Page 42 of Cage of Starlight

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T ime . It makes sense . Without even realizing it, Tory has always thought of his abilities in those terms—as if he’s turning the body back to when it was whole. And Sena—

Warmth spreads in Tory’s chest.

Today, Sena made something grow.

“Westrice has taken the byproducts of your Seeds and presumed them to be the whole of you. Channeler. Neutralizer . In naming you, they diminished you.”

“Wait. Why can I channel energies?”

Iri shrugs. “By accident, really. The Worldseed and Voidseed exert some level of control over all energies because time affects all things. But it’s much easier for a Worldseed to use their true power with life energy, because that energy is native to them.

Most often, their first successful attempt to handle time is with the human body, but until they’ve extensively practiced with other energies, the best they can do is clumsily grasp and throw them.

Like infants crawling before they walk, Worldseeds usually learn to pull or stretch or throw energies back before they learn how to turn them back. ”

“So I’m crawling,” Tory says.

Iri laughs. “It has its uses, as I’m sure you’ve realized, but it’s a pale imitation of your true power. A fortunate byproduct.”

“Then why call Sena a Voidseed? How does that not diminish him?”

“In your language, it might. But think about it.” Iri gestures up.

“A void may evoke ruin and emptiness, but it’s so much more.

It’s the void of space, birthplace of stars and planets and everything that lives on them—avatar for the Celestial Beast, a cosmic womb for all life.

A peacefully coexisting duality: creation and destruction.

” Iri gestures to the potted plant he brought.

“That’s eliheni, by the way. Great in soups.

Sena, I was hoping you could give me a nice big bush of it, but I suppose you’ll want to stop and get that hand looked at. ”

“No,” Sena says, and Tory flinches at his expression. He’s never looked so young. Happy. Unburdened. Tory’s chest aches. “It doesn’t hurt. What’s next?”

“Well, ideally what’s next is that you learn to control your power so you’re not indiscriminately unmaking things, but that’s not the work of an afternoon and it’s certainly not work I can do. But for now . . . I think perhaps we can do a little bit of practice letting Tory handle your energy.”

Sena startles, stumbling back. “No.”

“You won’t be harming anyone. What I’d like Tory to handle is merely the plentiful energy you create by being alive—the field that neutralizes other Seeds. He should be able to handle it. All right?”

Sena settles, offering a careful shrug he instantly regrets by the way he pales. His ribs must still be giving him trouble. “All right.”

Iri positions Tory several strides from Sena. “Is this far enough? You can still access your abilities? I’m not sure how far his nullifying field extends . . .”

Tory spreads his awareness out and senses a faint buzz of ambient Seed energy beyond the clump of tents. So there are people still here. Patrols, maybe. The roughness of it reminds him of the energy at play in the Rec Room testosterone battles. “Yeah.”

“Very good. Try to find Sena. You did it before on the training blanket. It will be harder this time, since there’s more to distract you.”

He tries, but his senses keep swinging toward whatever’s happening beyond the clump of tents, jagged and wild and so clearly there . The trees here hum with their quiet industry.

It really is harder to seek Sena’s energy with everything else, but Tory forces his awareness in front of him, nudges it out until it runs into the shape of something. What he finds expands beyond Sena by a few feet on every side, a massive, static void.

“Found you,” he says.

“Good. If you can discern it, you can use it. First, would you try to expand it?”

If he expands Sena’s bubble of nullification, he’ll temporarily disable any other Seeds in this camp.

Which would be pretty damn neat, actually.

He could make use of that—could’ve made use of it the other day. A whole battlefield worth of Seeds, defanged. If the assholes at the Box knew this was a possibility, they’d have been all over it.

Disable and demolish. They could have made a weapon of mass destruction of him. On second thought, Tory can’t help the rush of dizzying gratitude that they didn’t know. “ . . . Do you have permission for this?”

Iri’s eyes flash terrible joy. “I find it easier to beg forgiveness.”

“Sena? You okay to try this?”

Sena gives an aborted twitch of one shoulder. “Go ahead.”

When Tory reaches for it, the energy jumps to him like it was waiting for an invitation. It’s slick and buzzing, pins and needles all up his arms. It’s dense as anything, so heavy it nearly drops him to his knees.

This is what he felt in the lab with Helner, just before Sena reached out and ended it—that brimming possibility, the charge in the air before a lightning strike.

He starts slow, stretching it just to see if it will spread.

It does—eagerly. It passes over Iri, and the burning energy at the core of him collapses.

He shudders, and Tory spreads it farther, over the clearing and then beyond it, to the tents and past them.

He doesn’t realize how alive the camp was with energies until they die.

There are people still here. Maybe not many, but enough.

The hair-raising buzz from the patrols beyond the tents flickers out, then something shimmery-bright that made the air feel warmer.

Others go like background noise. Perfect silence with Tory at the center of it, electrified.

Sena sucks in a breath.

“Okay?” Tory asks.

“Feels strange.”

It spreads out and out like warm butter, easier than anything he’s ever handled. It must be far outside the camp and into the woods—and he’s not nearly at his limit; it would go farther if he asked it to—when he lets it go.

It snaps back like a rubber band, and Sena staggers.

An apology half-forms on Tory’s lips, but Iri speaks before he can voice it.

“It’s strange, how slow it is to come back. It’s not immediate, it feels . . .”

Tory lets his eyes drift closed. It’s a sort of reverse crumpling. All around the camp, like insects starting their songs again after a predator passes, distinct energies flicker or whisper or crackle back to life.

It’s a lot . Everything feels crisper, clearer. He’s not even trying and he gets the electric zap of the energies from beyond the tents flaring back, so clear they could be right beside him—

A choking noise precedes a non-verbal growl and a torrent of curses, and Tory’s eyes snap open. He knows that voice.

His body flares with remembered fear as he turns to find Judge with Sena on the ground, hand at his throat. No. Blade at his throat, thin line of red welling around it.

“I’ll kill you this time, don’t you fucking doubt me.”

Tory’s moving before he registers the desire to.

Iri is faster. Judge has at least a foot on him, but he wrenches at Judge’s arm, the fingers around his bicep too small to go all the way around. Don’t pull, Tory wants to beg. If Iri pulls—if the hand holding the knife snaps back against Sena’s throat—

Iri shoves at Judge. “Leave him alone! He acted on my request!”

“He what ?” Judge rounds on Iri, fingers releasing their grip on Sena’s throat and dropping him.

Sena levers himself onto an elbow and rolls onto his side, choking his way into a rattling coughing fit. Tory winces at the wrecked sound, the way Sena goes ghost-pale and tries to stop.

His insides knot. He can ground a carriage, drop an arrow. He disabled a Legion unit the other day, too, but there’s no way to stop a body from tearing itself apart. This must be how Thatcher felt—restless, helpless hands that want to fix . It might be the worst feeling Tory’s ever known.

But making sure no one else goes in for the kill—if nothing else, he can do that. Tory steps between Judge and Sena and holds his ground.

It’s then that a group of three breathless Seeds breaks through the trees. One is Spark, soot-stained, singed, and ready for a fight.

“What did you do?” She advances on the group. “We were ’porting back and Travin dropped us all in the woods mid-’port, said something cut him off. He nearly split his skull open on the rocks. Two of the boxes were damaged when we landed.”

Iri pales. “Shit. I didn’t realize—”

Riese stalks into the clearing as Travin flickers into view, chest heaving, arms wrapped around a stack of cracked crates.

Riese checks on Travin first, a whispered exchange, but then turns to Iri. “I need you to tell me,” he says, quiet in the way some murders are quiet, “what exactly you just did.”

Behind Riese, a growing group mutters, bitter and accusatory.

Iri looks at his feet. “It was an experiment expanding the Voidseed’s nullifying energies. I didn’t know you’d be coming back so soon.”

“And that’s why we didn’t take you along.

You’re impulsive , Iri. You acted yet again without considering the consequences and risked disabling every Seed in this camp.

You know there are soldiers in the woods hunting us.

I owe your father my life many times over, but .

. .” Riese rubs at his temples. “You can’t do things like this.

Unrestrained emotion like yours is what cost your father his life.

I was emotional, too, back then. Idealistic.

And he paid the price. Unity and caution are important above all.

Iri, if we’re going to stay safe, I need you to listen to me. ”

“But you’ve said it a thousand times! Every Seed deserves to be able to understand and exercise their skills. Those Westrian fools know nothing about the Voidseed, and Sena—”

Judge turns back to Sena, bristling, the slicked edge of his knife ready to cut. Tory relaxes his stance, ready for anything.

Riese sighs. “Judge, stop.”

“But he—”

“ Go . No negotiation. You’ve done enough here.”

Judge’s scowl slips off his face and he stalks away.