They traveled when they could, veering around burning fields. At night they found shelter and gathered around a fire, the men telling the story of his fight with Reef over and over. They embellished it, playing out their parts. Embarrassing Perry by slurring the things he’d said. They howled every time the story came to Perry vomiting with his knife held at guard. Reef earned Perry’s respect again by accepting his defeat at the end of the story with good humor. He claimed he’d need his nose broken half a dozen more times before it looked like Perry’s.

Perry had only known Scires among his family. Liv. Vale. Talon. Reef changed what he knew about his Sense. They spoke little but understood each other perfectly. He tried not to think of what this sort of bond would feel like with a girl. Whenever his mind tended that way, it felt like a betrayal.

One night Reef turned to him as they stood under a stand of trees waiting out a pelting rain. “It’d be a different life without the Aether.”

His temper was calm and steady. Thoughtful.

The other men went quiet. Their eyes turned to Perry, waiting for him to speak.

He told them then about the Still Blue. For a while after he’d finished, he and Reef had stood watching the rain beat down on a charred field. Listening to the hiss it made. Perry knew he and Roar could discover this place. Reef and his men would help. Marron and Cinder, too. They’d learn where it was and then he’d take the Tides there.

“We’ll find the Still Blue,” Perry said. “If it exists, I’ll get us there.”

It came out sounding like what it was. Like he’d made a pledge to his men.

After a week of skirting storms, they approached the Tide compound under a night sky lit bright with Aether. Perry strode across a field that crunched like tinder beneath his feet, inhaling the familiar scents of salt and earth. This was where he needed to be. Home with his tribe. He had no illusions of the welcome he would receive. The Tides would blame him for Talon and Vale. But he hoped to convince them that he could help. The tribe needed him now.

A torch flickered to life at the edge of the compound and then he heard shouts of alarm, telling him they’d been spotted by the night watch. Within moments several more torches appeared, blazing spots in the blue night. Perry knew the Tides would think this a raid. He’d been a part of this situation dozens of times before. He would have been the archer on the roof of the cookhouse, where he now saw Brooke.