Page 33 of Cage of Starlight
“You gonna try? Bet you could knock ’em on their faces.”
“What? No way! Who do you think I am? Balloons are hard enough. Peoplechooseto move. Too much going on for a CFR.”
Well, Tory isn’t a CFR. Maybe he’ll try stepping into the ring one day.
Watching the fight makes him tense instead of calming him down, so he lets Randall drag him to a rickety wooden card table. Old, mismatched chairs make a ring around it, and off to the left, several dart games are going on. One woman guides a dart to the bullseye with her hands behind her back. Tory’s pretty sure that’s cheating.
Randall scoffs. “Sword corps. All the offense guys think they’re so special. Don’t give ’em any attention.”
The creepy stellite lighting adorns the walls in here like everywhere else, but they’ve made it dimmer, somehow, so the light is as dull andsmoky as the air. When Tory finally turns back to the table, Randall gives him a drink, has a big guy deal them in, and they start to play.
He has an overabundance of tokens, thanks to Helner, and this isn’t a bad way to spend them. People talk in non-threatening environments. He might learn something useful. Anyway, he hasn’t spent his whole life corralling his emotions for nothing. He has a killer game face. It’s nice to use those skills for hisownbenefit for once.
It only takes a few hands until he’s loose with relaxation, guarding a generous pile of tokens and more than a few scraps of paper with scribbles on them, representative of whatever these men are gambling in lieu of tokens. Two extra pillows. A sweater that will cover his arms.
He startles as a voice bursts out close to his ear. Gavin.
“Whoa, man! Didn’t know you had a tattoo. Where’d you get it?”
A hand closes around Tory’s upper arm. His cheeks burn, pulse clamoring. He shouldn’t have let go of himself. He jerks his arm free, dropping his cards. “Don’t.”
“Come on, Roomie, I’m just trying to get to know you.” Gavin shrugs, stepping back.
“Maybe I don’t want you to get to know me,Roomie.”
Grinning, Gavin telegraphs a reach but then catches Tory with his other hand. Strong fingers close around Tory’s arm. “See? That wasn’t so hard—”
Tory throws the first punch without thinking, fist landing on Gavin’s stubbled jaw. Pain explodes over his knuckles.
Gavin curses, stumbling back. He grabs for Tory’s shoulder, wrinkling his shirt and tugging the sleeve up to reveal the blue ring. “I was just trying to say hello. You wanna be like this? Fine. But you should know what you’re getting into.”
“Oh, man. Those are labor camp tats, aren’t they?” one of the guys around the table says.
The unnatural energy from the stellite strips on the walls combines with the zing from the fighters in the ring to sharpen Tory’s senses. All he can focus on is Gavin’s grip and the awful, unwavering stares. Ragged breaths saw in and out of his chest. He’s dizzy with it, the edges of everything crisp and bright.
Gavin laughs. “What, mama popped you out in the camps? I hear that means theyownyou.”
Gavin’s unyielding grip underlines Tory’s ugliest memories—the helplessness, the things he did to himself and for others in those first years after his escape. Tory tries to shake it away. He’s out. He’s free of thatnow.
Except he’s not. He’s owned again. Penned in, laughed at,again.
Tory aches, an unpleasant reminder of today’s training, and though he likes Menden, he knows the smiles will be gone the moment Tory steps out of line. The bruises over his body have settled and spread, converging into a singular throb, syrupy and electric.
Like when he did healing.
Like when he worked in the mines, when he mucked out stalls from sunup until twilight. The reminder that maybe it’s always been this bad—maybe the actual, physical prison walls are the only difference—sets him alight. He breathes in the electric air, grabs Gavin’s hand, and twists. Something cracks.
He jerks away. He didn’t mean to break bones.
Gavin crouches, groaning, fingers loose around his dangling wrist. He swings with his uninjured hand, landing a punch on Tory’s chin that sends streaks of color dancing over his eyes.
Gavin grabs a dart from a nearby game, grinning awfully before he throws it. It accelerates midair.
Tory weaves left, and it whizzes past to crumple against the wall. And that? That’s cheating. It would have gone right through him. “You don’t want to get into this with me.”
“I think you got it the wrong way ’round,Seedbait.”
Tentative fingers settle on his shoulder from behind.
