Page 69 of Cage of Starlight
“How can you still be wearing those gloves?” Tory asks. “All . . . soggy and . . .”
“I don’t notice it. I rarely take them off.”
“That sounds unsanitary.” Silence spreads between them, broken only by the obscenesquish-schluckof Tory’s shoes. With Tory behind him, Sena feels his gaze like a brand between his shoulders. After a while, Tory says, “So, how long have you been doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“This.” The word is not nearly as illuminating as Tory seems to think it is. Sena lets his judgmental silence clue Tory in, and he does eventually clarify. “Being a soldier, I mean.”
“Anofficer.” Sena speeds up as they enter the woods. “I was sent to officer preparatory school as soon as my Seed was discovered.”
“Yeah? How’d that happen?”
“As I said before, I was the target of harassment. A group of boys found joy in roughing me up whenever the teachers’ eyes weren’t on us. I reached out from the ground to stop one of them from kicking me in the face. Without meaning to, I . . .”
Tory perks up. “Killed him?”
“He survived. His leg had to be amputated below the knee.”
“Ah. Yeah, you mentioned that. You finally going to tell me what your Seed is?”
Sena pauses. “How much do you know of the First Children? Dr. Helner would have called them the Sources.”
“I know I’m supposed to be one of them. ’Til a few months ago, I’d’ve sworn up and down I was a Healer.”
Sena laughs. “That really was unwise.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Sena slows his gait. “In Arlune, there are legends of the Great Celestial Beast.”
“The what?”
“The Celestial Beast was an ethereal creature who swam among stars, the creator of our planet and many others.” Sena cuts himself off. He has the words right, but itsoundswrong. There’s something missing when Sena tries to recite them. He grumbles, “I can’t tell the stories like my mother did.”
“Give me the abridged version.”
“Just as well.” Sena adjusts his jacket and pulls in a halting breath. He’ll have to get used to shallow breaths. “The first Seeds ever to appear on this planet after the Beast’s body was planted in the earth were two children, the Beast’s gift to the planet it loved unto death. They’re the so-called Sources, because the military likes slapping its own names on everything. The First Children were the Worldseed and the Voidseed—Channeler and Neutralizer, if you use Westrice’s names. Just as the world has roads and roots and the universe is flooded with rivers of stars, the First Children each carried life. From them, all other Seeds blossomed.”
“Worldseed.”
“That’s you. The Worldseed has the ability to handle all energies.”
“And the other one?”
“Voidseed.” Bitterness churns in Sena’s stomach. He stuffs his hands into his pockets. “That’s me. Intrinsic. The Voidseed destroys all energies. It’s notoriously unstable. Also the rarest, with your type coming in a rather distant second. I can break down anything I touch.”
“So you’d kill me if you touched me?”
Sena laughs, brutal and short. “My self-control is better than that, I hope. But . . . I could, if I weren’t careful. I also nullify foreignenergies as a matter of course. It’s why no Seed abilities can affect me, and why my Core and . . . and NOVA had to be surgically rather than Seed-implanted.”
Tory winces.
“You remember when you came to the facility, the test they did to determine your type? It destroys the Seed in your blood when it touches it. The color and pattern of the sparks indicate your type, and the extent of the destruction indicates your range of effect. They’ve been taking my blood since I was eleven to develop it.”
He swallows a surge of shame. Tory saw, the day his father visited. He saw Sena’s arm, marked with over a decade of needle scars.
“Not only the type tests,” Tory whispers.
