“Yeah, well, it’s too hard for me not to forgive you. I’ve always told you that. I couldn’t help forgiving you, not even when I used to try to make myself hate you.”

As important as Dorian’s words felt to Luce and as hungry as she was for the forgiveness he was offering her, she was suddenly distracted by a distant sound. The wind was whistling, but there was something unusual in the tone of it. A kind of musical accent, an urgent intonation. Luce’s skin prickled, all her nerves rising to meet the cry.

“Luce?”

“Dorian, I’m sorry, but . . . do you hear that?”

“You mean the wind? It does sound kind of strange.”

“That’s not wind!” Luce couldn’t see past the crags that walled them in, but it sounded like the source of that sound was getting steadily farther away. It was a terrible moment to leave Dorian, but . . .“I have to go. Now.”

“Did I do something? Luce, I mean, at least take me back! It’ll probably take me hours to row.”

“I can’t. It—she sounds wrong somehow, like she might be in trouble . . .”

“Another mermaid?” Luce didn’t answer, just flashed him a blind, frantic smile and dove. That voice in the wind didn’t exactly sound like any mermaid she’d heard before, but it didn’t sound like anything else either. And it had a dreadful quality, a crawling alarm, that made Luce’s heart race and sent cold, trickling sensations running through her skin.

The voice was louder under the water. The waves transmitted its silvery, whispering resonance; Luce was more certain now that it was another mermaid and that she was calling for help, but from farther out in the sea: out in those deepening waters where Luce had avoided swimming lately. Too many orcas. There didn’t seem to be much choice about that now, though, if only she could figure out exactly where the call was coming from. It fractured in the deep water, shivered into her ears, and she couldn’t pinpoint its direction. Luce broke the surface in confusion, staring wildly around. A huge fishing trawler was just starting its swing out to sea, heading away from the mermaids’ territory. Not that it would have interested them much in any case. Luce could remember Catarina saying that most of those ships were double-hulled to protect against collisions with sea ice. Trying to sink them was too chancy, not worth the risk, and Luce reflexively looked away from its rust-colored bulk, still scanning from one horizon to the next. There was only the ship, a few bobbing seals, the far-off spouts of whales. Nothing to indicate where that strange voice might be coming from.