“What makes you think I’m enchanted?”

“Well, I mean . . .” He was definitely embarrassed now. He looked away, deep blue shadows and the dim reflections of the water curling around his face. “It’s exactly like a story, right? The boy who falls in love with a mermaid?” Luce felt her heart start to race. What was he saying? “So in a story—if you were, like, under a spell . . .” Dorian suddenly stared down at her, his face wild with longing.

“What then?” It was awful, Luce thought, but maybe she couldn’t avoid telling him the whole thing much longer.

“Well, then it would be my job to break it, right? Like, kill whoever enchanted you?” Dorian looked so hopeful as he asked this that Luce ached inside.

“There’s a big problem with that.” Luce shuddered a little as she remembered that terrible night on the cliffs when her uncle had tried to rape her, then left her alone and howling. When the change had started to come over her, she knew, she did have a choice, even if she didn’t understand what that choice was going to mean.

“What problem?” Dorian was getting too excited, and Luce cringed. “You know who did it, don’t you? And you think he’s too, like, powerful for me to fight—”

“No! Dorian, it’s not like that!” They were gaping at each other, and Dorian’s hands squeezed her shoulders convulsively. “I did used to be human, Dorian. But the trouble is—

“But if you were human before, then—”

Luce cut him off. “But nobody enchanted me! Or maybe I did it. I enchanted myself!”

Luce had never seen anyone look so completely astonished. Dorian gaped and seemed as if he was trying to say twenty things at once. Crosscurrents of emotion surged in his face, and his nails sank into her shoulder.

“Luce!” It was the best he could do.

“I didn’t know I was going to turn into a mermaid or anything. I didn’t know what was happening to me, but I still let it happen . . .”

“Oh my God!”

“I didn’t want to tell you. That I was ever human. Because I knew you’d flip out . . .”

“But how can you be sure there’s nobody else behind it, Luce? Behind whatever did this to you? Because if there is then maybe we could . . .” Luce knew what he’d been about to say: “Maybe we could turn you back.” How could she tell him that she didn’t think she would want to turn human again, even if it were somehow possible? It was terrible to realize what he’d imagined: stabbing some wizard or demon, the enchantment vaporizing as it died and the mermaids all miraculously restored to human form. And in his daydreams she was so grateful to have legs again, to be rescued from her life in the sea . . .