Page 59 of Cage of Starlight
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
O f course Tory turns the moment the door opens. Sena should have known he would.
His shock is almost comical, his hair a mess, mouth half-open. The bruises under his red eyes say he’s probably been sleeping about as well as Sena has.
Sena opens his mouth and can’t speak, frozen with the awful, selfish desire to take more than his hands can hold. It was easier being apart.
Tory’s face flits through several expressions—something open and painful: hope, maybe; confusion; determined stillness.
It settles on a sharp-edged thing. Not anger, but nothing Sena can put a name to.
“I can’t—” Tory shakes his head, walks straight at Sena.
He’s trembling, and an apology sits on Sena’s lips, unspoken.
Sena tears himself from his paralysis and snags Tory’s arm, holding as tight as his hands will allow. “Please.”
Tory flinches and scrubs his free hand over his face. “You’re alive . I—shit, are you— Sena. I . . . I don’t have time for this now.”
Sena doesn’t have time for anything except this.
“I need you to listen. I’m not sure how long I have before they—” he peers through the open door into the sterile, too-bright hallway.
No clamor of running footsteps yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
He steps forward to let the door slip closed behind him. “Someone saw me coming in.”
Tory pins him with that angry-adjacent look, terrible up close. “Why did you come back? I thought . . .”
Sena shifts his gaze over to the tree, serene in diffuse gray daylight.
He blurts, “Riese lied to you.” Probably not the best place to start, but his limbs are too heavy, and he doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be able to stand.
He explains the rest haltingly. Riese’s power, Iri’s survival.
Riese’s plan. If he talks long enough, he won’t have to get to the hardest part.
“Why’d you leave?” Tory asks.
Again, he skims the ugliest truth: he won’t be able to stay this time, either.
“I didn’t want to. My energies made you immune to Riese’s influence.
Travin came into my tent after Riese took you away.
He tried to kill me. Would have succeeded, but—I managed to get a hold of his arm and—” Sickness churns in his stomach. Tory may not even believe him. “I—”
Tory doesn’t need him to finish, apparently. “His hand . Shit, I should’ve known those weren’t bruises. That bastard! I hope it rots off slow.”
Relief spreads through Sena, warm like the cloak Tory let him borrow.
Tory continues his tirade. “He was all buddy-buddy with me when he brought me here, too, after—after . . . What about Dr. Helner?”
“I met her on my way out.” Which reminds him— “She stabbed me a little. I got blood on your cloak. I’ll fix it.”
“Whoa, back up. She stabbed you ? A little ?”
“Just a scalpel. I doubt it was her choice. My best guess is Riese put both her and Travin up to it.”
Tory curses and stomps in a circle, and Sena can’t help the smile that tips his lips up, the warmth of having someone on his side.
“Sorry,” he volunteers. Surely there are better, more precise words for conversations like these, but he’s never had a chance to practice them.
It is, Sena discovers, the worst thing he could have said. Color flees Tory’s face. “No,” he says, and Sena scrambles to understand how he messed up.
“No,” Tory says again, rough and low. “ I’m sorry. When I found you gone, I—”
The worry clears, and Sena breathes. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not! Damn it, Sena, it’s okay to be pissed at me.”
“I know. But I’m not, and we are—again—on a timeline.”
Tory frowns. “Fine, okay. Later, then.”
Did Tory just schedule a time for Sena to be angry with him? Happiness is a fragile flutter in Sena’s chest. “Later,” he lies.
“Wait, you got stabbed . We need to fix it.” Tory looks around, like maybe a medical kit will be lying on the ground.
“No need. Someone wrapped it for me. We should get to work.”
As if he’s just remembering, Tory says, “The Monitor Room! Was that part true? If it’s destroyed—”
Sena’s stomach sinks. “That part’s true.”
“I meant to—Sena! If we destroy the compasses, they won’t be able to disable your Core!
It’s not—It’s not the perfect solution, but it could work, right?
” That smile, like an epiphany or a promise, childlike in its uncomplicated joy.
“Everyone here, free. Your dad’s war effort derailed. And both of us . . .”
Sena wants Tory’s words to be true with a fierceness that brings physical pain. He can have this , anyway, for a little longer. He dredges up a smile. “We should get to it, then, huh?”
“Yeah. Let’s mess some shit up.”
Tory thrusts his left hand forward.
It’s such a ridiculous thing, that it’s his left.
Tory isn’t left-handed, and the only way Sena can think to explain it is maybe he’s either noticed that Sena is having difficulty moving his right at the moment or that Sena is, in fact, left-handed.
It’s such a small thing, a gesture to meet Sena where he is. He aches with it.
Tory’s radiant smile crinkles his eyes, and he looks so young, his stance loose and open, extended hand an invitation to something Sena has barely dared to hope for.
Steady, like taking what he wants could really be so simple.
Star-blessed , Sena’s mother called him. To everyone else, he was strange, uniquely dangerous . Sena got the message quickly enough; he was something to be used and feared. No one offered nearness. It was easy enough, after a time, to avoid it entirely.
He’d do anything to keep this. Yet here he stands, frozen like a fool.
Tory’s smile flickers, fingers curling and eyes flashing doubt.
Sena wants this and more. He’s wanted it since he knew his hands could make things grow.
Drawing as deep a deep breath as his chest will allow, Sena peels the glove from his left hand and drops it onto the moss between the tree’s roots.
He extends his hand. The trembling is faint enough that Tory won’t notice, surely.
He regrets it instantly. There are so many reasons why it could be a bad idea, and maybe Tory doesn’t even want—
He gasps as a strong grip closes around his hand, warm skin callused and real against his. He loses an embarrassing amount of time looking at the way their hands meet, skin against skin. Tory is so warm.
Tory clears his throat, but he’s beaming . “It’s called a handshake for a reason. You shake it, and then you let go .”
Sena laughs. He doesn’t mean to, and it startles him.
Startles Tory, too. Sena withdraws his hand, tingling with the heat of another person’s touch for the first time since he was nine.
He feels lit up, like he’s bumping against the netted dome over the tree and could slip through and float up into the sky. Laughing hurts, but he can’t stop.
Tory joins him. “You’re so weird,” he says. Then, “You know, you owe me.”
Sena frowns. “Owe you what?”
“A story. You never finished telling me about that—sky-dog or whatever, and the Seeds.”
Sky-dog. Something in Sena shrivels. “ Celestial Beast , ” he says. “And you keep saying my stories are terrible. I don’t owe you anything. Anyway, my mother tells it best.”
Traitorous, his mind spools out images of his mother as he last saw her, and Hina as Sena imagines her, and Tory listening raptly to the tales that gave Sena such hope when he was small. It’s nice, like all impossible things are.
Dark haze closes in around his eyes, and he squeezes the bridge of his nose and breathes until it recedes.
Tory opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but Sena shakes his head.
“The compasses. We should get started.”
“Yeah. Let’s cause some chaos. Oh. Speaking of! They brought those prototypes your dad made with your blood. I ruined them all, just like you asked me to.”
He did ask, didn’t he? By the fire. “I would have liked to see that. Thank you.”
“Any time.” Tory claps a hand down on Sena’s shoulder—the shoulder with his decaying Core, with the wound, the arm blistered by Helner’s injection—and Sena makes a sound he’d be ashamed of if his whole body weren’t burning.
He flinches, crumples—barely manages to catch himself with his left hand, splayed bare on the moss, grass, and gravel.
He tries to force his feet to lift him. He can’t ruin this fragile peace. “Sorry,” he slurs. “I’m . . .”
“Sena.” Tory’s voice from above him is quiet. “What’s that on your neck?”
Sena burns with something hotter than pain. He lifts his shoulders to hide it, but it’s too late. The roots of his dying Core must be visible. If he’s lucky, Tory won’t understand. “Let’s just go.”
He can’t look at Tory’s face, at the dawning horror on it.
“Sena, are you—”
Obligingly, the world falls apart to spare him having to answer.
The sound comes first—a rumble, then a deep and hollow crack . Another follows it, then another. The world shakes, then there’s nothing and everything, and Sena is on the ground, vision fizzing.
His head is screaming. Something’s screaming, anyway.
Someone? A high whine. Rock dust and smoke clog his nose, and he doesn’t want to cough but he can’t stop. Smoke burns his eyes and something wet tracks down his face. Colors swirl above him, white and gray and green, green, green. Muted thuds all around.
Roots beneath him, digging into his back, and—
“Sena, move!”
Hands pull him beneath the branches of the tree. More thuds shake the ground.
The sky falls in great chunks.
He catches his breath, manages, “What . . .?”
Tory’s face is wet, too. Red. In his hair and down over his ear. Sena reaches up, gets it on his bare hand. Tory hisses, and Sena snaps back to himself. This, he understands. “You’re hurt.”
“That doesn’t matter!” Tory’s eyes dart beyond the tree, and Sena’s head is still screaming and all the colors are yelling, flaring bright and sharp enough to stab a man, but he squints and sees what Tory sees.