Into the Still Blue (Under the Never Sky, #3)(77)

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.

Marron stepped between Hyde and Twig, joining them. “I wouldn’t call it good fortune. Millions of people lived here once. Now there isn’t a soul left. That seems far from good fortune. And we might have benefited from some compassion and some help. We are so few.”

Aria bit her lip to stop herself from snapping at him. She didn’t know why she was suddenly so angry. It was those words: We are so few. Why had he needed to say that? They weren’t few. They were lacking. They were missing Perry.