Page 35 of Cage of Starlight

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

F uzzing in and out of awareness, Tory isn’t sure how far they drag him before dropping him.

When clarity trickles back in, he blinks into impenetrable darkness. He’s weighted down, skin buzzing, breath shallow. He blinks and blinks, but there’s not a drop of light.

There’s something wrong with that, with the darkness.

But his brain is slow to answer, body aching in a syrupy way that’s consistent with being battered, marinated in seawater and tenderized on the rocks, then fried to perfection by some weird electric lady, which is awful, really, because they’re kind of in a—

Shit. It’s dark.

With a lurch, Tory tries and fails to stand, but it’s like his body is anchored to the ground. If it’s dark, that’s a whole day wasted. “Sena?”

“Tied to you,” comes the strained reply. “Can you stop moving?”

“How long have I been out? If it’s night already—”

“Not night. Blindfolded. You’ve been in and out for maybe ten minutes. Just long enough for them to tie us up and leave us here.”

“Oh.” Tory wiggles his nose and the prickly sensation of motion across it does indeed feel like cloth. Tension leaves him in a rush. “That’s . . . not so bad, then.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. One of these people had to be physically restrained to keep him from killing me when we arrived. I’m not optimistic about our prospects.”

“Shut your mouth, dog.” The low, gravelly voice comes from Tory’s right.

“Ah,” Sena says faintly. “It was that one.”

Tory reflexively reaches for his power—for any energies he can turn against an enemy—but the world is empty and silent. It’s worse than being blindfolded. He shivers.

That must be why they’ve tied him to Sena.

“Who are you?” Tory says. The more he blinks, the more his eyes adjust. The cloth they’ve tied around his head is rougher than the water-smooth kerchief Sena used on Tory in training.

He can almost make out shapes through the loose weave.

A hunched, restless silhouette sits on a box of some sort, a mere few strides away from Tory. “What do you want with us?”

“Boss thinks you might be useful.” The way the man spits his words says he disagrees. Something bounces with an irritated tap tap tap against the man’s knee, catching the light on each upswing. A knife?

A terrible plan begins to take shape in Tory’s head.

He pitches his voice casual. “How ’bout this hospitality, huh? Almost in line with what those bastards at the Box offer.”

The man goes deadly still where he sits. “Don’t you dare compare us to them. ”

A weak spot? “You’re not doing a lot to differentiate yourself.” Tory tries to gesture at his current state but fails again, fibers from the thick rope that binds him to Sena piercing his shirt to prick his skin. “I’d say you’re about even.”

“Stop talking.” Irritation shows in the increased pace of the taps of the flat side of the blade against the man’s knee, the way his leg jumps up to meet it.

But he’s not irritated enough. Not yet.

The quiet stretches, nothing but the shallow wheeze of Sena’s breath to break it.

In this hazy dark, it’s easy to remember the bursts of blood-slick dirt over his skin and the riot of his breath in his ears.

Randall, empty eyes aimed at the sky. It’s easy, too, to remember Sena’s terribly casual , Our cores will be deactivated in two days.

There’s no time to do this slowly. “Let’s play a game.”

It’s a flimsy plan: piss this guy off; get him over here. In close quarters, Tory can headbutt him, maybe turn the tables. “I’ll start. If I stood you and the bastard Grand General side by side—”

“ Tory .” Sena’s voice. Half exhaustion, half warning. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I’m just saying, their hospitality is shit. Even you’re a better conversation partner than this guy.”

“Am I really?” Sena scoffs, a punched exhale that turns into a crackling cough. He stills against Tory’s back, and when he speaks up again, his voice is low. “Tory.”

“Hm?”

“They didn’t drag us far. We’re still in the woods. I’ve heard at least six people since we arrived here. All Seeds, if I had to—”

The man with the knife lurches to his feet and stalks toward them. “You wanna die, lapdog?”

Sena shuts his mouth, and the man retreats with a growl, but he doesn’t go back to his seat. He stalks once, twice in agitated circles around the both of them, wrist flicking like he wants to set his blade against flesh.

Almost there. If Tory can get him to come nearer, if he can stun him and get his hands on that knife . . .

“Maybe you’re worse than the bastards at the Box,” Tory tries, when the man’s third, angry revolution brings him close again. “After all, if you think about it—”

“What the fuck did you say?”

There. The shadowed shape of the man clenches his blade and breaks from his circle to stalk in Tory’s direction.

“Tory!”

Maybe it’s Sena’s interjection that deflects the man’s rage, or maybe it’s that the guy seems to have it out for the Box as a whole, but at Sena’s panicked call, the man heads for him instead.

There are few emotions more awful than the sudden, searing dread that flushes through Tory . It’s Kirlov’s tent all over again. It’s Sena on the ground, unbreathing while Tory stares down from above.

He wrenches at the ropes that bind him, but there’s no give. They only get tighter, sawing at his skin and squeezing the breath from him. From Sena, too, by the sudden, sharp noise of pain. Tory can’t see , this time, and it’s so much worse.

“I was the one who said that shit!” Tory yells, but there’s terrible pressure against his back. A thud, the crinkle of leaves like Sena is trying to scramble away and can’t.

“Don’t think I didn’t hear them talking. Don’t think I don’t know what you did to her, to my—”

Tory can’t see a thing, can’t tell if the man stabbed Sena already or is just getting started, and this is all wrong. It was supposed to be Tory. This isn’t what he planned for. He hates it, hates this, hates feeling like this—

“Stop it! You said you had questions! Just let go of him and I’ll—”

The thud of running footsteps. The low growl of a voice. Suddenly, the pressure against Tory’s back vanishes, and the ropes around him tighten as Sena sags.

“Judge!” a deep voice booms from somewhere behind Tory. “I leave you alone for one moment. Drop the damned knife. Now !”

A clink.

“How many times have I told you your temper will be the death of us? You’re as bad as Iri. Get over here.” A grunt, the rustle of cloth. “You will not let your emotions ruin our mission. Sit this one out. Cool your head.”

“He said—”

“I don’t care what he said! We need him.”

Tory’s stomach flips, because he knows that voice—honey-smooth and authoritative. He’s heard it somewhere. But his heart is a drumbeat in his ears, turning the world to ocean noise, and his thoughts are a riot in his skull. He can’t place it.

Slow and casual, footsteps crunch the leaves around Tory until they stop in front of him. Tory tenses at sudden pressure on the side of his face. On the blindfold. “That was a terrible idea,” the familiar voice drawls.

Then there’s light, brutal as a blow to the head. Tory blinks through the ache of it, squeezing his eyes closed until they adjust.

The voice says, “You could have gotten yourself killed, provoking Judge like that. He has ample reason to be unhappy with the Westrian military. What were you thinking, Tory?”

This guy knows his name? Blindfold removed, Tory squints into the gray light. A man stands in front of him, leaning all his weight on one leg and bending to peer at Tory with an exasperated expression. Tory takes in the man’s fox eyes, his waves of red hair like flames. “You!”

Riese . The rebels. He’s found them, but what an introduction.

Riese’s lips curl up. “Me. Told you I’d be seeing you again, although—” he quirks an eyebrow at Tory’s disheveled state “—maybe not quite like this. If I were a moment later, I’d be burying you, not greeting you. What were you thinking with that stunt?”

“I meant to get him to attack me,” Tory admits with a one-shouldered shrug. “I was going to headbutt him and take his knife.”

Riese laughs. “Bold! Foolish, but bold. It might have worked if you hadn’t become so soft.”

Tory bristles. “What?”

“ Soft. Like spoiled fruit. All Judge had to do was apply a little pressure to that Box-dog and you were ready to sing like a canary. Where’s the sharp-toothed boy I met, the one who wanted to start fires and open veins?”

Tory flushes. His mother’s words echo in his skull. Don’t grow roots.

Has he? Surely not again. Not so quickly. It’s just that Sena’s the only one who knows the terrain. Tory doesn’t let himself look at Sena. “It’s been a long day.”

Riese offers a mild smile, but the sharpness of his canines ruins it.

“So it seems. I apologize for the reception you received. We normally don’t treat guests this way.

You have to understand that we must be careful, given the sorts of creatures we find crawling in these woods.

” He scowls at Sena. “I’ll be frank. In any other situation, I would have killed your friend here,” Riese says.

“We’ve taken in Seeds from the Compound before, which comes, naturally, with its own risks.

Never have we taken in an officer .” He spits the word like it’s a curse.

“Sena is a Seed,” Tory says, and regrets it instantly. He probably shouldn’t have used Sena’s name. If these people want to kill Sena just for being an officer, he doesn’t know what they’d do to him for being Vantaras.

But Riese just nods, unaware.

“We noticed. Iri here had plenty to tell me about that.” Riese flaps a hand toward the sullen boy who ran in behind him: another familiar face.

Short, angry, drowning in a knitted burnt-orange sweater several times too large for him and still wearing his hair in a braided bun.

Burn scars on both hands and thick rings on his thumbs.

“I’m told he tried to incinerate your friend. ”