The Twice Lost

He could also confirm her identity after some people just happened to tape a mermaid. She was heading this way, the soldier had said.

The girl’s eyes were wide, and she was biting her lip. Luce wavered, all the blood rushing away from her head and leaving a stripped, nightmarish shore behind it. Could Dorian really have done that to her?

“I’d heard about you and the whole water-cannon act. You’re getting to be kind of legendary, for sure. But you’ve really got enough power to pick up a boat and crack it in half?” The girl laughed, too wildly, then choked on her own laughter. Her face kept bunching strangely.

Luce gaped at her. She was overwhelmed by the hideous things she’d just realized. “It . . . works better when I’m really upset. I couldn’t always . . .”

“Oh, I think you’re going to get sufficient opportunities to be upset!” Suddenly the girl’s poise crumbled completely, and her face deformed like smashed clay. Sobs racked her, and she doubled and gasped. Luce wasn’t sure what to do at first—the girl seemed too tough and confident to want to be held.

Then Luce didn’t care anymore. She swam over and hugged the weeping mermaid, resting her head on the same rock. Luce didn’t know why she couldn’t cry now. She definitely had enough reasons to. She’d never felt so cold, so utterly poisoned inside. She’d thought that abandoning her would be enough of a betrayal for Dorian, but apparently he’d only be satisfied with getting her murdered. That was what humans were like; that was what happened if you trusted one of them.

Why hadn’t she wanted to kill them, again?

The strange girl’s sobs grew only more violent.

Luce listened to her and thought with icy loathing of the boy she’d once loved so completely. He was responsible for this.

* * *

It was at least an hour before the strange girl cried herself out. “Queen Luce? We’re going to have to get moving.”

“I know,” Luce said. Another tribe had died because she’d come too late. And after what had happened that morning the divers would be more determined than ever to catch her, and they’d go on killing all the mermaids along her route.

Far from saving them, she’d only ensured their deaths.

“Where are you going, anyway?”

“South. I was trying to warn everyone, but now . . .” Luce shook herself. “I never asked your name?”

“Oh, right. Where are your manners? There we were escaping from a complete bloodbath, and you didn’t give me a proper chance to introduce myself!” There was still an edge of hysteria in the stranger’s voice that made her annoyance sound more serious than she’d probably meant it to. “J’aime.”

“Gem?”

“No. Like Jem. Je-aime. It’s French for ‘I love’.”

Luce looked up at J’aime. Even without peering into the cloud of dark shimmer around the other mermaid’s head Luce was suddenly sure that whoever had hurt J’aime enough to change her into a mermaid hadn’t been her parents. Not if they’d given her a name like that.

Just like it hadn’t been Luce’s parents who’d driven her to the point of losing her humanity. Her father still loved her, Luce knew.

That, Luce thought bleakly, was why she didn’t want to kill humans. Why she still didn’t want to. She didn’t even want to kill those black-suited divers who were hunting her and all the other mermaids they could find.

If she did they might leave daughters behind. Girls who’d only wind up like her and . . .

“Hi, J’aime.”

“You said they killed your tribe, too?” J’aime’s voice was suddenly much softer.

“Yes. My ex-tribe, really. But the divers just slaughtered everybody, and ships weren’t even going anywhere nearby anymore, so it wasn’t like, like really self-defense or . . .”

“Did you see it happen?” J’aime’s eyes were wide in the dimness. Luce knew she was seeing unspeakable things all over again; that, no matter how long she lived, she’d never completely stop seeing them.

“I . . . just found the bodies.” Horrible as that was, Luce understood that it was much worse for J’aime.

“And it’s because of those helmets? Why we can’t just drown them?”

“Yes.”

“You can still kill them, though!” J’aime gave a hacking laugh that showed how close she was to sobbing again, but her voice turned crisp and assertive as she went on talking. “Thank God one of us can! But damn, you’re going to be one busy girl, Luce. You’ll have to kill them for everybody! Smash the hell out of their boats! I’m gonna have to come with you just so I can watch those creeps get what they deserve. After they cut Maya’s throat like that . . .”

“J’aime . . .” Luce didn’t know how to break the news to her, but she realized she was sick of hiding her real feelings. The time for that was long past. “I’m sorry. I won’t kill anyone. Not unless they’re about to kill one of us and there’s really no other way. I’m not about to murder people for revenge, though.”

J’aime stared at her. “You have to! You won’t after . . .”

Luce tried to think of a way to explain it. “It doesn’t help, J’aime. Mermaids have been killing humans for thousands of years, and it hasn’t helped anything. It’s just making them go insane wanting to murder us! And besides . . . weren’t there any humans you loved?”

J’aime was glowering at her. “Sure. My parents. My grandma. They’re dead. So whether I loved them is no longer particularly relevant, okay?”

“But anyone we kill could be the only person some other girl loves, and then she could wind up . . . in foster care, or with someone a lot worse.”

“Those helmet guys are out to kill all of us! They blasted those spear things at everyone; they spilled their guts—”

“I know that.” Luce’s head was starting to wobble again, and her face felt hot and heavy. J’aime’s fury made her want to weep and scream and hide all at once.

“You will kill them! I don’t care what kind of queen . . . If I have to make you do it myself, every last one of them is going to die for that!”

“No.” Luce braced herself as J’aime glared at her. “J’aime, look, however many of those divers we kill, they’ll just send more of them after us, okay? If I thought I could save the mermaids that way I’d do it, but I know it won’t work!”

“Yeah?” J’aime spat it out. Her raw hatred hurt Luce more than anything that had happened that morning. “What will? ’Cause if you won’t get out there and dispose of the problem, that’s going to be a lot of dead mermaids who you did nothing for!”

“We’ll . . . have to think of something different. Some other way.” Luce knew how pathetic that must sound and stared up at the fragment of blue daylight far above.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” Admitting that made Luce wonder if it would be better for everyone if she was dead. If the soldiers wanted her in particular, maybe they’d stop once she was killed?

J’aime shook her head. “I heard you were some kind of great queen. But you’re just sad. All that power— like who’s ever even seen that?—and you won’t do one thing to help.” She turned to go, her torn violet tail snaking awkwardly in the deep water.

“Be really careful, J’aime, please? Keep hidden.”

“Great advice. You stay away from the rest of the tribes out here, okay? If you’re not willing to do anything positive, you’ll just get them killed.”

“But . . . someone has to warn them, J’aime!”

“I’m on it.”

J’aime was gone.

She had a point. And even with her sliced tail she could go faster than Luce now, anyway.