She drew a shaky breath. “Roar,” she said.
He rolled to his feet without a word. The suddenness of his movement startled her, and she wondered if he’d ever been asleep.
He stared at her with unfocused eyes. Stared through her. She remembered feeling that way when her mother died. Detached. Like nothing she saw looked the same. In one day, her entire life had changed. Everything—from the world around her to the way she felt inside—had become unrecognizable.
Aria stood. She wanted to hold him and sob with him. Give it to me, she wanted to scream. Give me the pain. Let me take it from you.
Roar turned away. He picked up his jacket, banked the fire, and began to walk.
As they hurried to put the Snake behind them, clouds moved in, casting a mottled darkness over the woods. Aria’s right knee throbbed—she must have sprained it on the fall from the balcony—but they had to keep going. Sable would be after them. They needed to get away from Rim and find safety. It was all she let herself think about. All she could manage.
They traveled along the crest, stopping in the afternoon in a dense pocket of pines. The Snake curved along the valley below, the water rippling like scales. In the distance she saw a wall of rising black smoke. Another stretch of land decimated by a storm. The Aether was growing more powerful. No one could be in any doubt.
Roar dropped his satchel and sat. He hadn’t spoken once yet today. Not a word.
“I’m going to look around,” she said. “I won’t go far.” She left to scout their position. They were protected on one side by a shale slope. On the other by an impassable cliff. If anyone came after them, they’d have fair warning.
When she came back, she found Roar hunched over his knees with his head in his hands. Tears streamed down his cheeks and rolled off his chin, but he wasn’t moving. Aria had never seen anyone cry that way. So still. Like he didn’t even realize he was doing it.
“I’m right here, Roar,” she said, sitting by him. “I’m here.”
He shut his eyes. He didn’t respond.
Seeing him that way made her hurt. It made her want to scream until her throat was raw, but she couldn’t force him to talk. When he was ready, she’d be there.
Aria found a spare shirt in her satchel and tore it into strips. She wrapped her knee and put her things away, then had nothing else to do except watch Roar’s heart bleed out before her eyes.
An image sprang to her mind, of Liv smiling sleepily and asking, Are you the bird, or is my brother?
Aria clamped her hand over her mouth and scrambled away. She darted past shrubs and trees, needing distance because she couldn’t cry silently and she wouldn’t make it worse for Roar.
Liv should’ve been married tomorrow, or she should have run away with Roar. She should have seen Perry as a Blood Lord, and she should’ve been Aria’s friend. So much had vanished in a second.
Aria remembered being in the dining room with Sable. She’d had a knife in her hand, and a clear shot at his neck. She hated herself for not having done it. She should have killed him then.
Eyes swollen, her head pounding, she limped back to Roar. He was asleep, his head resting on his satchel.
She found her Smarteye and fought back a wave of fresh tears. If Liv hadn’t stolen it, would she still be alive? Would she be alive if Aria had given the Eye back to Sable on the balcony?
It nauseated her to think of Hess and Sable’s meeting. Their deal to go to the Still Blue together meant turning their backs on countless innocent people. She thought about Talon and Caleb and the rest of her friends in Reverie. Would they be chosen to go? And what about Perry, and Cinder, and the rest of the Tides? What about everyone else? The Unity was happening again, and it was more horrific than anything she’d imagined.
The thought of seeing Hess made her stomach turn, but she needed to. She’d connected him with Sable. She had done her part in helping him find the Still Blue. Now he needed to follow through on his part of the deal—and if he failed her, she’d contact Soren. She didn’t care how it happened. She needed Talon back.
Pulse racing, she applied the Smarteye. The biotech worked, attaching to her eye socket. She saw that the recordings were gone. Only the icons for Hess and Soren remained on her screen. She tried Hess and waited. He didn’t come.
She tried Soren next. He never showed either.
35
PEREGRINE
Later, Perry climbed up to the roof of his house and watched the Aether coiling in the sky. He’d plunged into the ocean after Kirra left, needing to wash her scent from him. He’d cut through the waves until his shoulders burned, then returned to the compound, his body tired and numb, his mind clear.
As he rested his head against the roof tiles, he could still feel the movement of the ocean. Closing his eyes, he drifted on the blurry edge of a memory.
He remembered the time his father took him hunting, just the two of them, on the afternoon Talon was born. Perry had been eleven years old. A warm day, the breeze as soft as a breath. He remembered the sound of his father’s stride, heavy and sure, as they’d walked through the woods.
Hours passed before Perry realized his father wasn’t tracking, wasn’t paying attention to scents. He stopped abruptly and knelt, looking Perry in the eyes in a way he seldom did, spots of sunlight dancing on his forehead. Then he told Perry that love was like the waves in the sea, gentle and good sometimes, rough and terrible at others, but that it was endless and stronger than the sky and the earth and everything in between.
“One day,” his father had said, “I hope you understand. And I hope you’ll forgive me.”
Perry knew how it felt to be haunted by a mistake whenever he lay down to sleep. There was nothing more painful than hurting someone you loved. Because of Vale, Perry realized he understood. No matter how hard he tried, there would be times when he couldn’t stop the rough and terrible from happening. To his tribe. To Aria. To his brother.
Shifting his back on the roof tiles, he decided that the one day his father had spoken of was today. Tonight. Right now. And he forgave.
The storm struck before dawn, wrenching him from a deep, restful sleep. The Aether turned in spirals, brighter than he’d ever seen. Perry climbed to his feet, his skin prickling, the acrid smell sharp and suffocating. To the west, a funnel wove down from the sky, turning toward the earth. The shrieking sound roared in his ears as it struck and spooled back up. He saw another funnel to the south, and then another. Suddenly the night was alive, pulsing with light.
“Perry, get off there!” Gren yelled from the clearing below. People rushed out of their homes, terrified, running for the cookhouse.
Perry sprinted for the ladder. Halfway down, everything turned shocking white, and the air shuddered. His legs tensed. He missed a rung and fell, tumbling to the dirt.
Across the clearing, an Aether funnel whirled down, striking Bear’s house. Shaking the earth beneath his feet. Perry watched, unable to move, as roof tiles exploded and popped. The funnel spooled back up, and the roof rumbled and toppled to one side. He shot to his feet and sprinted, knocking people over.
“Bear!” he yelled. “Molly!” He saw only a tumble of rock where the front door and window had been. Smoke seeped from the rubble. Fire burned somewhere inside.
Twig appeared beside him. “They’re in there! I hear Bear!”
People gathered around, watching in shock as flames licked up from the cracks in the sloping roof. Perry caught Reef’s eyes. “Get everyone in the cookhouse!”
Hayden pumped water from the well. Kirra’s people stood behind her, clothes whipping in the hot, swirling wind.
“What do you want us to do?” she asked, their time on the beach forgotten.
“We need more water,” he told her. “And help move rubble!”
“If we move any of this, the rest of the roof could fall,” Gren said.
“We don’t have a choice!” Perry yelled. Every second they lost, the fire spread. He grasped the stones of the collapsed wall, heaving them away one at a time, panic setting in as the heat of the fire seeped through the rubble into his hands. He sensed his own men beside him and Kirra’s.
Seconds felt like hours. He looked up and saw an Aether funnel slash down to the cookhouse. The impact threw him sideways, down to his knees. When the funnel wove back to the sky, he stayed for silent, dizzying seconds, regaining his bearings. Twig stared at him vacantly, a trail of blood running down his ear.
“Perry! Over here!” Straggler called from a dozen paces away. Hyde and Hayden pulled Molly through a gap in the rubble.
Perry ran to her. Blood seeped from a gash on her forehead, but she was alive. “He’s still in there,” she said.
“I’ll get him, Molly,” he promised. He wouldn’t let Bear die.
The brothers carried her to the cookhouse, where she could get treated. Everywhere Perry looked, funnels lashed the ground.
Nearby, Kirra called her people into the cookhouse. “We tried,” she told him. She shrugged and walked away. That was how easily she gave up on someone who needed help. Whose life was on the line.
Perry turned back to the house just as the rest of the roof folded inward. The air rushed from his lungs, and screams of terror erupted around him.
“It’s over, Perry.” Twig grasped him by the arm, tugging him toward the cookhouse. “We have to get inside.”
Perry shook him off. “I’m not leaving him!” He spotted Reef across the clearing, running with Hyde. He knew they’d haul him away.
Then Cinder ran up with Willow, Flea barking at their feet. He looked at Perry, a fierce intensity in his eyes. “Let me help!”
“No!” Perry wouldn’t risk Cinder’s life too. “Get in the cookhouse!”
Cinder shook his head. “I could do something!”
“Cinder, no! Willow, get him out of here!”
It was too late. Cinder was somewhere else. His stare was empty, oblivious to the chaos around him. As he backed away, moving to the middle of the clearing, his eyes began to glow, and veins of Aether spread over his face and hands. Shocked curses and shouts broke around Perry as others took notice of Cinder—and of the sky.
Above, the Aether melded into a single, massive whirlpool. A funnel twisted down, forming a solid brilliant wall that circled Cinder, engulfing him. Perry couldn’t find his voice. He couldn’t move. Didn’t know how to stop Cinder.
A blast of light sent piercing pain into his eyes, blinding him. He flew back on the earth, landing on his side, and shielded his head. Waited for his skin to burn. A hot gust whipped past him, pushing him back for long seconds; then a sudden silence fell over the compound. He peered up and saw no Aether. The sky was blue and calm as far as he could see.
He looked to the center of the clearing. A small figure was curled in a circle of glittering embers. Stumbling to his feet, Perry ran to him. Cinder lay deathly still and bare, his hat gone, his hair gone, his chest unmoving.
36
ARIA
I have to find us another way to the Tides,” Aria said the next morning, hugging her growling stomach. The snare trap she’d set the previous night had been empty. “I hurt my knee when we fell.”