Chapter 1

I woke up in the body of the Siren King’s vicious queen—and suddenly found myself with an autistic stepson who hated me.

Every day, the little prince wrote with his magic stone:

I HATE YOU.

GO AWAY.

I’M GOING TO HAVE FATHER FEED YOU TO THE DEEP-SEA MONSTERS.

The Siren King also warned me to stay away from his son if I wanted to live.

I listened to neither of them.

I even bossed the little prince into helping me make seaweed cakes.

Until his birth mother came back.

I divorced the Siren King and packed to leave.

The little prince chased me all the way to the palace gates, his eyes red with tears.

“...But...”

“You forgot me.”

“Who else is going to make seaweed cakes for you?”

……

I was a child therapist. After a car accident, I woke up as a mermaid.

Then I heard a child scream, I followed the sound into a vast coral hall.

Several white-robed figures with fish tails hovered around a giant shell bed, singing a lullaby to put a small boy to sleep.

They looked like the Sirens from old myths.

Inside the shell, the boy was curled into himself, both hands clamped over his ears, his small blue tail striking the cushions.

I could tell immediately that the singing was hurting him.

“Stop singing.”

Two guards crossed their tridents in front of my chest.

"One more step, Your Majesty, and we strike," the taller one said.

"The King's order — if the Queen goes near the prince again, she dies."

The memories came flooding back.

I was in the body of Nerissa, a mermaid princess sent to marry Cassian Veyr, King of the Sirens.

The boy was Cael, Cassian’s six-year-old autistic son. My stepson.

And apparently, I was the most hated woman in this palace.

Because the last time Cael refused to answer Nerissa, she had called him a useless little mute before shoving him into a coral pillar hard enough to crack two ribs.

On the shell bed, the boy was getting worse, his screams going ragged.

"Listen to me," I said,"he is overloaded, and every note you sing is one more shock to his head."

The healers faltered for a moment, then voices rose around me.

"What would you know about Siren healing, Your Majesty?"

"This lullaby has been used in the royal palace for generations. It is a sacred tradition."

"Enough," I raised my voice,"That is an order from your Queen!"

The singing stopped.

"Let me through," I said.

The guards did not move.

“If I hurt him, kill me.”

The tridents lowered.

As I moved toward the shell bed, whispers broke out behind me.

"The King will punish her when he returns."

"She’ll only make the prince worse."

Cael also flinched the moment he saw me.

He grabbed the small glowing stone at his belt and dragged it through the water like a pen.

I HATE YOU. COME ANY CLOSER, AND I’M GOING TO HAVE FATHER FEED YOU TO THE DEEP-SEA MONSTERS.

“All right.”

I stayed where I was.

“I won’t come any closer.”

Then I called on the mermaid magic I found in Nerissa’s memories—the kind that could soothe distressed minds and lull them to sleep.

The water around Cael grew calm as the magic settled over him.

His sobs faded.

His grip on the stone loosened.

Within minutes, he was asleep.

No one moved or spoke, they all stared in disbelief.

Then, at the far end of the hall, the great doors swung open.

A tall man in black and silver filled the doorway, and every guard in the hall bowed.

Cassian Veyr. My husband.

His eyes moved from the sleeping boy to me, his voice cold.

"Who gave you permission to go near my son?"

“Do you have a death wish?”