Aria had flown before, in the Realms. It was a glorious thing, soaring with no weight and no care. Flying felt like becoming the wind. This was nothing like that. It was an ugly, grasping, panicking thing. As the Snake River blurred closer, her only thought—her every thought—was hold on to Roar.
The water slammed into her, hard as stone, and then everything happened at once. Every bone in her body jarred. Roar tore out of her grip, and darkness swallowed her, driving every thought from her mind. She didn’t know if she was still there—still alive—until she saw the wavering light of the Aether calling her to the surface.
Her limbs unlocked, and she kicked, pushing through the water. Cold pierced into her muscles and her eyes. She was too heavy, too slow. Her clothes filled, dragging her down, and she felt the strap of her satchel looped around her waist. Aria grasped it and swam, every stroke thick, like cutting through mud. She broke the surface and sucked in a breath.
“Roar!” she screeched, scanning the water. The river looked calm on the surface, but the current was brutally strong.
Filling her lungs, she went under, searching desperately for him. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her, but she spotted him floating close by, his back to her.
He wasn’t swimming.
Panic exploded inside of her. She’d thrown him over the balcony.
If she’d killed him—
If he was gone—
She reached him, grasped under his arms, and towed him up. They surfaced, but now she had to kick harder. His weight was immense, and he was limp in her arms, a dead weight pulling her down.
“Roar!” she gasped, struggling to keep him above water. The cold was beyond anything she’d ever experienced, stabbing like a thousand needles into her muscles. “Roar, help me!” She swallowed water, and started coughing. They were still sinking. Still falling together.
She couldn’t talk. Aria reached up, fumbling, finding the bare skin at his neck. Roar, please. I can’t do this without you!
He jolted like he’d woken from a nightmare, wrenching out of her arms.
Aria surfaced and retched river water, fighting to catch a breath.
Roar swam away from her. She had to be losing her mind. He’d never leave her. Then she saw a dark shape floating toward them on the current. For an irrational second, she thought Sable had come after them, until her eyes focused and she saw the fallen log. Roar latched onto it.
“Aria!” He reached for her and pulled her in.
Aria grabbed hold, broken branches jabbing into her numbed hands. She couldn’t stop shaking, shaking from her core. They passed beneath the bridge and raced past homes along shore, everything dark and still in the dead of night.
“Too cold,” she said. “We have to get out.” Her jaw was trembling so much her words were unrecognizable.
They kicked toward shore together, but she didn’t know how they made it. She could barely feel her legs anymore. When their feet thudded against the gravelly riverbed, they released the driftwood. Roar’s arm came around her, and they waded on, clinging to each other, reality returning with every step.
Liv.
Liv.
Liv.
She hadn’t looked at Roar’s face yet. She was afraid of what she’d see.
As they trudged out of the river and onto land, she suddenly weighed a thousand pounds. Somehow, she and Roar hobbled up the shore, carrying each other, stumbling arm in arm. They passed between two houses and crossed a field, plunging into the woods beyond.
Aria didn’t know where they were heading. She couldn’t keep a straight line. She was beyond thinking, and her steps were weaving.
“Walking can’t cold anymore.” It was her voice but slurred, and she didn’t think she’d made sense. Then she was on her side in the tall grass. She couldn’t remember falling over. She drew into a ball, trying to stop the pain that stabbed into her muscles, her heart.
Roar appeared above her. There for an instant, then he was gone, and all she saw was Aether, flowing in currents above her.
Aria wanted to go after him. She didn’t want to be alone, and all she felt was aloneness. She needed a place with falcon carvings on the sill. She needed a place to belong.
When she opened her eyes, spindly tree branches swayed above her, and the first light of dawn colored the sky. Her head was resting on Roar’s chest. A thick, coarse blanket covered them, warm and smelling of horse.
She sat up, every muscle in her body aching, quivering with weakness. Her hair was still damp from the river. They were in the fold of a small gully. Roar must have moved her while she was asleep. Or unconscious. A fire smoldered nearby. Their jackets and boots were set out to dry.
Roar slept with a soft smile on his lips. His skin was a shade too pale. She memorized the way he looked. Aria wasn’t sure when she’d see him smile again.
He was beautiful, and it wasn’t fair.
She drew a shaky breath. “Roar,” she said.
He rolled to his feet without a word. The suddenness of his movement startled her, and she wondered if he’d ever been asleep.
He stared at her with unfocused eyes. Stared through her. She remembered feeling that way when her mother died. Detached. Like nothing she saw looked the same. In one day, her entire life had changed. Everything—from the world around her to the way she felt inside—had become unrecognizable.
Aria stood. She wanted to hold him and sob with him. Give it to me, she wanted to scream. Give me the pain. Let me take it from you.
Roar turned away. He picked up his jacket, banked the fire, and began to walk.
As they hurried to put the Snake behind them, clouds moved in, casting a mottled darkness over the woods. Aria’s right knee throbbed—she must have sprained it on the fall from the balcony—but they had to keep going. Sable would be after them. They needed to get away from Rim and find safety. It was all she let herself think about. All she could manage.
They traveled along the crest, stopping in the afternoon in a dense pocket of pines. The Snake curved along the valley below, the water rippling like scales. In the distance she saw a wall of rising black smoke. Another stretch of land decimated by a storm. The Aether was growing more powerful. No one could be in any doubt.
Roar dropped his satchel and sat. He hadn’t spoken once yet today. Not a word.
“I’m going to look around,” she said. “I won’t go far.” She left to scout their position. They were protected on one side by a shale slope. On the other by an impassable cliff. If anyone came after them, they’d have fair warning.
When she came back, she found Roar hunched over his knees with his head in his hands. Tears streamed down his cheeks and rolled off his chin, but he wasn’t moving. Aria had never seen anyone cry that way. So still. Like he didn’t even realize he was doing it.
“I’m right here, Roar,” she said, sitting by him. “I’m here.”
He shut his eyes. He didn’t respond.
Seeing him that way made her hurt. It made her want to scream until her throat was raw, but she couldn’t force him to talk. When he was ready, she’d be there.
Aria found a spare shirt in her satchel and tore it into strips. She wrapped her knee and put her things away, then had nothing else to do except watch Roar’s heart bleed out before her eyes.
An image sprang to her mind, of Liv smiling sleepily and asking, Are you the bird, or is my brother?
Aria clamped her hand over her mouth and scrambled away. She darted past shrubs and trees, needing distance because she couldn’t cry silently and she wouldn’t make it worse for Roar.
Liv should’ve been married tomorrow, or she should have run away with Roar. She should have seen Perry as a Blood Lord, and she should’ve been Aria’s friend. So much had vanished in a second.
Aria remembered being in the dining room with Sable. She’d had a knife in her hand, and a clear shot at his neck. She hated herself for not having done it. She should have killed him then.
Eyes swollen, her head pounding, she limped back to Roar. He was asleep, his head resting on his satchel.
She found her Smarteye and fought back a wave of fresh tears. If Liv hadn’t stolen it, would she still be alive? Would she be alive if Aria had given the Eye back to Sable on the balcony?
It nauseated her to think of Hess and Sable’s meeting. Their deal to go to the Still Blue together meant turning their backs on countless innocent people. She thought about Talon and Caleb and the rest of her friends in Reverie. Would they be chosen to go? And what about Perry, and Cinder, and the rest of the Tides? What about everyone else? The Unity was happening again, and it was more horrific than anything she’d imagined.
The thought of seeing Hess made her stomach turn, but she needed to. She’d connected him with Sable. She had done her part in helping him find the Still Blue. Now he needed to follow through on his part of the deal—and if he failed her, she’d contact Soren. She didn’t care how it happened. She needed Talon back.
Pulse racing, she applied the Smarteye. The biotech worked, attaching to her eye socket. She saw that the recordings were gone. Only the icons for Hess and Soren remained on her screen. She tried Hess and waited. He didn’t come.
She tried Soren next. He never showed either.