Page 90 of Cage of Starlight
“This way.”
Tory follows.
*
“Not much farther,” Iri murmurs. “Yized’s just around back.”
Sena measures his breaths and walks, eyes ahead. Shallow breaths in, each one igniting a blaze of pain. His throat burns, swollen from the grip Judge used to force him to the ground, and there’s a tickle starting in his chest. He ignores it. At this point, he’d rather die than cough.
That’s hyperbolic.
But he’s had plenty of time, lately, to think about things he’d rather die than do.
With Iri in the lead, they weave through a mess of tents that would give Kirlov an aneurysm. Sena smirks at the disorder, huffing out adry laugh. A mistake. Black spots blossom over his vision, specked with bursts of frothy white, and he pauses to get his bearings.
“Are you all right?”
He’s too busy trying to breathe deeply enough to clear the spots from his vision to reply.
“We are in no hurry. Take your time.”
“What you said about the Voidseed . . . thank you.”
It doesn’t matter, but it’s nice—not only a weapon but a well; not only emptiness but the field of stars he used to reach for at night. Creation, and togetherness, like he’s meant to belong somewhere.
“No need. As I said, it was selfish—if the truth could wrest you from their hands, it was worth it.”
“Still. I’m grateful.”
Iri’s hand rings round his opposite wrist, tracing the burn scars. “No Seed should have to fear himself, not even a Vantaras. It is a shame you had to go until now without knowing that, and shame on me for forgetting.”
Quiet falls between them, but Iri matches the pace Sena sets when he continues walking.
Perhaps everything will work out.
If they can return to the battlefield and find a communicator, Sena will do everything he can to secure a promise of leeway on the Core shutdown from the Compound. If nothing else, it’ll give Tory a few more days for a competent Reacher to remove his Core. His odds are decent, and he’s stubborn. He’s the type to claw his way from the restful jaws of the Celestial Beast and live to spite the world. Tory will be fine. He’ll be free. And that—ensuring Tory’s safety—was the only real reason to go back.
Sena, meanwhile, has found his line.
He’s a pragmatist; it would be unrealistic to envision himself surviving this. No Reacher can help him. Sena is a curiosity at best. He’s no Healer, non-threatening and central to the dirty business of war—the sort of Seed who’d easily be given lenience because they’re too valuable to lose. Sena knows too much, and the generals, lacking competently preserved records, know too little about the Voidseed. To them, he’s an attack dog afraid of his own teeth. The only use they’ve found is in bleeding him, and they’ve taken more than enough of his plasma to make type-determination tests andprototypesfor decades. They will not risk Sena’s knowledge and skills falling into enemy hands.
They won’t bother to track and recapture him. They’ll disable his Core as soon as they can justify it.
To live, Sena would have to return to the Compound with its stale air. To Kirlov with his watch and a set of expectations Sena will always fail to meet. To hunting other Seeds and making a game of avoiding pain.
That’s not a life he wants.
Perhaps it’s like Tory said: Sena has not been living. Since he was nine, he has merely survived—until Tory came and unearthed an anger years buried, made a mirror for Sena to look into. Tory beat his hands against walls he could never climb, burned foolishly and recklessly bright even when his only fuel was himself. Sena, on the other side, dreamed impossible dreams. For all their differences, they want the same thing. Tory makes him want to believe they could have it, makes him want to believe in all sorts of things he still doesn’t dare to contemplate.
He always thought death would be scarier than this, but there’s peace in knowing he’ll die a person outside his father’s control rather than living as a weapon within it.
He’s not welcomed here, but he’sfree, the night sky close and clear enough that he could walk the path of stars through the bone-cage of the Beast’s belly and find his rest. Here, Kirlov can’t control him. If he’s lucky, Sena will die without seeing anyone from the Compound again.
With an ache, Sena remembers Hina’s unopened letter, full of flowers. He hasn’t seen her since she was four, Sena nine. She’ll turn sixteen before the leaves fall this year.
Today is Westrice’s Dedication Day—a watered-down and glitzed-up version of Arlune’s coming-of-age ritual. Tonight, without Sena, Hina will watch fireworks from the highest point in the city and eat rich morsels from silver plates and think about what part of herself she needs to shed in order to grow. At Hina’s age, alone in a grungy dormitory and without ceremony on the day of his own Dedication, Sena tried to shed the concept of wanting. It seemed a foolish, dangerous thing to someone whose hands were not allowed to reach for it.
He hopes she knows he misses her. Sena allows himself, for a moment, to imagine what it might be like if he were there: letting her show him every plant she cultivates and tell him its name. Sitting by the fire as she casts an effigy of her sacrifice into the flames. In his imagination, they get along as seamlessly as they did as children. Hina will do well, he’s sure.
