The thought brought on a frown. He didn’t like the way it contorted his face, so he forced his features into an impassive mask.

Using the flimsy, plastic comb he’d found in the medicine cabinet, he worked to untangle his long hair. It took only a few painful snarls for him to realize the sad truth. It would have to be cut.

You’re making excuses not to kill her.

There were scissors in the medicine cabinet. He could use those to stab her. He’d once cut a man’s fingers off with hedge clippers, and that had been a pleasant-enough experience.

The memory turned his stomach, and he focused his attention on cutting.

Cyrus expected the blades to be rusty, but was pleasantly surprised to find they were sharp. A few ragged snips left his hair shoulder length. From there he clipped it shorter, mimicking the generic style he’d seen his former bodyguards wear. It took longer than he’d expected to finish the job, and his arms ached by the time he was done.

Beyond the door, a game show host inquired as to the price of dishwashing liquid, and the Mouse’s voice preceded the contestant’s answer.

Cyrus wetted his hair and parted it on the side. His own perfectly good eyes stared him down in the mirror. He no longer resembled the monster he once was.

For a frightening moment, he found he liked it. Then he picked up the scissors once more.

He opened the door as quietly as he could. She didn’t look away from the television. The sunlight streaming in through the small window above her head surrounded her in a halo of shimmering dust motes. Though she looked tired, the worry had left her face.

A contestant on the game show shouted a number, and the Mouse shook her head. “Way too high.”

Cyrus took slow steps, not wanting her to see him until the moment he raised the scissors, the second before they fell. To see her face, serene in recognition, then drawn and pale in the briefest sliver of horror as the deathblow landed. As he imagined the beauty of it, his chest tightened and he sucked in an involuntary gasp of breath.

She turned then, obviously startled.

She knows, his frantic brain shouted. Do it quick now, she knows.

The shock on her face melted into a small smile. “You cut your hair.”

He’d never seen her smile. She wasn’t beautiful, but the unguarded expression transformed her from plain to a simple kind of pretty. It was the meaning behind it, though, that froze his lungs and made the air in the room too thick to breathe. Somewhere in the night, as she nestled against his side, her fear of him had vanished.

If she noticed his distress, she didn’t show it. Her smile grew wider. “It looks nice.”