The Selacir are known for luring. For the pull of their voices across water, for the way a song can reach into a person and make them walk toward the dark. It is the oldest story humans tell about them — and it is only part of the truth. Daelan has been alive for nearly a hundred years. He has heard humans sing before. He has never heard anything like her. He surfaces near the rocks and listens for a long time without moving and thinks, with the particular clarity of someone who has been waiting for something without knowing it: I would very much like to know that person. What follows is not a luring. It is a friendship — built slowly and honestly, tested by the strangeness of what he is, deepened by everything they find they have in common. It is the best thing in both their lives. And it is also, eventually, the most complicated.