Into the Still Blue (Under the Never Sky, #3)(54)

She’d almost reached the chamber when Loran appeared at the end of the corridor, rushing her way. His eyes locked sharply with hers, like she’d shouted his name. He slowed. “I’ll meet you outside,” he told the men accompanying him.

Aria tried to catch her breath as he walked up. She wanted to run away. Or ask him the millions of questions that swirled in her mind. She didn’t do either. Her legs wouldn’t move. Her lips wouldn’t form a single word.

In the pause that spread between them, she realized the Komodo had stopped. Any doubt that Sable had staged a coup of his own vanished.

“I sent my men for you,” Loran said.

“I didn’t like them. They were shooting Guardians.”

“I was trying to help you,” he returned, frustration adding a rough edge to his voice. “The Hovers are leaving. Peregrine and Cinder are already outside. You need to come with me right now.”

“What about Roar? What about Soren?”

“My allegiance is to Sable, Aria.”

“Yes, I know, Father. Mine is not.”

Loran shifted his weight, shadows falling over his gray eyes. Aria wished she could read the emotion in them. She wished she hadn’t just spat father at him, like it was an insult. “Are you going to force me to come with you?” she asked.

“No—I’m not.” He glanced down the hall and then shifted closer. “I want a chance to know you, Aria,” he said, low and urgent. “I’m trying to prove I deserve it.”

“And I’m trying to believe you!” Her voice rose, sounding shrill and unfamiliar to her own ears. She backed down the hall, suddenly desperate to retreat.

Loran didn’t stop her.

He watched as she spun and sprinted away.





[page]UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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30


PEREGRINE


Move, Tider! Hurry up!”

Struck between the shoulders, Perry stumbled forward, crashing into a man rushing the other way. Pain tore through him, sharpest in his ribs. He recovered his balance and glanced back.

The man escorting him out of the Komodo was a giant. Perry’s height, but built like a mountain, his eyebrows pierced with metal studs. “You want to untie my hands? I’d walk faster with them free.”

The giant sneered. “You think I’m an idiot? Shut up and keep moving.”

Slowing his steps as much as he could, Perry scanned every hall and chamber for Aria and Roar. For Cinder. Sable’s men poured through the narrow halls, but he saw far fewer of Hess’s men.

Perry passed a room with a group of Guardians. They looked panicked and lost, like the rest of the world shared a secret. He shook his head. His gut feeling had been dead-on. Sable had beaten Hess at his own game. Perry had known as soon as the giant had stepped to his chamber minutes ago.

“Get up, maggot,” the Horn soldier had taunted, flinging a bundle of ragged clothes at Perry. “Put those on. It’s time to go.”

It had been far too soon. Only an hour had passed, not the four Hess said he’d needed.

Now the giant’s voice boomed at Perry’s back. “Faster! Move your feet, or I’ll knock you out and drag you outside!”

Perry didn’t see how that would help. He’d be harder to carry; that seemed obvious.

Abruptly, the giant pushed him through a door. Perry stumbled halfway down a ramp before it hit him: after days in the Komodo, he was finally outside.

He pulled the cool air into his lungs as he took a few steps over the loose dirt. The night smelled of smoke from fires that smoldered on the distant hills. His skin prickled with the familiar feel of the Aether. The sky churned red and blue and terrifying—a fearsome sight, but worlds better than being trapped in a small chamber.

Hovers lined the field before him, just as when they’d arrived, but the Komodo looked different from the coiled snake he’d seen before. Now it stretched backward and forward, unspooled, its links running in a straight line.

“Peregrine!”

Sable stood with a cluster of men a short distance away. Perry didn’t have to be pushed to walk over to him.

“Ready to see the Still Blue?” Sable smiled and lifted a hand to the sky. “Eager to leave all this behind?”

“Where are they?” Perry asked, anger burning in his blood.

“Cinder is loaded up and waiting for you. You’ll see him in a moment. As for the others . . . Roar is an aggravation at best, but only a fool would leave behind such a pretty girl as Aria. She’ll be here soon. When this is all behind us, I hope to get to know her better.”

“If you touch her, I will rip you to pieces with my hands.”

Sable laughed. “If they weren’t tied behind your back, that might actually concern me. Take him,” he said to the giant, who hauled Perry away.

Across the field, hundreds of people loaded crates onto Hovers. They were a mix of Horns who seemed to know little about preparing Hovers, Guardians who were trying to help, and Guardians who had no idea what was happening. Angry shouts volleyed back and forth. Total chaos.

As the giant pushed him toward a Dragonwing, he noticed armed men along the roofline of the Komodo. Everywhere he looked, he saw firepower. Dwellers and Outsiders taking sniper positions. He couldn’t tell whether they were working together or in opposition. It didn’t seem clear to them, either.