Page 52 of Cage of Starlight

“Oh. Oh, no.” Iri’s eyes widen, bloodless lips parting, and he grabs Sena’s hand, ignoring his flinch and clinging with a grip both vengeful and desperate.

“Sena, I wanted to tell you before. I tried to—listen to me. Riese is lying. I didn’t—my thoughts are a mess but they’re clearer now that I’m away, see?

Tory,” Iri murmurs. “They’re going to kill him. You can’t . . .”

No.

He can bear any punishment but that. His tongue fails him when he tries to speak, vision blinking to a seamless darkness. His bones are molten, eyes burning dry. The ground tips up to meet him.

When he falls, no one catches him.

*

The sun blinds Tory as he turns.

It wasn’t that high a moment ago. How long has he been standing here?

He rubs his eyes to clear the sun’s flickering after-image and squints at the man behind him.

Riese waits, foxlike eyes creased with something gentle. “You ran out and never came back. I got worried.”

Tory swallows. “Sena . . .” The name sticks in his dry throat.

Riese’s expression hardens. “That’s what I need to talk about.” The hand on his shoulder guides him away from Sena’s tent and toward the fire. “Take a seat.”

“I’m fine like this.”

“ Take a seat, Tory.”

The words land twice as heavy as the hand on his shoulder, and Tory’s body obeys the order, falling onto a stump next to the fire so hard he’s surprised his legs kept him up so long.

Riese watches him. Finally, he says, “Travin and Yized were attacked.”

Tory tries to stand, but Riese’s hand goes from calming to controlling in a second, clamping around his shoulder to keep him down.

“Who . . .?”

“We think it was Sena.”

“He wouldn’t—”

“He did.”

Tory’s mouth moves, but he can’t find a single word of argument in the jumble of his thoughts. “ Why ? What happened?”

“They heard a sound and pursued it. I’m sure you understand. We’re all sensitive to unexpected noises here. They found Sena, attempted to talk with him, but he was . . . confused .”

Tory pushes down a surge of concern. Of course he was. He was confused beside the fire, too. Tory shouldn’t have left him there. If he’d stayed . . .

“Combative, as well. Travin said it was like he didn’t recognize him. He tried to use his Seed to escape, but of course . . .” He sighs. “I don’t want to say this, Tory, because it’s been clear to me from the start that you’re quite close—”

“We’re not.” It tastes like a lie. Again. “We’re not. Tell me.”

Riese sits on the log across from Tory, the one Sena used earlier.

“I tried not to make a big deal of it while he was here, but I didn’t trust him.

I meant what I said before. Being under the thumb of the Westrian military rots the mind.

Some dogs bark on command for so long they can’t forget their masters.

” He peers into the dying fire. “I would see all Seeds free, but sometimes that’s not the merciful choice.

Some Seeds don’t know what to do with freedom. ”

Sena wasn’t given the chance to know what to do with it. Tory can’t help the ugly surge of hope. “Did Travin catch him?”

Riese shakes his head. “He got away. It’s for the best. I sent a couple of my people to look for him, but .

. . if they didn’t find him immediately, I advised them to pull back for their own safety.

They can’t use their abilities against him, and I won’t lose more people for that—” he closes his lips on whatever he was going to call Sena. “I don’t imagine he’ll get far.”

Tory steers his thoughts around the wrenching feeling those words bring. It’s for the best. It’s for the best. It becomes a mantra in Tory’s head. He doesn’t say, shouldn’t we go after him? Or, even worse, I’ll go after him.

He could, though. Tory promised—five days of looking for every answer at Sena’s side, not giving up. It wouldn’t be hard, with Sena like he was, to find him and drag him back.

He could.

“I’ll—” The words die on his tongue. It’s for the best. He still can’t help saying—hoping, “I could look. Don’t we need him? For your plan?”

“Not as such.”

Tory bristles. “What do you mean?”

“We’ll discuss any revisions to our plans later. It’s time for breakfast.”

Tory turns away. “I’m not hungry.”

“Understandable, but you should eat. Taking care of your health is important. This is a setback, but you’re like me. You’ll take it and use it to make yourself stronger. Come along.”

Tory’s following a few steps behind Riese before he realizes his legs are moving. A setback. It’s a nice word, packaged with the hope of moving forward. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“No need for apologies. It’s understandable to be upset, but it is better this way. This way, you’re focused.”

Tory grabs those words like a handhold in a flood. Maybe Riese is right. He has a job to do, a mission to fulfill.

They don’t need Sena for this. He doesn’t need Sena.

It really is better this way. His mouth is dry when Riese leads him to where Judge, ever-present frown on his face, is distributing bowls of reheated stew to the assembled Seeds.

Travin, sweat soaked and shaking, sits on the ground while someone wraps up his arm.

Sena. Sena did that. Did Sena do that? Confusion and frustration and all manner of unsettled feelings bubble up in Tory, shredding the cloak of fragile peace he’s pulled around himself.

Sena wouldn’t do that, would he?

Tory averts his eyes and speaks up again only when they’re in line. “Riese.”

Riese turns to face him, eyes shadowed, face dark with stubble.

“Tell me what I need to do,” Tory says before Riese can open his mouth. “I’ll do anything.”

He has a mission, and doing it will free Sena—even if it’s too late for it to matter.

Riese smiles. “I knew I could trust you. The effects of freeing Seeds from Westrice’s control will echo far beyond today.

Westrice will no longer have captive Seeds to stock their hospitals, run their most sensitive mail, and fight their battles against others and against us.

With one move, we strike a killing blow against Michal Vantaras and his war effort.

You have no idea the kind of role you’ll be playing for us. ”

At that, Tory can’t help a wan smile.

Sena was right.

There are things more important than survival. He can change the world. He’ll make all of them free.

*

Hands on his neck, his shoulder.

Sena shoves them away, scooting back until he runs into the solid trunk of a tree, hands scrabbling at its roots. His jacket, unbuttoned, hangs halfway off his shoulder. He tugs it up.

Fog and a tomb-like dome of leaves squelch the pale sunlight overhead. Two blurred blobs resolve into people-shapes as he blinks.

Where is he? Where was he?

Images flood his mind, sharp and free of context: surprise, pressure, and running, running, running.

Broken images. And fear , not for himself but of himself.

Nothing before that, but plenty after, ghostly and dreamlike.

Blood and the bodies of the dead. Roots arching from the ground like something sacred.

Iri.

He found his way back to the battlefield on the cliffs.

“Iri!” His last words ring in Sena’s head: They’ll kill him. “Tory, where’s . . .” Those hands again, reaching for him. “ Don’t touch me! ”

His head throbs, too full. The hands retreat, and Sena drags in a shaky breath, vision wavering. He forces himself to his feet. “H-have to find Tory.”

Tell him—something. He didn’t mean to leave. He wants to live, to stay .

Sena wants so many things he can’t have. All he can do now is choose to chase them.

“Yeah, I don’t think you’ll be finding anyone in your condition,” a no-nonsense voice offers. “You’re bleeding, by the way. Stab wound, looks like, though you didn’t give me enough time to assess it. I tried to heal it, but no luck. Both of you, problem patients. I swear . . .”

Sena blinks down to his right arm and the blood soaking his glove, oozing from a wound he doesn’t remember getting. He falls back against the tree, sliding to the ground again. “S’fine.”

“It’s not,” says the voice. Niela. That’s her name. Niela who loves the freckled boy with the cloth over his face, who couldn’t save him. Sena hopes that’s not a prophecy. “But it is the least of your concerns right now.”

“Please. Iri said . . .”

Another voice echoes toward him from farther away, so faint the wind nearly overcomes it.

Iri . “Welcome back,” he says, and Sena squints until he sees him—forcing himself upright with a shaking hand cupped over a still-bleeding wound, skin nearly translucent with blood loss and shot through with green-blue veins.

Niela grumbles and moves across the clearing again, pressing her hands to the wound.

She growls as she lifts Iri’s bloody hands away and replaces them with her own.

“You won’t make this easy on me, will you?

Gimme a break, I’m an apprentice , I’m not—” She wipes her forehead on her upper arm.

“ Something’s neutralizing my work, and it circulates the more he exerts himself.

It’s almost out of his system, but it’s a bit of a game now to see which will last longer—his life energy and my ability to force his body to produce more blood to replace what he’s lost, or the toxin that’s preventing my healing from sticking. ”

Null. It has to be. Sena must make some sort of noise, because Niela’s eyes dart to him.

“You know something about this, Lieutenant Vantaras?”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Iri’s chin falls against his chest like he can no longer support it. “S’not your fault,” he murmurs. “S’your asshole dad.”

His blood oozes between Niela’s splayed fingers and floods over.

Sena might not have to be a weapon—but Null is .

The tests used to expose Seeds, made from his blood, have become a sharp weapon in the Grand General’s hands.

Iri showed him beauty and creation and crushing hope, showed Sena how he could make things grow, but it’s the compound made from Sena’s blood tearing open his wounds over and over.