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Authors: Veronica Rossi

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BOOK: Under the Never Sky
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For six decades, when the Aether came, it had scorched the earth with constant fires, but the real blow to humanity had been its mutative effect, as her mother had explained to her. New diseases had evolved rapidly and thrived. Plagues had wiped out entire populations. Her ancestors had been among the fortunate few who’d taken shelter in the Pods.

Shelter she no longer had.

Aria knew she couldn’t survive in this contaminated world. She hadn’t been designed for it. Death was only a matter of time.

She found the brighter patch in the cloud cover, where light shone through in a golden haze. That light came from the sun. She might get to see the real sun. She had to fight off the urge to cry, thinking about seeing the sun. Because who would know? Who would she tell about seeing something so incredible?

She headed toward where the Rovers had disappeared, knowing it was pointless. Did she think Consul Hess would change his mind? But where else could she go? She walked with feet she didn’t recognize on earth that looked like giraffe print.

She hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when she started to cough again. Soon she grew too light-headed to stand. But it wasn’t just her lungs rejecting the outside. Her eyes and nose streamed. Her throat burned and her mouth filled with hot saliva.

She’d heard all the stories about the Death Shop, like everyone else. A million ways to die. She knew of the packs of wolves as smart as men. She’d heard of the flocks of crows that picked living people to pieces, and Aether storms that behaved like predators. But the worst death in the Death Shop, she decided, was rotting alone.

Chapter 8
PEREGRINE

P
erry watched as his older brother strode into the clearing. Vale paused and lifted his head, scenting the wind. He held the buck’s rack in his hand, a huge snarl of horns, thick as a small tree. Impressive. Perry couldn’t deny it. Vale searched the crowd and spotted Perry, then Talon at his side.

Perry became aware of a dozen things as his brother came forward. The Dweller device and the apple, both wrapped in plastic, deep inside his satchel. His knife at his hip. His bow and quiver slung across his back. He noticed the way the crowd quieted, easing into a circle around him. He sensed Talon shift at his side, drawing back. And he scented tempers. Dozens of bright scents, charging the air as much as the Aether above.

“Hello, Son.” Vale ached, gazing at his boy. Perry saw it in his eyes. He also saw the swelling around Vale’s nose, but wondered if anyone else would notice.

Talon raised a hand in reply, keeping back. He didn’t want to show weakness in front of his father. How he hurt, both from grief and illness. Once it had been Perry hiding from his father behind Vale’s legs. But hiding didn’t work around Scires. Scents carried.

Vale raised the rack. “For you, Talon. Choose a horn. We’ll make a handle for a new knife. Would you like that?”

Talon shrugged. “All right.”

Perry glanced at the knife at Talon’s belt. It was Perry’s old blade. As a boy, he had carved feathers into the handle, making a design fit for him and later, Talon. He saw no reason for him to have a new one.

Vale finally met his gaze. He looked at the bruise on Perry’s face, suspicion flashing in his eyes. Vale would know he hadn’t given it to Perry. He hadn’t landed any solid punches that night across the table.

“What happened to you, Peregrine?”

Perry went still. He couldn’t tell Vale the truth, but lying wouldn’t help him either. No matter what he said, people would think Vale had given him the bruise, just as Brooke had. Blaming someone else for it would only make him look weak.

“Thanks for caring, Vale. It’s good to be home.” Perry nodded at the rack. “Where’d you bring him down?”

“Moss Ledge.”

Perry couldn’t believe he’d missed picking up the buck’s scent. He’d been out that way recently.

Vale smiled. “Fine beast, don’t you think, little brother? Best one in years.”

Perry glared at his older brother, holding back the bitter words that sprang to his lips. Vale knew it annoyed Perry to be called this in front of the tribe. He was no longer a boy. There was nothing little about him.

“Still think we have overhunted?” Vale added.

Perry was sure of it. The animals had left. They’d sensed the Aether growing stronger each passing year in their valley. Perry sensed it too. But what could he say? Vale held proof there was still game like that out there, ready to be brought in. “We should still move,” he said without thinking.

A smile spread over Vale’s face. “Move, Perry? Do you mean that?”

“The storms will only get worse.”

“This cycle will play out as they all do.”

“In time, maybe. But we may not survive the worst of it here.”

A stir ran through the crowd. He and Vale might argue like this in private, but no one crossed Vale in front of others.

Vale shifted his feet. “Then tell us about your idea, Perry. About moving more than two hundred people into the open. Do you think we’d be better off
without
shelter? Fighting for our lives in the borderlands?”

Perry swallowed hard. He knew what he knew. He just never said it well. But he couldn’t back down now.

“The compound won’t hold up if the storms get much worse. We’re losing our fields. We’ll lose everything if we stay. We need to find safer land.”

“Where do you want us to go?” Vale asked. “You think another tribe will welcome us into their territory? All of us?”

Perry shook his head. He wasn’t sure. He and Vale were Marked. Worth something, purely for their blood. But not the others, the Unmarked, who weren’t Scires or Auds or Seers. Who made up most of the tribe.

Vale’s eyes narrowed. “What if the storms are worse in other territories, Peregrine?”

Perry couldn’t answer. He wasn’t sure if the Aether raged elsewhere as it did there. He only knew that last winter, the storms torched nearly a quarter of their territory. This winter, he expected, would be worse.

“We leave this land, we die,” Vale said, his tone suddenly hard. “Try thinking once in a while, little brother. It might serve you.”

“You’re wrong,” Perry said. Didn’t anyone else see that?

Several people gasped. He could almost hear their thoughts through their excited tempers.
Fight, Perry. This’ll be good to see
.

Vale handed the rack to Bear. It grew so quiet that Perry heard Bear’s leather vest squeak as he moved. Perry’s vision started tunneling as it did when he hunted. He saw only his older brother, who’d defended Perry countless times as a boy, but who didn’t believe him now. Perry glanced at Talon. He couldn’t do this. What if he killed Vale right there?

Talon shot forward. “Can we hunt, Father? Can Uncle Perry and I hunt?”

Vale looked down, the darkness in his gaze vanishing. “Hunt, Talon? Now?”

“I feel good today.” Talon lifted his small chin. “Can we go?”

“Are you so eager to show me up, Son?”

“Yes!”

Vale’s deep laugh roused a few forced chuckles from the crowd.

“Please, Father. Just for a while?”

Vale raised his eyebrows at Perry, like he thought it fitting that Talon had stepped in to rescue him. That look nearly launched Perry forward.

Vale knelt and opened his arms. Talon hugged him, his skinny arms closing around Vale’s broad neck. Covering the Blood Lord chain. Stealing it from Perry’s sight.

“We’ll feast tonight,” Vale said, easing back. He cradled Talon’s face with his hands. “I’ll save the best cuts for you.” He straightened and motioned Wylan over. “Make sure they stay close to the compound.”

“We don’t need him,” Perry said. Did Vale think he couldn’t protect Talon? And he didn’t want Wylan along. If the Aud came, he couldn’t give Talon the apple. “I’ll keep him safe.”

Vale’s green eyes settled on Perry’s swollen cheek. “Little brother, if you saw yourself, you’d know why I don’t believe that.”

More laughter, unchecked this time. Perry shifted on his feet. The Tides saw him as a joke.

Talon pulled his arm. “Let’s go, Uncle Perry. Before it gets late.”

Perry’s muscles filled with the need to move, but he couldn’t give his brother his back. Talon let go of him and ran ahead in pitiful lurching strides.

“Come on, Uncle Perry. Let’s go!”

For Talon, Perry followed.

Chapter 9
ARIA

W
hen the coughing fit passed, Aria lay on her side. Her ribs hurt. Her throat was swollen and sore. But she’d survived. Her skin hadn’t melted off and she hadn’t gone into shock. Maybe the stories were wrong. Or maybe that would come.

She hauled herself to her feet and began to walk again. She’d accepted that she wouldn’t get anywhere. What mattered was
pretending
she might. That by taking one step after another, she had a chance of finding shelter. She convinced herself of this so completely that when she saw rough shapes in the distance, she thought she was imagining them.

Aria walked faster, heart pounding as the forms became more distinct and the ground grew uneven with debris. Broken pieces poked through the soles of her Medsuit, hurting her feet. She stopped, scanning a sea of cement. Pieces of iron stuck out of the rubble, sculptural, bent and rusted. A great city once, she thought. Defiant, here in the middle of nowhere. Now it wouldn’t even provide shelter for her. She pointed herself in another direction and set off again.

She avoided her thoughts as long as possible, but they came, stampeding beyond her control. Ward had seen her alive. Had Hess pressured him to keep quiet? Was her mother grieving now? What had Lumina said in the “Songbird” message?

Aria sat down to rest. She remembered the last time she’d been with her mother in Reverie. A Singing Sunday.

At eleven o’clock every Sunday of her life, Aria had met her mother in the Paris Opera Realm, a replica of the lavish Palais Garnier. Lumina was always there first, waiting with her hands folded neatly in her lap, her back straight in her favorite front row seat. She came dressed the same way every time, in an elegant black dress, a thin strand of pearls around her slender neck, her dark hair pulled back in a tight, perfect bun.

For an hour, on a stage built for four hundred performers, Aria sang to her. She became Juliet or Isolde or Joan of Arc, singing about doomed love and grand purpose and resilience in the face of death. Aria let their stories soar on her dark falcon soprano voice, across gilded columns and crimson curtains, up to a fresco of angels. She performed every week for Lumina because her mother was there for that hour, and that was more time than Aria got from her all week.

She did it, though she hated opera. She hated everything about it. The overblown sense of drama. The violence and lewdness. No one had ever died of heartbreak in Reverie. Betrayal never led to murder. Those things didn’t happen anymore. They had the Realms now. They could experience anything without taking risks. Now, life was
Better than Real
.

Her last Singing Sunday with Lumina had been different from the start. Lumina’s cool hand on Aria’s bare shoulder had jarred her awake.

“What is it?” Aria had asked. Her Smartscreen read 5 A.M. “What’s wrong?”

Lumina was perched at the edge of the bed. She wore a gray traveling jumpsuit with reflective stripes along the arms, not her usual doctor’s smock. Somehow she still looked elegant. “The transport team wants to avoid some weather. I need to leave earlier than planned.”

Aria swallowed the tight feeling in her throat. She didn’t want to say good-bye. They’d planned to meet every day in the Realms, but Lumina would be far. They wouldn’t be in the same Pod anymore.

“Will you sing to me now?”

“Mom,
now
?”

“I look forward to this all week,” Lumina said. “Don’t make me wait until next Sunday.”

Aria flopped facedown on her pillow. Opera first thing in the morning? It seemed criminal. “Why do you have to leave? Why can’t you just do your research in the Realms?”

“I need to be in Bliss for this assignment.”

“Why can’t I go with you?” Aria asked.

“You know I can’t tell you why.”

Aria pressed her face deeper into the pillow. How could her mother sound so calm? She made it seem so easy to keep things from Aria.

“Please,” Lumina said. “I don’t have much time.”

“Fine.” Aria rolled over and glared at the ceiling. “Let’s just get it over with.” She found the Opera Realm on her Smartscreen. The icon should’ve showed the columned front facade of the opera house, but Aria had changed it to an image of her pretending to choke herself. She chose it and fractioned, her mind easily opening to another world. She was in two places now. There, in her cramped little room, and in the extravagant, cavernous opera hall.

Aria had chosen to appear behind the main curtain. She glared at the heavy swath of red velvet. Lumina could wait a few more seconds. That would irritate her. When she stepped through, she didn’t see Lumina in her usual front row seat. The opera house was empty.

In Aria’s bedroom, Lumina leaned forward, resting her hand on Aria’s arm. “Songbird. Will you sing to me here?”

Aria yanked herself out of the Realm and sat up, stunned. “
Here?
In
my room
?”

“I won’t be able to hear your real voice once I’m in Bliss.”

Aria pushed her hair behind her ears, panic coiling in her gut. She looked around the tiny room, at the neat drawers built into the walls and the mirror above her sink. She knew her voice. She knew its power. Her voice would shake the walls in such a confined space. It might carry beyond the small living room outside and make it out to the Panop.

What if
everyone
heard her?

Her heart began to race. This had never happened before. It was too strange. Too big a change from their routine. “You know it’s the same as in the Realms, Mom.”

Lumina’s gray eyes bored into her, urgent and pleading. “I want to hear the gift you have.”

BOOK: Under the Never Sky
4.42Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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