Page 37 of Cage of Starlight

Iri shrugs. “I would not know. Your people killed them.”

Tory grimaces. “Fine. Let’s play this game, shall we? My mom was a whore and I have no idea who fathered me, but the way she looked at my eyes sometimes, she knew and was afraid of him. I could ask, but she killed herself to let me out of prison when I was eight.”

Iri stares at Tory, horrified. “Excuse me?”

Tory stares back. “I thought we were telling sad little stories that have nothing to do with the point.”

“The point,” Iri echoes.

“Please,” Sena whispers, voice frayed. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does! The point ,” Tory says, “Is that none of us chose our parents and this guy doesn’t have the slightest idea what any of us went through to get here. I won’t defend Westrice. We all know it’s rotten. We’re here because it’s rotten. But none of us chose this.”

“Didn’t you? To serve that monster or to die—I know which I would choose.”

“I’m sure you believe that. I did, too, but here I am, still scrambling to survive. Go ahead and blame me. I probably deserve it, but Sena—”

“Tory! I have no excuse.”

“ Sena ,” Iri spits the name like a curse. “Did you know your name means hope? I wonder how the bodies you left behind unburied feel about that.”

Tory wants to interrupt, but he doesn’t know where to start. Dread simmers in his stomach. Soft , Riese called him. The word echoes in his skull. He should know better by now.

Iri continues, “Do you know why your father started this war?”

Sena shakes his head.

“He and his new wife, your mother , were invited to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the treaty that formalized trade and brokered peace between our nations. At the event, an artisan Seed shared a performance. She used what you call Legion. It was not a weapon. It was an expression of unity between two disparate but interconnected elements. They were used for building and bridge-making, for transportation, for many of the intricate works we traded with your country in exchange for stellite. Your father saw the artisan at work and saw a threat. A month later, he killed the stellite trade. We relied on that trade—for food and buildings and everything else. And when it stopped and our reserves ran scarce, we starved.”

Iri pauses. “Your Grand General was right. ‘Legion units’ can indeed be used to kill, though they would never have been used that way if not for him.”

He turns on Sena, dark eyes burning. “How can you allow him to make a weapon of you? The Voidseed is meant for growth, protection— it is the cosmic womb of all life, not a mindless destroyer.”

Of all the things Iri has said, this hits Sena hardest.

He draws back with a wounded expression that’s gone before Tory can name it. “My power destroys things,” he says flatly. “I don’t see what’s protective about that.”

And of all the things to deflate Iri’s anger, it’s that line that does it.

His taut shoulders loosen. Irritation, then confusion, then a sickened sort of wonder bloom on his face. “You do not know,” he whispers.

“Know what?”

“You don’t know anything. They do not know anything. About the Voidseed. They are warlike men, so they see a weapon in you. But both of your abilities are mere byproducts of your true skills. No wonder their names for you are flawed. They’ve taken the part to be the whole.”

Sena must mean to respond, but he opens his mouth and says nothing.

“If telling you the truth will take a weapon out of your bastard father’s hands, I will do it. It is too late to make a proper start on it tonight, but both of you, find me tomorrow.”

*

Fatty meat sizzles onto the rocks around a roaring bonfire.

Tents pock the ground beyond it, green as the vines that arc between the trees overhead.

Riese’s people bask in the bonfire’s glow.

The group’s Porter—a genial young man with large brown eyes who introduced himself as Travin and spent the first few minutes after Tory’s arrival apologizing for their first meeting—blinks in to steal a slice of meat before Judge can grab it, earning a scowl and a half-hearted swat.

Spark, the buzz-cut girl who zapped Tory into unsweet dreams, shocks Travin and steals the meat from his fingers, swallowing it almost without chewing and serving both Judge and Travin a satisfied grin.

Tory aches.

He spent his whole life hiding his powers or trading his service for silence. These people use their abilities as freely as they breathe. They laugh like they have nothing to fear.

It’s absurd—it’s reckless, their confident liberty.

There are few things he wouldn’t trade for ease like theirs.

Riese smiles in the midst of it, and every Seed around the fire glows with his grand vision. Maybe this is what real freedom looks like. Freedom from fear. Tory’s never known it, but he longs for it with a fierceness that rattles in his bones. It’s nice.

But it’s not complete.

Mumbling excuses, Tory stands to leave. He parts the curtain of vines strung between the trees and walks away into the woods.

Sena didn’t receive the welcome Tory did around the fire. When he left, he wandered off in this direction. Twigs crunch beneath Tory’s feet, and the gold tongues of fire fade from behind his eyelids, replaced with cool moonlight.

He finds Sena leaning against the knotted trunk of a massive dead tree wrapped with vines that drip strings of frail, electric-blue flowers. Sena said it before: they bloom blue in the short years before they never bloom again.

This place, too, has been mined dry of stellite.

The tree’s barrenness creates a hole in the canopy of leaves. Dyed blue and ink-black in light of the moon, Sena stares at the tapestry of stars overhead.

Tory sinks down beside him. The wildfire warmth from Riese’s people fades, replaced by a quieter, uncomplicated peace. The Tory of a few weeks ago would’ve laughed himself sick if anyone told him he’d ever choose to sit beside Sena Vantaras.

Sena goes rigid for a moment before relaxing.

Tory pulls his knees up. “Way too cold out here.”

“It’s not so bad.” Sena tips his head back against the tree’s rotten trunk. “You know, you should stop defending me to these people. It’ll only make things more difficult for you.”

A startled laugh rasps from Tory’s throat. “Haven’t you already tried to warn me against that once? Seriously, have I ever given you the impression that I’m interested in making things easy for myself?”

A long pause. “You have not,” Sena admits.

“I should have expected nothing less.” With a soft huff, he tilts his chin at the stars.

“Would you believe I used to think I could gather them? The stars, I mean. I learned the names of every constellation, the Celestial Beast at the core of them.” His finger rises, and Tory can almost tell where he’s pointing.

Up above, there’s a cluster of pinprick lights, serpentine and stellite-bright.

A red one twinkles at its heart. “There’s the one for the Worldseed.

My mother says when the First Seeds died, they rose to stay beside the Beast whose sacrifice allowed them to bloom.

Thus on the earth as it is in the air— that’s why kuhlu is drawn to stellite, each crystal a scale the Celestial Beast shed on the planet in death.

They say the vines are the earth’s veins that once bore the Beast’s mortal blood, that their blossoms are a love song our planet sings to the stars. ”

Tory stares up and imagines it: that distance, the loneliness of crying out for something gone. “You need to stop telling bad stories.”

“You don’t think it’s beautiful?”

“Being torn apart, separated?” Tory scowls. “It’s horrible .”

Sena shrugs. “I’ve loved that story since I was a boy. Just—the way a love can last, even when the ones who felt it are gone.”

“That’s not pretty. It’s just pain.”

“Pain has to be beautiful sometimes. Otherwise, it’s unbearable.

” The denizens of the forest fill the silence that follows with hoots and mournful calls that only sometimes find an answer.

After a while, Sena hums. “Did you know that outside their use as a locator for stellite, kuhlu vines are considered a nuisance? They’re invasive and destructive, not only to the trees that house them but also to manmade structures.

They tear down walls or burrow underneath them.

They slip into cracks in roads, in buildings, and pull them to pieces.

They plant themselves in soil where nothing else will grow. I think they’re a lot like you.”

Tory frowns. “What, you’re saying I’m a nuisance?”

A tiny bud of a smile blooms on Sena’s face. “Perhaps a small nuisance. You certainly caused me enough problems at STAR-7. But also a tearer-down of walls. I think that’s beautiful.”

Tory’s cheeks heat. He schools his face to neutrality and settles back against the tree. “What’s your take? On what they’re doing here, I mean.”

Sena’s gloved fingers trace the scar on the back of his neck. The chirps of insects nearly drown his whispered response. “I want it.”

At Kirlov’s hand, Sena dropped like a marionette, denied even the breath to scream. It’s not hard to see why Sena might long for the same freedom Tory does.

It’s not a bad thought, the idea that maybe they can seek it, together .

Sena called Tory a nuisance, and maybe he is.

But he’s more than that, and in this light, Tory understands that Sena’s more than Tory thought he was, too.

He’s a teller of terrible stories and a breaker of falls into the sea.

He begged Tory to go and save himself when he was on his knees on the ground.

He’s kind in a way Tory is only just beginning to recognize.

In the silence that grows between them, thick as vines, Sena’s breaths are shallow wheezes. Guilt spreads through Tory. He owes Sena a story, too. He owes Sena the truth.