Some queen, Violet thought, then shook her head wildly to make the words go away.

The brief interlude of blue daylight was already fading. Dana’s beautiful brown skin took on a midnight shading outlined by her dim golden glow, and her coppery tail thrashed in sympathy with some unseen dream.

As far back as she could remember Violet had suffered from a sense that magic was everywhere: that dreams might grow like vines in empty skulls: that the air might take on a voice of its own or suddenly feather itself into a pulsing wing. From the wing a hawk would sprout, then dive at her and claw out her eyes. She’d felt the stirring of enchantment under her fingertips, and it had horrified her. With her transformation into a mermaid that creeping magic had suddenly, violently, invaded her body and taken it over, without asking her. Violet still couldn’t feel the involuntary force and grace of her own tail without a shiver of aversion. Changing was simply the most devastating thing that had ever happened to her. It was even worse than watching her older brother being molested when she was still a small girl. And as for singing, well, Violet liked listening to the other mermaids, especially to Luce. But her own singing was stiff and uncomfortable, barely mediocre, and she usually tried to keep her voice as quiet as possible. She didn’t want power, and most of all she didn’t want the magic to think she’d accepted it.

But now Violet felt an inexplicable desire to sing, maybe even to try copying the odd, smooth tone—smooth even when it rose to a scream—that Luce’s voice took on when she controlled the water. She glanced at Dana again. It would be too inconsiderate to wake her, Violet thought, and she stared around the room in frustration. The starfish didn’t have the same shape as before. Now it was weirdly bundled in on itself like a squashed lemon.

Violet looked again and realized that the starfish was halfway through the laborious process of flipping itself right side up.

∗ ∗ ∗

Miles down the coast later that night Luce stretched out on the beach of the shallow cave where she usually took Dorian, glancing around at the geometry of the broken rocks and the complicated snaking shapes of the roots that dangled overhead. A froth of gleaming snow covered everything. Somber clouds and mist choked out the sky almost all the time now, but this was a rare clear night. The stars were fierce and razor-bright, surrounded by radiating fangs of white brilliance, and an icy wind whirled down from the far north. Luce was a little bored. Dorian and Nausicaa had been talking so intensely—for what felt like hours now—that Luce was starting to feel sorry she’d suggested it.