Page 137 of Cage of Starlight
“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, andthisis the man who made sure he can’t survive this. “You talk aboutfreedom, 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.”
“Bequiet.”
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 placetriedto 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 saidlook 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. Moretangible. 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 canmovethis.
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’ssatisfyingto 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 ownmind? 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 sotired.“Jeffra,” he says. “Come do your thing.”
“Oh, absolutely fuckingnot,” 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.”
