“And I’m trying to believe you!” Her voice rose, sounding shrill and unfamiliar to her own ears. She backed down the hall, suddenly desperate to retreat.

Loran didn’t stop her.

He watched as she spun and sprinted away.

30. Peregrine

30

PEREGRINE

Move, Tider! Hurry up!”

Struck between the shoulders, Perry stumbled forward, crashing into a man rushing the other way. Pain tore through him, sharpest in his ribs. He recovered his balance and glanced back.

The man escorting him out of the Komodo was a giant. Perry’s height, but built like a mountain, his eyebrows pierced with metal studs. “You want to untie my hands? I’d walk faster with them free.”

The giant sneered. “You think I’m an idiot? Shut up and keep moving.”

Slowing his steps as much as he could, Perry scanned every hall and chamber for Aria and Roar. For Cinder. Sable’s men poured through the narrow halls, but he saw far fewer of Hess’s men.

Perry passed a room with a group of Guardians. They looked panicked and lost, like the rest of the world shared a secret. He shook his head. His gut feeling had been dead-on. Sable had beaten Hess at his own game. Perry had known as soon as the giant had stepped into his chamber minutes ago.

“Get up, maggot,” the Horn soldier had taunted, flinging a bundle of ragged clothes at Perry. “Put those on. It’s time to go.”

It had been far too soon. Only an hour had passed, not the four Hess said he’d needed.

Now the giant’s voice boomed at Perry’s back. “Faster! Move your feet, or I’ll knock you out and drag you outside!”

Perry didn’t see how that would help. He’d be harder to carry; that seemed obvious.

Abruptly, the giant pushed him through a door. Perry stumbled halfway down a ramp before it hit him: after days in the Komodo, he was finally outside.

He pulled the cool air into his lungs as he took a few steps over the loose dirt. The night smelled of smoke from fires that smoldered on the distant hills. His skin prickled with the familiar feel of the Aether. The sky churned red and blue and terrifying—a fearsome sight, but worlds better than being trapped in a small chamber.

Hovers lined the field before him, just as when they’d arrived, but the Komodo looked different from the coiled snake he’d seen before. Now it stretched backward and forward, unspooled, its links running in a straight line.

“Peregrine!”

Sable stood with a cluster of men a short distance away. Perry didn’t have to be pushed to walk over to him.

“Ready to see the Still Blue?” Sable smiled and lifted a hand to the swirling sky. “Eager to leave all this behind?”

“Where are they?” Perry asked, anger burning in his blood.