No Longer Our Sea (Book 1)

Prologue

Since childhood, humans are taught the legend of the half-fish half-human creatures who dwell in the depths of the oceans. They were taught mermaids are gracious, beautiful, and compassionate creatures who's only want was to help lost sailors.

That was the generation before us. Now new legends are in place.

Now human children are told the legends of half-fish half-human enchantresses: sirens. The legends say sirens possess the power to bewitch anyone with their fantasizing singing voices. Their immediate goal? The death of their victims.

The change in the stories wasn't to scare the next generation but make them aware of the monsters that inhabit the roaring seas surrounding them.

My mother is the reason those legends were flipped into what they are today. She painted our race of gracious mermaids into the ruthless creatures we are today for one purpose: revenge.

My mother's punishment for the two-legged creatures didn't come by whim but by experiences that made her believe otherwise.

Years ago, when my mother was young and early in her reign, she had wanted to form an alliance with the humans of Bavia and the mermaids of Draesa. An alliance between our two realms meant power, wealth, peace, and her being remembered as "The One Who United Two Worlds." My mother, as ambitious as she is, was in love with the title that would be next to her name and all the good fortunes the human alliance could bring. My mother was fully aware of what she'd have to sacrifice for an alliance to proceed but she was willing to take the risk and give up her freedom to marry a human.

Queen Serafina, my mother, approached King James, the King of Bavia, and told him her identity and why she came. King James and his court didn't believe in the legends of the mermaids and thought she was a peasant from one of the villages looking to raise from the dirt and marry royal blood. As punishment for her suspected fraud, they threw her from a cliff and into the sea. The purpose of the harsh punishment wasn't only to see her drown but to be eaten by these fabled man-eating creatures that were said to lurk in the ocean.

She was appalled by the way King treated her and embarrassed to think humans could potentially be allied with mermaids of our Kingdom. So, she brought the human's false fables to life. She rewrote the legends, making them her own and gave the mermaids ghastly voices that could control their prey and sink ships. But created a new power for people of the royal line: the ability to control water. The new power she brought upon herself reshaped her personality making a once kind, caring, and naive Princess into a revengeful, manipulative, and cruel Queen.

After her creation, ships started to disappear, storms at sea became frequent, and it became almost impossible to travel to and from the island Kingdom. Now, the legends are a reality: sirens are real.

Sirens have risen from the shadows of the ocean, they are bloodthirsty and ready to carry out my mother's revenge. They are told to be ruthless and lack sympathy: mercy gets you killed.

My mother says they have condemned themselves to this fate, I disagree.