Chapter 50 #2
Amaya gradually became more confident in her readings, able to direct Will with more accuracy. And where it had previously taken three men to keep the helm under control, Ultima allowed Will to man it himself.
But the deeper they flew, the darker their surroundings became.
The thin, silvery blue swirls of Aether deepened to dark steel, while the cerulean bands became navy.
What little visibility they had reduced even further, transforming the eerie glow cast over the Maelstrom into something more ominous.
The shields began to flicker as a tapping sound pricked Amaya’s ears. It sounded like hail on cobblestones at first, but grew louder and louder by the second.
“What’s that?” Amaya called, pulling the helm to the right. Will followed her lead and the Maelstrom tilted, barely avoiding another collision.
Nicholas pressed his face to the glass. “They’re like meteorites, but they’re hard to see.”
“Everything’s hard to see,” Sebastian said. He stood behind them, tinkering with a control panel in an attempt to stabilize the shields. “It’s probably debris from the mountains.”
The “meteorites” pelted the starboard side. The rocks weren’t enough to present a serious threat to the ship’s integrity, but required near-constant deflection from the shields.
“Bas, how’s the charge?” Will asked.
“Draining.”
“How fast?”
“. . . Fast. They’re registering like small hand grenades.”
“What does that mean?” Amaya asked, looking at Will. He just grimaced in response.
When the first shield finally gave out, it was on account of an especially large boulder. The starboard side shield stuttered and zapped at its impact, protecting the ship one last time before flickering into nothing.
Will muttered a curse behind her, then an order. “Everyone get down!”
Sebastian, Nicholas, Ford, and Crowe all complied, ducking underneath the tempered glass encasing the pilothouse as stones began hammering against their unprotected side. Only Will and Amaya remained standing, unable to steer and take cover at the same time.
It won’t break, Amaya told herself as boulders continued slamming against the glass. She couldn’t see anything, their visibility now reduced to merely a few inches ahead. They couldn’t see the stones coming—each one was a surprise, like bullets shot from the depths of ever-warping darkness.
Perhaps the Skyvault didn’t want to be found, even by a descendant of Ronan Pearce. Maybe the Aether Storm’s violent defense was a warning that they were not welcome.
It’s not going to break. This is a Sky Lord flagship, it won’t—
CRACK.
One of the stones finally struck true, crashing into the glass keeping them safe and dry. Amaya jumped at the noise and watched in horror as a spiderweb of hairline fractures spread across the window.
She felt an odd itch in her brain—Sixth Sense. The itch reared up to a blaring alarm, red and hot and—now.
“Will, duck!”
Sixth Sense dragged Amaya’s body to the ground. She fell on her knees, squeezing the conductor and covering her head with her hands as a boulder smashed through the glass, shattering their last line of defense into a million pieces.
Amaya was safe from the boulder, but a mixture of Aether-soaked rain and broken glass showered down on her. The glass nipped at her skin, leaving small, thin scratches that welled up with blood. The rain stung like acid as Aether seeped into her bloodstream through the small cuts.
She was soaked to the bone in seconds. Amaya clenched her teeth, dizzy as the sharp pain chewed through her and infected every inch of her body.
When she dared to open her eyes, her veins glowed blue beneath her ghostly pale skin.
“Are you all right?” Will shouted. His voice sounded distant, carried away by the winds whipping her hair.
Distant or not, Amaya was relieved to hear his voice. He must have dodged the boulder on his own, or hadn’t been in its direct path.
But her? No. No, she wasn’t alright. She was about to shatter just like all that broken glass. Her body was tearing itself apart from the inside out.
She was on fire, and yet, she was freezing. She was a frozen flame blazing in the dark storm, and all she could do was let out a strangled cry in response, pressing her forehead to the leather of Will’s boot.
“Sebastian! Take this!” The desperation in Will’s roar was palpable.
Sebastian lunged for the wheel, assisted by Nicholas, Ford, and Crowe. They held it steady while Will dropped to his knees, pulling Amaya into his arms.
“Hey, Bluebird.”
“It hurts,” Amaya sobbed, reaching for his hands. Her arms were covered in blood and Aether, the blue and crimson bleeding together into a muddy lavender.
“I know, I know. Come here.” Will gripped her arms and dragged her out from under everyone else’s feet, where he shed his red coat and wrapped it around her. It was shredded by glass, as were his hands, but the lining was thick and blocked most of the rain. He shoved her arms inside the sleeves.
“This will help, but it’s still going to hurt,” Will said, cinching the coat around her with his belt. “You’ll have to fight through it. And don’t you dare tell me you can’t.” He stole the words from Amaya’s lips.
“You don’t do this for me, or the crew, or the sky cities,” Will continued.
He lowered his voice until it was just for her.
“You do it for yourself. Because after this, that beautiful, badass version of you deserves a life doing whatever the hell she wants. You don’t get to give up on her. I haven’t; I never will.”
Amaya bit her lip, gnawing on it so hard she drew blood. The rain hurt so much, radiating pain through every inch of her body. Will pressed his hands to either side of her face, lifting her gaze to his.
His eyes weren’t gray anymore—they were green and familiar as he smudged away drops of Aether and tears with his thumbs.
“Amaya, listen to me. I love every version of you. You hear me? I love you.”
Amaya’s lips parted, his confession striking her heart with a thousand arrows.
“And if that’s not enough, that’s fine,” he said. “You do it because Grace needs to get home. Because your father needs you. Because Camden didn’t die for you to give up now. Okay?”
Amaya’s breath rattled, the pain easing just enough as the coat prevented more rain from soaking into her cuts.
Camden.
There were so many reasons she needed to see this through, but her best and oldest friend’s memory was the one that broke through her paralysis. She thought about him falling, his whispered apology, and how the worst moment of her life had brought her here.
It couldn’t be for nothing.
Finally, she nodded and took a deep, trembling breath. “Okay.”
The ship lurched as the Maelstrom collided with a mountain on the port side.
“A little help here!” Sebastian said.
Will helped Amaya up on one side. She imagined Camden pulling her up by her other arm, giving her the strength she no longer had on her own. Will guided her beneath Sebastian’s arms, where she fell against the helm and stared, bleary-eyed, into the storm.
Would it ever end?
Will pressed on his pendant to reactivate Ultima and took the wheel from Sebastian, gripping it with conviction and confidence.
“Amaya, look at me.” Will’s voice broke as Amaya glanced over her shoulder at him. His eyes gleamed gray again. “We will do this.”
It was hell. It was the hardest thing Amaya had ever done, but she soon became so numb with the twin sensations of fire and ice in her veins that she could almost dissociate from the pain. The conductor was practically grafted onto her hand like an honorary Class Four as she followed the path.
Up, down, left, right.
A mountain here.
An airborne boulder there.
She went on autopilot, closing her heart and mind and body to anything that might make a bid for her focus. Anything that wasn’t the storm, the Aether current, the conductor’s spinning rings, Sixth Sense’s warnings, or the wheel was irrelevant.
Will became the enforcer of her will, trusting her guidance implicitly. They worked as one, each of them taking on the burden the other could not.
Finally, the spinning rings slowed. The midnight blue Aether began to fade into lighter, brighter shades. The rain let up, and the path ahead stopped extending. It was getting shorter, stopped by an invisible wall only a few yards ahead.
Immeasurable relief flooded Amaya’s body. She ducked under Will’s arm and stepped to the front of the ruined pilothouse, brimming with hope and anticipation.
The rings slowed to a stop.
“Amaya?” Will asked.
He sounded exhausted, but she didn’t dare turn to look back at him. Her focus remained fixed directly ahead, even as the Aether particles stung her eyes like sand and glimmering rain slid down her body. Even as she teetered on the verge of collapsing. She wouldn’t look away. Not now.
“Amaya, where am I steering?”
“Nowhere,” she said. “We’re here.”