Page 53 of Cage of Starlight

Sena presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and pulls his knees up to his chest. His breath quickens, vision bursting with color from the pressure. He shouldn’t be here.

Iri’s voice, far away and gentler than he deserves: “Sena?”

“Don’t you dare move and undo my hard work again. You should stay well away from him right now, anyway. Look. The tree. ”

Sena looks. Beneath him, the dark, healthy roots he clung to sit grayish-brittle and pitted, aged a hundred years in a moment. He brushes a twig growing from the tree as he turns. It cracks and crumbles, drifts down on him like ash.

“I didn’t—”

His hands are gloved, the right one stiff with his blood. It should be safe with them on.

His head throbs, iron-weighted but cotton-filled. His eyes burn. He’s breathing in and in and in and he’s dizzy with it, unsafe and surrounded by people he could hurt. “This isn’t . . .”

“You need to calm down . ”

He draws a breath in so fast he loses it in an agonizing fit of coughs and reflexively pulls his hands back to himself. He tucks them against his belly and curls over to hide them.

Niela walks toward him on her knees, and Sena pushes himself farther back. Sena’s never done anything like this through a barrier before. His whole life—all this time—

“Breathe. You’re making it worse.” Iri. “Believe me, I know from experience. Panic does not help an unstable Seed. It will likely calm down once you do.”

He forces shallow breaths into his uncooperative lungs until his spotty vision clears.

“Like that,” Iri says, whisper-light.

Sena shakes his head. “Tory! You said he would . . .” He can’t make his lips shape the word. “I have to go back.”

“By the time we could get back, they will have moved on.” Iri leans toward him. The wound on his shoulder stretches open again at the movement, but it’s only the surface—shallow, bleeding pits. Niela sighs and heals it again. This time, it stays closed.

“Moved where?”

He laughs, breathless and tired. “Can’t you guess? Riese will want to get started.”

The Compound.

“And that is where the problems begin. Without you next to him, Tory is probably singing Riese’s tune right about now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Riese uses . . . a form of persuasion to ensure group harmony. His type is relatively rare, but I think you’d probably call him an Orator.

As long as you were near Tory, Riese was unable to affect him.

When I was around you, it wore off for me, too.

” He grimaces. “That’s when . . . I’m sorry, I tried to tell you, back then.

He wasn’t always like that. I doubt he needed to use his abilities on me at the start.

I was angry . I wanted to hurt everyone in this awful country.

My father was accepted into an exchange program in Maran’s largest university.

That’s where he met Riese. My father was old for a student and Riese was young for it.

They were the odd ones out, so they became friends.

My father confessed his abilities to Riese—he was a Reader, capable of seeing Seed energies on a person.

He had known Riese was a Seed from the moment they met.

They were friends until graduation. But Riese went on to seek a higher degree, and my father went back to Arlune, where he met my mother and had me. This was just before the war.”

He had assumed, given that an Arlunian scholar was admitted to and graduated from a Westrian institution.

“And Tory?”

“I’m getting there. Riese got in contact with my father many years later, thanks to the help of a certain gutsy merchant’s daughter.

My father was a gentle man, always, but my mother had just died and he was lost. Riese .

. . something had changed in him, too. He was harder.

Angry.” He shakes his head. “He came to my father with a plan. If he would help Riese find Seeds who might be open to joining him, he’d lead them in liberating the Compound from Westrian control.

STAR-7 houses all the battle-capable Seeds.

No Compound, no soldiers . . . no war. Or at least a great pause while your father reconsidered his approach to warcraft. ”

Niela speaks up. “That’s not sounding too bad.”

Iri shakes his head. “It isn’t, is it? My father went all in, helped Riese gather Seeds for his goal.

But they couldn’t get inside: the wall was too high, the security too tight.

They kept losing people—to Westrian soldiers, Westrian Seeds, recruits whose loyalties had been addled by their time inside.

That’s how my father died, betrayed by one of our own.

They never found his body, never even told me that he’d gone.

I tracked Riese down after my father’s letters stopped and decided to join the fight.

I had nothing else left. But Westrice kept pushing us back.

And when Null appeared, it just got worse. ”

Sena flinches.

“That’s when Riese changed. The dogs were using our own to kill our own.

He started talking about conscripted Seeds like they were animals.

He said . . .” Iri presses his lips together.

“Releasing domesticated Seeds would be a cruelty. He started talking like it would be better if they all died. I would gladly kill any of Vantaras’ soldiers myself, but to kill our own— it was against everything I believed.

I went to share my concerns with Riese .

. . and then I wasn’t concerned anymore.

Riese barely has to imply something to make you believe it.

Then you came and cleared my head—it’s why Riese warned us all away from you, I’m sure.

Your neutralizing field seems to affect anything within a couple of paces from you.

I wanted to tell you what was happening, but Riese spoke to me before you finished with Yized, and I forgot again, until .

. .” He shrugs. “Until I got here. His manipulations are subtle—like a splinter in your brain. He’s the same as any illusion-type Seed.

The more ideological dissonance, the easier his work is to unravel.

But the thing is, we all agree with him on almost everything.

He just has to sand down any sharp edges.

I’d have gladly sacrificed myself for a worthy cause, but it took me too long to remember that this is not my cause. ”

“What about Tory?” Sena leans forward.

“Tory is a sacrifice, a tool in his bid to stop Westrice from hunting Seeds. Riese will use him to lower the Compound’s defenses. Once he lets them in, it will be a massacre.”

Sena laughs into his hands, the cruelty of it settling into his bones.

The only way to save Tory is to save the Compound, the root of all their pain.

He can’t go back. He won’t spend his last days alive in their hands, forced to be their perfect soldier.

But Tory will be there, and he has no idea what he’s walking into. “We need to get to Tory first.”

Pain stabs at Sena’s chest and the grind of broken bone against bone makes his teeth itch. Stars pop in front of his eyes, and he falls.

He doesn’t hit the ground. Warm, small hands press against his shoulders and lift him.

Reflexively, he pushes them away. “What’s happening to me?”

“You’re . . .” Niela winces. “It’s just that—shit. They only taught me to heal people and toss them back into battle, not how to talk about this stuff. You know about your Core, right?” She gestures to his still partially unbuttoned jacket. “That thing’s rotten .”

“I know, but—”

Niela winces. “No, I mean . . . your Seed’s going haywire because your Core is deader than dead and your body’s shutting down. A Core like that’s been dead for days. Maybe a week.”

“That’s impossible.”

Iri interrupts, quiet. “It’s not. I’ve seen dead Cores before, and yours . . . yours is as bad as I’ve ever seen.”

This is—what, the third full day since the battle? Fourth if he counts the day of. They’d have to have disabled his Core days before he even went missing. “That doesn’t . . .” It makes no sense. “I haven’t even been gone for a week.”

Niela hums. “There are substances that can break down the organic matter of the Core and speed its death. Did anyone give you anything? A pill, a serum, an injection?”

Sena shrugs—and the pain of it travels up and down his right arm. “Oh.” He tugs up the sleeve. “Here,” he says. “Antibiotics.”

The site where Helner injected them yesterday is inflamed and weeping pus. He didn’t even notice, what with his ribs, his Core, the wound on his shoulder—

The wound . The memory of how he got it comes back in a frantic rush:

The flap of his tent shifting open in the dark, showing Travin when Sena expected Tory.

Sena dropping the metal pitcher onto his blanket in surprise, unable to manage even a greeting as Travin lurched forward with some tarp or bag or bundle of cloth and shoved it over Sena’s face. (Suffocation, of course. Easy to explain away, in Sena’s condition.)

Travin’s eyes, wide and afraid. Sena reaching up with gloved hands, with the same focused burst of desperation he felt at nine years old. Travin avoiding his grasp but not flinching away when Sena’s left hand seized his wrist. Of course. He shouldn’t have been able to do a thing with the gloves on.

Then a muffled yell. Withdrawal. Travin clutching an arm going sunken-thin and black where Sena touched him.

Fear—from both of them—thick enough to choke on. The smell of smoke, splash of coffee as he upended it in his hurry to run.

Travin scrambling away from the tent and away from Sena.

Then Helner, who smiled wryly and gave him painkillers the other day, running into him as he tried to leave the woods.

A scalpel plunged in his shoulder and wrenched out, then raised again.

An apology, barely audible. Regret, maybe, or some adjacent breed of feeling—hard to discern in the low light of morning.

An elbow to her chin as he found his feet and ran until he couldn’t run another step.

Their fear and hesitation.

They were asked to do it. He wants to believe that, anyway. It’s easier to believe they didn’t choose to hurt him.

Niela says what he’s thinking. “There’s no way what they gave you was antibiotics.”

Sena closes his eyes.

“I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but . . .” She shrugs. “All I can suggest is you don’t use your Seed. It could make this worse. Sorry. I wish I could . . .”

Sena shakes his head. “It’s enough. Thank you.”

“We need to hurry. My mom’s back at the Box and she doesn’t know what’s going on. I already lost . . .” She stands, squares her shoulders. “I’m not letting anything happen to my mom, too. If we can find a Porter—”

“I can’t be ’ported. But . . . there were soldiers in the area. If we find them, they’ll have a way to get us back.”

First, they’ll find the patrols, and then they’ll aim for the Compound Sena swore he’d never return to. He bites his lip against the surge of fear and hardens his resolve.

He’s dead either way. If he can save Tory, it will make all this pain worth it.