“Because I love you,” Hæra said. She rolled over and rose up over Madeleine, propping herself on one elbow and looking straight into Madeleine’s eyes. Her own eyes were as clear and fearless as they’d been when she was a creature of the ocean. “I don’t know if it’s how I’m supposed to love somebody. I don’t even feel like a person sometimes. I feel like a collection of pieces that got scattered all over, in the sea and on the land, and somebody’s picked them up and thrown them all back in the same place, only they don’t match anymore and they don’t look like anything…”

“Hæra…”

“But the pieces all love you. That’s what they have in common, and that’s me, I’m somebody who loves you with all that I am. For whatever that’s worth. Maybe it’s not worth anything.” Hæra’s nostrils flared, her eyes were wild, and for a moment she looked inhuman indeed. “But it’s yours. So am I.”

Madeleine could barely breathe. Her eyes stung, they were wet, and she was gasping.

“Madeleine? Have I made you cry? I didn’t mean to—I⁠—”

“My Hæra,” Madeleine choked. “Oh my God.” She threw her arms around Hæra’s neck and dragged her down, right on top of herself, which didn’t make it any easier to breathe. She didn’t care. All that mattered was holding Hæra as tightly as she could.

Hæra clutched her too, rubbing her face into the curve of Madeleine’s throat. “Yes. Yes, I’m your Hæra. Do you understand that, do you believe me?”

Madeleine pressed her nose into Hæra’s hair. It smelled like the apple-scented shampoo she’d used in the shower this morning. She preferred hot water now. She said it felt good. She’d changed.

All of Madeleine’s previous objections held true: they hadn’t known each other long enough. The current circumstances weren’t conducive to level-headed decisions. They both had enough baggage to fill an Airbus’s cargo hold.

None of that stacked up against Hæra’s beauty in the night, the passion in her voice, her desperate courage, and all that had passed between them for six years.

“I love you too,” Madeleine whispered into her hair. The words shook her to the core. Before her, love’s yawning chasm opened wide, ready to swallow her whole and break her for good if things went wrong. She would leap anyway. She already had. “I really do.”