It didn’t help that they were at the dining beach and that only one larva, the Inuit one, was still living there. The fairskinned one had vanished the day before and her little blackeyed companion couldn’t seem to stop keening wordlessly as she lay hidden behind a jag of rock. As Luce and Nausicaa arrived at the beach the endless whimpering formed a kind of plaintive harmony running under the sound of the sea. The poor little Inuit larva had probably seen her friend swallowed alive. They’d tried repeatedly to comfort her and brought her oysters, but she refused to eat anything.

Luce and Nausicaa settled in a relatively sheltered spot, leaning back against low crags. Although they’d come there for breakfast Luce didn’t feel like eating, and she got the feeling that Nausicaa didn’t either.

“Luce?” Nausicaa’s voice was unusually gentle. “I will be leaving here. Perhaps today.” Heavy snow felted the beach, vibrant blue in the endless twilight, and the snow-laden trees looked like melting blue candles. It was probably ten o’clock in the morning, but time seemed to blur into meaninglessness in this light, as if the old distinctions of days and hours no longer applied. Nausicaa’s billows of midnight hair appeared even darker than usual, and her greenish bronze face was sad and determined.

Don’t leave me! Luce thought, but she didn’t say it out loud. Nausicaa would know what Luce was feeling without the words being voiced. They stared at each other in silence for a moment. Luce had known this moment might come sooner or later, but she still couldn’t quite believe that Nausicaa would truly abandon her.

“Come with me,” Nausicaa said in reply to Luce’s unspoken words. “Luce, I do not like to beg, but please. Go and gather your tribe, whoever will agree to come with you. We will lead them away from here together. I cannot escape the feeling that some evil is coming to this place.”

You know I can’t leave Dorian, Luce thought. She deliberately closed her mind to the possibility that the approaching ice might force her to leave him, at least for a while. In any case the ice wouldn’t get that bad for weeks, and there was no reason to worry about it yet. Nausicaa, don’t make me choose between Dorian and you!

“Your romance will end, Luce.” Nausicaa’s voice was softer than Luce had ever heard it. “It will be so much better for you if you can accept that, and keep Dorian only as a beloved memory. Come with me, and I will help you found a new tribe. We will live by our own timay, breaking Proteus’s thrall, and hunt humans no more. You will be queen in a new way, leading your mermaids on journeys never yet imagined. It will be exactly as you’ve dreamed . . .”