Page 81 of Cage of Starlight
He grimaces. “No, the bodies. They’ll have weapons. Supplies Riese could use.”
It just keeps getting more confusing. “You want us to loot corpses?”
“No, I—” Sena cuts off. “Yes. But for a good cause. There will be officers among the dead. Riese can get weapons and supplies, butwecan get a communicator. If you want to get in contact with the Compound and convince them not to disable our Cores, that’s our best chance. We just have to convince them to go.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Iri’s words ringin Sena’s head all night. He said the Voidseed was meant for growth,protection.
Surely, he was lying, but as soon as the first rays of light pierce the flaps of the rudimentary tent Sena was given to sleep in, he finds his feet, ignoring the growing ache in his chest—it’s inconvenient, not debilitating.
The place is abandoned, all the more eerie for the many indications that it should have people. Frowning, Sena wanders. It might be challenging to implement their plan of convincing Riese to return to the battlefield if there is no Riese around to convince. Sena should be much more worried about that than he is, but it’s the fear of Iri’s absence that bothers him more. He promised. Tomorrow, he said. Sena forces calm on himself. He needs to investigate, find out what precipitated everyone’s absence.
In the rest of the camp, there are more indications of a quick departure. A line strung between one tent and the next contains drying clothes. A half-drunk cup of tea steams on a log, and the fire still contains stubborn embers and a kettle bubbling merrily away on a metal grate.
When a hand lashes out to grab the kettle, Sena startles, but the shock is soon replaced with a flutter of anticipation. A figure,hunched over and bleary-eyed, emerges from a huddle of brown blankets beside the fire.
The chaotic poof of long, dark hair and the resting murder face allow him to place the person quickly.
Iri. It’sIri. “You’re here.”
The figure blinks, refills his cup, and takes a long gulp of tea so hot Sena is surprised it doesn’t sear his throat closed. “Mm.”
He should ask about Riese. “Where is everyone else?”
Iri irritatedly waves away. “Not here, mostly.”
“I gathered. When will they return?”
“Who knows? They’re on amission.” Iri cups both hands around the battered metal cup, sullen. “Riese has another Flameseed. Didn’t need me.”
Tory emerges from his own tent with sleep-swollen eyes and staggers toward the fire. He mumbles something Sena can’t discern and doesn’t bother trying to. Instead, he turns to Iri. “Yesterday—” he starts.
With a sigh, Iri pushes himself up off the stump he’s sitting on, stumbling and nearly spilling his tea. He catches himself with a guttural growl that can only be a curse.
“Yes, right. Promised you a demonstration.” He still looks half-asleep, clutching his drink like a lifeline, but his eyes narrow at Sena, his sleep-slack expression sharpening. “Ready to learn the things your bastard father could never have taught you?”
Sena couldn’t be more ready.
After Iri dips into his tent to grab a lovely woven rug, a bowl, and other assorted items Sena can’t identify—on account of them being wrapped up in the rug—Iri leads them to a leaf-strewn clearing a short way outside the camp and lays down his bounty. Yawning,he heads off to gather more supplies, then takes his time setting everything up.
He calls Tory over first, to Sena’s disappointment.
While he waits, Sena cups the stellite crystal his mother sent him the year he would have celebrated his Dedication, holding it under a bubble of light that slips through the trees and casts dim galaxies onto his gloves. The pendant has never touched his skin. If he were careless, his bare fingers could crack and blacken it. But this—the reflected light of stars he cannot reach for—is something he dares, at times, to enjoy.
These stars, his mother always told him, shine because of the crystal’s flaws. When things were too much, she’d whisper his favorite stories to him word for word and stroke his hair.Oh, miokh,she’d sigh.My heart.She still calls him that in her letters.Visit home, won’t you?she always asks, and he has to come up with increasingly creative reasons why he can’t.
In the northern capital of Maran, stellite is a luxury item. At STAR-7, it’s a marvel, allowing his father to create weapons that target Seeds and Cores that imprison them. Sena is not so unlike stellite—all his stars made from flaws, a trinket at best and a tool to hunt his own kind at worst.
In Arlune, it’s a precious mineral, borne by warriors who fear neither pain nor death. They use it to store and amplify Seed energy—the secrets of how, they have so far managed to keep from Westrice. Each crystal is a fragment of Arlune’s history, a fractured scale from the hide of the Beast who birthed the cosmos, a creature star-strewn and crystalline, snake and lion in one.
There’s nothing holy about Sena. He’s no warrior. He is not brave. Like the Compound, he is destructive, reductive.
But Iri said his abilities are meant to nurturelife.
Hope is a sharp and terrible thing, and despite his best efforts, Sena has cut himself on it more times than he’d like to admit.
Minutes pass, then an hour, and Sena watches Tory work.
