Soren stared down at her with brown eyes that swam in rage, his lips pulled in a tense, grim line. He was holding his breath, just as she was.

He looked the same. Tan. Big-boned. Handsome in a harsh way, the angles of his face just a little too sharp. He held his chin at a condescending tilt. She couldn’t help but compare him to Perry, who never seemed to look down at people despite being much taller.

Soren hadn’t changed except for one significant difference. The set of his jaw was slightly off, and a scar ran through his bronzed skin, from the left corner of his mouth down to his jawbone.

Perry had given him that scar. That night in Ag 6 he had stopped Soren from strangling her. She’d be dead if Soren didn’t have that scar. But she knew he hadn’t been in his right mind. He’d been affected by Degenerative Limbic Syndrome—a brain disease that weakened basic survival instincts. It was the same disease her mother had studied.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” she said. She knew what it was like in Reverie. No one had scars. No one even had scratches. But she couldn’t believe what she was saying. Was she really consoling Soren?

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Not bad? When did you get to be so funny, Aria?”

“Recently, I guess. You know, they’re all scarred on the Outside. You should see this one guy, Reef. He’s got this deep scar across his cheek. It’s like a zipper running through his skin. Yours is … I mean, you can barely see it.”

Soren narrowed his eyes. “How’d he get it?”

“Reef? He’s a Scire. Those are Outsiders who … never mind. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that someone tried to cut his nose off.”

Her voice rose at the end, making it sound like a question. She was trying to seem unfazed, but the brutality of the outside world seemed even more pronounced in such an elegant place. Aria studied his scar more closely. “Can’t you get your father to hide that for you in the Realms? Wouldn’t it just be simple programming?”

“I could do it, Aria. I don’t need my father to do anything in here.” His voice rose almost to a yell. Then he shrugged. “Anyway, why bother? I can’t hide it in the real. Everyone knows I look like this. They know, and they won’t ever unknow it.”

Soren wasn’t the same at all, she realized. His usual smug expression looked forced, like he was trying too hard to keep it there. She remembered that Bane and Echo—his closest friends—had died in Ag 6 the same night as Paisley.