Page 3 of Cage of Starlight
When they’re gone, he examines Kelly’s wounds. They’re the worst he’s ever been called on to heal. He’ll be lucky if he can stand when this is over. Slanting a glance at Fedri, Tory says, “Catch me if I’m about to fall into your husband’s intestines,” and rolls up his sleeves.
Too far.
Fear lances through him.Hide the tattoos, his mother begged him.
The sharp blue edge of the mark that identifies him as the child of a convicted prisoner peeks from the sleeve on his left arm. Without the complex marking indicating that Tory’s freedom has been bought and paid for, the tattoo is a problem. As far as Westrice is concerned, it still owns him. Tory’s never found an artist willing or able to reproduce the hue of the pardoning mark, so the best he can do is keep it out of sight. He tugs the sleeve down before pressing his hands to the wet mess of Kelly’s abdomen.
The telltale tingling starts in his fingers—a strange sensation, like a shudder in reverse—as he seeks out the glow of Kelly’s natural healing energies and puts them to use—restoring damaged organs and ruined blood vessels, sealing torn skin. Kelly’s body remembers wholeness like all bodies do. The challenge is making it do the work. But a wound this bad will need far more energy than Kelly’s weakened body has to spare. Tory pushes the last wisp of the miner’s strength toward healing, then shifts gears. His ears ring, veins sizzling as he lends his own body’s reserves to the effort.
“Is he okay?”
Tory clenches his teeth, vision dimming. “He will be.”
“It’s taking so long. How much longer?”
“. . . N-not much.”
They always tease him like this, like Tory’s the slowest Healer in Westrice.My old Auntie Ghaile says Maran’s Healers can close a wound in a snap!they’ll say.You need more practice.
The way Tory sees it, if they want the capital’s Healers, they can damn well pay for one.
Sweat stings his eyes. He’sclose. He can’t heal it all at once, but he can seal the worst of it. With numb fingers, he shoves Kelly’sshirt aside. Thin, pink flesh arches across what was once an open wound, flecks of dirt and gravel slipping down Kelly’s side from where his body pushed them out. There’s only a little section still bleeding. He can close it. Just a bit more.
But his vision writhes, mouth dry and body burning. He’s never gone farther than this.
The unwritten law is that he does what they ask, and they keep his secret. It’s been like that since his powers manifested at fifteen after he fought with anexceptionallyirritating girl and knocked them both down an incline. Tory arrived scuffed and wide-eyed at the bottom. The girl landed, screaming, with one leg twisted in an unspeakable direction. Panicked, he gripped her leg, apologizing and urging her toshush(because she was no less annoying screaming in pain than she was raging about howof course anyone sent to the labor camps deserved it, and by the time Hasra and the villagers arrived, the girl’s broken leg was halfway healed, and the hungry-eyed townspeople had an offer for him: their silence for his service.
So he keeps going.
One last time. One final kept promise. Their unspoken agreement kept him out of Vantaras’ greedy hands and off the front lines of the Grand General’s war for years. He’s grateful for that, at least. Better this mundane, familiar pain than whatever Vantaras’ soldiers could deal out if they ever caught wind of his skills.
It’s been nice here. Thatcher and his kind smiles. The room upstairs with its feather blanket. Tory has stopped running for so long, he’s not sure his legs remember how to do it anymore.
He’ll relearn fast. He always has.
He just has to finish up and recover from wherever the work leaves him, and he’ll slip out of their lives the way he slipped in. But eventhough he pushes the sputtering dregs of his healing energy into Kelly, the last wound won’t close. The world drifts sideways, trees on their sides and the snatches of gray sky far away, drifting farther. His arms unlock and nearly drop him, and it’s only by virtue of Fedri’s strong arms that he doesn’t fall face-first into the slurry of blood and dirt. His mouth tastes like metal and his vision swirls, but he’s nearly done. Eyes shut, he grasps for any energy he can take and use.
Something bright and light and warm leaps into his hands, and the rest of Kelly’s wounds close in a snap. Tory doesn’t even need his vision to know they’re healed. He feels it.
Normally he’d stop here. Kelly would be in a coma for a few days and would have recovery left to do after he woke, but this energy is like nothing Tory’s ever known. He’ll have Kelly on his feet again in an instant, awake and laughing, ready to work.
“Tory.” It’s Fedri’s voice, awful and afraid. “Tory, stop.”
“M’almost done,” he slurs. “S’fine.”
The next voice to speak is the stocky miner. “Whatever you’re doing, I need you to stop it right now.” The men who scattered into the woods to stand guard must be here, too, by the crunch of urgent footsteps all around. “Shit.Shit. They’ll find us. Stop it, Tory!”
He opens his eyes tolight.
Not overhead, through the trees, but from the other side of the fence, where men who push carts of stellite from the mine have dropped their carts to stare—where tiny flecks of the precious crystal have mixed with the earth, invisible until they started to glow bright blue.The light glares through the thick vines on the fence, making skeletons of the bell-shaped blossoms.
The light fades the moment Tory tears his hands from Kelly’s torso, but it’s too late.
A soldier races into the fray, half-obscured by the vines, demanding answers no one can give. Tory freezes, begging him not to turn around.
Naturally, that’s the moment Kelly gasps dramatically awake.
The soldier spins and wrenches the vines aside, squinting into the dim woods. “Is someone out there?”
