Into the Still Blue (Under the Never Sky, #3)(86)

“I can picture all the ways I want to end your life.”

Sable sat back on his heels, letting out a sigh. “You need some time. I understand. I’m in no hurry. You’ve suffered quite a lot.” He stood, pausing, his lips turning up. “I’ll send your father for you later.”

She froze, her heart squeezing in her chest. How long had he known about Loran?

Sable’s smile widened. “No need to worry. He’s a trusted warrior. A man of great character. That should make you very proud. He is very valuable to me. Almost indispensable,” he added with a smile. He moved to the ramp, turning back for one last comment. “Oh, and I’ve been meaning to tell you. Your friends who mysteriously disappeared? Roar and Soren? Not to worry. I’ll find them for you. My people are looking for them.”


Loran arrived to fetch her at dusk.

“He knows,” Aria said, as he walked up the ramp.

Loran crouched in front of her. “Yes.”

“You’re in danger because of me.”

“I want to be.”

“You want to be in danger because he knows you’re my father?”

“I’d prefer that he didn’t know, but he does. It was bound to happen. He was bound to scent how I feel. He is like all Scires . . . a master at using leverage to get what he wants. An expert manipulator.”

“Not all Scires are that way,” she said.

“No . . . you’re right. Not all.” With a sigh, Loran sat. “Sable applies pressure on the psyche,” he said, his voice unhurried and soft. “He’s very pleased to have learned that we’re connected. I have the respect of his soldiers, and he is wise enough to know that he needs me to keep order. And now he’s confident that I won’t step out of line. He has found a very big weakness of mine.”

“Would you have stepped out of line?”

“Never before,” he answered quickly. “But recently . . . recently someone I met has me asking questions about integrity and what it’s worth.”

“What is it worth?”

“A great deal.”

“So now you’re questioning him, but he has a means of controlling you . . . and that’s me?”

Loran shook his head. “You misunderstood. I’m not questioning him. I’ve always known who he is. What I’m questioning, thanks to a girl with a tooth-rattling kick, is who I am.”

She hugged her knees, unsure what to say. She’d hoped that finding her father would lead to her knowing herself better. She’d never considered it might also happen the other way around. “So . . . who are you?”

His gaze fell to his boots. “I don’t know where to start, Aria. This is new to me. I want to tell you so much, but I don’t want to burden you with more than you want to know.”

“I want to know everything.”

He lifted his eyes, and Aria saw a change in them. She thought it was surprise at first. Then she realized it was tenderness.

“My family,” he began, “and yours, has been in the service of the Horn Blood Lords for generations. We are soldiers and advisers who hold the highest military positions. It’s the life I was born to, the one I knew I’d lead eventually, but twenty years ago, when I was close to your age, I wanted nothing to do with it. When I asked my father for a few years to be on my own, he granted me one. It was more than I had expected.”

Loran had music in his voice. It was beautiful.

“I’d only been traveling a month when a Hover chased me down on the edge of the Shield Valley. I found myself inside a Dweller Pod, a place I’d only ever heard about in rumors.”

Loran glanced behind him, out to the beach. “There is no forgiveness in the north. We do things a certain way, as you know by now. So when I was taken captive, I expected something along the lines of what happened to Peregrine. Your mother was the first person I saw when I came to. She did not look frightening.” He smiled to himself then, lost in an image of Lumina that Aria wished she could share. “She promised I wouldn’t be mistreated. She told me I would go home one day. I heard sincerity in her voice. I heard kindness. I believed her.”

[page]As he spoke, Aria felt like she was wearing a Smarteye. Part of her listening to Loran. Part of her in a Realm in which Lumina was a young researcher, fascinated by an Outsider.

“From that moment on, I didn’t worry. I had left Rim to see what was different from what I knew.” He lifted his shoulders. “I couldn’t have landed in a better place.

“Her studies dealt with adaptations to stress. Dwellers, she explained, had less resilience to it than we do. Sometimes she’d put me into simulations in the Realms, but most of the time she asked me questions about the Outside. Eventually, she was answering my questions.” He ran a hand over his jaw. “I don’t know the exact moment that I fell in love with her, but I will never forget the moment she told me she was with child.

“As much as I cared for her, Aria, and I did, very deeply, I realized I would never be accepted into her world. Her people would never be mine. She couldn’t come to the outside with me, either. I knew that, but I still asked her a thousand times. But she wanted our child to grow up in safety. In the end, we both agreed the Pod would be the best place for you.”

Aria bit her lip until it stung. Our child. For a few seconds, the words flapped around her mind like bats. “So you left?”