Reaching up, he drew back his hood and unwrapped the scarf. The face before her was painful to look at. Deformed and horribly scarred, it appeared to have melted into a patchwork of red blotches. One ear was missing, along with his eyebrows and much of his hair. His mouth lacked the pale pink of lips. His appearance was both horrid and so welcome she could find no words to express herself. She broke into tears of joy and threw her arms around him, hugging as tightly as her strength allowed.

“I hope this will teach you not to run off without me, Your Highness,” Hilfred told her.

She continued to cry and squeeze, her head buried in his chest. Slowly his arms crept up, returning her embrace. She looked up and he brushed strands of tear-soaked hair from her face. In more than a decade as her protector, he had never touched her so intimately. As if realizing this, Hilfred straightened up and gently escorted her to a chair before reaching for his scarf.

“You’re not going back out?” she asked fearfully.

“No,” he replied, his voice dropped a tone. “The city will be filled with guards. It won’t be safe for either of us to venture in public for some time. We’ll be all right here. There are no occupied buildings around, and I rented this flat from a blind man.”

“Then why are you covering up?”

He paused a moment, looking at the scarf. “The sight of my face—it makes people … uncomfortable, and it’s important that you feel safe and at ease. That’s my job, remember?”

“And you do it very well, but your face doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”

“You don’t find me … unpleasant to look at?”

Arista smiled warmly. “Hilfred, your face is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

The flat Hilfred stayed in was very small, just a single room and a closet. The floor and walls were rough pine planks weathered gray and scuffed smooth from wear. There were a rickety table, three chairs, and a ship’s hammock. The single window was hazy from the buildup of ocean salt, admitting only a muted gray light. Hilfred refused to burn a single candle after dark, for fear of attracting attention. The small stove kept the drafty shack tolerably warm at night, but before dawn it was extinguished to avoid the chance of someone seeing the smoke.

For two days they stayed in the shack, listening to the wind buffet the roof shingles and howl over the stovepipe. Hilfred made soup from clams and fish he bought from the old blind man. Other than that, neither of them left the little room. Arista slept a lot. It seemed like years since she had felt safe, and her body surrendered to exhaustion.