48 
Is he breathing, Roar? Is he alive?”
“Shut up. I’m trying to listen to his heart.”
Perry forced his eyes open. Through a bleary film, he saw Roar leaning over his chest. “Off. Get off me, Roar.”
Perry’s throat was so dry that the words were no more than rasps. All he could think about was water. He ached for it. Every fiber of his body demanded it. His head pounded. It hurt so badly he was afraid to move.
Roar’s head popped up and his eyes flew wide. “Ha!” he yelled. “Ha!” He shook Perry by the shoulders. “I knew it!” He leaped to his feet and shouted that he knew it, over and over, until he finally sprawled on the sand. “That was horrible. That was so horrible,” he said between pants.
Soren, who’d been watching Roar in silence, appeared over Perry. “Want some water?”
They gathered by a fire as the sun set, surrounded by foreign scents and sounds. Every breath was like hearing a new language—a process of recognizing soil and plant and animal scents, but also learning them as new. This land was green and young, and even as spent as he felt, his heart thudded with the desire to explore it.
After drinking enough water to make his stomach cramp, Perry learned that Roar and Soren had escaped from Sable’s camp two days ago. They’d been familiarizing themselves with the terrain, finding freshwater and food, while trying to devise a plan for taking Sable out. Then it was Perry’s turn to talk. He told them what had happened with Cinder on the Hover.
“That was the last time you saw him?” Roar said. “Before you blacked out?”
Perry considered that, remembering those final moments. Saying he blacked out didn’t feel right. He’d seen only white. But he nodded and said, “That was it. I didn’t see him after that.”
Roar rubbed his jaw, giving a small shrug. “Maybe that’s how it should have been. I doubt you could have helped him.”
“But I would have tried,” Perry said. “I’d have done all I could.”
Soren poked at the fire with a stick. “From where I’m sitting, you did.”
It was a decent thing to say. Perry nodded in thanks.
He leaned his back on the raft—the raft that had saved his life—and wove his fingers together on his stomach. He wanted to rush to Aria but he was too weak. He had to replenish the water his body desperately needed. Hour by hour, his muscle cramps and his headache faded and he felt more like himself.
He saw the scars on his hand, scars Cinder had given him, and his throat tightened. The feeling he had of incompletion—of wishing he could have done more, or differently, or better—wasn’t new. But he was tired of bashing his head against the past. He tried to do right—in every situation. Sometimes that wasn’t enough, but it was all he could do. The only thing he truly had power over. He was learning to accept that.
He watched the ashes from the fire flicker upward into the darkness. To the stars. The lid had come off the sky, and now they were connected, earth with everything. Him to Cinder. To Liv and his brother and his father.
He was so close to feeling peace. Only one thing stood in his way now.
“Per, how did you know that thing was on the Hover?” Roar asked, tipping his chin to the raft.
Perry’s eyes moved to Soren, remembering the Dweller’s comment when they’d been preparing to go after Cinder in the Komodo.
That’s an inflatable boat, Outsider. And if that’s what you’re wearing, I’m out of this operation.
Soren grinned. “Go on, admit it. I saved your life.”
His tone was friendly. He had changed in the past week, Perry thought. The way he looked and the way he spoke.
“You helped,” Perry said. When Sable had left him for dead, Perry had shot right to the storage lockers, Soren’s wisecrack loud in his mind. He had hoped the Dragonwing, a smaller craft than the Belswan, also carried the raft. Luck had been on his side. He’d immediately located the inflatable boat, which had assembled with just the press of a button. He could say one thing about the Dwellers: they built good ships.
Perry had escaped the Dragonwing with only seconds to spare. He’d watched the Hover sink behind him and then he’d come through the barrier of Aether, the last of the Hovers in the fleet soaring above him.
They’d pulled ahead quickly then. The fleet had probably made the journey there in hours, where he had spent a day battling rough seas, and then two more in calmer water.
Three days alone, but they hadn’t been difficult. He preferred hunting, but he was a fisherman by birth. He’d been fine with the ocean ahead of him, a new sky above. His only real problem had been the lack of water.
Dehydration, he’d realized quickly, was worse than burns or the pound of a mallet. By the time he’d dragged himself and the raft up the beach, into the cover of the trees where Roar and Soren found him, reality had lost its sharpness. He’d thought that maybe he was only imagining that he’d reached land when Roar and Soren showed up.
“It would have been easier on me if you’d taught me how to fly the Hover,” Perry said to Soren now. “Could have saved me a few days.”
Soren grinned. “You keep saying you want to learn, Outsider. I’m ready. I’ll teach you anytime.”
“I’m proud of both of you,” Roar said. “I just have to say that.”
He was joking, but there was a seed of honesty there. Perry was sharing a jug of water with Soren. They were talking easily. Perry had never thought it possible.
He sat up and asked the question that had been on his mind all day. “How is she, Roar?”
Roar met his eyes directly. “How would you be if you thought she was dead?”
Perry couldn’t even stand to imagine it. He found himself biting down into his teeth. “What has Sable done?” he said instead.
Silence.
“Tell him, Roar,” Soren said.
Perry leaned back and shut his eyes. He already knew.
“Reef.”
“Yes,” Roar said. “Gren, too. The moment we got here. Twig was shot, but he was holding on when we left.”
Reef. Perry sucked in a breath and held it there, pushing back on the pressure. In half a year, he’d become so much to Perry. Brother. Father. Friend. Adviser. Perry’s eyes blurred, another gap opening inside him.
“I’m sorry, Per,” Roar said.
Perry nodded, bracing himself. “Marron?”
“He’s fine. At least he was when we left.”
It made sense. Marron was brilliant and respected, but he wasn’t ambitious or aggressive. He’d never challenge Sable for power—he’d reason for it. Reef had represented the only real threat to Sable. He would have picked up the Tides as his own. He’d have done it for Perry.
“Sable has control of everything,” Soren said. “You could feel it even before he set down on the beach. As soon as you left with Cinder, he took control. He’s a madman. Completely psychotic.”
“He’ll be completely dead soon,” Perry said.
For the next hours, he talked with Roar and Soren about the camp Sable had set up. They discussed the basic layout of the settlement, the surrounding geography, and the advantages Sable had—which were many.
When it was late, Roar said, “What are you thinking, Per?”
Perry rolled his shoulders back, his muscles finally loosening and feeling stronger. “We go after him. But we have to do it the right way. If I show up and the Tides see me, it could turn into an uprising. It could escalate and become us against the Horns. That can’t happen. They have all the weapons. . . . It’d be a bloodbath. Worse than the Komodo.”
Roar crossed his arms. “Then we hit him fast.”
“Right. And while he’s not expecting it. We’ll come up on him tomorrow night in the darkness. We get close, and we take him down when he’s not looking.” He looked at Roar and Soren. “It means you have to trust me, and do exactly what I say this time. No mistakes.”