Page 62 of Cage of Starlight

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

A s Tory staggers into gray daylight, lending his hand to lead survivors over the rubble of the outer wall of the intake lab, he finds chaos.

Familiar faces flicker into view before he can call a warning: Travin and Spark, the team that dropped him in the woods what feels like years ago. They’re just as effective now. Spark closes a hand around the neck of one of the survivors. Her victim convulses and falls—then she’s gone.

“Shields up,” Tory cries. An instinct from training.

A forcefield flickers to life, but the range is limited—they don’t have a full set of Fielders. A woman on the outskirts screams. The few who weren’t inside the parameters of the shield when it was raised fall shortly after.

The rear end of the shield flickers and glimmers, and Tory swears under his breath.

The Fielder at the back is on his knees, choking from smoke inhalation. He won’t last. As soon as his part of the shield falls, the survivors are sitting ducks.

Sena’s still inside. Tory bites his lip. “Come on, come on . . .”

He can’t abandon them.

“Anyone who’s any use at offense, face this way!” Tory says. “You’ll need to be ready when—”

The shield breaks down. Spark blinks into view in front of the exhausted Fielder and reaches for his skull. An attack from a frightened Kineticist goes high and wide, and Tory scrambles for Spark’s energy, but it’s odd and difficult to handle in the split second she activates it.

“Spark, wait.”

Her Seed flickers out before she can use it and she pouts at the speaker.

Fury boils in Tory’s gut as Riese Larsen strides over the ground toward him, hair tied back and sweater knotted around his waist, short sleeves baring the red tattoo.

Tory promised to gut him slow; it’s a promise he intends to keep.

“Glad to see you. You’re injured. I was worried!” Riese says, and oh , he doesn’t know Sena’s here. He still thinks Tory is an ally, thinks Tory doesn’t know. “Everyone, stand down. Tory—”

“I’m glad to see you, too.” Tory paces over, offering Riese his most beatific smile. “I wanted to thank you personally.”

Riese’s bland expression slackens. “Oh?”

Tory winds up and punches him in the mouth. He goes down like a sack of Thatcher’s brick mix.

Travin and Spark gasp, but Riese’s last order was to stand down , so they’re dazed and slow to respond, their own instincts battling his compulsions.

Tory takes advantage of that, using his teeth to tear a strip of cloth from his ugly, hateful shirt.

He’s on Riese from behind, sliding the makeshift gag between his teeth before he can even roll onto his side and knotting it so tight and so many times behind his head that he might’ve broken some teeth.

Riese makes a startled, gurgling noise, but no words come out. His hands rise to tug at the gag, but Tory yells, “Something to tie him with!” and someone in the group he led here flings a belt over.

Riese’s people must have gathered their wits, because he feels the whiz of Seed-enhanced Kinetic energy coming at him, and he flings it back at its source, barely pausing when he hears a terrible choked noise.

He wrenches Riese’s hands behind his back and loops the belt around them over and over, uncaring how tight the bonds are. Riese won’t be alive long enough for it to matter.

He steps back when it’s done, just in time to see someone flicker in behind Spark and Travin. Wide, dark hands settle on their shoulders, and both of them stagger and drop.

Jeffra steps over them in her bright yellow apron, halo of curls still held back with a polka-dot band. “Tory.” Her hands fall on her hips, and he feels inexplicably chastised. “Did I or did I not tell you to keep yourself out of trouble?”

Her words—and the wry smile that accompanies them—pull a broken laugh from Tory.

Niela, Iri, and Dr. Helner step out from behind Jeffra, and Prentice waves from the back. “Special Diet Junior!” he calls affectionately, straggly gray-brown hair wrapped in a hasty bun and face soot-streaked. “Remember me?”

Helner kicks Travin, plum-painted lips pursed. “I could’ve pulled out his kidney, Jeffra.”

Jeffra glares. “And make me fix him later? What if we need another Porter?”

Prentice waves his hands. “I’m plenty enough Porter to go around, thank you.”

Tory blinks down at Travin, crumpled on the ground, then up at Jeffra, who’s supposed to be a Healer . “Wait, aren’t you gonna . . .?”

Jeffra peers at him, eyes narrowed. “I know the body inside and out, young man. A little medical coma is nothing to me.” She nudges Travin with a foot. “He’ll live. As for that one . . .” she gestures at Riese. “What did he do to deserve your ire?”

“He’s the one who—” Tory bites his tongue. “Sena. What happened to Sena was his fault.”

Jeffra’s warm demeanor goes ice-cold so fast Tory shivers. Thoughtfully, she says, “I’ll bet he doesn’t know a Healer can make a body feel pain so intense it can drive men to madness. Let me take out that gag. I think I might like to hear him scream.”

Tory grabs her arm before it reaches the cloth. “Don’t. He can make a person believe anything he says.”

She stops. “Ah. Do we kill him, then?”

“Of course we kill him.” Iri stomps over, sleeves rolled up to bare the scars that lick up his hands and forearms. “He threw me out on a battlefield to die for a cause it turns out I don’t believe in, so you are all welcome to argue ethics, but I’m going to fry him.”

Helner smiles. “I at least deserve to pull out his spine before you do your thing. You’re not the only one he used.”

“Spine’s too quick.” Iri makes sparks and rolls a little ball of flame from hand to hand. “Let me sear him on both sides first.”

“What I’m asking is, can we use him ? ” Jeffra clarifies. “Is there anything we’ll need him to do for us? Because if so, I have my ways to keep him docile until we need him.”

The group pauses. “Oh,” Helner says. “Well, it would be convenient to point him at Michal Vantaras and have him nicely suggest walking off the nearest cliff.”

Jeffra rubs her hands together. “It’s decided, then. Give me just a moment, and I can—”

“ Stop .”

Tory’s halfway to turning back when the word halts him in his tracks.

Halts everyone in their tracks.

It’s only then that he realizes they all took their eyes off Riese. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Riese lift his head and offer them a placid smile.

A smile.

The significance of it hits Tory a moment too late, because Riese opens his mouth again, every word a cage. “Be still, all of you,” he says, slow and warm and terrible.

Impossible. That should be impossible. Tory tied him up tight. But Riese stands, free of his ties and gag hanging around his neck. The cloth of it is frayed like he ground it between his teeth and dark with a combination of blood and saliva.

“Bastard!” Iri grits out.

“Shh. No one here is going to hurt me.”

Now that he knows to feel for it, he can sense the energy of Riese’s Seed.

It’s hot but not painfully so, like the warmth from a winter stove.

Even if Tory had the ability to counter it, he’s not sure he’d want to.

Still, he tries to make it happen, tries to reach for the energy that’s fallen over him and tear it off. No luck.

Riese lopes over to Tory, canines bared in lazy satisfaction.

“Tory.” Something warm and wet taps beneath his chin. “You may speak.”

“Fuck you.” Suddenly, Tory regrets destroying those nullifying vests. One of them would come in quite handy now.

There’s something wrong with Riese’s hands, the skin bloody-raw.

He must have dislocated or broken multiple bones to tear free from the belt.

His left hand is barely recognizable as anything other than a stringy collection of exposed flesh.

The belt is still buckled around his right wrist, and that hand and wrist are far more intact.

He must have chosen to sacrifice his left hand to get free.

Tory wouldn’t have imagined anyone capable of that sort of self-mutilation, but he should have.

A trapped animal will chew its own leg off.

“Sufficient desperation,” Riese says with a nod, hairline specked with sweat. His blood paints the yellowing grass of the yard. “I knew you’d understand. Look at you, those eyes . I told you we’d sharpen you up. I wasn’t sure I’d see you again, but I’m glad you made it out.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“I don’t think you will.” Riese walks over to Jeffra and lifts his hands. “Heal these, would you? You may move, but you won’t hurt me, and as soon as you’re finished, I’ll need you to be still again.”

Her expression is murder, but the hands that rise to heal his wounds are clinical and gentle. Jeffra’s teeth close on her own bottom lip so hard that a bead of blood drips down, and she manages to croak out, “ You— ”

She’s using pain to break free.

“None of that.” He shakes his head. “Sufficient desperation, indeed. None of you will harm yourselves.”

He returns to Tory, flexing healed hands. “Much better. You, too. Oh, look at you. This is the boy I met in the back of that caravan, blood-hungry. I knew he was still in there.”

“Yeah, but the throat I’m gonna tear out is yours.”

“Don’t say that. I made you stronger, Tory. I made you a leader. A leader can’t be chained to anyone. It hurts now, but I swear it was a kindness.”

“What you’re doing isn’t leading.” Tory raises his voice in case any of Riese’s people are conscious and listening. “If any of you can hear me, think about this: did any of you know what Riese’s power was before this?”

“ Don’t speak to anyone else.”

Tory’s mouth snaps shut.