Servaine Noxirel grew up hearing stories from her great-grandfather—tales of the grandeur their noble house once enjoyed and the madness and obsession that ran through their bloodline. The strangest story of all, however, was about his sickly young niece and the merman she owned—a boy whose beauty and allure inspired a possessiveness that kept him locked away in a tank. Despite bearing a striking resemblance to her namesake, Servaine dismisses everything as just a fairy tale. That is, until Servaine’s return to her ancestral manor dredges up Mel, the merman—who believes his Servaine has finally come back for him. But has he been waiting all this time out of love? Or for revenge…?
Servaine Noxirel is on a mission to reclaim the title stolen from her family generations ago. Despite the tales of murder and missing people that swirl around the ancestral mansion, what awaits upon her return is not a conniving usurper or terrifying ghost but a single man, seductive yet volatile. Every word he speaks drips sickly sweet like poisoned honey, every touch landing like a fatal caress. So when Mel begins treating Servaine as if she’s her long-deceased namesake, the situation becomes clear—one wrong move, and she’ll be dead at his hands. But when the “right” move involves pretending to be the Servaine the merman once knew, memories, feelings, and lines rapidly start to blur…