Page 142 of Cage of Starlight
Blood clots. Dying tissue. Failing organs. Overtaxed lungs filling with fluid.
Broken ribs. Sena said there was maybe one. There are three.
Tory experiences the shift in the body after death—the slow fade of every flavor of energy that fuels a mind, body, and soul. In Hulven, he would have given it up for lost.
Tory opens himself up, feeds everything he has into the boy on the ground. His breath comes slow and hitches in his chest. His fingers go cold. His vision fragments and fades.
He works in reverse. Cleans poisoned blood. Restores ruined lungs. Renews dead tissue. Seals broken bones.
Pushes—with the last energy he has to spare—that still heart to beat again.
He isn’t finished with Sena. They’ve barely begun.
Sena’s heart stutters, but it’s not enough. Tory’s numb hands betray him. His vision blinks out. This last damnable wall, the barrier between life and death, refuses him passage.
He sinks, against his will, into something deep.
*
He rises from it in a panic, choking until he tastes smoke.
His eyes flick open to a barred darkness lit ocean-blue, wobbling and unreal. There’s noise all around. The ground shakes. The air reeks of fire and blood, and Tory is on his side in the dirt amidst the chaos.
“You’re back,” says a dry voice next to him. “You’re lucky they went back in to find you before you killed yourself.”
Helner. Tory grimaces. Reason returns slower than everything else, but an overwhelming sense of wrongness clamors at the back of his mind. Something’s wrong. Something—
“This is afascinating development, by the way.”Helner gestures up. “It did this as soon as we set you down.”
He can’t push words out yet, so he makes a rasping growl and trusts her to translate it.
He squints up, and the slats of light through whatever structure he’s in illuminate leaves in fresh green and long strings of bell-like flowers in vital blood-red dripping from . . . vines.
A dome of them, braided together by the hundreds and tucked protectively close around Tory and all the other Seeds.
How odd to think this is the same thing that destroyed the lab in response to Tory’s fear, that killed so many people on the battlefield. Howbeautiful. It’s all around him, but it doesn’t feel like a tomb or a prison. The blossoms shed the honeyed fragrance that muted the reek of fuel in Hulven.
Sena will love it.
Tory tips his head to the side, seeking him. “Told you,” he murmurs. “Told you they like me.”
There’s no response.
The horror of thewhycrashes into him with a weight that presses the air from his lungs.
“Sena!” he rasps. “Where . . .”
Vision blurred, he peers through a cacophony of shifting feet and finds him.
Not far away—almost close enough to touch if he could make himself move—he finds Jeffra, eyes wide and wet, on her knees over someone on the ground. “Please,” Tory says, levering himself up. He could get to her if there weren’t so manypeoplein here. “Please.”
But she’s already leaning over Sena, hands gentle against his still chest. She looks over at Tory, stricken, and doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t have to. Her hand on Sena’s chest goes soft and soothing, motherly. She sucks in a breath and exhales a sob. “Oh, Sena.” She shakes her head. The feet part for her as she moves to Tory and kneels. “Tory, he’s already . . . There’s nothing to—”Her eyes dart to Sena. “I can’t do anything. But maybe I can help you help him.”
Tory forces himself upright and his vision shutters. He crawls until he’s beside Sena.
Jeffra’s hand settles warm and solid against his back, filling his cold body with warmth. Tory breathes, and breathes again. He still has work to do, but he has no idea how to do it.
The Core is still inside Sena, rotten and poisoning him—and it’s one thing Tory can’t undo.
