Songs of the Silence

The Other Crown #3

He spent his whole life learning how to move through water.
He never learned how to stay still long enough to be found.

Erikson Vance is the fastest butterfly swimmer in his batch-or he's supposed to be. He has a coach with a laminated chart, a father who calls every three days for the number, and a championship in December that has been the organizing fact of his entire life for as long as he can remember.

Then he goes under during a solo night practice and someone pulls him out, and when he gets his head up she's already gone. There was no name. Just dark hair and two hands and the faint smell of salt in a building nowhere near the ocean.

He tells himself he's looking for her to say thank you.
He's not just looking to say thank you.

Songs of the Silence is a Little Mermaid retelling told from the prince's journal-starting from the campus pool, and the slow and humbling education of a young man who thought he understood water, until someone showed him what was happening underneath the surface.

She never said a word. He's never been more heard in his life.