The corpse of a mermaid rots high above a bushel of pure white gardenias. Her scales fall like stardust over the moonlit garden, shriveled but still glittering and iridescent, even as the rest of her congeals. No one pays any mind to the devastation, however. They’re too busy bathing in the glitter, smearing it on their chests and lips in sadistic ritual. Bittersweet liquor flows like a fountain from their hands as they drink deeply, as they shriek with laughter and dance around their victim, reaching up to pull at her long lavender hair. The men. The women.

Humans.

They do not mourn the creature they’ve slain. They celebrate her death and dance beneath her grave.

An old anger, hot and furious, clenches my heart in its sharpened claws. Just beyond the ornate white gates of the palace garden, beneath a dome of silvered glass and decorative marble columns, a full moon illuminates a hundred royals and nobles celebrating their vindictive masquerade. A hundred humans whose families have spent generations claiming and slaughtering and wrecking.

Tonight they will pay.

For five centuries, humans have slaughtered merrow. Out of greed. Cowardice. They fear what they do not—what they refuse to—understand, and instead of seeking our favor, instead of fostering peace, they butcher us on sight. To humans, a merrow commits treason by simply existing, and our sentence is swift execution— a sword in the heart, perhaps, if the human feels merciful, or a slow and torturous flaying if not.