With one fingertip, I traced one of the scars on his back, but he cringed away from my touch. “I don’t know how you can stand to look at me.”

“How could you say that?” I whispered.

“Because I’m not like I was.” He drooped forward, hair falling into his eyes. “Not anything you should have to look upon.”

“Is that what you think? That scars change the way I feel about you?” I asked, rising to my feet. My fingers trembled as I reached behind my back, unfastening the buttons that reached from below my shoulder blades to my waist. Letting my gown fall to the ground, I kicked it aside. Then, taking a deep breath, I pushed the straps of my shift off my shoulders, the silk sliding down to catch on my hips and leaving me bare to the waist.

The half of me facing the fire burned hot while the other half prickled with goose bumps, and my bravery wavered. He’d never seen me like this before, and my arms trembled, uncertain of whether to hang at my sides or fold across my chest. I stared straight ahead, too nervous to look down and see how he would react. But not seeing didn’t stop me from sensing the moment he turned his head, or hearing the soft intake of his breath. Or from feeling…

“You know I didn’t mean you.”

My chin jerked up and down once. “I know.”

“It’s different. You’re… I’m…” He stumbled over the words as though his ability to use them had abandoned him.

“It’s never going to go away,” I said, my knees shaking so hard they knocked together as I visualized the livid red scar running down the side of my ribcage. “For the rest of my life, it’s going to be there, so if you cannot bear to look at…”

The heat of his lips pressing against the flaw marring my skin turned my thought into a gasp. I swayed on my feet, but his arms wrapped around my hips, holding me steady. “Don’t say it.” His voice was muffled. “Do not ever even think it.”

Letting my fingers tangle in his snow-damp hair, I finally looked down. Tristan sat on his heels at my feet, face pressed against my side, arms gripping me so tightly it almost hurt. He was half-holding me up, and yet I felt as though he were clinging to me like I was a rock in a storm.

“Part of me would erase it, wipe it away if I could,” he said. “Because seeing it makes me remember when I thought I was going to lose you. Reminds me of all the hurt that has come to you because of us. Because of me.” Letting go with one arm, he traced the scar from top to bottom with one finger, and I shivered, feeling it in places I should not.

He tilted his face up, his eyes no longer dulled to grey by magic and once again the strange silver pools I never ceased to lose myself in. “But part of me is glad that it will always be there for me to see,” he continued, “because it is a sign of how much you can endure and survive. And it makes me less afraid.”