Page 75 of Cage of Starlight
“Stop it! You said you had questions! Just let go of him and I’ll—”
The thud of running footsteps. The low growl of a voice. Suddenly, the pressure against Tory’s back vanishes, and the ropes around him tighten as Sena sags.
“Judge!” a deep voice booms from somewhere behind Tory. “I leave you alone foronemoment. Drop the damned knife.Now!”
A clink.
“How many times have I told you your temper will be the death of us? You’re as bad as Iri. Get over here.” A grunt, the rustle of cloth. “You willnotlet your emotions ruin our mission. Sit this one out. Cool your head.”
“He said—”
“I don’t care what he said! We need him.”
Tory’s stomach flips, because heknowsthat voice—honey-smooth and authoritative. He’s heard it somewhere. But his heart is a drumbeat in his ears, turning the world to ocean noise, and his thoughts are a riot in his skull. He can’t place it.
Slow and casual, footsteps crunch the leaves around Tory until they stop in front of him. Tory tenses at sudden pressure on the side of his face. On the blindfold. “That was a terrible idea,” the familiar voice drawls.
Then there’s light, brutal as a blow to the head. Tory blinks through the ache of it, squeezing his eyes closed until they adjust.
The voice says, “You could have gotten yourself killed, provoking Judge like that. He has ample reason to be unhappy with the Westrian military. What were you thinking, Tory?”
This guy knows his name? Blindfold removed, Tory squints into the gray light. A man stands in front of him, leaning all his weight on one leg and bending to peer at Tory with an exasperated expression.Tory takes in the man’s fox eyes, his waves of red hair like flames. “You!”
Riese. The rebels. He’s found them, but what an introduction.
Riese’s lips curl up. “Me. Told you I’d be seeing you again, although—” he quirks an eyebrow at Tory’s disheveled state “—maybe not quite like this. If I were a moment later, I’d be burying you, not greeting you. What were you thinking with that stunt?”
“I meant to get him to attack me,” Tory admits with a one-shouldered shrug. “I was going to headbutt him and take his knife.”
Riese laughs. “Bold! Foolish, but bold. It might have worked if you hadn’t become so soft.”
Tory bristles. “What?”
“Soft.Like spoiled fruit. All Judge had to do was apply a little pressure to that Box-dog and you were ready to sing like a canary. Where’s the sharp-toothed boy I met, the one who wanted to start fires and open veins?”
Tory flushes. His mother’s words echo in his skull.Don’t grow roots.
Has he? Surely not again. Not so quickly. It’s just that Sena’s the only one who knows the terrain. Tory doesn’t let himself look at Sena. “It’s been a long day.”
Riese offers a mild smile, but the sharpness of his canines ruins it. “So it seems. I apologize for the reception you received. We normally don’t treat guests this way. You have to understand that we must be careful, given the sorts of creatures we find crawling in these woods.” He scowls at Sena. “I’ll be frank. In any other situation, I would have killed your friend here,” Riese says. “We’ve taken in Seeds from the Compound before, which comes, naturally, with its own risks. Never have we taken in anofficer.” He spits the word like it’s a curse.
“Sena is a Seed,” Tory says, and regrets it instantly. He probably shouldn’t have used Sena’s name. If these people want to kill Sena just for being an officer, he doesn’t know what they’d do to him for being Vantaras.
But Riese just nods, unaware.
“We noticed. Iri here had plenty to tell me about that.” Riese flaps a hand toward the sullen boy who ran in behind him: another familiar face. Short, angry, drowning in a knitted burnt-orange sweater several times too large for him and still wearing his hair in a braided bun. Burn scars on both hands and thick rings on his thumbs. “I’m told he tried to incinerate your friend.”
“No hard feelings,” says the boy, who clearly has enough hard feelings for both of them.
Tory glares at Iri, who only crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow.
Riese continues with a thin-lipped frown at Sena. “The fact that he is a Seed and the fact that he’s withyouare why he’s still alive. If he attempts to betray us or I’m given any reason to believe hemight, I’ll kill him myself.”
“You can’t—” Tory starts, but Sena interrupts.
“I would expect no less.”
Riese shrugs, and his smile is directed at Tory, not Sena. “I wanted to start out with honesty, however unpleasant it might be. In any other situation, we conduct an . . . entrance interview of sorts with any new inductees. Judge has the ability to discern truth from falsehood. Apparently when someone lies, it tastes terrible. However, your friend’s unique constitution means that Judge is unable to get a read on either of you.”
