“Please, Father. Just for a while?”
Vale raised his eyebrows at Perry, like he thought it fitting that Talon had stepped in to rescue him. That look nearly launched Perry forward.
Vale knelt and opened his arms. Talon hugged him, his skinny arms closing around Vale’s broad neck. Covering the Blood Lord chain. Stealing it from Perry’s sight.
“We’ll feast tonight,” Vale said, easing back. He cradled Talon’s face with his hands. “I’ll save the best cuts for you.” He straightened and motioned Wylan over. “Make sure they stay close to the compound.”
“We don’t need him,” Perry said. Did Vale think he couldn’t protect Talon? And he didn’t want Wylan along. If the Aud came, he couldn’t give Talon the apple. “I’ll keep him safe.”
Vale’s green eyes settled on Perry’s swollen cheek. “Little brother, if you saw yourself, you’d know why I don’t believe that.”
More laughter, unchecked this time. Perry shifted on his feet. The Tides saw him as a joke.
Talon pulled his arm. “Let’s go, Uncle Perry. Before it gets late.”
Perry’s muscles filled with the need to move, but he couldn’t give his brother his back. Talon let go of him and ran ahead in pitiful lurching strides.
“Come on, Uncle Perry. Let’s go!”
For Talon, Perry followed.
Chapter 9
ARIA
When the coughing fit passed, Aria lay on her side. Her ribs hurt. Her throat was swollen and sore. But she’d survived. Her skin hadn’t melted off and she hadn’t gone into shock. Maybe the stories were wrong. Or maybe that would come.
She hauled herself to her feet and began to walk again. She’d accepted that she wouldn’t get anywhere. What mattered was pretending she might. That by taking one step after another, she had a chance of finding shelter. She convinced herself of this so completely that when she saw rough shapes in the distance, she thought she was imagining them.
Aria walked faster, heart pounding as the forms became more distinct and the ground grew uneven with debris. Broken pieces poked through the soles of her Medsuit, hurting her feet. She stopped, scanning a sea of cement. Pieces of iron stuck out of the rubble, sculptural, bent and rusted. A great city once, she thought. Defiant, here in the middle of nowhere. Now it wouldn’t even provide shelter for her. She pointed herself in another direction and set off again.
She avoided her thoughts as long as possible, but they came, stampeding beyond her control. Ward had seen her alive. Had Hess pressured him to keep quiet? Was her mother grieving now? What had Lumina said in the “Songbird” message?
Aria sat down to rest. She remembered the last time she’d been with her mother in Reverie. A Singing Sunday.
At eleven o’clock every Sunday of her life, Aria had met her mother in the Paris Opera Realm, a replica of the lavish Palais Garnier. Lumina was always there first, waiting with her hands folded neatly in her lap, her back straight in her favorite front row seat. She came dressed the same way every time, in an elegant black dress, a thin strand of pearls around her slender neck, her dark hair pulled back in a tight, perfect bun.
For an hour, on a stage built for four hundred performers, Aria sang to her. She became Juliet or Isolde or Joan of Arc, singing about doomed love and grand purpose and resilience in the face of death. Aria let their stories soar on her dark falcon soprano voice, across gilded columns and crimson curtains, up to a fresco of angels. She performed every week for Lumina because her mother was there for that hour, and that was more time than Aria got from her all week.
She did it, though she hated opera. She hated everything about it. The overblown sense of drama. The violence and lewdness. No one had ever died of heartbreak in Reverie. Betrayal never led to murder. Those things didn’t happen anymore. They had the Realms now. They could experience anything without taking risks. Now, life was Better than Real.
Her last Singing Sunday with Lumina had been different from the start. Lumina’s cool hand on Aria’s bare shoulder had jarred her awake.
“What is it?” Aria had asked. Her Smartscreen read 5 A.M. “What’s wrong?”
Lumina was perched at the edge of the bed. She wore a gray traveling jumpsuit with reflective stripes along the arms, not her usual doctor’s smock. Somehow she still looked elegant. “The transport team wants to avoid some weather. I need to leave earlier than planned.”
Aria swallowed the tight feeling in her throat. She didn’t want to say good-bye. They’d planned to meet every day in the Realms, but Lumina would be far. They wouldn’t be in the same Pod anymore.
“Will you sing to me now?”
“Mom, now?”
“I look forward to this all week,” Lumina said. “Don’t make me wait until next Sunday.”
Aria flopped facedown on her pillow. Opera first thing in the morning? It seemed criminal. “Why do you have to leave? Why can’t you just do your research in the Realms?”
“I need to be in Bliss for this assignment.”
“Why can’t I go with you?” Aria asked.
“You know I can’t tell you why.”
Aria pressed her face deeper into the pillow. How could her mother sound so calm? She made it seem so easy to keep things from Aria.
“Please,” Lumina said. “I don’t have much time.”
“Fine.” Aria rolled over and glared at the ceiling. “Let’s just get it over with.” She found the Opera Realm on her Smartscreen. The icon should’ve showed the columned front facade of the opera house, but Aria had changed it to an image of her pretending to choke herself. She chose it and fractioned, her mind easily opening to another world. She was in two places now. There, in her cramped little room, and in the extravagant, cavernous opera hall.