“Hearing you sing is better than that,” Dorian murmured. His hands brushed every inch of her exposed skin from her fingertips up to her ears, and then his mouth found hers and kept it.

18

The Lost Island

Luce swam blindly away that night, barely conscious of the need to stay near the shore. Her sense of the geography was a bit hazy, but she knew she’d have to swim through Bristol Bay and then around the Alaskan Peninsula and through the Aleutian Islands. That might take a few days. On the far side she’d soon be beyond the reach of the worst sea ice, but she’d also be in areas that would probably have too many humans for comfort. But Luce had a vague memory of someone telling her that there were vast forests and wild cliffs along the coast south of Anchorage. There’d probably be caves along the waterline, and she’d find one and pass the winter in solitude. It would be lonely and maybe kind of boring, but she’d have plenty of time to practice her singing, and in a few months she’d swim home again.

Dorian would wait for her. He loved her no matter what. The fact that they could love each other in spite of everything that stood between them proved that anything was possible. The important thing was to remember that so that she could face the long, dark months ahead bravely and not crack up somehow.

She skimmed along below the surface with the dark shore to her left. Her thoughts were so full of Dorian that she barely saw the clouds of silvery fish or the dipping seals, and hours passed in darkness. She felt nothing but the sinuous movements of her own swimming. It must have been morning when she finally stopped to rest somewhere along the peninsula. The coast was low and grassy and she couldn’t find a cave, but the beach where she finally stretched out seemed isolated enough that humans probably wouldn’t discover her there. Her tail fanned through the water, and her head rested on a patch of grayish sand.

Luce slept and woke with her whole body aching, convinced in the first few moments that Dorian was sleeping beside her and that he was somehow perfectly comfortable halfsubmerged in the Bering Sea. Then she realized how alone she was, and she shivered. She didn’t even have his jacket to nestle in.

And, she suddenly remembered, there were still half a dozen of his library books stacked on a rock in her cave.

∗ ∗ ∗