Page 64 of Cage of Starlight

A syringe is buried in his belly, and liquid floods into him, breaking him down. He cries out and staggers back against the wall. The stolen cube in his pack crashes against the wall and jolts with the groan of metal on metal, but it doesn’t matter, because Tory’s burning from the inside out.

Something coils inside him and mutes him, swirls outside him and creates him, something electric-hot and—

—and familiar. He knows this energy.

He laughs. Reaches for it, and it jumps to him as easily as it did in the clearing with Iri.

The pain vanishes as he pulls the energy off the fluid in the syringe and discharges it harmlessly into the air.

He staggers away from the wall and brings an elbow down hard onto Kirlov’s left shoulder as he tries to slide up the wall without putting weight on his shattered knee.

Kirlov falls again, and hot satisfaction courses through Tory’s blood.

He wrenches out the syringe of Null and tosses it away so it shatters against the opposite wall.

Glass shards scatter across the floor like falling stars, and Tory can’t tear his eyes away.

His blood sings, alive with something unnameable.

His head swims, mouth dry, every sense razor-sharp.

Shit, the box. It must have opened when he fell.

The Legion . He’s moving at half-speed as he slips his pack off and reaches in with numb fingers. The lid of the containment box is skewed, the metal at the corner warped. Inside, its crystal pulsing cerulean light against a cradle of vines, sits the Legion, fully awake.

Tory’s consciousness pulses and fades with the weapon’s light, body slow and clumsy, mesmerized.

Not now, he doesn’t need this now .

Tory tries to force the lid back on, but the warping along the edge makes for an imperfect seal. The tapered edge of a vine sneaks through and tickles the tip of Tory’s finger.

He shudders and drops the box. Its lid skitters free, and the roots rise to reach for Tory.

They widen and contract with each pulse of light—too much like the rise and fall of a living chest. All of this, and he’ll die, stabbed to death by a tree .

No. Sena said—he said Tory was controlling it before, in the lab, that it protected him.

He can do it again, surely. But how?

A voice cries out, wrenching his attention from the blue-lit stellite and the breathing vines that embrace it.

“Tory, his gun!”

Sena’s voice. Sena!

The distraction holds Tory too long, mind still syrupy-slow.

Kirlov dropped the pistol, and Tory knocked him to the ground right beside it.

Now, Kirlov has it in his hand, and Tory’s energies are slow to respond, just like Iri’s took time to uncrumple after Sena extinguished them in that clearing.

His eyes dart up to find Sena—and he’s close, shaking and barely standing, and what’s to keep Kirlov from turning the gun on Sena after he kills Tory? Sena darts toward Kirlov, reckless.

Tory thinks no, and every part of him blazes with it.

This is not how it ends, in the dark at the hands of the man who’s hurt Sena for so long. This prison is not the last place either of them will ever see. He won’t stand for it.

The muddled energy slowing his thoughts and his limbs sharpens into something fine and focused. Kirlov stops, stone still, and makes a sick gurgle.

Three braided roots drive all the way through his chest and shit , Sena was behind him—

But Sena stands unharmed. The bloody vines curl out of Kirlov and around and behind Sena as if to hold him up.

Slowly, they withdraw, and Sena lifts his hand from the back of Kirlov’s neck.

The man who thought he could control Sena crumples like a puppet, stringless.

The back of Kirlov’s neck—where Sena bears his scar—is matte-black, dried-up and dead.

“ Nice , ” Tory breathes. He grabs the lid for the containment box and drops it back on, trying to stomp it closed as the roots draw back inside, at rest.

One peeks through the tiny gap where the metal is crumpled, and Tory thinks no again.

It withdraws as if stung. Tory closes it into his pack and swings it back onto his shoulder.

“Ha! That was—that was . . . What the fuck .” He’s never telling Helner about this. She’ll come at him with needles and knives. “Sorry, I mean, you clearly had it covered. I—I didn’t even think, it just . . . I think that thing likes me, maybe.”

“I don’t think it’s capable of liking anyone,” Sena murmurs. He stares down at Kirlov, stock-still and waiting. “He’s—is he . . .?”

Tory kicks the corpse. “Deader than dead. A shame. Would’ve liked to zap him a bit, make him dance.”

“He’s . . .” Sena exhales a voiceless laugh and shifts his gaze up to Tory.

A smile breaks over his face, and he looks young , overjoyed and disbelieving, shaking.

He shields his expression with a bare hand as the laughs turn to quiet sobs.

His right shoulder against the wall bears all his weight.

“You came back.” It’s more breath than sound.

“’Course I did.” Tory has never wanted to hold a person more.

His hands clench at his sides before he realizes he doesn’t have to restrain himself, probably.

He pulls Sena in, as gentle as he can manage for all the broken bits, and regrets it almost immediately, because how is anyone supposed to do this?

Sena seems to feel the same. He goes ramrod straight, and Tory moves to withdraw. “Sorry, I wasn’t—”

“Don’t. It’s f—it’s just . . . Stay.” Only one arm—the left one—goes around Tory’s back, careful and light. Almost too quiet to hear, Sena whispers, “Stay with me.”

“As long as you’ll let me.” Tory smiles. It’s better, that they’re both shit at this.

Sena chokes out another one of those wrenching laugh-sobs and trembles against Tory, hooking his chin over Tory’s shoulder.

Sena sighs, warm and slow, but it catches on the exhale. He staggers.

If the world were fair, Tory would be able to keep him from falling, but he’s not bearing any of his own weight, and Tory can’t bear it for him. They both fall, and Tory’s knees crack against stone. He hisses in a breath but doesn’t scream.

Sena hits with the same force.

He doesn’t breathe at all.