It was the first time I’d seen myself since I’d awakened in the cabin. I couldn’t stop staring, and it wasn’t the absolute mess that was my hair. Lowering my hands to the rim of the sink, I stared at my reflection.

“What are you doing?” Casteel asked.

“I…I look the same,” I said, noting the strong brow, the line of my nose, and the width of my mouth. “But I don’t.” I lifted a hand, touching the scar on my left cheek. His gaze followed mine to the mirror. “Do the scars look…less to you?” I asked because they did to me. They were still clearly noticeable, the one at my hairline that cut through my brow, and the other that sliced across my temple, reminding me of how close I’d come to losing an eye. The scars didn’t appear to be a shade paler than my skin like before. They were the same tone of pink as the rest of my face, and the flesh didn’t feel as rough, nor did it look as jagged.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Casteel said, and my gaze shot to his in the reflection. I…I sensed surprise from him. He spoke the truth. He truly hadn’t noticed the difference because he never really noticed the scars in the first place. They had never been a thing to him.

I might’ve fallen even more in love with him right then if that were possible.

“They are a little fainter,” he continued, his head cocked. “It must’ve been my blood—how much of it. It could’ve repaired some of the old wounds.”

I glanced down at my arm then and looked—really looked. The skin was less shiny and patchy there.

“It amazes me,” he commented. “That the scars are what you notice first.”

“Because the scars are what everyone seems to see first when they look upon me,” I stated.

“I don’t think that’s the first thing, Poppy. Not before,” he said, brushing a clump of my hair over my shoulder. “And definitely not now.”

Definitely not now.

I lifted my gaze once more and looked beyond the scars and the smattering of freckles across my nose to my eyes. They were green, just like I remembered my father’s being, but they were also different. It wasn’t exactly noticeable upon first glance, but I saw it now.

The silvery sheen behind my pupils.

“My eyes…”

“They’ve been like that since the Temple of Saion,” he said.

I blinked once and then twice. They remained the same upon reopening. “This isn’t what they look like when they glow, right?”

He shook his head. “That light behind your pupils seeps out into the green. It’s far more intense.”

“Oh,” I whispered.

“I think it’s the eather in you,” he told me, angling his body toward mine.

“Oh,” I repeated, thinking that it must be the same thing that made Casteel and the other Atlantians’ eyes become luminous and churning.

He arched a brow. “That’s all you have to say to seeing your eyes? Oh?”