Page 49 of Cage of Starlight

“I get why you don’t want to go back. I swear I won’t make you. But there’s gotta be a way, right?”

Sena inhales. Shallow, still shallow. “May not matter.” He ignores the wild patter of his heart, the greedy, awful thought that he could get used to this.

“You know I’m not . . . an optimist. Don’t think they’re equipped to treat this out here.

But it’s fine. There really are more important things than survival.

” Freedom to make his own choices, that’s one of them.

He won’t give them a single drop more of his blood.

They will not cage him, and he won’t let himself be used to cage others.

“If you ever find more of the stuff they’ve made with my blood, burn it for me? ”

“Riese says Yized will be back soon,” Tory says. “She can give you more antibiotics. You’ll be fine.” He doesn’t answer the rest. Stubborn, dragging his own truth from what he hears and ignoring everything else.

It aches, deeper than the pain of broken bones or whatever calamities are happening in his chest, to have that stubbornness focused on helping him. Maybe that’s why, against his will and his better judgment, a terrible confession breaks out of him. “I wish I didn’t have to go.”

Tory startles, as he should.

Sena isn’t sure he’s ever said anything with so much conviction. It’s tantamount to a confession of—

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says, more calmly. “It must be the fever.”

The shock in Tory’s eyes hardens to determination, and no, Sena can’t be the one to do this to him.

He needs to convince Tory not to hope. Pneumonia doesn’t care about hope.

His Core, when they deactivate it, will not be nudged away from its inevitable decay by the fact that Sena might like, for once, to not fall asleep alone.

“We’ll fix it. I’ll fix it.” Tory grabs for Sena’s gloved hands and for once he holds on. “Wait for me. I’ll find a way.”

Sena should say don’t count on it . He should tell Tory that it’s only in stories that heroes find the right answers on a timeline like this, that not even all stories have happy endings.

Sena would know. The sad ones were always his favorites.

But he barely has the strength to stand on his own two feet.

He certainly doesn’t have the power to crack Tory’s rock-solid resolve.

It’s selfish to let it stand, but Tory is still holding his hands, and Sena is far too weak to resist that gentle invitation to touch.

Carefully, he leans so his torso is braced against Tory’s shoulder, face tucked into Tory’s neck so no one can see how terrible a job he’s doing of controlling his expression.

Barely louder than a whisper, with Tory radiating warmth through his thin shirt like a furnace, Sena breathes, “Okay.”

A foreign voice interrupts, and Sena starts at the sound, pulling away from Tory.

“Boys, if you have a moment?”

His mind scrambles to place it.

Riese.

Tory scowls. Probably angry about Iri. His loss sits like a rock in Sena’s chest. Or maybe that’s the pneumonia.

Silence.

Riese is waiting for an answer, eerily still. He’s unhappy.

“Yes, sir,” Sena says, reflexively.

“Both of you,” Riese says. (But his eyes are only on Tory.) “It’s time to talk about our plans. Are you all right, Sena?”

“Yes, sir.” The world around Sena is gauzy and unreal, hazy with firelight.

And in the distance—the first glow of sun melts on the horizon like liquid gold, turning the sky purple in shades from bruise to lavender.

Kuhlu blooms sway in a breeze, such an impossibly vibrant blue they almost glow with it. Like lanterns for the dead.

Riese’s voice, far away like it’s coming through a tunnel: “You don’t look well. Go rest. I’ll fill you in when you’re feeling better.”

He needs to say something, but Tory speaks first. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea . . .”

“M’fine,” Sena says. “You go on.”

Riese says something, but Sena can’t focus.

He loses time again. He blinks in Tory’s direction and finds the stump he sat on empty. He wracks his mind for memories.

It offers up only these: a warm pressure and a blazing bolt of strange pain in the shoulder that was giving him trouble earlier, and Tory’s too-serious promise that he’ll be right back.

Sena reaches up, curious, to his right shoulder where the ache comes from, settles his hand over the cloak and presses.

He gasps, withdraws, curls double. He makes an ugly sound and murmurs thanks that no one is beside him to hear it.

This is wrong. Sena has had pneumonia before. This is different. His whole right arm burns when he tries to move it, hammer-clangs of pain and heat , like it’s caught fire.

It’s wrong.

No—no.

It’s early.

He finds his feet after a few tries, grabs a bright metal pitcher from the grate over the fire. It smells of coffee, turns his stomach. Reflective—it will do.

Into his tent, onto his knees.

Signal mirror from his front pocket.

Breaths fast. He won’t cough.

Crackling in his lungs like crinkled paper, gray haze around his eyes, not enough air. What a mess he is.

Cloak off, buttons freed to expose his shoulder. Arm burning, burning. He loses time checking it’s not on fire. A fool notion. Of course it’s not, it’s—

Signal mirror over his shoulder. Pitcher in front, warped but serviceable in the reflection it offers.

Unmistakable. He’s seen it on a corpse or three before: purple-black lines under irritated skin.

Roots. Like a tree, the tree they stand on to get to the top.

Mechanically, he buttons his shirt again.

Lets the pitcher down. Tucks the mirror into his pocket, closes the cloak around himself.

Warm. Woodsy. Smell of smoke, treated against water and given to Tory by someone who loved him.

Sena closes his eyes and for the first time in ages allows himself to long for home.

Oh, and Tory’s clumsy promises of the world they could build. Tory’s wait , Tory’s we’ll find a way .

Now is a terrible time to want to believe in it, a terrible time to admit, like the weak creature he is, that he wants to live.

That he could be someone better, fuller—together.

Sena wasn’t lying before. There are more important things than survival.

Living, now that he’s found someone worth living for, is one of them.

It could have been, anyway.

The flap of his tent shifts open—Tory returning, no doubt—and Sena doesn’t dare open his eyes. He rarely has the right words for anything. Finding the ones to tell Tory this might be impossible.

He does not have five days, or a day.

His Core is already dead.

*

In the flickering lamplight in Riese’s tent, Tory perches on a box, ready to kill.

“You what ?”

Riese flips placidly through a pile of documents in the far corner. “I wanted you to meet Yized, since she’ll be helping you. Sena didn’t tell you about her?”

Sena’s had a lot on his mind and is a half-step shy of delirium. Sena is not the one Tory blames for not telling him. “She’s from the Compound! The Core you said you’d remove? She put it in me!”

“Funny thing,” Helner drawls. “You’re from the Compound, too.”

“I’m not—”

“Give her a chance,” Riese says. “I’ve known her much longer than I’ve known you. She’s saved a lot of lives for us . . . though she’s a real bitch about it. Keeps asking for money.”

Helner smiles sweetly. “If you think anyone gets a single thing in this world for free, you’re delusional, dear.”

Riese purrs, “I can be very persuasive.”

“Oh, I know. It’s why I never linger. I hate sticky men.”

Tory stands. “Are we finished here?”

Riese keeps ruffling through papers. “Sit. Give me a minute. I could tell you, but it’s better if you see.”

Tory drops back down on the box, kicks his knee up and down, runs the pads of his fingers over the coarse slacks of his combat fatigues.

Wishes for a change of clothes. Wishes he were back by the fire—wishes he were as far as he can get from all of it.

It’s the most relaxed conversation he’s ever had with Sena, but that’s what made it so wrong.

Sena told him about his fucking bird .

Tory’s mother was like that in her final days.

She stopped paying attention to the big things.

Her focus narrowed to him—to them. To the final meal they foraged from the woods for themselves.

She held him close and alternated between sweet melancholy and fear.

Told him stories, told him (again and again) how to protect himself once he was out.

Stroked his hair and kissed his forehead and promised there was a wide world out there full of every wonderful thing except her.

If I’m still alive five days from now , Sena said. He, too, is already telling stories of a future he doesn’t expect to share with Tory.

Tory was eight the last time he felt such dread. No wonder he didn’t recognize it. It’s been a lifetime since he got so close to someone he could lose.

Years have dulled the grief of his mother’s loss, but this— Sena who wants a quiet house in the trees with his dumb bird, who has five days to live free or a lifetime to live under torture, in servitude.

Sena shaking on that log, fevered and fading.

The tentative way he leaned against Tory, like nearness was something he would have denied him. Who’s to say he even has five days?

It’s worse than any pain Tory can recall, like hot ropes strung around his chest, tightening.

That’s why this was stupid.

He’s stupid, just like Niela. How could he let it get this far?

He kicks his knee harder, brings a thumb to his mouth to chew at it. He pulls a strip of dry skin away with his teeth, hisses at a spark of pain. Blood wells up, and Tory presses his tongue to it, tastes copper.

He wants, and he wants, and he wants , but right now, he wants not to hurt. To be able to walk and not look back. He couldn’t even do that with Thatcher, though.

What a fool he is, to cling to things that could break him.

“Tory, hey. You hearing what I’m saying?”