It looked like me, but didn’t. Not in the way I thought I looked. I knew Magnus to be a practical artist when it came to detail, drawing only what he knew was true. He hadn’t made me beautiful. It was homely, unextraordinary me, ugly scar and all. And yet … there was beauty in this picture I’d never seen in myself before.

“Am I always so fierce looking?” I asked, not knowing what else to say. I’d felt so happy while he was drawing me. Why didn’t it show up in the picture?

“Always.” He leaned on the chair arm to watch my expression. “I’m glad I managed to capture your soul this time. It’s taken a bit of practice.”

I looked at him, laying the sketchbook flat against my legs. “Practice?”

For a moment he didn’t break my gaze, and then he tilted the sketchbook up and flipped to the previous page. It was me, multiple times. My silhouette. My hands. My profile. Twenty, maybe more, small overlapping sketches.

My breath caught, and maybe Magnus mistranslated it, because he quickly said, “I should’ve asked, I suppose. But then the moments would’ve been lost.”

“Are there more?”

“Yes.”

“In this one?”

He hesitated, gauging my expression. “And others.”

I flipped back to the one he’d just drawn and stared at it. Tears burned the backs of my eyes, blurring my view, and I closed the sketchbook and dropped it on the side table so it wouldn’t get wet if they fell. I blinked a few times, trying to clear my vision and choked out a laugh. It felt like a strange reaction, to cry and laugh at once, but I couldn’t stop either.

“Don’t cry. You know I don’t know what to do about crying…” I felt him leave my side, saw the blur of him kneel in front of me … felt the warmth of his hands on my knees. “Is it okay, Andromeda? That I draw you?”

“Magnus,” I said, swallowing through the knot in my throat, wiping at my tears so I could see him more clearly. “You only draw things you care about.”

He grinned, blushing warm and sweet. “And love, in your case.”

For a long moment, I was unable to speak, my heart like a hummingbird’s in my throat. I escaped from the chair over the armrest, but he came after me and caught my waist, pulling me close.

“The ancient Greeks believed,” he said, “that humans were born with four arms, four legs, and two faces. Then some jealous god tore them apart, leaving them to search the earth for the missing half of their soul.”