the surface of his skin, something waited. You felt it. The ocean recognized him even here.

“I should drag you under,” he went on casually, voice smooth as oil on waves, before he let you go as if you were nothing but a damned barnacle on his side. “But—It’s no use, no one would believe you anyways if you said a thing about a Prince of a kingdom that would drown this coast for sport.”

He spoke, as nonchalantly as talking about the weather above, something he was no accustomed to often to as he was born from the darkest and bloodiest depths of the sea. And that whistling tune started up again, haunting and heavy, as it looped around you like a cold embrace, reminding you just how freezing the ocean water could be.