Page 112 of Stars on Fire

He then ran a hand through his luxurious dark hair.

The silver at his temple had extended in the past few weeks.

She leaned over, stroking the strands along his forehead and brow.

‘I promise to listen and respect whatever you tell me,’ she said softly.

‘Will you still want to know me when I reveal my true self to you?’ he asked, so quiet, so low she barely heard him.

‘I will,’ Selene said. ‘Nothing you can ever say will change the fact that the man I’ve come to know these last few weeks is everything and more than I could have ever imagined.’

‘Ah,khamila,’ he groaned. ‘But you don’t know me, not this way.’

‘What way is that?’ she urged, fear creeping into her voice.

He stared at her for a long moment. ‘What I’m about to show you, what you’re about to see remains strictly between us. Also, no one else can see us, mainly because I instructed Mirage to hack into your security and recycle earlier footage of the beach and garden. So all your guards can see right now is the same old view they’re used to. After you arrived, she extended the ship’s stealth tech to the beach and garden beyond. No eyes can penetrate that shield.’

Selene’s imagination ran wild, but she kept her expression calm. ‘I can keep a secret,’ she reassured him.

He rose to his feet and strode down the air bridge steps. They rocked with the weight of him. He cut across the sand and stood a few metres away.

‘Stay there,’ he said, pointing to the steps. ‘It’s the safest for you. I can control myself so you don’t get hurt, but I don’t want to chance it in case something goes wrong.’

He gazed at her with eyes so forlorn that it sheared away at her soul.

‘This is what I am,khamila.’

He stood there and extended his arms out.

She saw tendrils of white, red, gold, sapphire, and silver coalesce inside his body and under his skin. It was like watching a piece of coal gradually burn from within. First, the white-hot, red and sapphire heat spread across his entire body. Then it leaked onto his hair and fingers and toes.

His clothes burnt up and fell off his body in ashes.

His molten eyes blazed with flames then suddenly, his entire body combusted.

She recoiled, falling back against the step she was seated on.

It was HIM?

This was the same being she’d seen on Enia at Prince Occaro’s birthday party. On the night, the Rhesian royal had gone up in flames.

She gaped as a whirlwind began to form under and around the resulting flame columns and blazing tongues of energy. Intense rising heat scorched her skin, so she scrambled backwards up the highest step of the air bridge.

A turbulent wind kicked up, forming whirling eddies of air.

That turned into a tornado-like vortex that sucked in sand and air from the vicinity.

She began to choke, and that’s when the whirling force of the blaze slowed.

Kainan’s body reformed, and the vortex ceased.

Selene forced herself to watch as his body reappeared. The tendrils of fire retracted, cooling, curling back under his skin.

He slumped onto the sand on one knee, naked.

She felt conflicted. Torn.

Yet she refused to judge him until she knew the whole story.

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