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CHAPTER FIVE
GALENHEADEDBACKto the Temple Suite, peeled off his suit and took a long drink of water.
It was icy cold and pure, and so instantly refreshing that he conceded there was one thing about Anapliró he missed.
Galen refilled the glass, took the sprig of flowers from his lapel and placed them into the water.
Duty had been fulfilled.
It was done.
Well, not quite.
He stripped off and got into the pool and lay on his back, liking the weightlessness, choosing not to reflect on the day.
It had been a disaster workwise.
Galen hauled himself out of the pool and lay on the now plain linen and looked up at the dome. He’d forgotten just how beautiful the stars were here. How, as a child, he would creep out at night just to stare up at the Milky Way and try to spot the stars he had read about.
Yaya had said he wandered.
No.
Sometimes...
But usually it was to sit or to lie and stare up, as he did now.
Galen found Scorpio easily and thought that the stars above did not itch like the ones that had been on the bedlinen...they were soothing...
Roula must have thought him a right bastard, Galen thought. A demanding guest. Perhaps he was? But the guest services manager did not need to know of his issues with fabric, or the chaos missing his announcement had caused. Perhaps it was a good thing he couldn’t get online now and see the charts!
Rarely, he wished for a moment to explain himself. He had long ago given up on doing that, but he would have liked to explain things better to Roula.
Galen took a breath, and to distract himself fixed his gaze on the star Antares. But there was no escape there, for with its reddish glow he thought of her hair uncoiling.
Roula Kyrios... With her fiery red hair she had once been so strong with her opinions, and with a laugh so infectious that he could recall it now.
Ha-ha, breath, ha-ha-ha, breath, ha-ha-ha-ha...
She hadn’t laughed that way tonight.
Maybe your laugh changed after childhood? he considered.
Possibly.
Or perhaps it faded away when your husband died?
Where do you go to, Roula?
Galen decided he would not be going there!
Instead, he hauled himself from the bed. Hopefully Kristina had managed to brief his maid properly and his running gear would be there.
It was, so he dressed and put on his small running pack. Under a pre-dawn sky he took the familiar road up the hill towards his old home, but that was not his destination. It took ten, maybe fifteen minutes to get into rhythm, and then he made his way up the steep incline.
The last of the stars were fading in the sky when he first saw thekandylakiafor his parents. The roadside shrines were dotted amongst all these hilly roads. Each different, some were like little houses, but his parents’ shrine was a tiny replica of the village church where they had married and were now buried together. It was set high on a stone, near where the accident had occurred.
It was not the gradient Galen was tackling that had his throat hitching as he jerked in air—more that he could see a candle was lit inside it.
