“I didn’t tell her! She—Dorian, she’s been a mermaid for like three thousand years, and I thought she might know more than Catarina. I asked her if there was any way a boy could change, and she realized right away why I wanted to know that.” There was no way she’d ever tell him all the other things Nausicaa had said, Luce thought. Repeating those words out loud would give them too much power. Even remembering them seemed destructive, as if delicate fibers between her and Dorian were being torn. And while she couldn’t quite put her finger on why, she had the impression that Dorian looked a little different somehow.

“Are you saying she wasn’t mad?” Dorian pulled her closer so that she was leaning back against him and wrapped her in his arms. Everything was fine between them, Luce decided. Doubting him before had been unfair of her, and Nausicaa was just being pessimistic. Mermaids always believed the worst where humans were concerned.

“She was totally mad, actually. But it wasn’t like it would be with another mermaid. It was more like she thinks I should try to become queen. Challenge Anais for the tribe. She thinks I’m being irresponsible because I want to be with you instead.” Luce snuggled into him. It was hard to believe she’d felt this absolute warmth only a few days before.

“I can see her point,” Dorian said. Luce tipped her head back to look at him, her eyes wide with disbelief. “I’ve thought about it a lot, Luce. If you took the tribe away from Anais, you could keep them all from killing any more people, right? And, seriously, ‘queen of the fucking mermaids’ does sound like kind of a no-brainer.” He laughed.

“I’d just be queen of this one messed-up tribe, though!” Luce gazed up at his wide gold-brown eyes, his crooked nose, thinking that he had no idea what he was talking about. “And if I did, I’d have to stop seeing you. I wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret.”

“If you were queen, though . . . couldn’t you just tell everybody that you have a human boyfriend, and too bad for them if they don’t like it?”

“You mean, just make up my own timahk?” Luce delivered the words with heavy sarcasm. She suddenly realized that Dorian hadn’t asked the most important question: if Nausicaa knew about some way he could change. Why wasn’t he at least curious?

“Yeah. I do mean that. Why shouldn’t you make your own version? Like, why should we care at all about these random laws that come out of nowhere? Especially when they screw us over? Luce, think about it, you could just take the good parts . . .”