Into the Still Blue (32 page)

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

T
he 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 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 endlessly—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 were 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 rippling 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

A
ria’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.