Fast. It had been so long since she’d swum this fast, since curtains of glimmering bubbles had parted around her face. So long since she’d felt so free, even with the harness pulling back on her shoulders and slowing her down. The raft wasn’t nearly as streamlined as Dorian’s rowboat, and towing it was much harder work. Luce whipped through the glowing green waves, thinking of Dorian. In just a few days she’d feel his hands on her face again, breathe his scent, brush her lips lightly over his before she kissed him . . .

She couldn’t wait to tell him everything that had happened.

Maybe it was crazy to imagine that she might be able to go back to the human life that was destroyed after her father vanished, but she couldn’t entirely keep the fantasy of it out of her mind. Then she’d live with her father until she grew up, and she and Dorian would stay with each other always, but she wouldn’t abandon the mermaids either.

The daydream was a little vague on the details. But possibly she could find some way to bring the humans and mermaids together before it was too late. Maybe there would never be a war at all. The fact that she and Dorian loved each other must prove that anything could happen. If the broken world was ever going to mend, if humans and mermaids were ever going to reconcile, it made sense that it would somehow start with the two of them: with the boy who was almost a land merman and the mermaid who was—Luce allowed herself to think it—almost a sea human.

∗ ∗ ∗

After an hour or two Luce saw something blue in the far distance as she came up to breathe. She looked back at her father. “That’s land all right, doll,” he called, grinning at her. Luce thought she saw some other emotion hiding behind his smile, though, maybe worry or grief. What was wrong?

“We’ll be there before night,” Luce told him, trying to sound cheerful. “Going south was a great idea.” She kept looking around the horizon apprehensively, dreading a darkening in the sky that might mean a coming storm, but there was nothing except clear blue broken by beating wings, clouds like a trail of pale dots, a few whale spouts. It was all going better than Luce had dared to hope, and she pushed on, trying to ignore her growing tiredness. Swimming was a struggle with the raft’s weight tugging on her, and they still had so far to go. She twisted, trying to loosen the cramps building in her shoulders.