Page 103 of Cage of Starlight
Tory retreats. Sena leans as close to the fire as he dares.
He loses time, he’s pretty sure, because next thing he knows, there’s someone behind him yelling, “Catch!”
His body is too slow to respond. He stares at the blurred, firelit curiosity of his empty hand until he registers that he’s supposed tohave something inside it. He squints into the dimness and finds something rumpled on the ground.
Tory grabs up the item and dusts it off, suddenly sheepish, before extending it.
“Treated leather,” he says. “Pretty much waterproof. Warm as anything, but pretty light and thin. You can use it.”
Sena examines the item. A cloak.
Thecloak—kuhlu vines lovingly but imperfectly sewn along the bottom, worn slick with years of wear. “I can’t. This is . . . important to you.”
Tory shrugs. “All the shivering you’re doing is making me cold, and anyway, I don’t want you to get me sick. Go ahead. Be warm. Use the thing.”
“I was the one who took this from you.”
“The one who gave it back, too.”
Sena sighs relief as he shrugs the cloak around his shoulders.
The glow on the horizon is brighter. No sun yet, but the promise of warmth. The cloak traps the heat of Sena’s body inside and thaws the ice in his bones. “S’nice,” he says.
“I know. That’s why I brought it.”
Sena wraps the cloak tighter around himself with his left arm. He must have done something to his right. It aches. Maybe Tory dropped him once or twice, dragging him back to his tent. He lets his eyes close, enjoys the light show of the fading fire through his eyelids. He could sleep here. This was not how he envisioned his last few days of life. He imagined it would be a quiet, dignified affair, with no one in attendance to see him struggle.
“Sena, listen.”
He tries an “Mm?” Hopes it’s audible over the wind and the crackling fire.
“What you said earlier, in the truck—about your Core.”
Sena keeps his eyes closed at the tentative words. Tory is not used to caring, but Sena is even less used to being cared for. It’s a strange feeling. Worse, it’s not a terrible one.
“I get why you don’t want to go back. I swear I won’t make you. But there’s gotta be a way, right?”
Sena inhales. Shallow, still shallow. “May not matter.” He ignores the wild patter of his heart, the greedy, awful thought that he could get used to this. “You know I’m not . . . an optimist. Don’t think they’re equipped to treat this out here. But it’s fine. There really are more important things than survival.” Freedom to make his own choices, that’s one of them. He won’t give them a single drop more of his blood. They will not cage him, and he won’t let himself be used to cage others. “If you ever find more of the stuff they’ve made with my blood, burn it for me?”
“Riese says Yized will be back soon,” Tory says. “She can give you more antibiotics. You’ll be fine.” He doesn’t answer the rest. Stubborn, dragging his own truth from what he hears and ignoring everything else.
It aches, deeper than the pain of broken bones or whatever calamities are happening in his chest,to have that stubbornness focused on helping him. Maybe that’s why, against his will and his better judgment, a terrible confession breaks out of him. “I wish I didn’t have to go.”
Tory startles, as he should.
Sena isn’t sure he’s ever said anything with so much conviction. It’s tantamount to a confession of—
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says, more calmly. “It must be the fever.”
The shock in Tory’s eyes hardens to determination, andno,Sena can’t be the one to do this to him. He needs to convince Tory not to hope. Pneumonia doesn’t care about hope. His Core, when they deactivate it, will not be nudged away from its inevitable decay by the fact that Sena might like, for once, to not fall asleep alone.
“We’ll fix it. I’ll fix it.” Tory grabs for Sena’s gloved hands and for once he holds on. “Wait for me. I’ll find a way.”
Sena should saydon’t count on it. He should tell Tory that it’s only in stories that heroes find the right answers on a timeline like this, that not even all stories have happy endings. Sena would know. The sad ones were always his favorites. But he barely has the strength to stand on his own two feet. He certainly doesn’t have the power to crack Tory’s rock-solid resolve. It’s selfish to let it stand, but Tory is still holding his hands, and Sena is far too weak to resist that gentle invitation to touch. Carefully, he leans so his torso is braced against Tory’s shoulder, face tucked into Tory’s neck so no one can see how terrible a job he’s doing of controlling his expression. Barely louder than a whisper, with Tory radiating warmth through his thin shirt like a furnace, Sena breathes, “Okay.”
A foreign voice interrupts, and Sena starts at the sound, pulling away from Tory.
“Boys, if you have a moment?”
