Into the Still Blue (Under the Never Sky, #3)

by Veronica Rossi

Liv was suddenly there, in the cool ocean air. In the tumbling waves. In the monster waking inside his mind and clawing at the walls of his skull.

When he reached the edge of the woods, she called out, “Be careful.” She knew he would be. It was just a way to stall. To feel close to him a little longer. He looked back, still walking, and pressed a hand to his heart.

“Tough fall we had.” “It was,” Aria said. “But we landed in one piece.” Roar stared at her intensely. His eyes welled with tears, and he looked like he was concentrating. Like he was trying to determine if he actually was in one piece. She put a hand on his arm. “We did . . . right?” Roar blinked. He gave a slight nod. “There are moments I think so.” Aria squeezed his arm, smiling. The possibility of wholeness was all she wanted for him. Maybe his grief was like her wounded arm. Slowly healing. Gradually becoming less consuming as life delivered other worries and other joys. Other sources of pain and happiness. She wanted that for him. More life. More happiness.

happiness flooded his nose with bright scents, their tempers bringing him the spring the Aether had taken.

As they walked back to the cave, a piece of him that had been broken felt whole again. Nothing looked the same or smelled the same, and maybe the world was ending, but he and Roar would walk to that end side by side.

He could drop a stone into the black well of Sable’s heart and never hear it hit the bottom.

his shirts were more than mere shirts. Maybe she was losing her mind, but they meant something to her just because they were his.

He still felt it calling to him—but in a voice he no longer recognized.

He looked relaxed. The world raged around him, but it didn’t feel that way to Perry. Standing behind him, watching him, Perry felt like the world was raging for Cinder.

Reef met Aria’s eyes, and she wondered if he’d been hoping, irrationally, for the same thing as her. That the instrumentation would find one human. A young man of almost twenty, with green eyes and blond hair and a crooked smile that he used infrequently, but to powerful effect. A young man with the purest heart imaginable. Who believed in honor and who never, not for a moment, placed himself over others.

Dweller. Outsider. Horn or Tide. They were of the same mind. They’d had enough of strife. It was time to shed the skin of the old world and move forward.