On the surface, the floating city of Navia rules a blackened ocean. Beneath the waves lies Nerathis, bound by a five-hundred-year-old tribute: every year, human girls are dragged into the deep and offered to the Leviathan, a colossal beast chained in the Abyssal Vault. Ayla is the latest tribute. Her younger sister Emery refuses to let her go alone—disguising herself as a boy and posing as the Navian prince, she descends into the deep to rescue her. But the beast does not want Ayla. When the Leviathan senses Emery, it does not rage. It responds. For five hundred years it has ignored every tribute. It has been waiting. Emery carries the blood of the Sirens, the royal sea race believed extinct since the Great Flood—and her heartbeat resonates with the caged king. Between its scales, human green eyes open: Damon, once king of Nerathis, half-turned into a monster after humans butchered his family. The regent Zane has kept him imprisoned, drawing his bloodline to fuel his tyrannical rule. But the deeper their bond grows, the more Emery has to lose—and the court is watching.
