“Perry? Say something. I want to hear your voice again.”
He didn’t know what to say but he wasn’t going to disappoint her. He cleared his throat. “I’ve been having this dream since we started sleeping together up in the trees. I’m in this grassy plain. And there’s this blue sky stretching out over me. No Aether in it at all. And the breeze is moving the grass in waves, stirring up bugs. And I’m just walking, my bow sort of combing the tall grass behind me. And there’s not a thing I’m worrying about. It’s a good dream.”
She squeezed him. “Your voice sounds like a midnight fire. All warm and worn in and golden. I could listen to you talk forever.”
“I could never do that.”
She laughed at him. He brought his lips to her ear. “Your scent is like violets in early spring,” he whispered. Then he laughed at himself because though it was true, he sounded like the worst kind of fool.
“Was Vale a good Blood Lord?”
Aria was too eager to learn about her Sense to sleep so they walked into the night.
“Very good. Vale is calm. He thinks things through. He’s patient with people. I think . . . I think if it weren’t a time like this . . . he would be the best man to lead the tribe.”
Maybe that had held him back from making a challenge for Blood Lord, as much as his fear of hurting Talon, Perry realized. He still couldn’t believe his brother had been captured. “He wasn’t going to go after Talon,” he said, remembering the last time they’d been together. “Vale said it meant risking the tribe’s safety. It’s the reason I left.”
“Why do you think Vale changed his mind?”
“I don’t know,” he said. Vale had never put anything above the good of the tribe before, but Talon was his son.
“They’re together. Will you still try to bring them to the outside?”
He looked at her.
“Talon is being cared for,” she said. “You saw him. He has a chance to live in there.”
“I’m not giving up.”
Aria slipped her hand into his. “Even if it’s better for him?”
“Are you saying I should let him go? How could I do that?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out the same thing.”
Perry stopped. “Aria . . .” He was going to tell her he’d rendered to her. That nothing was the same anymore because of her. But what difference would it make? They only had three more days together. And he knew she had to go home. He knew exactly how much she needed her mother.
She took his other hand. “Yes, Peregrine?” After a moment, she smiled.
He found himself smiling too. “Aria, I don’t understand how you can be so chirky right now.”
“I was just thinking. Soon you’ll be Peregrine, Blood Lord of the Tides.” She swirled a hand in the air as she said it. “I just love how it sounds.”
Perry laughed. “Spoken like a true Aud.”
Chapter 39
ARIA
Aria heard song everywhere.
Shifting in the trees. Rumbling in the earth. Drifting on the wind. It was the same terrain, but she saw it differently. When she looked into the distance, where she’d seen nothing before, she now imagined the father who might be there. A man who would hear the world as she did, in endless tones. He was an Audile. That was the only thing she knew about him. Strangely, it felt like a lot.
A day after she’d discovered her ability, she noticed her own footfall growing quieter. Somehow, without consciously thinking of it, she’d begun to choose her steps with greater care. When she mentioned it to Perry, he grinned.
“I noticed that too. Easier to hunt,” he said, patting a hare strung over his shoulder. “Most Auds are quiet as shadows. The best end up as spies or scouts for the larger tribes.”
“Seriously? Spies?”
“Seriously.”
She practiced sneaking up on Perry, determined to succeed where she’d failed before. The morning before they were to reach Bliss, she pounced on him, throwing her arms around his neck as she planted a kiss on the blond scruff over his jaw. Finally she had accomplished the Spontaneous Kiss. She expected him to laugh and kiss her back. He didn’t do either. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his head on top of hers.
“Should we rest?” she asked, feeling his weight settle onto her shoulders. She could see the hills where Bliss was supposedly nestled on the horizon.
Perry straightened. “No,” he said. His green eyes were tight, like the day was too bright for him. “We have to keep going, Aria. I don’t know what else to do.”
Neither did she, so they walked.
They reached the hills late in the afternoon. They climbed one and another, and then almost suddenly, there stood Bliss, a man-made mountain amid earthen hills. Aria had never seen a Pod from the outside but knew the largest dome at the center would be the Panop. The off-shooting structures were the service domes, like Ag 6. She’d spent seventeen years in Reverie’s Panop. Contained in one place. It seemed unbelievable to her now. With daylight fading, the Pod’s deep charcoal shape was fast blending into the night.
Perry shifted his weight at her side, silent as he took in the scene. “Looks like a rescue. There are Hovers . . . thirty or so, and a bigger craft. At least fifty people out in the open.”
To her, what he described was just a smattering of dots next to Bliss, lit within a circle of light. The soft drone of engines carried to her ears.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.