“As much as I cared for her, Aria, and I did, very deeply, I realized I would never be accepted into her world. Her people would never be mine. She couldn’t come to the outside with me, either. I knew that, but I still asked her a thousand times. But she wanted our child to grow up in safety. In the end, we both agreed the Pod would be the best place for you.”

Aria bit her lip until it stung. Our child. For a few seconds, the words flapped around her mind like bats. “So you left?”

Loran nodded. “I had to. When I returned to Rim, I’d been gone exactly a year. Leaving her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

A sense of unreality seeped through her as she stared at him. Her eyes filled, and her lungs felt like they were going to explode.

“What is it, Aria?”

“I lost my mother, and I lost Perry. If I started to care . . .”

Her tears came like a torrent. They came so violently, with such an eruption, that she could only yield to them, letting the pain shake her, unravel her piece by piece.

After a long while, her grief shaped into something different.

Surprise.

Loran’s arms wrapped around her, holding her. When she looked up, she saw concern on his face—intense concern—and a flicker of something else.

“I’m sorry you’re hurting,” he said, answering her unspoken question, “but this is my first act as your father. At least it feels that way to me. And it’s . . . very fulfilling.”

She brushed her fingers over her eyes. “I want to try. I want to give us a chance too.”

They weren’t the prettiest words she’d ever spoken, but they were a start. And judging by Loran’s smile, they were enough.

They turned toward the open hatch at the same time, following the sound that carried from outside. Drums pounding in the distance.

“We’d better go,” Loran said.

Sable’s party had begun.

The clearing in the woods was much larger than the one at the heart of the Tides’ compound. It was bordered on one side by a river that stepped down the hill as it wove around smooth boulders. Lush foliage decorated the banks, and trees bowed low, trailing their branches in the burbling water. It couldn’t have been more unlike the deadly cold and stark alpine shores of the Snake River.

Around the area, torchlight wavered. Night was falling, the deep blue sky pierced by the stars that flickered to life one by one. Aria heard music. Two drums beating a rhythm, and strings as well. A few instruments had survived the crossing, then.

Sable was right. This place was beautiful. This land had promise. But she couldn’t separate the suffering of the people from the beauty of the place.