“I was just thinking. Soon you’ll be Peregrine, Blood Lord of the Tides.” She swirled a hand in the air as she said it. “I just love how it sounds.”

Perry laughed. “Spoken like a true Aud.”

Chapter 39 - Aria

Chapter 39

ARIA

Aria heard song everywhere.

Shifting in the trees. Rumbling in the earth. Drifting on the wind. It was the same terrain, but she saw it differently. When she looked into the distance, where she’d seen nothing before, she now imagined the father who might be there. A man who would hear the world as she did, in endless tones. He was an Audile. That was the only thing she knew about him. Strangely, it felt like a lot.

A day after she’d discovered her ability, she noticed her own footfall growing quieter. Somehow, without consciously thinking of it, she’d begun to choose her steps with greater care. When she mentioned it to Perry, he grinned.

“I noticed that too. Easier to hunt,” he said, patting a hare strung over his shoulder. “Most Auds are quiet as shadows. The best end up as spies or scouts for the larger tribes.”

“Seriously? Spies?”

“Seriously.”

She practiced sneaking up on Perry, determined to succeed where she’d failed before. The morning before they were to reach Bliss, she pounced on him, throwing her arms around his neck as she planted a kiss on the blond scruff over his jaw. Finally she had accomplished the Spontaneous Kiss. She expected him to laugh and kiss her back. He didn’t do either. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his head on top of hers.

“Should we rest?” she asked, feeling his weight settle onto her shoulders. She could see the hills where Bliss was supposedly nestled on the horizon.

Perry straightened. “No,” he said. His green eyes were tight, like the day was too bright for him. “We have to keep going, Aria. I don’t know what else to do.”

Neither did she, so they walked.

They reached the hills late in the afternoon. They climbed one and another, and then almost suddenly, there stood Bliss, a man-made mountain amid earthen hills. Aria had never seen a Pod from the outside but knew the largest dome at the center would be the Panop. The off-shooting structures were the service domes, like Ag 6. She’d spent seventeen years in Reverie’s Panop. Contained in one place. It seemed unbelievable to her now. With daylight fading, the Pod’s deep charcoal shape was fast blending into the night.

Perry shifted his weight at her side, silent as he took in the scene. “Looks like a rescue. There are Hovers . . . thirty or so, and a bigger craft. At least fifty people out in the open.”

To her, what he described was just a smattering of dots next to Bliss, lit within a circle of light. The soft drone of engines carried to her ears.