She didn’t actually want him to hurt Peter, but this hardly seemed like the moment to start an argument. “I’ll find you somehow.” She sounded like Nausicaa, Luce thought. “Don’t wait for me, don’t worry, just do whatever you can to be happy . . .” She could hear men chattering, their rapid steps, the skittering sound of the dog breaking into a run. The flashlight’s beam suddenly swept across her eyes as the men turned onto the beach. She didn’t think they’d seen her, but they would very soon.

“Hey.” The man was heavyset and lumbering against the twilit sky. “Thought we heard something. Who’s there?”

She couldn’t hug her father properly while he was standing. She settled for squeezing his knees. Everything she’d promised him might be a lie. Luce had to choke down a wild cry of grief as she realized that she might never see him again.

The water closed around her, but she couldn’t bring herself to speed away. Instead she hovered under the surface just offshore. “LUCE!”

“Hey there.” Dimly Luce could hear the strange man’s whistle of surprise and she knew he’d spotted the crude raft. “You okay, man? Looks like you’ve been through a rough patch . . .”

“LUCE!” her father screamed. His steps splashed in the water, but Luce was sure the strangers were restraining him. “LUCE! Oh, come back!”

“Luce isn’t here, old guy,” the man’s voice soothed. “Just you.”

∗ ∗ ∗

Queen Sedna and the others caught up with Luce twenty minutes later. She was swimming lethargically under the water, her whole body trembling from a mixture of fatigue and heartbreak. She barely registered the presence of the other mermaids as they flocked around her, guiding her to a safe cove on the next island over. Luce drowsed on the beach as the other mermaids ate dinner, their chattering voices mingling with the wash of thickening darkness.

“Don’t you think she needs some food, too?”

“I don’t know, I think we should let her sleep . . .”

“You think Nausicaa is right about her? Like, of course what she did was incredible, but . . .”

“I trust Nausicaa more than anyone I’ve ever known.” Luce thought the voice was Sedna’s, but maybe she was already dreaming. “If she calls somebody ‘the future of the mermaids,’ I don’t know, I kind of tend to believe that she knows what she’s talking about.”

“Anyone Anais hates that much has to be special at least.”

“I think they’ve lost us. We’re not going to catch them now.”

“She’ll know. She can show us where they live.”

Luce watched curved shapes like glowing seals in a midnight tide. Her father stepped out of the sea, his hair clean and his beard shaved, and threw back water like a shining cloak. He was safe now, and Luce slept.

∗ ∗ ∗