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“Dear God,” she whispered, scarcely able to hear her own words over her drumming heart, her singing blood. She lifted her arm carefully, felt around and then up the tapered spike of rock. She flatted her hand on more rock. The roof of the cavern. It was a foot and a half above her head.

She lifted her other arm, too quickly, and her wrist struck a second spike. Pain exploded. She welcomed it, a distraction from the panic unfurling inside her.

“Tib.” James deep voice came from below. When had he started calling her that? She maneuvered her arm upwards, placed both her hands on the roof.

Nothing had ever felt so final.

They could batter it with their fists, scrape it with their nails. There was no way through.

“Our lifetime,” she croaked. “It’s run by.”

James pulled her down, cradled her on his chest. He cupped the back of her head, and he kissed her, and it tasted like the sea, like her tears.

She was crying. She realized it, dimly. Stupid, stupid to contribute to the waters about to spill over the sides of the boat, sealing their fate.

Would the tide suck them out? Would they ever be found?

She thought of her father walking home through the fields with the sheep, unsuspecting. Of her mother checking the bedroom, calling to her from the yard, then sighing, resigned to prepare dinner alone. Tib had always been such an irksome, flighty, unreliable daughter. A will o’ the wisp.

No one would worry until later. Until night fell.

They’d look for her, then, her family and friends, all of Dearnrigg. And when they realized Lord Blane was missing too, they’d summon a regiment.

Too late.

She wished she could apologize. She wished she could tell her parents that they’d done well, that she’d loved every minute of her life, even the weary ones, waking before dawn to milk the cows, long winters of chilblains. She wished she could tell her siblings a story to make this hurt less. She’d tell them she was a selkie gone back to the sea, that she’d watch over them from the rocks. From time to time, she’d even shed her skin and pay them a visit in human form. She’d tell them that this wasn’t goodbye.

Where was Merlin now?

Oh dear. She was crying harder. She rested her forehead on James’s forehead. He was the last person on Earth she’d have wanted to witness such weakness.

“I’m not so brave after all,” she said, and he tucked her head under his chin, wrapped her in his arms, and hugged her so tight he nearly cracked her ribs.

“There’s no one braver.” He loosened his hold, moving his hands up and down her back, slow circles. “Much to my shame. I used to think, as a male, and a duke’s son, I should have that distinction.”

“I plagued you deliberately,” she admitted. “On behalf of the isles, and Scots everywhere.” The attempt at humor helped her blink back her tears. “That’s all over now.”

“Because you realize you’re in love with me?”

Teasing. He was teasing her. The familiarity of it ached.

And the truth of it too.

“Because neither of us can breathe underwater.” She turned her face into his jacket. “If I were in love with you, I’d plague you even more.”

“I should praise God then that you’re not in love with me.”

She almost responded—I didn’t say I’m not in love with you—but a current slapped the boat slantwise, and the stern struck rock.

She gasped instead. James continued on as though nothing had happened.

“We’re not in love, then,” he murmured. “But as it turns out, we endure each other’s embraces rather well. Our lifetime could extend considerably before I tired of this. And you don’t seem in any hurry to remove yourself from my person.”

“There’s nowhere to go.”

“What if there was?” He stroked her hair. He was rather dear, attempting to soothe her out of this paroxysm of terror.