Page 23 of Stars May Fall

Kasten and I straightened together in surprise.

I licked my lips. “What letter?”

He tossed a cream envelope with ‘General and Lady Batton’ written on the front in gold ink, and the royal seal still complete on the back. Kasten raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess, you used a hot knife to open the seal and read it, and then resealed it again.”

Callum looked wounded. “Well, you did want me to handle all your affairs for a week. I needed to check if it was important. You know how some royal decrees are nothing but fluffynonsense. No need for you to use that tone of voice as if I did something wrong.”

Kasten eyed the letter wearily as I took it and cracked the seal. I would have never guessed it had been tampered with.

‘General and Lady Batton,

You are summoned to court on the last week of the month to discuss battle plans for the upcoming campaign. General, your presence is required, by order of the king.’

It ended with a huge, illegible signature that I assumed was the king's.

I handed the note to Kasten. My mouth felt dry. If the king was behind Lord Lyrason’s experiments, he was a man who would stop at nothing. And he would see Kasten as more of a threat than ever.

He had killed so many innocent people and would kill so many more. We couldn’t follow a man like that.

Callum leaned back in his chair. “So the question I’ve been waiting all this time to ask is: Are you going to go? Or are you going to prod the wasps’ nest even further and turn your back on the world?”

KASTEN

The garden was hushed by twilight, and both Sophie and I were lost in our thoughts as we stood on the veranda.

She spoke without facing me. “Kasten, do you want to have children?”

I couldn’t have been more unprepared for such a question which had no preamble. Her face gave nothing away. “I suppose I have never thought of them as a possibility. But if we were to have children, then I would…cherish them. Though I’m not exactly natural fatherhood material. The only thing I could teach them is how to wield a sword and freisk knife. And how to outmaneuver a Kollenstar army.” I said the last with some humor, but she didn’t laugh.

“Hm.” My answer seemed to satisfy her, and still her face gave me no clue as to what she had been looking for in such a question. She didn’t seem distressed, so I didn’t push her further.

I turned to look at the castle grounds, drenched in the long shadows of twilight. I didn’t like to think about my own mother. My memories had rough edges that scratched and irritated my mind. When I considered her half-remembered face, I felt tooadrift. Too uneasy. Lost. She represented part of me that I would never know. I had long learned to shut her from my mind. But Sophie’s question and the quietness of the evening pulled my thoughts to her. Had my mother wanted children? Had she wanted me? Had she replaced me by having more children in a proper family?

She had been banished through no fault of her own, but it was still hard not to feel the sting of abandonment. I wondered if she still thought of me often, or if she had learned to suppress my memory like I did hers to null the pain.

It was hard to imagine having children of my own. But if we ever did, one thing was certain: whoever tried to banish me, I would never abandon them.

Funny that thoughts of children came to Sophie and memories of my mother came to plague me now when we should be thinking of Adenburg and the big decision before us. I pushed the uncomfortable feelings from my mind.

Sophie rubbed her upper arms and shivered ever so slightly, though her gaze was fixed on the golden autumn light falling behind the trees and outer garden wall.

The soft golden glow bronzed her cheeks, and her lips were parted in wonder. Her hair had darkened in the dusk light to a deeper gold.

I shrugged out of my coat and laid it around her shoulders, startling her, though I had been here all along. Sometimes she seemed to grow lost within whatever she was concentrating on as if she were becoming one with the beauty surrounding her.

She pulled my coat so it overlapped across her chest and leaned back against me. I wrapped my hands across her front in case she was still cold and rested my chin on her head. I looked out at the sunset since it was no longer easy to see her face.

My thoughts returned to what Callum had said and Sir Egbert’s report on Whitehill, which I had still not read. Deepdown, I knew what the report was going to contain. I just didn’t want to process what that would mean.

The king had summoned us, and all my peace had shattered. Could I continue to obey a king who was so desperate to get me killed that he sacrificed the lives of countless others?

I’d been abandoned by one parent. And the other was a monster. What did that make me?

Sophie spoke softly. “Why do you think all the birds sing at dawn and dusk? It doesn’t get them food and they don’t seem to be mating calls. Do you think they know that it is beautiful and wish to add to that beauty?”

I hadn’t even noticed the birdsong. Now she pointed it out, it was rich and varied and, yes, beautiful.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I once heard somebody say that they sing at dawn to celebrate that they have survived the night and to inform the others in the flock that they still live.”

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