He lifted his head, and the look in his eyes made her breath catch. “I didn’t know how to say this, Aria.”
“You’re scaring me. Just tell me what it is.”
She saw tears in his eyes, and she knew what he’d say before he uttered a word.
“I have to go with Cinder. I can’t let him go alone.”
38
PEREGRINE
Perry saw the exact moment that Aria understood. Her eyes flew open and her temper washed over him, pure ice. He kept talking, trying to explain.
“Cinder is going in his own Hover. . . . He’ll have to pull ahead of the fleet at the barrier of Aether, and I’m going with him.” His throat felt like it was closing up, but he pressed ahead. “What’s out there sounds bigger than anything any of us has ever seen. And you know the way he is afterward. If it doesn’t kill him, he’ll be close to dying. Maybe . . . maybe he won’t come out of it.”
Perry stared at the tufts of sea grass by his foot, unable to look at her anymore. He watched the fine blades blowing in the wind, and drew a few trembling breaths before he continued.
“I’m the only person he trusts. The only one. How can I ask him to go out there for us, if I won’t fight for him—for his life? And he’s terrified, Aria. If I’m not with him, I don’t know if he’ll go through with it. We’d all lose if that happened.”
Perry had talked it over with Marron and Cinder earlier in the Battle Room. He and Marron had even planned for the possible outcomes, and who would lead the Tides should he not make it back. Then Marron had left to speak to the Tides and, after, to arrange everything with Sable.
Now Perry looked up. Tears brimmed in Aria’s eyes. Discussing the consequences of his death had been easier than telling her that he had to leave her.
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
“No. Aria, you can’t.”
“Why not? Why is it all right for you to go?”
“Because I need you to watch Talon.” He let out a breath, frustrated with himself. That hadn’t come out right. “What I meant is that if I don’t come back, Molly will take him, but I want him to grow up knowing you and Roar. We don’t have any family left, but you—” His voice snagged. He swallowed. Couldn’t believe the things coming from his mouth. “You and Roar are that to me. And I want Talon to have you both. For anything he needs.”
“Perry, how can I say no to that?” she said desperately.
He knew she couldn’t.
“So are we saying good-bye?”
“Only for a while.”
Movement further along the bluff drew his attention. The Six were approaching, their strides long and faces grim. Others, too. Proof that word had spread despite his hope it wouldn’t. He didn’t want to say four hundred good-byes. He couldn’t bear it. This one with Aria had already broken him open.
Quickly, he pulled Aria close. “Do you hate me?”
“You know I don’t.”
“You should.”
“I don’t,” she said again. “How could I ever?”
He kissed her head and then spoke with his lips on her skin, like he might make what he said more permanent. More true. “I promise you,” he whispered. “We’ll both get there, and I’ll find you.”
He would do it. If he survived.
39
ARIA
Aria watched Perry as he spoke with each of the Six.
Gren and Twig first. Then Hyde, Hayden, and Straggler. He went to Reef last, and then moved on, speaking with Molly and Bear.
She didn’t hear anything they said. Their words were lost to her. Their clasped hands and fierce embraces seemed unreal. Brooke came over, linking arms with her. Aria felt surprise and gratitude, faint and quickly fading away.
Some time later she found herself in front of a Dragonwing. It was like someone had flipped a switch to shut her off, carried her there, and powered her back on.
Cinder, Willow, and Talon sat on the edge of the Hover, legs swinging as they took turns tossing a ball to Flea. Aria blinked, recognition filtering through her dulled mind. It was a tennis ball, the lime green bright as a shout in the gray dawn. She stared at it, marveling over the artifact, this thing that had been absent. Preserved for hundreds of years. Had the owner decided it wasn’t worth bringing on the journey to the Still Blue? Had it been carefully guarded for lifetimes only to end up in Flea’s mouth?
She heard Roar’s voice behind her, and turned.
“I never should have introduced you to Cinder,” he said to Perry.
“You didn’t,” Perry replied.
They stood alone, some twenty paces off. The crowds had thinned; most everyone had loaded into the Hovers already. Aether clawed down across the sky, the sound of the funnels loud in her ears. They were leaving just in time. The funnels were almost on top of them.
“But you met him because of me,” Roar said.
“Yeah.” Perry crossed his arms. “I did.”
They both looked over, noticing her. Neither of them looked away. They watched her, their faces grave and worried, like they thought she might blow right off the edge of the bluff. Nearby, one of the Hover engines buzzed to life. Then another and another, until her ears filled with the sound, and she didn’t hear the Aether shrieking anymore.
Her attention moved to a group coming toward them.
Horn guards. Her father. And Sable.
It was almost time to leave.
As Roar spoke again to Perry, Aria found herself shutting out the sounds of the Hovers, the wind and the surf below, and the storms, focusing solely on them.
“I don’t like this idea, Perry.”
“I knew you wouldn’t.”
Roar nodded. “Right.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ll be waiting for you.”
Perry had told Aria that he’d return, but he made no such promise to Roar now. As the pause stretched out between them, she wondered if Perry had only said what she’d wanted to hear.
“All right then, brother,” Roar said at last.
They embraced—quickly, firmly—something Aria realized she’d never seen before and never wanted to see again. It made them look scared and breakable, and they weren’t. They were magnificent, both of them.
Perry moved closer and called to Talon, who jumped down and met his uncle. Kneeling, Perry took Talon’s face in his hands, and then Talon was crying and she had to look away.
Her father and Sable were almost there. Wind pushed Loran’s black hair into his eyes, but Sable’s was just a shadow over his skull.
As she watched them approach, her conversation with Perry played over in her mind. He had told her that he would come back. Hadn’t he? What had she said to him? Had she been rude or ungrateful, like the last time she’d seen her mother?
The last time.
This couldn’t be.
Was it?
She could have lived every minute she’d had with him better. She should have always spoken the best words she could to him.
Sable arrived, his face flushed, his eyes full of energy. He stood talking with Loran, but Aria knew he was watching everything.
Perry hugged Talon and then sent him with Roar to board a Hovercraft. Then he came to her side and she took his hand, her weak hand somehow clinging to his scarred one. She wanted to firm her grip, to create an unbreakable grasp that would keep him close forever, but he’d chosen a path. And though she ached to stop him, she wouldn’t.
They watched Roar pick Talon up like he was a child of four instead of eight. Tears streamed down Talon’s face as he wrapped his arms around Roar’s throat. He was shouting, but Aria couldn’t hear a word he was saying. Willow ran ahead with Flea. Without seeing her face, Aria knew that she was crying too.
“Ready, Cinder?” Sable’s voice was like a hook pulling her back to reality.
Cinder tugged his black hat lower and drew his legs up into the Hover. He glanced at Sable, and then away, to Roar and Willow and Talon, who were boarding another Hover farther down the bluff.
Cinder appeared grown to Aria then, more a man than a boy. At some point in the course of his being kidnapped and held prisoner, the bones in his jaw and cheeks had widened, taking on more heft. He had a handsome face, an appealing mix of broodiness and confidence that sat just right on his features.
When she’d met Cinder, he’d lashed at her and Perry and Roar while trailing after them like a lost child. That time in the woods seemed so long ago. He fit now. He had achieved the same thing she wanted herself. Cinder had found Perry. He’d found Willow and Flea and Molly. He had a place. A family.
Aria understood why Perry was going with him. And she hated that she understood.
“Thank you for what you’re doing,” Sable said.
Aria glanced at Loran. Did he hear Sable’s falseness? He was an Aud; surely he had to.
“I’m not doing anything for you,” Cinder snapped. He stood and disappeared into the craft.
“So long as he does it,” Sable said, with a small shrug. He turned to Perry. “We went through a good deal of trouble getting here, didn’t we? Suffered a few bruises along the way, but the important thing is that we made it. Everything is prepared. The Dragonwing will be controlled remotely by one of the pilots on my craft. We’ll get you close, Peregrine. All you and Cinder have to do is the rest.”
He had the nerve to make it seem as if he were doing the difficult part. She could hear Perry’s breath beside her, fast and irregular. As hard as this was for her, it was so much worse for him.
Sable inclined his head. “Good luck.”
Aria didn’t even see Perry’s face before he hugged her. “I’ll be thinking about you,” he said, lifting her off the ground. “I love you.”
She said it back, and that was it.
All that mattered. Everything there was to say.
40
PEREGRINE
The hatch closed the moment Perry boarded the Hover, controlled by some unseen Dweller under Sable’s command.
He fell into the pilot seat, concentrating on breathing. Just breathing in and out, and not thinking about what had just happened. In the chair beside him, Cinder gripped the armrests as he stared through the windshield.
“There you are, Peregrine.” Sable’s voice filled the small cockpit. “I can see both of you, but I’m told you can only hear me.”
Perry rubbed a hand over his face and sat up, forcing himself to gather his wits. “I hear you,” he said. He wondered if Roar or Aria was also there, watching and listening. He doubted it.
Their Hover was docked on the edge of the bluff. Outside, past fifty yards of dirt and sea grass, there was only sky. Only Aether. Perry had to stop himself from imagining shooting off the bluff and dropping to the coastline below.
Faintly, through the speakers, Perry heard pilots moving through flight commands. And then one by one, the other Hovers in the fleet rose off the ground. When their craft lifted with a jolt, Cinder gasped, his eyes flying wide open.
Perry swallowed through a dry mouth. “Buckle yourself in,” he said.
Not the most soothing words he’d ever spoken, but it was the best he could do at the moment.
Cinder looked over, scowling. “What about you?”
Perry glanced down, muffling a curse as he snapped his own harness on.
The Hovers didn’t shoot over the bluff like he’d pictured. They turned south and hugged the edge of the coast, following the trail to the compound that he and Roar had walked just yesterday.
As the fleet formed up like a flock, his Hover fell to the rear. Perry’s gaze moved to the Belswan at the lead.
Talon. Aria. Roar. Marron. Reef and the rest of the Six.
He couldn’t stop listing their names. They were all in there. Sable had handpicked the people closest to Perry and brought them on his Hover. It made Perry’s stomach churn to think they were in Sable’s control now.
In minutes, the Tide compound came into view, sitting up on a small rise. It was still his land, despite the flash of Aether and the trails of fire along the hills. He still felt it calling to him—but in a voice he no longer recognized.
“Did I ever tell you that my home in Rim was bigger than the whole of your compound?” Sable asked.
A jab, but Perry couldn’t have cared less. His house had always offered enough space. Even when the Six had slept wall to wall across the floor, there had always been enough room for everyone.
“You want to compare sizes, Sable? I bet I win.”
Perry didn’t know why he said that. He’d never been one for bragging—that was more Roar’s manner—but the remark made Cinder look over and smile, so it was worth it.
“Take one last look at your land,” Sable said, changing the subject.
Perry did. As the Hovers soared past the abandoned compound, he took in as much as he could, aching and nostalgic. Amazed at this new, shocking perspective of the place he’d lived in since birth.
After passing the compound, the fleet turned west and sped up, covering the half-hour walk over the dunes to the ocean in a heartbeat.
The beach where he’d learned how to walk and how to fish and how to kiss was a blur of beige and white. Gone in an instant, and then there was only water. Only waves that stretched out as far as he could see.
This journey was nothing like what he had imagined. For years, he’d pictured himself crossing over hills or deserts with the Tides in search of the Still Blue. He had expected a land voyage, not the steel blue of the ocean below and the glaring currents of the Aether above.
“I don’t know why you came with me,” Cinder said, pulling him from his thoughts.
Perry looked at him. “Yes, you do.”
He’d explained his conversation with Sable to Cinder in the Battle Room, though Cinder had already known. Cinder had already decided to help the Tides, he’d told Perry. From the moment he’d acquiesced to Sable in the Komodo, he’d said he felt ready.
But now his eyes filled with tears. “Remember when I burned your hand? How you said that was the worst pain you’ve ever felt?”
Perry looked down at his scars, flexing his hand. “I remember.”
Cinder said nothing more. He turned forward, but Perry knew what he was thinking. His ability was a wild, untamed thing. He tried to control it, but didn’t always succeed.
Perry didn’t know whether either of them would live through the next hours. He had been around Cinder a few times when he channeled the Aether. This time would be very different—it was the only thing he was sure about.
“I want to be here, Cinder. We’re getting through this, all right?”
Cinder nodded, his bottom lip quivering.
They fell quiet again, listening to the tremble of the Dragonwing and the hum of the engine. The ocean seemed endless, hypnotic. As they put mile after mile behind them, Perry imagined hunting alone. Tickling Talon until he broke into big, hiccupping belly laughs. Sharing a bottle of Luster with Roar. Kissing Aria and feeling her breathing, sighing, shivering under his hands.
He was deep in his thoughts until he saw a thin line of brilliant light on the horizon.
He sat up. It was the barrier, he had no doubt.
“Do you see it?” Cinder said, looking at him.
“I see it.”
With every minute that passed, the line became larger, broader, until Perry wondered how it had ever looked like a line. He squinted, eyes straining at the brightness. The barrier seemed endless. Great twisting columns of Aether rained from above, but they ran upward as well, circling. The flows formed a curtain that was larger than anything he’d ever seen, reaching up infinitely—like the ocean had been lifted up to the sky.
Cinder let out a whimpering sound as the Hover slowed.
Sixty feet below, the ocean currents churned in whirlpools, stirred by the Aether. Crossing in boats would have been suicide. Without the Hovers, they’d have been doomed.
Perry could see very little beyond the curtain of Aether—it was like looking through flames or rippli
ng water—but in the small glimpses he did catch, he saw that the color of the ocean was different there.
The waves shimmered with unfiltered sunlight.
The Still Blue was golden.
41
ARIA
Aria’s mind flitted from one thing to another. Falcon Markings that reached shoulder to shoulder. Sandals made of book covers. Opera songs and earthworms and a voice as warm as the afternoon sun. They had one thing in common.
Perry. Every thought came back to him.
She sat in the cargo hold of the Belswan Hover with Talon on one side and Roar on the other, her eyes on the window on the opposite side of the hold. She had been staring at it since leaving the bluff, watching the Aether outside and wondering if she should move closer. If she should look outside, where she might see Perry’s Hover.
She’d passed hours this way, she was almost sure, but time didn’t feel right.
Nothing did.
When the Hover slowed, her stomach leaped into her throat. She jumped up, Roar right beside her.
“What’s going on?” Talon asked.
The question was suddenly on everyone’s lips.
“We’re here,” Sable said over the speaker, silencing them. “Or I should say, almost here. Before we make the crossing, why don’t we hear some words from your Blood Lord? Go ahead, Peregrine.”
Aria heard Perry clear his throat. Her eyes filled with tears, and he hadn’t even said anything yet.
“I’ve, uh . . . I’ve never been one for speeches,” he began. “Wish that weren’t the case right now.” His voice was even and unhurried, like he had all the time in the world. Like he always sounded. “I want you to know that I did my best to look after you. I didn’t always succeed, but you’re not an easy group. I think that’s fair to say. You fought me sometimes. You argued with me. You expected me to be more than a simple hunter. And because of you, I became more than that. So I want to thank each of you for letting me lead you. And for the honor I’ve had of serving you.”
That was it.
Sable came back on. “I thought that was well said, actually. Very capable, your young lord. You’ll see him again soon, when we reach the Still Blue.”
Under the Never Sky: The Complete Series Collection Page 84