the tank.
They were having drinks and hors d'oeuvres while watching a figure floating in the water.
Judging by the shape of his body—wide shoulders of a swimmer, well-defined chest, and narrow hips—he was a male, despite the halo of long white hair streaming around his head in the water and the silver skirt with high slits on each side. The skirt was actually a long, loin cloth, I realized, upon a closer look. And it was the only clothing the male was wearing.
Madame stood next to the bar.
“Hear the siren’s voice.” She waved her arms in the air dramatically, and the sound of a somber but breathtakingly beautiful voice filled the space.
It was a wordless song—no lyrics—the emotions conveyed through the melody alone. Yet the suffering in it was so clear, my chest ached, and my eyes burned with tears.
The man in the tank remained upright, as if suspended in the glowing water. The glow appeared to be coming from him, his pale skin highlighted by the delicate blues, greens, and pinks, which shimmered through his long, silvery hair, too.
Suddenly, a few deep notes of the song sliced through me with recognition.
I knew this voice.
It was the same sound that had enchanted me back in the cabaret in Paris.
Some of the songs he sang back then might have been soulful and sad, but none had been this sorrowful.
Yet I had no doubts. This was the voice of the man with fascinating blue eyes and a warm smile that hid in the corners of his mouth, even when he was singing a song meant to make you cry.
Zeph.
I shot my gaze back to the tank, examining closely the face of the person inside it. He seemed paler than I remembered, his hair much longer. There was not a hint of a smile in his features this time. But it was certainly the same man, the one I’d spent a night with and hadn’t been able to forget ever since.
My heart thundered so loud, I pressed both hands to my chest, afraid that the people at the bar would hear it.
“He’s gorgeous!” A young woman exclaimed, raising a tall glass with luminous liquid to her lips.
A man sitting next to her gave her a side glance. “Looks rather human to me.”
Madame leveled him with a stare. The next moment, however, her face lit up with another wide smile.
“But he is not human.” She gestured somewhere behind her.
The same dark-haired girl with big, soulful eyes who sold us our tickets entered from the side, carrying a large crystal decanter filled with a shimmering cocktail. She refilled the man’s glass with it.
“The differences between sirens and humans are not that apparent at a first glance,” Madame continued the moment the girl had left.
I spotted Radax, the large, bearded man who had escorted me out of this tent earlier. Now he stood in the entrance where the girl with the decanter had departed. Another man, who looked nearly identical to Radax except that this one was clean-shaven, stood on the other side of the entrance. The arms of both were folded across their enormous chests.
“However, there are differences.” Madame made another theatrical gesture toward the man in the tank...Zeph. “Aside from the ability to breathe under water, as you can see, Water Fae swim better than any fish and infinitely better than a human. They can also regulate their body temperature and are not affected by cold.”
“Still, looks human to me,” the man at the bar retorted gruffly.
“No regular man could be this beautiful,” a woman objected.
“So...” The man shrugged, dismissively. “A pretty-boy human, then.”
With another gesture from Madame, a ripple ran through the water, carrying something that made Zeph’s body arch. He threw his head back, his features crumbling into a grimace of pain, mouth open in a soundless scream.
This couldn’t be right. Bounced around in my head.
Why would Zeph be here? How did he end up in that tank?
Zeph’s jaw flexed as he bared his teeth. The singing never stopped, however, making me realize it must be a recording. He shot his hands to the side, his arms and legs rigid and straight.
Two pairs of magnificent fins opened, fanning out from his arms—elbow to wrist—and from the back of his legs—knee to ankle. The multi-colored glow in the water broke into iridescent swirls as Zeph slowly rotated inside the tank. When he turned with his back to the audience, they all broke into awed gasps.
A large, dorsal fin opened on his back like a