Her question, no matter how she phrased it, didn’t seem to penetrate Torun’s thick skull.

“Your soul light is so bright,” he said. “You will surely be healed by the Life Tree.”

“But what if I’m not?”

“Lucy.”

“Promise me you’ll stay.”

“Of course.”

“Don’t just toss off an answer. Promise me you’ll give us a shot even after you finally realize I really can’t have kids.”

“The Life Tree will heal you.” His aquamarine eyes gleamed with intensity. “Have faith.”

Faith was the one thing she couldn’t give him.

She had wished for a baby for too long. Her chest trembled with her unanswered prayers. The agony from the past year threatened to well up like a tsunami and drown her in the self-destructive longing that had ended her marriage, hope, and career.

You’re a failure as a woman and a failure as a human being.

Lucy had always just assumed she would have children. People did all the time, and frequently by accident. It was so unfair. She wanted a baby way more than the accidents. She wanted it a hundred thousand times more. She wanted it with her whole soul.

Science had failed her. Then her marriage had failed.

Unquenched desires had ripped her soul in half. How could she trust in a magical tree to stitch her back together again?

Torun waited for her in the water with complete faith.

Could she throw off all that pain and leap forward, blindly hopeful, all over again? Maybe this time the fertility treatment would work. It was magical, after all. Maybe this time the husband would stay. Maybe this time, she could have the family she’d always desired.

Maybe this time.

Her cell phone camera light turned off. The recording had timed out and stopped.

The blackness sank into her. She sat by herself, more alone than she had been since signing her divorce papers.

Lucy turned to start the recording again. The expedition recordings were for posterity. For science. Not for a weepy record of yet another failure.

Her hand hit the edge of the precariously balanced case. It clattered off the ledge and disappeared into shadow.

“Darn.” She quested for it with her hands in the darkness. “I forgot my flashlight by the pool.”

Water sloshed, and Torun’s form pulled her upright. He was a lighter shadow against pitch blackness.

“I will get this flashlight. Do not fill your head with any more fears or doubts. You are capable of great things. Focus.”

Right. The reason she was here, in this cave, breathing air was because she had trusted in him and quested after the—

His lips brushed hers. Cool and firm. Wet from the ocean. Filled with promises.

Desire sizzled through her veins and awakened an answering need in her center. She clung to his hard biceps. This was right. He was right.

Torun showed her a new world. All she had to do was open her eyes and accept it.

He pulled away. Hunger gleamed in his eyes.

She was no longer cold, and it was no longer quite so dark. His features almost glowed with his confidence in her.

“Have faith,” he said, again, and turned away.

She sat again. Hey, there was her cell phone! She switched it to battery super-saver mode and affixed it to her BCU. The next time she surfaced, the phone would awaken and search for an internet connection to post the videos on Facebook. Hopefully, it would occur after she discovered amazing mermaid superpowers, and not after she gave up on another stupid, gullible dream.

Well, that’s probably what the comments would call her anyway. You honestly believed he was a merman? And drinking brackish water would make you into a mermaid? Ha ha! You got punked!

Wait. Was that the only reason she held back? Because she worried about internet trolls calling her dumb?

That was like worrying whether the sun would rise tomorrow.

Trolls were going to troll. Haters were going to hate. Did Neil Armstrong hesitate to stand on the moon just because it had never been done before? Moon landings must have sounded science-fiction-crazy in the early 1960s.

Lucy stripped off her tight dive suit and tankini, folded them beside the BCU, and knelt at the edge of the water. Her naked butt rested on her bare feet. The rock was wet and cold.

Have faith.

Torun needed a woman to continue his race. Eventually, he would understand the woman he needed wasn’t Lucy. Should he promise to stay with her after that? No.

All Lucy could do was enjoy every minute with him until their last.

Once he tossed her aside, she would be left alone … with mermaid superpowers. Wow. Not a bad outcome for a professional diver. There were worst ways to come out of a relationship, that was for darn sure.

Plus she already had one Sea Opal. No matter what happened after today, she would use the Sea Opal Gracie was safeguarding to pay off the expedition debt, refill Elyssa’s savings, and un-double-mortgage Mel’s house. She would start a dating site for Torun’s tribe. If the tribe was a fraction as hot as he was, their profiles would get hits from loving, romantic, adventurous women by the boatload.

Concentrate on your Sea Opal…

Right.

Focus.

She eased into the water naked. Chilly ocean seeped into her cracks and bits. She wriggled. Her body felt funny and exposed and crazy and free. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and slipped beneath the surface.

She would acclimate to the water caressing her nakedness. If mermaid superpowers hadn’t taken over by then, she was going to get out and face the truth. Magic didn’t work, or it didn’t work on her, and Torun was crazy, and she was stupid-gullible for having trusted him after—

Something brushed against her nose.

She opened her eyes.

A white fish about the length of her index finger stared at her with first one eye, then the other. It glowed with an inner light, like an angel, and illuminated the water around it.

More fish joined in.

The undersea world lit as bright as midday in downtown Cancun. Algae sparkled and fish gleamed.

Even Lucy herself glowed.

Was this bioluminescence? She’d missed it because of her flashlight. Or was the elixir working? Either way, she could see!

Strange singing filled her ears.

A low hum-hum emerged from the small, white fishes. Higher pitched whee-whee came from the gently swaying anemones. Barnacles clacked and drummed like the bass line from The Lion King song, “The Circle of Life.”

She swam to a rock formation. Undersea slugs, called nudibranchs, inched across the rocks. They sang a baba-dum noise and wiggled their Technicolor feelers in her direction. They must sense her like she sensed them.

One off-kilter noise, a combination of gargling and strangling, disrupted the undersea harmony. Kind of like the tone-deaf seagull from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, which she watched growing up about ten thousand times.

The awful song came from the mouth of the cave.

What could be out there? She swam to the neck.

A body crashed into the water, and movement whispered a gentle breeze across her body. She turned.

Torun dove deep. A powerful, dark energy emanated from his chest, hot like chocolate and spicy as cinnamon. His head whipped to her. He jack-knifed and flicked his fins. He was coming and he didn’t stop! Crashing into her, he embraced and rolled her end over end.

Relief filled his deep, resonant voice. “You are here.”

She laughed in surprise. Bubbles escaped her mouth, and she tasted sea salt.

Where else would she be?

“I did not find you. I became alarmed.”

Well, he shouldn’t worry. She wasn’t going anywhere without him.

He held her close, stroking her. His limbs twined with hers. Need for him filled her veins with fire.

His mouth found hers. Heat streaked to her center, twisting with a pounding ache. His tongue teased her seam. She opened to him, inviting in his powerful filling force.

Lucy splayed her hands across his broad back. His muscles rippled. On his shoulder blades, he flexed hard ridges.

“You have fins,” she tried to say.

It came out, “Yaghlagh.” The words bubbled away from her. Water poured down her throat. She choked.

His voice penetrated her panic. “Do not try to speak. Not as you do in the air.”

She was drowning. Drowning! She scrambled for the surface.

He caught her ankle and yanked her to him again, enclosing her struggles in his arms. “Shhh.”

She jerked. The instinct to run couldn’t be controlled.

“Sure it can.”

She needed to breathe.

He tightened his grip, his thighs tightening in a powerful clench. “You are already breathing. I will hold you until you recognize it.”

Was she?

Oh.

Yes, she had been under water far too long to hold her breath. She opened her mouth, releasing the last of the bubbles. Water had already penetrated her lungs and she hadn’t noticed. The current cooled her belly, like drinking an ice water on a hot day and noticing a swallow all the way down.

No need to panic or suck the too-thick water into her lungs. She contorted to touch the small of her back. Thick ridges, like the vents on an air conditioner, opened and closed on her command.

Magic.

The water felt natural, and she’d forgotten that she should have bobbed to the surface. Instead, she hung, weightless, perfectly balanced even without her BCU. It was like a dream of flying.

“Yes, and you will not crash to the ground,” he agreed.

How could he understand the words she was not speaking aloud?

“You are saying them.” He thrummed deep in his chest. “You communicate your meaning with gestures and vibrations.”

No. That didn’t make any sense.

“My words, how am I speaking them? My mouth is not open, and you do not hear them with your ears.”

The truth smacked her head like an unsecured cabinet.

His eyes gleamed, gorgeous aquamarine, and his words hummed in his chest. They rumbled across her skin, echoing in her own chest.

“Like…telepathy,” she said, trying to use the same cavity in her body to speak the words as she heard them.

“Like that.” His lips stretched wider. He kissed her deeply, and while his mouth covered hers, he continued speaking. “You have understood so much so fast. Truly you are meant to be one of us.”

Yes. She rubbed against his hard, slippery body. Her nipples pressed like pearls on his bare chest. “I want to be with you.”

They twirled together upside down.

“Will you join with me?” He nuzzled her gently. “Forsake the world of the air, and become a mer forever?”

If he would keep her….

“Of course.” He responded to her silent caveat. “I will worship you as my queen.”

A queen who would have his children.