Luce lunged through the water to tackle her anyway, but Dana spun to one side and caught Luce’s shoulders between her cool hands. “Wait, wait, Luce! Wait, okay? I’m trying to tell you something, but you’re not listening to me. I had to get your attention somehow!”

Luce drew back, wary, half expecting Dana to flip her again. “What’s so important, then? That you need to tell me?”

“That you’ve always been scared to death of how powerful you are.” Dana suddenly sounded completely serious. Luce gaped.

“What makes you think I’m scared? I’m just—I’m trying to be honest about it, Dana!”

“Because! Because even if you were, like, calling up some bigger force, you were still the one who was doing the calling! No one else was there, Luce. And I’d be scared, too, if I could do that, but sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with it!”

“I bet you could learn how to do it. I don’t think there’s anything I can do that you couldn’t.”

Dana just shook her head. “You just don’t want to face up to it. You . . . I don’t want to say you don’t have an ego because you do. But sometimes I think you’re basically hiding from yourself. That’s the real reason you don’t want to be queen!”

Luce was astonished. “How can you even talk about me being queen? I mean, now that you know . . .”

“About that guy?” Dana ran one glossy hand over her face. “It still kind of blows my mind that you did that, Luce. I wish you hadn’t, I mean, so I could still think of you as being—I don’t know, the one who’s always so serious about the timahk and all intense about what it means to be a mermaid. Even if I told you off for being uptight about it before . . . I really liked believing I could count on you that way. But our tribe hasn’t done such a good job of sticking to the timahk anyway. We’ve all kind of screwed up. So it’s not really fair for me to hold that against you, right?”

Luce sat silent for a moment, resting her fingertips on the milky gray whorls of out-rushing foam. Someone had to stop Anais. On the other hand, living on her own made it a lot easier to slip off without anyone noticing. As queen of a tribe, sneaking away every evening wouldn’t really be an option. Before too long she’d get caught in Dorian’s arms.

“Luce?” Dana’s voice was suddenly shy.

“What?” Luce’s thoughts were far away, and it took her a moment to focus on Dana again. When she did Dana’s brown doe eyes looked tentative and sad.

“You did drown that boy, right?”