He was thirty yards away, sitting with his arms around his knees and scanning the waves hungrily. But for once he wasn’t alone on the beach. A strange woman was walking her dog along the shore and Luce darted under the waves again, her tail almost whisking from impatience. It looked like the woman was on her way back to the forest trail, but still . . . Luce couldn’t completely repress a sudden fantasy of letting a few notes uncoil from her mouth, just a few, and luring the woman out into the ocean. Then she’d be out of their way more quickly.

“Come on, Biscuit!” Luce heard the pebbles grind far to her right. They were almost gone, at least. And there was a slight disturbance in front of her, Luce realized: somebody wading in the icy water. So Dorian had seen her, and he couldn’t wait either!

Luce skimmed along the seafloor until she could see Dorian’s bare feet, blue-white from the cold, then slipped close enough to kiss his ankle. “Wait till she’s farther away, okay?” Dorian murmured. Luce rolled onto her back so that a rippling pane of water covered her face and smiled up at him, his image split and curled by the unresting sea. He didn’t exactly look happy, staring away in the direction the woman had taken. “Maybe we’re . . . I think we’re good now. God, I missed you. I even came down here two days ago, just in case. The wind was blowing so hard I could barely walk.”

Luce came up and wrapped her arms around his knees. She leaned her face against his thigh and breathed in his warm smell; it was all beautiful to her, even the faint trace of mildew in his unwashed jeans. “It was the first time the water’s ever been too strong for me. Swimming was almost scary.” The dog was barking again, not really far enough away, and Dorian tensed a little.

“But you missed me, too?” Dorian asked; he sounded a little sad, Luce thought.

“You know I did. I missed you so much!” But Nausicaa’s words still rebounded through her mind in a stream of bitter echoes. “Dorian, Nausicaa knows. About us. I don’t think she’ll do anything to hurt us, though.”

Dorian staggered back out of the water and sat down hard on the beach. “You told her that? That you’re breaking those big-deal laws? Luce, I mean—what makes you think we can trust her?”