Page 21 of Stars May Fall

My mouth dried. “What? What haven’t you told me?”

He closed his eyes and looked down. My heart sank with trepidation. “Kasten?”

He must have heard the slight tremor in my voice as he opened his eyes immediately and placed his hands on my upper arms. “I don’t want you to worry, Sophie. But I…I took the starstone, and I used it in front of people. The king now knows I have its power, even if he doesn’t know what it is.”

I stared at him as his words took hold. The peaceful bliss I’d had the last few days shattered. My mouth dried. “But…but you said you would never use it. You said there would never be a big enough emergency. You wanted Callum to destroy it.”

He swallowed and looked intensely between my eyes as if trying to communicate without speaking. “I know. But I don’t regret it. I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t lose you. Fenland comes second to you.” His eyes were pleading as if he wanted me to accept what he had done.

My chest clenched, and I pushed the heel of my hand to my eyes. “But itshouldn’t, Kasten. I don’t want to be the cause of the king seeing you as an even greater threat. I don’t want to be the one who puts you in danger. You shouldn’t have to give up everything for me.”

Kasten pulled me into an embrace and cupped the back of my head, bringing it beneath his chin. He held me in silence for a moment, then tilted his head down so his breath tickled the shell of my ear as he spoke. His voice was fierce. “Don’t blame yourself for this. Youaremy everything. There is no greater good when it comes to you, and I don’t care if that makes me an enemy of Fenland, the king, or the entire world. They have given me nothing. With this power, I will protect us from them. They will never have it.”

I pushed back so I could study his face, my heart pounding as I processed his words. “You plan to use the power again?” Fear rose up, cold and disorientating. “Kasten…”

My husband smoothed down the strands of hair that were drifting across my face. “We never told you before—it simply never came up—but when you use the starstone, well, it can only have one owner. It binds with your body. Your soul. I can’t hang it up again. I can never put it back in that secret room. Its power stays with me.”

I could only stare.

His brow furrowed in concern. “Sophie…”

I interrupted him. “I don’t understand. You mean you can access the power right now? There must be a way for you to remove it. You’re not even wearing the harness. Where even is it?”

Kasten shook his head with a half-smile that looked apologetic. “It doesn’t work like that. The stone, that translucent dome, was just its storage vessel. To access the power, you put on that harness which holds it directly over your heart, and you smash it. The power went inside me, and now I am its vessel. It’s not really kryalcomy. It’s something new, less controlled. There are no poles that you can move it down. It’s just raw power. The harness and broken stone were discarded.”

My heart raced as I stared at him. I trusted Kasten, I really did, but how could he hold this much power and not be changed by it? The thought terrified me.

Kasten stepped closer and cupped my cheek with a gentle smile. His voice was coaxing and his eyes were still pleading. “Callum always saw it as a good thing, since the power can’t simply be stolen from you.”

I pressed my hands to my mouth as I processed this. “But…but the king will never let you keep this power. Nobody will if they know you have it. They won’t trust you. Or they’ll want it for themselves. If you die, does the power pass on?”

Kasten looked down. “Callum has theories, but they’re all speculation. We’ve never had power like this before, and the only way to know for sure would be to see what happens when I die.” His eyes snapped back up mine. “But wewill notlet them test that. We don’t even have to let them know I still have access to it. They know nothing about it themselves.”

This wasn’t making me any calmer. “Kasten, the king already saw you as a threat to Prince Stirling taking the throne. Even if he thinks the power is gone, he’s not going to risk letting you live.”

Kasten hung his head to one side. “I know. I know. But I still don’t regret doing it.” Kasten stared out over the garden to where Callum was slouched in one of the seats, bored as he waited for us to join him. “And I now have the power to protect us. Protect Kasomere. Even end the war. I dare the king or Kollenstar or anyone to challenge us.”

My fear didn’t abate. I pressed my hand over his chest and could feel a slight thrum beneath my hands. I didn’t want to lose him to this. “You shouldn’t use this power, Kasten. Not unless you have an emergency where you have no choice.”

He tilted his forehead toward mine. “I also think that is wise. Power like this…I could get lost in it.” He gave me a small smile.“But I won’t. I’m in control. Most of the time, I’ve learned to ignore it completely. I fear, as does Callum, that if I make a habit of drawing on it, even just a little, that amount will only increase more and more over time. This way, I will only use it when I need it. We’ll make everyone believe it is gone.”

I studied his eyes for a moment and could see a trace of sadness there. Guilt stabbed my chest. This was all my fault. I took both his hands. “I trust you, Kasten.”

The corners of his lips twitched up into his typical subtle smile. “I know. And I don’t want you to worry about this. Not until we have a reason to, anyway. For now, I want you to rest and be happy.” He gestured over to Callum. “Shall we? If the conversation gets too much for you, we can tell him to postpone.”

I looped my arm back through his, but my mind whirred as we approached Callum. I had thought things were over. But the threats toward us were as bad as ever.

Callum smiled and leaned forward, clasping his hands on the table. “Don’t mind me putting aside my work and delaying my management of Kasomere while you two take a week to cross the lawn.”

Kasten raised an eyebrow with an unamused look. “What is it you have found?”

Callum placed a metal disk on the table. It was such a pale silver, it gleamed white. One side was frosted, the other smooth. Callum spread his hands dramatically. “This piece of metal is our greatest weakness, and also our greatest clue about what Lord Lyrason has been up to.”

Kasten eyed it suspiciously. “Enough of the theatrics, Callum. What is it?”

“Well—” He paused to steeple his hands. “As far as I can determine, the purpose of halfsouls is to harvest life or health, which is then stored in disks—the other end of their haemalcomypole. The haemalcomy sucks it from the halfsoul until there’s none left and they die.” He jabbed the disk. “This is the kryalcomy device that was storing the parts of Sophie that were stolen. Mister Gregane and I extracted what was in there and channeled it back into Sophie. This disk has a huge capacity and stored those qualities from other victims too. Unfortunately, we had to extract all of them, so the life and health and whatever else belonging to other people was lost when it couldn’t return to its original hosts.”

I frowned as I looked at the disk, feeling disorientated that part of me had been in that thing. “Could you work out exactly what was taken from me? My…life source? It feels like it has to be more than that or people would just get weak and die rather than transform into monsters. Did you find out what other things?”

---