Into the Still Blue (Under the Never Sky, #3)(26)

Perry caught her at the top of the ramp. A sheet of rain fell across the opening, blocking the outside like a waterfall. He grabbed her by the hips, afraid of hurting her arm—and that was the problem right there.

Four dead. Two injured.

And they hadn’t even reached the Komodo yet.

“Aria, that was too close—”

“I’m going with you, Perry,” she said, spinning to face him. “We’re getting Cinder back. We’re getting Hovers, and then we’re going to the Still Blue. We started this together. That’s how we’re going to finish it.”





[page]UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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13


ARIA


With Soren piloting the Dragonwing, they sped through the lashing rain toward the Komodo, their breaths loud and ragged in the quiet of the cockpit. They were a quartet of pure stress, each of them fighting to regain focus.

Aria pressed her back into the seat. The ride was jarring, almost violent compared to the Belswan, as though this craft had to fight to reach its greater speeds. She felt every small jostle in her throbbing arm.

Soren and Roar sat in the two anterior seats, commander and pilot. She and Perry sat in the seats behind them.

Half an hour ago, four men had been in these same spots. Her seat still held the warmth one of them had left behind. It seeped through her clothes to her legs and her back. She was cold, trembling and soaked, but that warmth—the final echo of a man’s life—made her want to crawl out of her skin.

Was it her fault? She hadn’t pulled the trigger, but did that matter? Her eyes moved to Soren’s back. She had brought him to the Tides. She had trusted him.


Beside her, Perry sat rigidly. He was muddied, bloodied, and intent, his stillness contrasted by the rainwater dripping steadily from his hair. He’d been against Soren from the beginning, Aria thought. Should she have listened to him?

She turned her focus back to the windshield. Trees blurred past, the hills where the Komodo was stationed drawing closer at an astonishing rate.

“Five minutes out,” Soren said.

Five minutes until they reached the Komodo. They were heading right into the dragon’s lair—and there were two dragons.

She pictured Hess, who was so quick to disregard human life. Travel safely, Aria, he’d said, before he dumped her out to die. He’d done the same to the thousands of people he left in Reverie. He’d told them he was going to fix everything; then he’d abandoned them in a collapsing Pod.

If Hess was a killer, then Sable was a murderer. The act was personal with him; he’d looked into Liv’s eyes when he’d fired the crossbow at her.

Aria bit her lip, an ache building in her throat for Perry. For Roar and Talon and Brooke. She was stupid to think this way right now, but grief was like the mud that covered them. Messy. Quickly spreading everywhere, once it found a way in.

“I’m going to learn how to fly these too,” Perry said, his voice low and deep. “So I can race you.”

His green eyes held a smile, a trace of good-natured competitiveness. Maybe he really did want to fly Hovers. Or maybe he knew exactly what to say to calm her down.

“You’re going to lose to her,” Roar said from the front seat.

He was teasing, Aria thought, but Perry said nothing back, and every second that passed in silence made Roar’s comment seem less friendly.

To her relief, Soren broke the silence. “I pulled up the last five flight plans and I don’t see any deviation. I’ll extract voice samples from those missions, change them up and graft everything together. That will get us through the protocols and make everything seem routine. They won’t notice a thing.”

They had planned this part earlier, knowing that even alive, the Guardians could jeopardize the mission over a live comm. Soren would splice the recordings of the now-deceased Guardians and reuse them in order to continue their fa?ade. The Realms—their entire life once—had become a weapon, helping them uphold the image of a normal patrol.

Was Soren telling them all of this again, waving his contributions in the air, as a way of apologizing?

Aria cleared her throat. She played along, asking for more information that they already knew. They needed to band together. Now.

“And when we get there?” she asked.

“All covered,” Soren said. “I’ve got it right here.”

He pushed a few buttons. A diagram of the Komodo appeared on a transparent screen, just as it had in the Belswan. The Komodo looked like a spiral made of individual units that could link and unlink, like old-fashioned train cars. Each segment was capable of breaking off and becoming individual, or self-determining, as Soren said during their run-through. Each unit could travel or fight in its own right.

In its stationary state, the Komodo coiled like a snake, following the same principle that had been utilized in Reverie’s design. The outer units were defensive and supportive. The inner three, at the center of the coil, were highest security, highest priority. They housed the most important figures.

“My father and Sable will be in these central units,” Soren said, highlighting them. “My guess is Cinder’s in there too.”

They were risking their lives on that guess.