“So we wait?” Aria asked. “How long?”

“A few hours.”

She gasped. That was soon. She couldn’t believe the plan was working. She felt like she’d just taken her first step back toward the Tides. Toward Perry.

Sable rose from the table. “Let’s go, Olivia,” he said, walking to the door.

Aria shot to her feet. “Wait,” she said. “The Smarteye. I’ll bring it back when it’s time.”

He turned back to her. “No need. I’ll keep it.”

Liv came to her side. “Sable, it’s hers.”

“Not anymore,” he said, and then spoke to the guards by the door. “Keep them here overnight. I might still have need for the Dweller. Then see them out of the city at first light.” Sable’s steel-blue eyes moved to Liv. “You understand, I’m sure, why your friends can’t stay.”

Liv glanced at Roar, who stood a few feet away, frozen. “I understand,” she said. Then she followed Sable from the room without a backward glance.

Hours later, Aria sat at the table with Roar, watching the rust-colored drapes stir in the wind. The dining room was cloaked in darkness, the only light coming through the open balcony doors. Every so often, she heard the muffled voices of the guards posted in the corridor.

She rubbed her arms, feeling numb. Sable had surely met with Hess again by now. He had used her and discarded her. She shook her head. He was just like Hess.

Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving the stones on the balcony slick, reflecting the glow of the sky. From where she sat, she could see currents of Aether. Bright rivers, flowing against the darkness. They’d see another storm soon. It didn’t shock her anymore. Eventually, the storms would come every day, and it would be just like the Unity. Decades of constant funnels crashing across the earth, coating it in destruction. But it wouldn’t spread over everything.

In her mind, she pictured an oasis. A golden place that shimmered in the sunlight. She imagined a long pier, with seagulls wheeling in the blue sky above. She pictured Perry and Talon together, fishing at the end, content and relaxed. Cinder would be there too, watching them, holding his hat to keep it from blowing away. She imagined Liv and Roar nearby, whispering to each other, planning some kind of mischief that would lead, inevitably, to someone being tossed into the water. And she would be there. She’d sing something gentle and pretty. A song that would hold the sway of the waves and the warm feel of the sun. A song that would capture how she felt for all of them.

That was what she wanted. It was her Still Blue, and every breath she took, every second that passed, she could choose to fight for it, or not.

She realized it was no choice at all. She would always fight.