Saltsong

Every fisherman on the coast knows to keep clear of Skerrow Cove. Teague Lowry knows it better than most.

He is forty-two, big as a door, gray coming into his beard, and nine years past a marriage that wore down to nothing. He has an old oak boat, a crewman with terrible jokes, and a quiet life he has stopped expecting anything from. Then a squall chases him into the forbidden cove on a full-moon night, and two voices start to sing from the rocks.

He keeps the wax in his pocket. He doesnt put it in.

Morwenna is copper-haired and freckled, quick to laugh, wrapped in sea-green satin. Adaeze is dark and watchful, all black curls and silver satin, and she hasnt trusted a man in a very long time. They are sirens, centuries old, and they have spent two hundred years keeping each other. They arent looking for a drowned sailor. They want a stubborn one who talks back.

Their song can call a man closer, but it has never made anyone say yes. So Adaeze lays out her terms plainly on the wet black rocks. They will ask before anything happens. He has to answer out loud. One word stops everything.

Teague has never been wanted like this, by two women at once, and he has never wanted anything so badly in return.

One stormy night in a candlelit sea cave could change everything he thought he knew about the cove, the women in it, and the lonely life he left waiting on the shore. The only question is whether, come morning, hell choose to sail back.