Kaelen Vance reached out with a polished wooden spoon and tapped the rim of Barnaby’s teacup.
“Stop talking nonsense,” Kaelen said, his voice flat, dry, and unhurried. “Self-pity burns through more spiritual vitality than three hours of longsword practice, and it does not even leave clean ash.”
Old Barnaby kept his head bowed, staring at the bandaged palm in his lap.
“I am serious, third young master,” Barnaby muttered, his single hand trembling against his knee. “In the south, I could manage. But here? You are fighting imperial marshals and ancient sects. I am an old mortal who cannot even carry an iron pot.”
Kaelen looked down at the old herbalist’s slumped gray shoulders.
He knew that another lecture would not fix this. If Barnaby sat here staring at his pinned-up sleeve, his heart-meridian would knot itself into permanent depression.
Worse still, Kaelen felt a dangerous itch behind his own forehead.
Looking at the spilled star-quartz had started his brain calculating mineral ratios for the Jade-Marrow Limb Regrowth Pill. If he allowed himself to think about herb properties right now, Track 3 would cash out its banked hours before the orchids bloomed.
