Through the Ever Night

“He’s asleep, but when he wakes, I’ll tell him you said hello.” Another pole rested by the pier. Talon was using two. He was a Tider, she realized. He’d probably fished for all of his eight years. “Can I join you?”

He didn’t look happy about it, but he said, “Sure.”

Aria picked up the extra rod and sat next to him. She couldn’t believe that after a few days in a fishing settlement, she was now fishing in the Realms. She studied the wooden pole in her hands, realizing she had no idea how to cast it. She’d gone fishing in another Realm before. A Space Fishing Realm, where you fired hooks at fish as you floated through the cosmos. This was fishing as the ancients had done it.

“Umm … here,” Talon said, taking the rod from her hand. He cast out slowly, so she could see what he was doing, then handed it back.

“Thanks,” she said.

He shrugged without looking at her and began swinging his legs over the edge of the pier. Kicking left and right, left and right, left and right. Being still makes me tired, Perry had once told her. Apparently it ran in the family.

“We use nets more at home,” Talon said after a while.

“Oh, really?” She fumbled for a follow-up question. The timer read twenty-three minutes. “Do you like fishing better or hunting?”

He looked at her like she was crazy. “I love them both.”

“I could’ve probably guessed that. You look like you’re good at both.” He was sturdier now, healthier than when she’d seen him in the fall.

Talon scratched his nose. “I can catch them and catch them, but this Realm doesn’t let you cook them. I tried a few times. I gathered some wood and I tried to start a fire, but it doesn’t work. There’s no fire in the Realms. I mean there is, but it’s like a pretend kind of fire?”

Aria bit her lip, nodding. She knew that too well.

“You have to go to a cooking Realm to cook fish, but those are barmy. And then even when you eat them, it doesn’t fill your stomach after you leave the Realms. It’s not as fun catching them when there’s no point.”

Aria smiled. When he talked, his legs stopped swinging, and a crease appeared between his eyebrows. “I’m sure there are places where you can compete,” she suggested.

“For what?”

“For, you know, rankings. You could be first place.”

“Does first place mean I get to cook and eat what I catch?”

Aria laughed. “Probably not.”

“Maybe I’ll try them anyway.” He looked out at the ocean and swung his legs for a while before he spoke again. “I want to go home. I want to see my uncle.”

She felt her throat tighten. He hadn’t asked for his father. She wondered if he’d figured out what had happened between Vale and Perry, but it wasn’t her place to ask. It dawned on her that he no longer had parents. He was an orphan like she was.

“Are you unhappy in Reverie?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. I just want to go home. I’m better now. The doctors here made me better.”

“That’s good, Talon.” She remembered Perry telling her that Talon had been ill on the outside. “I’m going to get you out, and back home to the Tides. I promise.”

He scratched his knee but didn’t say anything.

“Do you ever fish with a friend?”

“Clara used to come with me. She’s Brooke’s sister. Do you know Brooke?”

Aria swallowed back a laugh. “Yes, I know Brooke. Why did Clara stop fishing with you?”

“She got bored. She thinks this Realm is too slow now. No one likes to fish this way.”

“I like it. Maybe we could do this again sometime?”

Talon gave her a sidelong glance and smiled. “All right.”

For the rest of their time together, Talon told her about all the fish he’d caught here. Using what sort of bait. At what time of day. Under what weather conditions.

He tipped his head to the side when his voice grew softer. His legs never stopped swinging over the edge of the pier. A few times, when he smiled, she had to look to the sea and breathe; he was so much like his uncle. She hugged him as the counter wound down to zero, promising she’d come see him again soon.

Aria fractioned into another Realm—an office. Hess sat at a sleek gray desk with a glass wall behind him. Through it she saw Reverie’s Panop—her home her entire life—with its circular levels coiling up. The view stole her breath and beckoned her forward. She’d been in the Realms dozens of times with Hess since she’d been cast out, but she hadn’t seen the Pod, her physical home, until now.

Hess spoke before she’d taken a step. “Pleasant visit,” he said. “He’s not suffering, as you saw. I hope we can keep it that way.”

17

PEREGRINE

Pledge, Vale,” Perry said, as he held the knife to his brother’s throat. His voice sounded too harsh, like his father’s voice, and his hands shook so badly he couldn’t hold the blade steady. He had Vale pinned to the grass in an empty field.

“Pledge to you? You can’t be serious. You have no idea what you’re doing, Perry. Admit it.”

“I know what I’m doing!”

Vale started laughing. “Then why did they leave you? Why did she leave you?”

“Shut up!” Perry pressed the blade against his brother’s throat, but Vale only laughed harder.

Then it wasn’t Vale. It was Aria. Beautiful. So beautiful beneath him, on Vale’s bed. She laughed as he held the knife to her throat. Perry couldn’t take the blade away. It trembled in his hand as he pressed it against the smooth skin at her neck, and he couldn’t stop himself and she didn’t care. She just kept laughing.