Page 77 of Stars May Burn

Callum took a drink. “They’ve been trying to kill us for years. I’m fed up talking about them. Your love life is far more interesting.”

“Callum…” I growled.

He placed down his wine glass and looked surprisingly sincere all of a sudden. “Kasten, you have a beautiful, interesting, and clever wife. Be happy.”

I frowned at him. “I thought you didn’t like her?”

He picked up his wine glass and frowned into it. “She’s grown on me. And I think you’re growing on her.”

To have Sophie at my side, truly at my side, and part of everything, would ease my burden so much. But what of the cost for her? Could I really consider something so selfish?

SOPHIE

Ifidgeted with excitement as Kasten handed me a glass of sparkling white wine. He was dressed in a black velvet coat and a navy blue shirt; the cut suited him. This was it. We were finally having dinner without a storm cloud hanging over us. And this time he sat next to me rather than at the far end. Every time our eyes met, my skin tingled, remembering the kiss.

I couldn’t remember another time in my life when I had been this happy, and I tried to appear as calm and elegant as possible and not let my emotions get the better of me.

Kasten asked about my garden and the swamp, and I answered his questions with enthusiasm, hoping he saw how much I appreciated his gift, and how much better I was getting at growing what I wanted.

“The properties of felixleaf are really fascinating, and I was thinking about talking to Callum about them. If I can distill the antiseptic proteins in their purest form, maybe there is a way to preserve them using kryalcomy. They are fragile and disintegrate with air, and normally, you have to prepare it immediately before application, which would be impossible on a battlefield, but they’re far better at killing infection than any other antiseptic we routinely use. It’s what helped stop your peritonitis.

“I know, it might sound ridiculous, but could you imagine what we might be capable of if we linked medicine with kryalcomy? Physician Harris already uses kryalcomy in her diagnostic equipment, but what about the actual medicines?” I paused to eat a mouthful of buttered green beans. “But also, some of the plants I’ve sourced for my bog haven’t been thoroughly researched from what I can tell. Pinkseed, for example. I’ve looked at all the books on botany you had in your library, and even though it is similar to birdsfoot, nobody seems to have worked out if it has the same properties. It’s so small, it might be more potent, and it takes half the time to grow and harvest. I just can’t understand why nobody has thought to test it properly.”

I looked back at Kasten. He was quietly eating his meal with a neutral expression. I looked down at my own food. I’d been talking so long and was so absorbed, it had almost gone cold. My heart sank, and I felt my cheeks heat. How could I selfishly ramble on about something so uninteresting to him? I had completely dominated the conversation. Kasten had to be bored to death. I had meant to keep relatively quiet and be a good listener. Kasten was holding so much responsibility and hardship, he must need somebody other than Callum to unload on. Instead, I was talking about my silly plans and theories.

Stupid, stupid.

I looked down and clenched my cutlery. “I’m so sorry, I forgot myself. I shouldn’t have let myself ramble.”

Kasten looked up abruptly. “No, no, please continue.”

I parted my lips in surprise. “To talk about my plants? Are you certain? You must have so much on your mind. So many real worries that make everything I have to say trivial.”

Kasten set down his cutlery and shook his head, focusing on me with a slight frown. “None of this is trivial. Please continue. I…eh…well I like hearing about what you enjoy. Besides, it sounds like you could make some very useful discoveries.”

I took a sip of my wine, the bubbles fizzing on my lips matching the fizz in my stomach. “Do you have a passion?”

His eyes dimmed, and his face turned cold. I’d said the wrong thing. I scrambled to correct my mistake. “It seems what you’ve done for your people here in Kasomere gives you a wonderful purpose. You have made so many lives better. They love you.”

He cleared his throat, but the darkness didn’t leave his eyes. “I have done little. Never enough. It’s my fault many of the families are grieving in the first place. Soldiers that follow me are always placed where the fighting is thickest. It doesn’t matter if I give them our devices, they still die.”

I could see his pain. How could one man bear it all? He had the responsibility of so many when the whole world was against him. I reached over and placed my hand on his. His eyes flashed up to mine in surprise.

“You can tell me, Kasten. However horrible and dark your thoughts are.”

He looked down, his face hard as if holding something back, and I wished I was better at reading him. “There is one thing that’s been troubling me that I wish to ask you about.”

Something in his tone of voice made my heart rate pick up. He was coiled and cautious like a snake about to strike. Had I done something wrong? I removed my hand and clasped my sweaty palms in my lap.

Kasten studied his wine glass and pinched the stem, rolling it back and forth. “You know that time in the garden after the Red Man attacked you. I reached out to you, and you flinched.”

I lowered my eyes in embarrassment that he remembered that. “I’m sorry.”

Kasten took a deep breath and my heart rate picked up even further. I fought the sensation of being trapped. It carried with it too many memories. Tentatively I picked up my knife and fork and tried to keep acting normally.

“Did…did Frederick ever hit you?”

I dropped my cutlery in shock. I hadn’t expected him to ever ask a question like that. Nobody ever asked questions like that. I licked my lips to try and make them move, but they stayed dry. Even my throat felt dry. My words came out as little more than a whisper. “Not often. Just a couple of times when I had really angered him. It wasn’t without justification. Sometimes I can be…distractible, as Miss Claris calls it.”

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