“For years now I’ve wondered how much longer we can keep ourselves entirely secret from them. It seems inevitable that they will start to notice. Too many ships will vanish; too many people will hear a strange sound in the far distance. And then”—Nausicaa looked hard at Luce—“too many mermaids will spare the lives of human boys. They will think that this one boy can do no harm. Who would believe his story when no one else has ever seen what he has seen?”

Luce stared out at the lush, heavy snowfall, a wild tangle of emotions in her heart. What Nausicaa said made her afraid and ashamed—she had been foolish to believe, as she’d carried Dorian to safety, that no other mermaid had ever made the same choice. But she couldn’t accept either that it would have been better to let him die. The snowflakes fell in such huge clusters that they looked like cupped pale hands begging in the dark.

Besides, if Nausicaa was right, humans would find out about them soon enough anyway. The problem wouldn’t be Luce and Dorian, but something bigger than that: a world too packed and busy to allow for secrets. Luce suddenly pictured the earth as a prison yard restlessly crisscrossed by floodlights. No patch of darkness would be allowed to rest undisturbed.

“But Nausicaa?”

Nausicaa’s eyes were fixed on the snow. Luce had never seen her look so depressed. “Yes, Luce?”

“If the humans do find out about us—do you think talking to them might help? Is there something we could say . . .” Luce broke off as she saw the expression on Nausicaa’s dark face. It was utterly bleak, so heartsick that Luce felt almost desperate at the sight of it. “You think they’ll still want to kill us, Nausicaa? No matter what we do?”

“I’m sure they’ll try,” Nausicaa said, and Luce realized there was more than despair in her friend’s face. Beneath the pain there was a steely ferocity, determined and calm. “We would hardly be the first creatures they’ve driven to extinction. But there will always be new mermaids arriving in the sea, and we won’t cease to fight.”

“But if we promised to stop killing them, then . . .”

Nausicaa’s look was scathing. “No doubt you would like to believe it could be as simple as that, Luce. But humans have wiped out hundreds of species that posed no threat to them. They find happiness in their power to destroy.”

“Not all of them do!” Luce insisted. “Anyway, what does this have to do with you talking to Dorian?”

“It remains dishonorable, certainly, for me to have a discussion with your human lover.” Nausicaa sounded so thoughtful that Luce suddenly understood she’d been brooding over the question for a long time. “But what will honor of such a kind finally matter, Luce? In a world where so many things are changing?”