Page 113 of Cage of Starlight
“Breathe. You’re making it worse.” Iri. “Believe me, I know from experience. Panic doesnothelp an unstable Seed. It will likely calm down once you do.”
He forces shallow breaths into his uncooperative lungs until his spotty vision clears.
“Like that,” Iri says, whisper-light.
Sena shakes his head. “Tory! You said he would . . .” He can’t make his lips shape the word. “I have to go back.”
“By the time we could get back, they will have moved on.” Iri leans toward him. The wound on his shoulder stretches open again at the movement, but it’s only the surface—shallow, bleeding pits. Niela sighs and heals it again. This time, it stays closed.
“Moved where?”
He laughs, breathless and tired. “Can’t you guess? Riese will want to get started.”
The Compound.
“And that is where the problems begin. Without you next to him, Tory is probably singing Riese’s tune right about now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Riese uses . . . a form of persuasion to ensure group harmony. His type is relatively rare, but I think you’d probably call him an Orator. As long as you were near Tory, Riese was unable to affect him. When I was around you, it wore off for me, too.” He grimaces. “That’s when . . . I’m sorry, I tried to tell you, back then. He wasn’t always like that. I doubt he needed to use his abilities on me at the start. I wasangry. I wanted to hurt everyone in this awful country. My father was accepted into an exchange program in Maran’s largest university. That’s where he met Riese. My father was old for a student and Riese was young for it. They were the odd ones out, so they became friends. My father confessed his abilities to Riese—he was a Reader, capable of seeing Seed energies on a person. He had known Riese was a Seed from the moment they met. They were friends until graduation. But Riese went on to seek a higher degree, and my father went back to Arlune, where he met my mother and had me. This was just before the war.”
He had assumed, given that an Arlunian scholar was admitted to and graduated from a Westrian institution.
“And Tory?”
“I’m getting there. Riese got in contact with my father many years later, thanks to the help of a certain gutsy merchant’s daughter. My father was a gentle man, always, but my mother had just died and he was lost. Riese . . . something had changed in him, too. He was harder. Angry.” He shakes his head. “He came to my father with a plan. If he would help Riese find Seeds who might be open to joining him, he’d lead them in liberating the Compound from Westriancontrol. STAR-7 housesallthe battle-capable Seeds. No Compound, no soldiers . . . no war. Or at least a great pause while your father reconsidered his approach to warcraft.”
Niela speaks up. “That’s not sounding too bad.”
Iri shakes his head. “It isn’t, is it? My father went all in, helped Riese gather Seeds for his goal. But they couldn’t get inside: the wall was too high, the security too tight. They kept losing people—to Westrian soldiers, Westrian Seeds, recruits whose loyalties had been addled by their time inside. That’s how my father died, betrayed by one of our own. They never found his body, never even told me that he’d gone. I tracked Riese down after my father’s letters stopped and decided to join the fight. I had nothing else left. But Westrice kept pushing us back. And when Null appeared, it just got worse.”
Sena flinches.
“That’s when Riese changed. The dogs were using our own to kill our own. He started talking about conscripted Seeds like they were animals. He said . . .” Iri presses his lips together. “Releasing domesticated Seeds would be a cruelty. He started talking like it would be better if they all died. I would gladly kill any of Vantaras’ soldiers myself, but to killour own—it was against everything I believed. I went to share my concerns with Riese . . . and then I wasn’t concerned anymore. Riese barely has to imply something to make you believe it. Then you came and cleared my head—it’s why Riese warned us all away from you, I’m sure. Your neutralizing field seems to affect anything within a couple of paces from you. I wanted to tell you what was happening, but Riese spoke to me before you finished with Yized, and I forgot again, until . . .” He shrugs. “Until I got here. His manipulations are subtle—like a splinter in your brain. He’s the same as any illusion-type Seed. The more ideological dissonance, theeasier his work is to unravel. But the thing is, we all agree with him on almost everything. He just has to sand down any sharp edges. I’d have gladly sacrificed myself for a worthy cause, but it took me too long to remember that this isnotmy cause.”
“What about Tory?” Sena leans forward.
“Tory is a sacrifice, a tool in his bid to stop Westrice from hunting Seeds. Riese will use him to lower the Compound’s defenses. Once he lets them in, it will be a massacre.”
Sena laughs into his hands, the cruelty of it settling into his bones. The only way to save Tory is to save the Compound, the root of all their pain. He can’t go back. He won’t spend his last days alive in their hands, forced to be their perfect soldier. But Tory will be there, and he has no idea what he’s walking into. “We need to get to Tory first.”
Pain stabs at Sena’s chest and the grind of broken bone against bone makes his teeth itch. Stars pop in front of his eyes, and he falls.
He doesn’t hit the ground. Warm, small hands press against his shoulders and lift him.
Reflexively, he pushes them away. “What’shappeningto me?”
“You’re . . .” Niela winces. “It’s just that—shit. They only taught me to heal people and toss them back into battle, not how to talk about this stuff. You know about your Core, right?” She gestures to his still partially unbuttoned jacket. “That thing’srotten.”
“I know, but—”
Niela winces. “No, I mean . . . your Seed’s going haywire because your Core is deader than dead and your body’s shutting down. A Core like that’s been dead for days. Maybe a week.”
“That’s impossible.”
Iri interrupts, quiet. “It’s not. I’ve seen dead Cores before, and yours . . . yours is as bad as I’ve ever seen.”
This is—what, the third full day since the battle? Fourth if he counts the day of. They’d have to have disabled his Coredaysbefore he even went missing. “That doesn’t . . .” It makes no sense. “I haven’t even been gone for a week.”
