Page 22 of Cage of Starlight
After years of aching, it’s time for Tory tofight.
Lucky him, he knows exactly who his opponent will be.
Anger uncoils in him, sharp and serpentine. Tory pushes forward in one long stride, lowering the hand that covers his face and baring his teeth. “It’d be convenient for you,wouldn’t it, if I didn’t make trouble?”
Vantaras blinks at his sullied gloves, face paling to something a half-step shy of horror. His lips press thin, and he glances back the way they came. A smooth turn, and he retreats with an urgentclick-click-clickof polished boots on tile.
“Find your quarters,” is his final pronouncement. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The terrible thing inside Tory doesn’t leave when Vantaras does. His insides roil, ears attuned to every mechanical click and grind of his prison. He loses time outside the door. When he inhabits himself again, his blood is cold and tacky on his palm, the cut on his finger beginning to clot.
Thiswon’tbe his last chance to run. He’ll find another. He needs darkness, quiet, rest. Anything but the all-seeing light in the hallway. Tory twists at the knob on the door, but it won’t budge. Right. He’ll have to knock. He beats at it until someone inside rouses to open it.
He’s immediately the target of three cool stares. Two men sit on a mattress to the left of the door, cards in hand and a messy pile of blue and red chips between them.
Tory must be glaring, because their gazes grow cooler.
The one who answered the door, square-jawed and thick with muscle, spits, “Who’reyou?”
Tory waves his bleeding hand at his uniform. His muscles protest the movement, bones weighted with iron from healing Kelly. Fat lot of good that did him. Vantaras probably took all his money along with Thatcher’s cloak when he arrested Tory.
The cloak. He pushes its weight and warmth from his mind. It’s gone now. He doesn’t need it. doesn’t need the connections that tied him to it—and to Hulven.
“Roommate?” the muscled guy growls.
Tory stares at the other two men. Both solidly built. Could probably kick his insides outside of him without breaking a sweat. The gray room is as narrow as he feared. In the back, a single, dim-yellow strip of lighting fails to illuminate anything.
Tory blinks and his eyes long to stay closed.
His roommate retreats from the door and slaps his cards down on his bedding. “Thought I had this place to myself.”
“Not anymore.” Tory slides into the room before the door slams on him. His shoulder throbs where Helner installed the Core, the vinegar-bite of nausea sharp on his tongue. A mountain of papers, strange tokens, and miscellaneous mess buries the bed to the right of the door.
“Mine?” Tory flicks a crumpled ball of paper across the room.
“That’s my desk.” The guy laughs.
He could give it up, could sleep on the floor under the tall beds. It’s what he would’ve done before. He’s slept in dirtier places, shared breath and space with ten others in a room this size. He’s probably never slept in a place this clean. If he has to share this space with someone, he should make nice.
Anger feeds the nausea inside him. Like Vantaras and so many before him, his roommate would be overjoyed if Tory kept his silence.
Fuck that.
“Look.” Tory gathers the junk in his arms and walks to his roommate’s bed, dropping it on top of the cards and tokens. A stiff, balled up tissue bounces off his roommate’s knee and falls to the floor. “I feel like I was chewed up and shit out twice. I’m going to sleep.”
That thrill again. Freedom of expression—the only freedom he has left.
The bed has nothing but a mattress, dark blue. The color does its best to hide the crusty edges of some milky fluid or another. He’s seen worse. He tips horizontal and curls up facing the wall. Tucking his knees close to his chest, he wraps one arm around them, pillowing his head on the other. The wound on his finger twinges, hand empty without the scalpel clutched inside.
This place is nothing like the labor camp with its dust and dirt and high fences, nights punctuated by groaning old men with festering wounds on nearby bedrolls, too weak for the soldiers with their sharp uniforms and full bellies to bother treating. It’s clean here—cold and clinical. It’sdifferent. He makes it a mantra. The room is small and gets smaller as his breaths speed up.
It may be different, but it’s just another set of walls.
Tory’s done making himself small enough to step on. He’ll get out of here—and until he does, he’ll make Vantaras’ life a living waste.
Across the room, the guys whisper, rough and pointed. They’re talking about him.
Yesterday, he might have cared.
