Page 66 of Cage of Starlight

CHAPTER THIRTY

T he last thing Sena knew before death was the crush of warm arms and I’ve got you, I’ve got you guiding him down into the dark.

He’s reborn to the distracting unpleasantness of knuckles on his sternum. He doesn’t have the strength to push them away, but he makes a passable effort at it.

A familiar laugh. “See? An exemplary response to painful stimuli. He’ll be fine.”

Tory’s voice: “He’s awake?” Pressure on his shoulder. A hand on his chin. “Hey. Sena?”

He opens his eyes to flowers swinging overhead in arterial blood-red and the eerie, electric blue of Tory’s eyes, both like and unlike Kirlov’s.

Kirlov is dead , and Sena is alive.

He never dared to imagine the moment that followed freedom from control. A breath pushes out of him in an odd hybrid of laugh and sob.

A smile softens Tory’s face. “Hey,” he says. “You’re back.”

Sena mumbles something that approximates a reciprocal hey . “Wh-what . . . happened?”

Niela leans over him, teeth bared in a grin. “You died a little. Nothing irreparable. Glad to see you’ve decided to return to us. Sorry about your sternum.”

Sena has dealt with worse than a brisk sternal rub. “Don’t worry about it.” To Tory, he offers, “I thought I wouldn’t see you again.”

Tory’s face warps. “Yeah. I—I’ve been meaning to tell you something.” He steels himself, and Sena readies himself for the gentlest letdown. Maybe something like, I have to go now. Or even, It was easier being beside you when I knew there was an expiration date.

Sena interrupts before Tory can finish. “You can go,” he whispers. It’s always been easier to be the first to walk away. Maybe it will hurt less if he does it this time, too. “The things I need to do—they’re only going to get harder from here.”

“Absolutely fucking not,” Tory says, at around the same time a red-clad, dark-haired woman drops into a threatening crouch on Sena’s opposite side and says, “I think I’m owed a proper introduction!”

“Not now, Hasra!” Tory yelps, flustered.

“Oh, am I interrupting something?”

But Sena can’t focus on her, because suddenly Tory’s hands are on his face, work-rough and warm, tipping his chin so all he can see are Tory’s steady blue eyes, and Sena can’t breathe.

“Just— listen ,” Tory says, and Sena can’t do anything else.

“Because I’m shit at this stuff and I can’t say it twice.

Being with you is the scariest thing I’ve ever done, okay?

I can’t think . I feel sick, and nothing makes sense, and I’m frightened of things that never used to worry me, and I’ve never gotten so close to dying so many times as I have since I met you. ”

“Ohhh,” says the dark-haired woman. Eyes wide, she stares at Tory. “Oh, damn. Tory, I’m going to need details .”

“ Hasra ,” Tory whines, which is an interesting sound coming from him. Sena doesn’t dislike it. “Please. A minute.”

“Oh, fine.” With a firm nod, she seizes Sena’s hand, mutters a quick, “Much more pleased to meet you this time than the last time we met, I think,” and retreats.

Sena splits his attention between Tory and the woman across from him with her ever-narrowing eyes. Tory’s words bounce around in his skull. No matter how he thinks about them . . . “That all sounds . . . unpleasant.”

“It’s horrible !” Tory agrees. “But I think—I’m pretty sure that means it’s important.

You’re important. Because I also haven’t ever felt as alive as I do with you.

I’ve never wanted to know someone as well as I want to know you.

I’ve never—never wanted— ” He sucks in a breath, and Sena’s chest aches, and neither of them are looking at each other.

“I think the best things are the ones that can ruin you. If that’s true, there’s no fucking way I’m letting you go again.

I’m in this until the end, whatever that looks like. ”

Sena’s mind blanks, an eternal drone of gray silence. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know!”

Sena doesn’t miss the way the woman—Hasra, that’s the Hasra Tory talks about, which is a panic attack for another time—snorts at the way Tory’s voice goes shrill on the last syllable.

He can’t miss the way Tory’s eyes are wide, his cheeks flushed, his pulse a frenetic thud in his neck that Sena could almost swear is echoed behind his own ribs.

Sena must be smiling. It must be bigger than any he’s ever worn before.

His face hurts, his chest so full he’s surprised his ribs haven’t cracked.

“You have to tell me what you’re thinking,” Tory begs.

“I’m thinking you’re terrible at this.”

“You don’t get it, I really am! I’m so bad at feeling things. I’ve got no practice. It could be the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. You could hate me for it.”

“Never.” Sena sets his hands butterfly-light over the ones that still cup his face and feels the shiver that travels through Tory in response. His mouth is dry, head spinning. He waits for his heart to stop trying to break free of his bones.

It doesn’t. It just keeps pounding out an urgent tune that washes like waves against his eardrums. He’s alive , and Tory is here, and Sena hates words.

None of them in any language he’s ever studied are big enough for the things he wants to say.

His hands against Tory’s say more than his mouth ever could, if only Tory knew how to translate it.

Awkwardly, Sena manages, “I think the common advice is that practice begets progress.”

Tory snorts, but he’s smiling, so Sena figures he didn’t do too bad.

“I suppose I should stick around, then.”

Sena’s eyes burn. Stay , he begged at the last minute he expected to be alive, and even then he barely dared to hope Tory would. “What if it takes a long time?”

“With the two of us as bad at this as we are? Might take forever.”

Before Sena can find words for the warmth that fills him, another voice breaks in.

“Is it finished? Am I allowed to stop pretending I can’t hear you?” Hasra turns around to give them very long looks, eyebrows vanishing into her hair. “Tory, this is a story I need to hear immediately.”

“Soon,” Tory promises. “We have some things to finish up here, first.”

He’s not wrong. Sena holds out a hand. “Help me up?”

Tory takes it, skin warmer than sunlight, and it really is that easy.

Sena tests his balance and his breath when he’s on his feet. He feels good. “What’s the plan?”

Tory shrugs. “We have a lot of skill here. I’d rather not kill them, but . . .”

Helner wiggles red-slick fingers. “Ah, good, I was wondering when we’d get back to the topic at hand. If we’re taking votes . . .”

Iri, beside her, raises his voice. “I’d rather we waited. I’m in no great hurry to kill Seeds, regardless of their allegiance. Riese is gone, but it will take time for some of them to separate what they want from what he made them want. They should be allowed to do that, as I was.”

Helner scowls at him. “That’s no fun. Fine. We’ll give them time to decide that they themselves want to be assholes, and then I’ll pull out their internal organs.”

Tory paces toward the dome of vines surrounding them. “Still, they brought the fight here. We need to stop them, and I’m not averse to using this guy to do it, if I can just . . .”

When he reaches the wall, it parts in front of him to create a wide opening, a window to the burning Compound.

“It’s connected to you.” Iri gestures at the shifting vines. “Think about what you want it to do or be, and it should respond.”

Tory squints, and the threatening braids of roots tear from the ground and coil back around themselves until the Legion unit, melon-sized, still pulsing blue, walks itself over on spindly legs and rolls up into his palm. “It needs a name,” Tory says, apropos of nothing.

Sena sighs. “Please don’t name it.”

Iri smiles. “They already have a name.”

“Legion,” Tory says. “I know. It’s hardly cozy.”

“That’s your name for them, because you see them as threats. They’re called miokh in Arlune. It means—”

Heart. Soul. “Core,” Sena says. A lullaby word. An endearment whispered into his ear at night. The most essential part of a thing. It’s appropriate—so unlike the cruel Core Westrice plants in its Seeds.

“Sena,” Tory says. “You should touch it.”

“I—you saw— ” He stumbles back a step, vision full of the destruction he’s caused. Crystals fractured and blackened, dead vines brittle. If he loses control, it could happen here, too. “I shouldn’t.”

“You’re not just a weapon.”

He could be. He has been .

He doesn’t want to be. Not anymore. He’s alive, and he can create things, too. Sena, trembling, reaches for the sphere. The roots, as expected, contort themselves around his hand rather than allow his fingers to touch them. He pulls back.

Tory pokes the ball. “Hey,” he says. The roots return to their former shape. “Remember what you told me? It’s responding to how you feel about it. Try again.”

He’s healed. He’s not dying anymore, not struggling with a Seed gone haywire. His touch will only hurt this thing if he wants it to, and he’s spent a lifetime learning control. He’s so much more than his father created him to be. Sena hauls in a shaky breath and reaches out.

This time, the roots withdraw, slow, to expose the crystal at the center of the thing, bright with Tory’s colors. Sena lays his hand on the crystal, and his vision ripples crisp and clear. The light from the crystal burns blood-red for a moment before settling into a warm, steady purple.

Tory grins, unbearably smug. “It likes you, too,” he says.

Like sound through water, a series of explosions echo from inside the Compound, preventing Sena from forming a reply. A section of the building shifts—and with the groan of twisting metal and the crackling of glass and a sound like a sigh, it collapses.

In the center of it all, exposed and regal, stands the tree, damaged but alive, rooted deep and branches high, reaching for something impossible. Sena can’t stop smiling.

He turns to the group. “I have a plan.”

*