Luce even tried one. It was the first time she’d attempted to eat cooked food since her change, and it felt all wrong in her mouth, too hot and too gummy. Luce spat it out, and soon fell into a hazy sleep. Firelight shone red and soft even through her eyelids, and after a while she heard him stretching out to sleep on the stones not far from her. Utterly exhausted as she was, worry kept jarring through Luce’s mind, keeping her awake. The journey back to land would be hard. All she wanted was to save her father, but there was a distinct risk that she could kill him in the attempt. She wasn’t even sure which direction they should choose, or where to find the nearest land. With the voices watching over him, he’d at least been safe. It was hours before she finally slipped deeper, tumbling through levels of velvety darkness.

Very soon now she would be with Dorian again.

∗ ∗ ∗

Luce woke to the thump of wood being dragged along the beach and looked up to see her father grinning at her. His look was playful, impish, and delighted, and Luce saw that he’d already lugged out of their hiding place a lot of the boards she’d gathered and also heaped up some other materials that had probably come from his own stash up on the hill. Luce couldn’t stay worried, not seeing that look on his face.

“I’d kind of been wondering what that wood was doing there.” He beamed at her. “But it was you, wasn’t it, doll? Always thinking ahead.”

“It was me,” Luce confirmed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so peaceful, so overjoyed purely by the sight of the brilliant sky.

She wasn’t going to talk to anyone from the FBI, of course. But maybe she could try changing on her own sometime, only without telling either her father or Dorian her plans. If things went wrong it would be better if they never knew what had happened to her. Two out of three hundred weren’t good odds, of course, but it wasn’t impossible that she would survive. Surviving wouldn’t be any more incredible than Dorian forgiving her for her part in killing his family; it wouldn’t be any more incredible than finding her father alive. Maybe incredible was just the way life went . . . Luce wasn’t about to mention the idea to her father, though. It wouldn’t be fair to say anything that might make him think they could really be a family again. Not unless she was actually standing up on human legs, alive and strong and staring back at the waves she’d left behind.