Page 79 of Cage of Starlight
There are few things he wouldn’t trade for ease like theirs.
Riese smiles in the midst of it, and every Seed around the fire glows with his grand vision. Maybe this is what real freedom looks like. Freedom from fear. Tory’s never known it, but he longs for it with a fierceness that rattles in his bones. It’s nice.
But it’s not complete.
Mumbling excuses, Tory stands to leave. He parts the curtain of vines strung between the trees and walks away into the woods.
Sena didn’t receive the welcome Tory did around the fire. When he left, he wandered off in this direction. Twigs crunch beneath Tory’s feet, and the gold tongues of fire fade from behind his eyelids, replaced with cool moonlight.
He finds Sena leaning against the knotted trunk of a massive dead tree wrapped with vines that drip strings of frail, electric-blue flowers. Sena said it before: they bloom blue in the short years before they never bloom again.
This place, too, has been mined dry of stellite.
The tree’s barrenness creates a hole in the canopy of leaves. Dyed blue and ink-black in light of the moon, Sena stares at the tapestry of stars overhead.
Tory sinks down beside him. The wildfire warmth from Riese’s people fades, replaced by a quieter, uncomplicated peace. The Tory of a few weeks ago would’ve laughed himself sick if anyone told him he’d ever choose to sit beside Sena Vantaras.
Sena goes rigid for a moment before relaxing.
Tory pulls his knees up. “Way too cold out here.”
“It’s not so bad.” Sena tips his head back against the tree’s rotten trunk. “You know, you should stop defending me to these people. It’ll only make things more difficult for you.”
A startled laugh rasps from Tory’s throat. “Haven’t you already tried to warn me against that once? Seriously, have Ievergiven you the impression that I’m interested in making things easy for myself?”
A long pause. “You have not,” Sena admits. “I should have expected nothing less.” With a soft huff, he tilts his chin at the stars. “Would you believe I used to think I could gather them? The stars, I mean. I learned the names of every constellation, the Celestial Beast at the core of them.” His finger rises, and Tory can almost tell where he’s pointing. Up above, there’s a cluster of pinprick lights, serpentine and stellite-bright. A red one twinkles at its heart. “There’s the one for the Worldseed. My mother says when the First Seeds died, they rose to stay beside the Beast whose sacrifice allowed them to bloom.Thus on the earth as it is in the air—that’s why kuhlu is drawn to stellite, each crystal a scale the Celestial Beast shed on the planet in death. They say the vines are the earth’s veins that once bore the Beast’s mortal blood, that their blossoms are a love song our planet sings to the stars.”
Tory stares up and imagines it: that distance, the loneliness of crying out for something gone. “You need to stop telling bad stories.”
“You don’t think it’s beautiful?”
“Being torn apart, separated?” Tory scowls. “It’shorrible.”
Sena shrugs. “I’ve loved that story since I was a boy. Just—the way a love can last, even when the ones who felt it are gone.”
“That’s not pretty. It’s just pain.”
“Pain has to be beautiful sometimes. Otherwise, it’s unbearable.” The denizens of the forest fill the silence that follows with hoots and mournful calls that only sometimes find an answer. After a while, Sena hums. “Did you know that outside their use as a locator for stellite, kuhlu vines are considered a nuisance? They’re invasive and destructive, not only to the trees that house them but also tomanmade structures. They tear down walls or burrow underneath them. They slip into cracks in roads, in buildings, and pull them to pieces. They plant themselves in soil where nothing else will grow. I think they’re a lot like you.”
Tory frowns. “What, you’re saying I’m a nuisance?”
A tiny bud of a smile blooms on Sena’s face. “Perhaps asmallnuisance. You certainly caused me enough problems at STAR-7. But also a tearer-down of walls. I think that’s beautiful.”
Tory’s cheeks heat. He schools his face to neutrality and settles back against the tree. “What’s your take? On what they’re doing here, I mean.”
Sena’s gloved fingers trace the scar on the back of his neck. The chirps of insects nearly drown his whispered response. “I want it.”
At Kirlov’s hand, Sena dropped like a marionette, denied even the breath to scream. It’s not hard to see why Sena might long for the same freedom Tory does.
It’s not a bad thought, the idea that maybe they can seek it, together.
Sena called Tory a nuisance, and maybe he is. But he’s more than that, and in this light, Tory understands that Sena’s more than Tory thought he was, too. He’s a teller of terrible stories and a breaker of falls into the sea. He begged Tory togoand save himself when he was on his knees on the ground. He’s kind in a way Tory is only just beginning to recognize.
In the silence that grows between them, thick as vines, Sena’s breaths are shallow wheezes. Guilt spreads through Tory. He owes Sena a story, too. He owes Sena the truth.
“I want it too,” he admits. “I’d give anything to have it. I don’t know if this is in thatfileyou have on me, but I’ve been runninga long time, just getting by.Survivingbut never living. I couldn’t let myself—” Oh, but he’s not used to this. The truth feels like cutting himself open and inviting someone inside the wound. Tory’s heart hammers. “Anyway, now—now we’re free, right? And this feels different. It feelsimportant.”
“It does.”
