Into the Still Blue

He looked relaxed. The world raged around him, but it didn’t feel that way to Perry. Standing behind him, watching him, Perry felt like the world was raging for Cinder.

Seconds passed. Perry began to wonder if Cinder had changed his mind.

“Peregrine,” came Sable’s voice, “make him—”

A blast of air pushed Perry backward. He slammed against the rear wall of the Hover, staggered.

Cinder hadn’t moved. He stayed planted by the doors.

Beyond him, in the distance, a gap formed in the barrier of Aether—a hollowed area that the currents flowed around, like river water past a rock.

The opening seemed almost insignificant in size. Twenty or thirty feet. Not big enough to fit even the smaller Dragonwings, to say nothing of the larger Hovers.

But through it, Perry could see what lay beyond the wall clearly: ocean, sitting beneath sunlight. That golden color that he’d glimpsed through the sheets of Aether was even warmer. And he saw sky. Endless, clear blue sky.

“What’s he waiting for? That’s not enough!” Sable yelled.

There was no point in talking to Cinder now. Perry had seen him like this. He was in another place. Lost to his surroundings.

“Peregrine!” Sable yelled.

As the seconds passed, relief moved through Perry. Maybe they wouldn’t make the crossing, but Cinder would live.

Horror followed quickly. What would they do now? Forge ahead through the barrier, and hope they made it through? The alternative, turning back to the cave, sounded worse. They couldn’t go back.

Cinder turned, fixing a blazing stare on him, and Perry understood.

What Cinder had just done was only the beginning. A test, to see what this would cost him. Looking into his eyes, Perry knew the answer.

Cinder turned back to the Aether.

Perry saw white, and then he saw nothing.

43

ARIA

Do you see them?” Brooke said. “They’re right there.” Aria nodded. Perry and Cinder’s Dragonwing was just a small point in front of the barrier of Aether, but she saw it.

An explosion of light blinded her.

Shouts erupted as the Hover dipped sharply. Aria flew into the person behind her. Blinking, fighting for her vision, she righted herself and lunged back to the window.

The barrier had a rift. A wide seam, like parted curtains. Through the barrier, the glittering ocean stretched out, as promising as anything she’d ever seen. She wanted to stare at it forever, but she tore her eyes away and searched for the Dragonwing.

“Where did they go, Brooke?” she asked. Perry’s Hover had disappeared.

“I’m looking,” Brooke said.

Roar was there too, searching. Grabbing her arm and steadying her when their Hover surged forward. Cursing softly when Sable’s voice came through the speakers again, announcing that they were going ahead with the crossing.

“Where are they?” Aria asked, her panic rising.

Brooke’s face paled, her quiet concentration changing suddenly to wide-eyed shock. “Water,” she said.

Aria’s gaze dropped to the ocean below—where Perry’s Hover tossed in ferocious white-capped waves.

44

PEREGRINE

When Perry opened his eyes, he was on his back, the concave ceiling of the cockpit above him. He couldn’t move, and it took him a moment to realize that he wasn’t paralyzed, only pinned in the small space between the wall and the back of the pilot seat.

His right shoulder throbbed, the pain as intense as when he’d dislocated it weeks ago—and his left shin stung sharply. There were other aches, less intense. Good signs. Pain meant he was still alive.

He pulled himself up, clutching the back of the seat for balance. The Hover was tilting wildly. Waves pounded the windshield, covering them completely, each torrent of water so thick that it plunged the cockpit into darkness.

Perry lumbered back into the hold, unsteady, nauseous. He swiped at his stinging eyes and came away with blood on his hand.

Through the open doors, he saw the sea. Thirty-foot swells of white and silver and Aether blue. The craft pitched, and water rushed up to his ankles.

The Hover was a boat—with a missing side. Miraculously it was still afloat, but that was changing with every wave that surged inside.

“Cinder!” he yelled. “Cinder!”

He could barely hear his own voice over the waves. Yelling was useless, anyway. His eyes swept across the small hold. There was nowhere for Cinder to hide. To have gotten lost. Perry staggered to the door, almost pitching forward into the ocean as the Hover hurtled down the face of a wave.

“Cinder!”

He fell against the cabin wall as the Hover rocked again and stayed there, pressed against the wall, the air rushing out of his lungs. Out and out and out. He didn’t think it would stop, the expansion of emptiness inside him.

“You survived, Peregrine,” crackled through speakers. “But not Cinder, from the sounds of it. I’m very sorry.”

Perry shot back into the cockpit. The nose of the Hover dipped suddenly, sending him flying against the windshield. The water in the craft shifted forward, soaking him completely.

“Get me out of here!” Perry yelled.

The doors began to close as soon as the words left him. Across the cockpit, the dashboard controls flickered on.

Sable said. “What are you doing?”

A terrified voice answered. “Bringing the ship back up—”

“I issued no such order,” said Sable.

“Sir, if we don’t act now—”

“Shut it down.”

A beat of silence.

“I said shut it down.”

Perry cursed, turning in time to see the bay doors pause for an instant, and then open again to the raging sea. In the cockpit, the controls fell dark.

“This pains me, Peregrine. I like you very much and this isn’t what I wanted. But I can’t take any chances.”

Then Perry didn’t hear Sable any longer, only the waves pounding against the Hover.

45

ARIA

Do something!” Aria yelled. “They’re still out there!” Loran stood at the door of the cockpit, blocking her way inside. It was the first she’d seen of him in the Hover. “I can’t let you in there,” he said.

“You have to! You have to help them! Help me!”

Loran stared into her eyes. He said nothing, but she could tell he was battling with himself.

Sable’s voice came through the speakers again. “We’ve had no contact from either Cinder or Peregrine. There’s no sign from either. We’ve lost control of their ship, and I’m afraid it’s too dangerous to attempt a rescue.”

Roar pushed forward, standing almost nose to nose with Loran. “We can’t give up on them. We have to get down there!”

Reef exploded next. “Sable could be lying! How can we know he’s speaking the truth?”

A great ringing sound swelled in Aria’s ears, and she was jostled, shoved between huge bodies that pushed and yelled. Through the noise and confusion, she still heard Sable.

“No one knows how long that barrier will remain open. Our priority needs to be making the crossing while we can.”

He kept speaking, his voice soothing, rational, as he explained why they had to leave Perry behind and how sorry he was for the Tides. Aria didn’t hear the rest. She couldn’t hear anything over the shrill ringing sound in her ears.

Somehow she made it back to the window.

They were almost upon the barrier of Aether. Outside, the wind was brutally strong, whisking up ocean spray. Water obscured everything, but she spotted Perry’s Hover by the white ring of waves that broke around it.

It was listing to the side and half swallowed by the sea.

As she watched, they flew right past it, into the Still Blue.

“Aria, look,” Brooke said, nudging her.

Aria was still at the window. She’d been there since they’d crossed the barrier and left the Aether behind. The ringing had left her ears, but now something was wrong with her eyes. She had lost the ability to focus. She’d been staring out the window without seeing anything.

Roar stood at her side, his arm around her. Twig held a sleeping Talon in his arms on Roar’s other side. The spot where Talon had cried against Aria’s stomach was damp.

“Land,” Brooke said, and pointed. “There.”

Aria saw a break in the perfect line of the horizon. From a distance it looked like a black bump, but it broadened as they neared, gained color and depth. Becoming verdant slopes, covered in lush foliage.

These hills were folded and rolling, and they couldn’t have been more different from the rocky bluffs they’d left behind. The colors she saw were crisp, unlike the dullness caused by the smoke that had clung to the Tides’ territory. Here the land was vibrant green, the water turquoise, both almost garishly so.

A buzz of excitement swirled inside the Hover as word spread. Land had been spotted.

Aria hated them for their happiness. She hated herself for hating them. Why shouldn’t they enjoy this moment? This was a new beginning, but it didn’t feel that way to her.

She wanted to turn back—how could she possibly want to go back? But she did. Perry was the rugged cliffs and the crashing surf. He was the Tide compound and the hunting trails and everything else she’d left behind.

Talon shifted in Twig’s arms. Sleepily, he raised his head and moved from Twig’s arms to Roar’s. Aria looked from one to the other and back.

They had to be enough. Maybe someday she’d feel like they were.

Voices carried from the cockpit. The pilots and engineers, assessing the terrain. For an hour—and then two—all she heard was the careful trading of coordinates. The running of tests that evaluated freshwater sources, elevations, and soil quality. The cataloging of every feature from the air as carefully as a spider creeping over its web, with technology so sensitive, so advanced, that it seemed like magic. Once, this kind of magic had built worlds for her in the Realms. Now it was discovering a new world, taking its temperature. Mapping the best place to establish a settlement.

What they were really looking for, she knew—everyone knew—was people. Such a discovery would bring a host of issues to consider. Would they be welcome? Would they be enslaved? Turned away? No one knew.

Until Sable emerged from the cockpit. “It’s ours. It’s uninhabited,” he said, sounding a little breathless.

“Good fortune at last,” Hyde said softly. He stood behind her, tall enough to see over her head to the window. All of the Six were there, crowded around her. They had been since they’d crossed the barrier.

She didn’t know what to make of that. She didn’t know whether it was supposed to mean something, all of them standing around her like a wall.

“About time,” Hayden said. “I’ve got no fight left.”

Twig let out his breath. Reef met Aria’s eyes, and she wondered if he’d been hoping, irrationally, for the same thing as her. That the instrumentation would find one human. A young man of almost twenty, with green eyes and blond hair and a crooked smile that he used infrequently, but to powerful effect. A young man with the purest heart imaginable. Who believed in honor and who never, not for a moment, placed himself over others. But of course such a person hadn’t been found. Magic wasn’t real.