Page 63 of Cage of Starlight

“It’s rude. We were having a conversation.

” Riese’s hand rings Tory’s upper arm, just over the tattoo, and the body Riese has told to be still won’t even shudder for him.

Nausea makes his knees weak, but Riese just sighs and keeps talking.

“I thought you would understand. We could never have made it this far without bloodshed. We’re here, having wrested so many weapons from Vantaras’ hands and made it nearly impossible for him to continue the war against Arlune, against Seeds, at the same level, because I wasn’t afraid to trample a few flowers on the way. This progress—”

“Maybe you’re right, but what’s your progress worth if the only ones left to enjoy it are people like you and me?

The jaded, messed-up ones?” Tory spits. It takes so much more strength to be kind in an ugly world than it does to be removed from it.

Sena is one of the strongest people Tory’s ever known, and this is the man who made sure he can’t survive this.

“You talk about freedom , but that’s not what it’s called when you’re the only person who decides who’s free. It’s just a different cage.”

“Be quiet. ”

Tory’s voice chokes in his throat, but he still has control of his face, so he puts as much venom into his expression as it will hold.

“It will be a shame to have to kill you. This place truly has ruined you.”

This place tried to ruin him. Sena saved him, before Tory even knew that’s what he was doing. His eyes burn, and he looks away into the quiet yard. He blinks when something flickers in the smoke. A person, dressed in red, picking their way over the rubble of the front gate. A newcomer?

“Look at me.”

Tory’s eyes swing back to Riese, but he sees the interloper approach slowly from behind.

“I’m sorry I have to do this to you,” Riese says.

“I wish things could have been different.” He withdraws a handgun from his waistband, and the red interloper is closer but is barely a blur in Tory’s peripheral vision because Riese said look at me , and Tory hates that this asshole will be the last thing he sees.

That, more than anything, lights a fire inside him. Riese asked them not to harm themselves, but there are plenty of other aches for Tory to press on. He imagines something worse than death: he imagines surviving this only to watch Sena fade.

How was it that Iri described it? The more ideological dissonance, the easier Riese’s work is to unravel. It couldn’t be more dissonant. Riese stilled hands that want nothing more than to wrap around his throat and squeeze, make him feel fear like Sena must be feeling.

Tory imagines a life that would’ve been his ideal mere weeks ago: a life free and alone and far away. No roots to bind him, no awful, unnameable feelings to knot him up.

No Sena.

He picks at those feelings like pulling off a scab to tear the healing wound wide open again, and Riese’s power over him becomes heavier and heavier—more suffocating.

More tangible . He can’t tear his eyes from Riese’s because the compulsion still has him, but he feels around the edges of the energy that binds him. He can move this.

The handgun rises, blessedly, to block his vision of Riese with the cold eye of a pistol.

“Not even gonna give me any last words?” Tory says.

Riese huffs. “I didn’t think it would be wise.”

He’s right, of course. Tory tugs, experimentally, at the edge of Riese’s compulsions. It’s so easy after the first pull. Tory peels Riese’s energy from his body like shedding a cloak. He twitches his fingers, one by one, heat flooding through his limbs.

“It will be fast,” Riese says. “Merciful.”

“No thanks.” Tory throws up a hand to divert the barrel of Riese’s gun. “I don’t trust your mercy.”

Riese’s eyes blow wide, and he swings the gun back to Tory. “You—” He takes only an instant to adapt. Eyes narrow, he says, “ Don’t move .”

But Tory recognizes the energy that tries to fit to him like a glove and flings it back on Riese instead.

Oh, and it’s satisfying to watch him go so terribly still. “What have you done?” Riese says. He’s shaking like he’s trying to resist his own words. His gun is still pointed in Tory’s direction, finger on the trigger, if only he could pull it. “Tory, you’d better—”

“Another order? I suggest you think about your words before speaking them. How does it feel to be denied control over your own body, your own mind ? Look me in the eyes and tell me this is freedom.”

“I did what I had to. I would have stopped as soon as we were safe.”

He probably believes that. He might even truly mean it. Maybe Michal Vantaras meant it, too, when he swore to return the country to the hands of the other families after the war was over. But how long does a war last?

Tory is so tired . “Jeffra,” he says. “Come do your thing.”

“Oh, absolutely fucking not ,” says a voice. A small, delicate handgun rises, and Tory remembers with a sharp burst of fear the red-clad figure striding through the smoke. He was a fool to forget—

But the voice, and the stance, and the aroma of turned earth and pipe smoke relax his muscles before they can tauten. Riese, though, is the farthest thing from relaxed.

He blurts, “Stop—”

But Hasra scoffs. “Should’ve thought about that before you tried to kill my kid.”

An eardrum-rending boom splits the air, and Riese Larsen falls onto the dying grass, eyes empty and one side of his skull blown in.

Tory looks up to find Hasra, gun in hand, pipe in mouth, and smile on face.

“You—that’s . . .” Tory blinks down at the body, waiting for it to move. Awkwardly, he says, “You can’t . . .”

“I just did,” Hasra says. It’s strange, nearly impossible to reconcile her presence here.

“I’m not your kid,” he mutters, head spinning and ears ringing. His own voice sounds drowned, trapped inside his skull.

“You sure give me enough trouble to be! Lucky I was still smoking. That asshole— ”

Dumbly, he says, “We’d planned on keeping him alive for a while.”

Hasra frowns. “Ah. A bit late for that.”

“How are you here ?”

“Did I or did I not tell you I’d chase you down if you took too long? You took far too long! Seems like I was just in time.” She kicks Riese’s lax body. “Anyway, how many more of these kinds of people are there? Makes my skin crawl. I thought Ari was bad.”

Tory scans the yard urgently, but it looks like Hasra and the others have it handled. All of Riese’s allies are on the ground.

“Hey,” Hasra says. “Are you in shock? Tory, you’re bleeding. Is he the one who did this to you? Oh, I should’ve made it hurt more.”

She’s kneeling, and her hand is on his shoulder, and he throws himself against her. He’s shaking and he has no idea why. “That was . . . quite an entrance,” he rasps.

“Well.” She holds him bone-crushingly tight. “I like to be seen.” She lets go and squeezes his shoulder, helping him to his feet. “Catch me up, then. What did I miss? You look different.”

“It’s . . . It’s a long story.”

“My favorite kind. Does anyone here need tying up? I’ll have you know my ropework is excellent. ”

Prentice, who must have been the one ’porting Jeffra around to drop all of Riese’s allies, steps up to hand Jeffra something he was holding—a birdcage, covered with a blanket.

Something pangs in Tory. “Sena!” he blurts, and Jeffra’s eyes widen and go to him. Hasra turns to him, too, but he doesn’t have time to explain. “He’s—he’s here! I need to get back to him. He’s . . .”

Jeffra must see something in his eyes. “Not too late after all, then.” She offers a sad smile.

“Clearly I’ve missed a lot.” Hasra’s eyebrows go up. “I expect you to catch me up when you’re back.”

Jeffra waves him away. “We’ve got things here. Go on. The things that matter . . . when you’ve got them, hold onto them.”

When he has them—as long as he has them. Tory can’t force words past the knot in his throat.

He runs.

*

The smoke has grown thick, clogging the halls where the Compound’s structure is still sound and coiling out where the walls have crumbled to expose sky. He breathes only where the smoke is thinnest and follows the pulsing blood-red lines along the floor into smoke haze and darkness.

“Sena!”

He has to be somewhere around here. Not too far, surely.

He smiles into the scarlet fog as he catches sight of someone staggering toward him. “Sena!”

A bullet zings into the wall a foot away.

“Sena, it’s me!”

The figure walks forward, gun raised and mostly steady in his left hand, strange rifle slung across his chest. The haze clears enough that, as the lights glow their brightest, he catches pale hair and the bearing of a general.

Kirlov.

And if Kirlov is here, alive, alone—

He squeezes off another bullet as the pulse of red light fades, plunging them into blackness. When it floods back again, Tory finds the bullet. Off, this time, by a few inches.

He’s lucky Kirlov’s not left-handed. His right arm hangs loose at his side.

Another bullet, and another. Tory’s ready this time. The theory is the same as it is with balloons and arrows and explosive shells. He takes the velocity off them and throws it at Kirlov’s knee, relishing the guttural noise of pain and the wretched, wet crack of bones breaking and flesh splitting.

Kirlov drops hard. This close, Tory can make out dark stains and spatters of blood on the sleeve of his right arm.

Sena’s blood, probably. Anger boils inside him, and all he can see is Sena on the floor of Kirlov’s tent, barely breathing as Kirlov twisted the dial on that awful watch. Tory left him behind to that, again.

“Bastard,” he hisses, stepping in close enough to grab the collar of his uniform. “You—”

Too close.

He registers the sound of the pistol hitting the tiled floor too late. It’s followed almost immediately by pressure against his abdomen, a hollow click-thunk, and a dim pain.