She swallowed the bitter taste on her tongue. She needed water and the seat straps were too tight. She couldn’t draw in a full breath without pushing against them. She began to feel light-headed, like she couldn’t get enough air. Aria ran through vocal scales in her mind, battling against the shrill note of her headache. Scales always calmed her.

The Dragonwing slowed much sooner than she’d expected. Half an hour? Aria knew she wasn’t tracking time properly, but it couldn’t have been long.

The Guardians pressed at wrist pads on their gray suits and donned their helmets, moving in quick, practiced movements. Soft light glowed from within their visors, shining clear through their Smarteyes. Aria looked around the cabin. Why hadn’t she been given a helmet?

The black-gloved man stood and unfastened her seat restraint. She finally drew a deep breath, but didn’t feel satisfied. A strange weightlessness had come over her.

“Are we there?” she asked. She hadn’t felt them land. The Hover still hummed with noise.

The Guardian’s voice projected through a speaker in his helmet. “You are.”

The door opened with a blast of light. Hot air gusted into the cabin. Aria blinked furiously, willing her eyes to adjust. She didn’t see a hangar. She didn’t see anything that looked like Bliss. Empty land ran clear to the horizon. Desert, reaching as far as she could see. Nothing more. She didn’t understand. Couldn’t accept what she saw.

A hand clamped onto her wrist. She screamed and reeled back. “Let go of me!” She grabbed the seat restraints, clutching them with all her strength.

Hard hands fell on her shoulders, crushing her muscles, tearing her from the straps. They pulled her toward the edge in an instant. She looked down at her cloth-covered feet. They were inches from the metal lip. Much farther below, she saw cracked red earth.

“Please! I didn’t do anything!”

A Guardian came up behind her. She caught a glimpse of him as his foot crashed into the small of her back, and then she was falling through the air.

She pressed her lips together as she struck the earth. Pain speared through her knees and elbows. Her temple smacked against the ground. She stifled a cry because making any sound—because even breathing—meant death. Aria lifted her head and stared at her fingers splayed on rust-colored dirt.

She was touching the outside. She was in the Death Shop.

She turned as the hatch closed, catching her last glance of the Guardians. Another Dragonwing floated beside it, both glistening like blue pearls. A buzzing sound shook the air around her as they glided away, kicking up clouds of red dirt as they sped across the flat expanse.