“I long ago came to that view myself. Humans are repulsive and senseless, and they work restlessly to destroy the world that carries them. But singing them to their deaths, though we are charged to do it . . .” Nausicaa shrugged. “A game for the newer ones, and I feel I have done my share. But no doubt you enjoy it.”

“I don’t, actually.” Luce heard her voice break a little, and Nausicaa’s glance sparked at her again.

“From the beginning? You felt this way? Do you think, even, that it is wrong, the vengeance mermaids bring?”

Luce paused and considered this. She couldn’t help being aware that the conversation was veering into dangerous territory, but the impulse to trust Nausicaa was overwhelming. “I mean, I helped sink ships at first, once or twice. But I always felt horrible about it. I kept remembering humans I’d loved.”

Nausicaa was nodding in a slightly impatient way, and Luce realized that this was just another story Nausicaa already knew. “It happens so, sometimes. There are those who still feel with their human hearts, and they cannot bear the task that is given to them.”

Luce was simultaneously bewildered and fascinated. The task that is given to them? Who gave it, then? Even more exciting, though, was the information that there were other mermaids somewhere who felt the way she did. If they could all live together . . .

“Where are they?” Luce asked, too eagerly, and Nausicaa looked blank. “I mean, the mermaids who don’t kill. Do they have their own tribe?” Now that, Luce thought, would be a tribe where it would be a tremendous honor to be queen, if they only thought she was good enough. Maybe she could persuade Dorian to run away, and they could start a new life together. Maybe mermaids like that would even accept him.

“Oh.” Now that Nausicaa understood what Luce was asking, she looked a little sad. “There is no such tribe, Luce. Mermaids who feel as you do—they do not choose to live as we must. All that I have ever known or heard of, they pull themselves soon enough from the water and die in the air.”

Luce stared at Nausicaa in horror, and suddenly remembered something Catarina had said when Luce had just changed and had barely escaped from an encounter with orcas: Luce, were you trying to die? Tell me the truth! So Catarina had known mermaids who preferred suicide to a life of murder in the sea. And Miriam . . .

“That’s what Miriam did,” Luce said; she could hardly restrain her tears.

“Of course. I knew that instantly from what you said of her.”

“But I haven’t! Maybe I thought about it, but I never tried . . .”

“You may yet.” Nausicaa said this with terrible indifference. “But maybe you will make a different choice and live with what you are now, knowing that the longing to kill belongs to all of us.”