Page 43 of Cage of Starlight

“The rest of you, too. Keep your distance from him. I’ll handle this.”

Just like that, the taut rope of tension slackens. The crowd disperses without complaint.

All these people, they trust Riese.

Tory relaxes as soon as Judge is out of sight, and maybe that’s why he only notices the boxes then.

While they were talking, Travin ’ported in with a few more precarious stacks.

The damaged ones sit at the front, the wooden crates splintered to disgorge their contents onto the ground in chunks of translucent crystal.

The shiver that scales Tory’s spine and sharpens his senses is not just adrenaline.

It’s stellite. Riese’s people intercepted a stellite shipment.

A few of the boxes have charred corners.

It clearly wasn’t an easy theft. And the nearest mine to the border—

Tory catches the letters HLV stamped in black on the side of each crate, and his breath seizes in his chest.

“Hulven.”

When Tory first met Riese that day he tried to escape, Riese was doing reconnaissance in Hulven.

The boxes are burned.

Tory’s chest won’t expand. He can only think of Thatcher and the huge hands he only ever uses to fix things, of the asshole miners who risked everything, over and over, to save their own. “Where’d you get that?”

A ridiculous question. He knows.

Riese blinks over at Tory. “I’m sorry?”

“Those boxes are from Hulven. They’re burned. What did you do? The people in that town, they’re innocent.”

“We didn’t harm the townspeople. We intercepted the shipment after it left Hulven’s gates.”

“Then why—how—”

Riese shakes his head. “You need to calm down. I’ll explain everything, but your friend is unwell. Iri, we’ll have words later, but for now—” he jerks his chin toward Sena. “Yized just arrived. Take him to her.”

Sena grabs Tory’s pant leg and pulls with strength he shouldn’t have. “Help me up.”

Tory blinks, bemused, and extends a hand that Sena grasps to lift himself.

Halfway upright, he stumbles against Tory’s shoulder, close enough to his ear that Tory hears it loud and clear when he murmurs, “Get him to agree to a supply run, remember? We need a communicator.”

“What?” Tory hisses. “How do you expect me to—”

“Tory!” Riese’s voice. “Iri’s got Sena from here.”

Riese turns to Tory with a fatherly grin as Iri leads Sena away.

“I don’t mean for my people to assault you before every conversation.

It’s hardly conducive to meaningful discourse.

” His lips purse. “I won’t let it happen again.

My people have reasons for their anger and distrust, and Judge more than most. He lost his little sister in our recent attempt to infiltrate the Box. ”

Tory remembers, with a terrible sinking in his gut, red light and a fine spray of blood on Sena’s face and smears of it on the floor. One of them went for my gun , he said. Tory swallows hard.

“So, uh, who’s Yized?”

Riese laughs. “A pain in my ass, but she’s useful.

She’ll take care of your friend. Come on.

I’ll explain everything, including why we had to hit up that little mining town.

I think you’ll like the sound of the ending we’ve planned for Vantaras’ ambitions—and the part you’ll be playing in tearing it all down. ”

Like last night around the fire, his words spread warmth through Tory’s bones. Purpose.

“This way.”

Tory follows.

*

“Not much farther,” Iri murmurs. “Yized’s just around back.”

Sena measures his breaths and walks, eyes ahead. Shallow breaths in, each one igniting a blaze of pain. His throat burns, swollen from the grip Judge used to force him to the ground, and there’s a tickle starting in his chest. He ignores it. At this point, he’d rather die than cough.

That’s hyperbolic.

But he’s had plenty of time, lately, to think about things he’d rather die than do.

With Iri in the lead, they weave through a mess of tents that would give Kirlov an aneurysm. Sena smirks at the disorder, huffing out a dry laugh. A mistake. Black spots blossom over his vision, specked with bursts of frothy white, and he pauses to get his bearings.

“Are you all right?”

He’s too busy trying to breathe deeply enough to clear the spots from his vision to reply.

“We are in no hurry. Take your time.”

“What you said about the Voidseed . . . thank you.”

It doesn’t matter, but it’s nice—not only a weapon but a well; not only emptiness but the field of stars he used to reach for at night. Creation, and togetherness, like he’s meant to belong somewhere.

“No need. As I said, it was selfish—if the truth could wrest you from their hands, it was worth it.”

“Still. I’m grateful.”

Iri’s hand rings round his opposite wrist, tracing the burn scars. “No Seed should have to fear himself, not even a Vantaras. It is a shame you had to go until now without knowing that, and shame on me for forgetting.”

Quiet falls between them, but Iri matches the pace Sena sets when he continues walking.

Perhaps everything will work out.

If they can return to the battlefield and find a communicator, Sena will do everything he can to secure a promise of leeway on the Core shutdown from the Compound.

If nothing else, it’ll give Tory a few more days for a competent Reacher to remove his Core.

His odds are decent, and he’s stubborn. He’s the type to claw his way from the restful jaws of the Celestial Beast and live to spite the world.

Tory will be fine. He’ll be free. And that—ensuring Tory’s safety—was the only real reason to go back.

Sena, meanwhile, has found his line.

He’s a pragmatist; it would be unrealistic to envision himself surviving this.

No Reacher can help him. Sena is a curiosity at best. He’s no Healer, non-threatening and central to the dirty business of war—the sort of Seed who’d easily be given lenience because they’re too valuable to lose.

Sena knows too much, and the generals, lacking competently preserved records, know too little about the Voidseed.

To them, he’s an attack dog afraid of his own teeth.

The only use they’ve found is in bleeding him, and they’ve taken more than enough of his plasma to make type-determination tests and prototypes for decades.

They will not risk Sena’s knowledge and skills falling into enemy hands.

They won’t bother to track and recapture him. They’ll disable his Core as soon as they can justify it.

To live, Sena would have to return to the Compound with its stale air. To Kirlov with his watch and a set of expectations Sena will always fail to meet. To hunting other Seeds and making a game of avoiding pain.

That’s not a life he wants.

Perhaps it’s like Tory said: Sena has not been living.

Since he was nine, he has merely survived—until Tory came and unearthed an anger years buried, made a mirror for Sena to look into.

Tory beat his hands against walls he could never climb, burned foolishly and recklessly bright even when his only fuel was himself.

Sena, on the other side, dreamed impossible dreams. For all their differences, they want the same thing.

Tory makes him want to believe they could have it, makes him want to believe in all sorts of things he still doesn’t dare to contemplate.

He always thought death would be scarier than this, but there’s peace in knowing he’ll die a person outside his father’s control rather than living as a weapon within it.

He’s not welcomed here, but he’s free , the night sky close and clear enough that he could walk the path of stars through the bone-cage of the Beast’s belly and find his rest. Here, Kirlov can’t control him. If he’s lucky, Sena will die without seeing anyone from the Compound again.

With an ache, Sena remembers Hina’s unopened letter, full of flowers. He hasn’t seen her since she was four, Sena nine. She’ll turn sixteen before the leaves fall this year.

Today is Westrice’s Dedication Day—a watered-down and glitzed-up version of Arlune’s coming-of-age ritual.

Tonight, without Sena, Hina will watch fireworks from the highest point in the city and eat rich morsels from silver plates and think about what part of herself she needs to shed in order to grow.

At Hina’s age, alone in a grungy dormitory and without ceremony on the day of his own Dedication, Sena tried to shed the concept of wanting.

It seemed a foolish, dangerous thing to someone whose hands were not allowed to reach for it.

He hopes she knows he misses her. Sena allows himself, for a moment, to imagine what it might be like if he were there: letting her show him every plant she cultivates and tell him its name.

Sitting by the fire as she casts an effigy of her sacrifice into the flames.

In his imagination, they get along as seamlessly as they did as children. Hina will do well, he’s sure.

He’ll miss Kierney, too, and his twittering tunes.

Things were simple with Kierney: food and water and a perch close to the light.

Space on Sena’s shoulder, little pats considerate of his bird bones.

A blanket to close out the world when it was too much.

It made no difference to Kierney when Sena said the wrong words or couldn’t find words at all.

He’ll miss the stories his mother whispered into his ear when she smeared liniment on his chest and counted his fading breaths when he was a boy. You’re star-blessed, miokh, she told him when his Seed first blossomed.

Star-blessed, she said, and gave him his first set of gloves so she could hold his hand.

There’s little else he’ll miss. Seeing Seeds liberated, maybe. He’s never really had room to contemplate it. He thought about the future in hours, before. Now he has a day, at least, to live. Days , if Tory can convince Riese to return to the battlefield.

He’s giddy with the freedom of it. Tory asked him, after Sena dragged him from Belmin’s caravan, when he’d tell the people who hurt him to stop instead of working so hard to avoid pain. Maybe this is where he starts.

There are more important things than survival. Here, he has a choice, even if he can only choose how he dies and where he draws his lines.

“Ah. Here we are.” Iri tugs him to a stop in front of a netted tent and gestures at the flap. “Yized will get you patched up. You’ll be out making history with us in no time.”

That begs the question. “What does your leader even need us for?”

“I can’t say. I think he’s speaking to Tory about it now. He’ll reveal it all in good time.”

“You trust him?”

“I’ve not yet met anyone who offers more hope for a better future.” He glances into the woods, then back to Sena, and shakes his head like he’s clearing it. “Actually, find me when Yized is done with you? There’s something we should discuss.”

Iri strides away before Sena can answer.

He gives it a bemused moment before he opens the tent flap. “I don’t know who told you I needed to be here, but I’m fine. I doubt there’s anything you can—”

A too-familiar voice calls from inside, and his blood freezes in his veins.

“Doesn’t matter. Riese’s orders. Come on in, Sena.”

Red hair, thin glasses, sharp teeth exposed in a predator’s smile.

Dr. Helner.