In the afternoon, they stopped to eat on a rocky outcrop. Perry brushed a kiss on her cheek while she was chewing, and she learned that it was the loveliest thing to be kissed for no reason, even while chewing food. It brightened the woods, and the never sky, and everything.

Aria embraced this tactic, calling it the Spontaneous Kiss, and soon learned how difficult Scires were to surprise. Whenever she tried the Spontaneous Kiss in return, Perry smiled with heavy-lidded eyes and opened his arms. She kissed him anyway, not caring, until it hit her that he’d someday choose a girl who was like him. A Scire who would also be immune to the Spontaneous Kiss. Aria wondered if they would know every emotion that ran through each other. She found it curious and frightening that she could deeply dislike someone she didn’t even know. It wasn’t her. At least, it wasn’t how she used to be.

That night Perry devised a hammock from their blankets and rope. Pressed together in a cocoon of warm fleece, his heart pounding solidly beneath her ear, she wished for what she’d always had in Reverie. A way to exist in two worlds at once.

The next day she spent hours thinking, turning her inquisitiveness inward. She liked what she was discovering about herself. Aria, who knew that birds should be plucked while they were still warm so the feathers came out more easily. Aria, who could start a fire with a knife and a piece of quartz. Aria, who sang wrapped in the arms of a blond-haired boy.

She didn’t know where this side of her would fit with what lay five days ahead. How would it be going back to the Pod? Knowing how utterly visceral and terrifying and euphoric these days had been, how would she return to simulated thrills? She didn’t know, but thinking of it worried her. As to her biggest question—what would happen when she reached Bliss—she did something new. She withheld her questions and fears and trusted that she’d know what to do when the time came.

“Perry?” she whispered late that night. His arms immediately tightened around her ribs and she knew she’d woken him.

“Hmm?”

“When did you get your Senses?”

In the quiet, she could practically hear him sinking into his memories.

“My sight came first. Around age four. For a while no one knew that it was different . . . even I didn’t. Most Seers see better in the light, but I thought everyone saw like I did. When it came out that I was Night-Sighted no one made much of it. At least not around me. I was eight when I started scenting tempers. Eight exactly. That I remember.”

“Why?” Aria asked. But there was something about the way he’d said it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.