He took her arm and helped her up. A gust of hot air blew a pungent, chemical reek into her face, stinging her eyes. At the far end of the fleet, fire engulfed a Dragonwing—part of the craft already scorched down to its steel ribs.
Roar’s grip on her arm tightened. “Stay here. Stay with Soren. I’m going to find Perry. Aria, can you hear me?”
She nodded. His voice was faint, but she heard him. Not only what he said but also what he meant.
Roar had to find out if Perry was in the Dragonwing covered in flames.
Roar’s eyes moved past her as Hess screamed again.
“Come forward, Sable! Come forward, or I will destroy every one of them! They’re my ships! I will not let you have them!”
“Yes,” Soren said. “Pressure him.”
“Calm yourself, Hess. I’m coming.”
The sound of Sable’s voice rooted Aria—and everyone— in place.
“Where are you?” Hess searched the ring of people around him. “Come forward, coward!”
Aria spotted Sable as he slipped past a few of his soldiers. “I’m right here.” He gestured to the burning Hovercraft as he approached Hess. “I would have come without all of that.”
Panic crept over Aria with every step he took. He wore a knife at his belt. But Hess had a gun.
She sensed movement behind her. Horn soldiers closed in, forming a wall around them. Roar caught her eye and shook his head. It was too late.
In seconds, Aria felt a gun press against her spine.
Kirra smiled and said, “Hi.”
They were stripped of their weapons. Her, Roar, and Soren. Trapped, all three of them. Again.
“We were going to do this together, Sable,” Hess said. “That was the arrangement we made.”
Sable measured Hess in that same quiet way Perry had. The way of Scires. The flames from the exploded Dragonwing roared in the silence, the fire a bright spot against the night.
Perry wasn’t in that Hover. He couldn’t be.
“Together?” Sable said. “Is that why you were planning to betray me?”
“You gave me no choice. We made a deal, and you broke it. Tell your people to stand down. We leave on my orders, like we planned, or no one leaves. I’ll level every one of the Hovers to the ground.”
Sable took a step toward Hess. “Yes, you’ve said that.”
Hess lifted his gun. “Don’t come any closer.”
“I always keep my word,” Sable said, still advancing in deliberate steps. “I didn’t break our deal. You only believe that I was going to.”
Aria noticed the crowd loosening. People dropped back, responding to some instinctive signal.
“I will shoot you,” Hess said.
“Yes, yes, yes, do it!” Soren chanted at her side.
Time slowed, every second lasting an eternity. Aria couldn’t move, couldn’t utter a sound.
“If you shoot me,” said Sable, “then my men will cut you down next. That doesn’t sound like a solution, does it? It sounds very similar to what you’re proposing . . . all or nothing. Lower your gun, Hess. You got what you wanted. We’re at a stalemate, and we both know you won’t pull that trigger.”
“You’re wrong about that,” said Hess. “Stand back.”
“Shoot him!” Soren screamed.
Sable’s eyes snapped to Soren. “Bring him here,” he said to his guards.
Hess found Soren in the crowd, his face transforming with fear. Then everything happened at once.
Soren yelled, “No!”
Sable shot forward in a flash, drawing his knife and slashing it across Hess’s chest. Hess rocked back, his scream shrill as it broke into the air.
The wound was shallow, grazing instead of piercing, but to a man who’d never known real pain, it was debilitating.
Hess gasped, eyes glazing as the agony paralyzed him.
Sable moved in again.
He drove the knife into Hess’s stomach and ripped downward.
Hess sank to his knees, his flesh and blood spilling through skin and uniform, pouring onto the earth.
32
PEREGRINE
Perry saw everything.
Taller than everyone in front of him, he had a clear view of Sable as he flayed Hess open.
Time came to a stop as Hess crumpled, his blood darkening the dusty earth. The moment of absolute silence felt familiar, reminding Perry of when he’d slain Vale. Power felt tangible. Its shift unmistakable. Something had just ended, and something had just begun, and every person there sensed it: a change as startling and inevitable as the first drops of rain.
Soren’s scream broke the spell, a deeper sound than his father’s final cry, low and anguished, springing from his gut. Then gunfire broke out, sudden and everywhere.
Perry shot forward, sprinting toward Aria and Roar. Horns and Dwellers fired at each other as they ran for the Komodo, for Hovers, for any place to take cover. Bodies fell lifeless to the ground. Ten, then twenty, cut down in seconds.
“Aria!” he yelled, pushing through the stampede. She stood at the center of what was quickly becoming a bloodbath.
In a break in the crowd, he spotted Sable surrounded by a dozen of his men, who protected him in a human shield.
Roar’s words rang in Perry’s mind. Cut off the head of the snake.
Perry could do it. He only needed one clear shot.
Roar’s whistle cut sharply through the gun battle.
Perry’s head whipped to the sound. Roar stood fifty paces away. A Horn soldier held him by the arm, shuttling him to the Komodo. Perry saw Soren and Aria beyond Roar, both of them also under gun.
Perry slowed and set his feet. He aimed the pistol, finding his mark, and pulled the trigger.
He hit the Horn soldier who had Roar—a square shot to the chest. The man flew back, falling to the ground, and Roar lunged free.
Perry sprinted again, bullets flinging past him. He’d lost sight of Aria and Soren, but Roar ran ahead of him, charging forward on the same path.
Roar reached Soren first, leaping at his captor. He fell, tackling Soren too.
Perry ran past them, seeing Aria. Then seeing Kirra.
“Stop, Perry!” Kirra yelled. She yanked Aria around.
Perry skidded to a stop as Kirra pressed a gun under Aria’s chin. He was only twenty paces away, but not close enough.
Aria tilted her chin up, her face strained with anger. She was breathing fast, her gaze on Perry but her focus elsewhere.
“Drop the gun, Perry,” Kirra said. “I can’t let you leave. Sable needs—”
Aria rammed her elbow into Kirra’s throat.
She spun away, grabbing Kirra’s arm and twisting it behind her. She forced Kirra down with an arm lock, sending her face smashing to the dirt. Snatching the pistol from the ground, Aria slammed the butt into the back of Kirra’s head. Kirra went limp, knocked unconscious.
Aria jumped to her feet and ran over. “I hate that girl.”
Stunned, impressed, Perry felt his mouth pull into an idiotic grin.
“We have to get out of here,” Roar said. Soren swayed behind him, ashen, his eyes unfocused.
“This way,” Perry said, leading them to the Dragonwing he’d been in earlier.
As they raced down the runway, he noticed battles waged over Hovers—and the Horns quickly gaining control. Every Dweller seemed to be challenged by three of Sable’s men. Some were Guardians, already showing allegiance to their new leader. Bodies lay strewn across the field, most of them dressed in gray.
He reached the Dragonwing and jumped inside, Aria, Soren, and Roar right behind him. Cinder waited in the cockpit, exactly where Perry had left him.
“Go!” Perry yelled.
The Dweller pilot was ready, just as they’d planned. He had the craft off the ground before the hatch closed.
33
ARIA
Aria sat on the floor with Soren in the dark hold behind the cockpit. The Hover had barely taken off before he’d begun to rock, choking on sobs.
She rubbed his broad back, biting her lip to keep from offering him platitudes. I’m sorry. I’m here for you. You don’t deserve this.
She knew nothing she could say would help.
Her ears still hadn’t recovered fully from the explosion, but she picked up snatches of conversation from the cockpit. An Aether storm had settled between the Komodo and the coast, blocking their way to the cave. The pilot—a Dweller who’d been in the craft with Cinder—described the path as impossible and unnavigable and suicide.
Her stomach clenched as she listened to Roar and Perry discuss alternate routes, hoping they’d settle on one worth trying. Finally free of the Komodo, she wanted desperately to get home—even if home meant a dismal cave.
She didn’t hear Cinder, but he was in the cockpit too. They’d all given Soren space—as much as was possible in the cramped Dragonwing.
Soren sat back, wiping his eyes. “He was terrible. He did awful things. You know what he’s really like. Was really like. Why do I even care?”
Crying had left his face red and swollen. He looked broken, his heart exposed. Nothing like the cocky boy she knew. “Because he was your father, Soren.”
“I’m the one who pushed him away. I stayed in Reverie when he wanted me to leave. He never gave up on me. I’m the one who gave up on him.”
“You didn’t give up on him. He knew that.”
“How can you be sure? How do you know?” Soren didn’t wait for her reply. He pressed his fists to his face and began to rock again.
Aria glanced up. Roar and Perry stood in the narrow threshold. Shoulders together. Minds together. Both looking so aware of what Soren was feeling.
Behind them, through the windshield, she saw the sky— Aether blue and now Aether red—and she wondered how she could feel lucky with Soren breaking apart before her eyes and after what she’d just seen. But she did.
Perry and Roar. Cinder and Soren.
They had all made it out alive.
* * *
By the time they found a clear route to the coast, Soren had exhausted himself and fallen asleep. Aria sat back against the cool metal wall of the Dragonwing. Her left arm ached from when she’d hit Kirra, but she noticed less pain in her right. She tested the movement in her hand and found she could almost close her fingers into a fist now. Stretching out her tired legs, she was struck by a pang of longing for her mother, who could have told her whether the wound was healing properly.
It felt familiar missing Lumina’s calm advice and assurances. But the immediate turn Aria’s thoughts took to Loran was new.
It hit her then: she’d never see him again.
She’d barely spent minutes with him, knew precious little about who he was. It made no sense that she felt so crushed. But like she’d told Soren about Hess, he was her father. That alone meant something. Regardless of all the years he’d been gone, or what might have happened between him and Lumina, she did feel something for him.
I want a chance to know you, Aria, Loran had said.
How could those words seem so lacking and so promising? What more could she have hoped for him to say?
Perry glanced back from the cockpit, interrupting her thoughts. When he saw that Soren had settled, he ducked beneath the low door and came over.
He knelt beside her, his eyes shining in the dimness. “How are you doing?”