—that he has to ask. Her fingertips drift to her cheekbone, splay against the skin beneath where her eye used to be, and her mouth pulls in a little, thinning, her gaze cutting away and her head straightening where she had been tilted, ever so slightly, to keep him centered in her field of vision.
He's a stranger. He's never seen her other than this. Something feels thick in her throat that she doesn't trust, so it takes her a moment to swallow it before she says, “Yeah, I don't recommend bargaining with ancient elvhen spirits, if you can possibly avoid it,” like it's a thing about which she can already be flippant.
“Some of us, we were in this ruin that the Venatori wanted access to, to get at the Gates. And to get through it we all had to give something up. They asked for a life, initially, and Loxley and I volunteered and he won the coin toss so— but when he said he would do it, they were just pleased we understood the stakes. That we respected it. And they gave us an alternative sacrifice.” A smile flickers, determinedly summoned but not successfully held, “What's another scar, right? I had two eyes, I could spare one. I knew a one-eyed archer, and he won the Grand Tourney very handily. And he was handsome.”
And then he broke her heart at the battle of Ghislain, but that is neither here nor there.
It's stupid to care if people still think she's beautiful.
no subject
ha, ha
—that he has to ask. Her fingertips drift to her cheekbone, splay against the skin beneath where her eye used to be, and her mouth pulls in a little, thinning, her gaze cutting away and her head straightening where she had been tilted, ever so slightly, to keep him centered in her field of vision.
He's a stranger. He's never seen her other than this. Something feels thick in her throat that she doesn't trust, so it takes her a moment to swallow it before she says, “Yeah, I don't recommend bargaining with ancient elvhen spirits, if you can possibly avoid it,” like it's a thing about which she can already be flippant.
“Some of us, we were in this ruin that the Venatori wanted access to, to get at the Gates. And to get through it we all had to give something up. They asked for a life, initially, and Loxley and I volunteered and he won the coin toss so— but when he said he would do it, they were just pleased we understood the stakes. That we respected it. And they gave us an alternative sacrifice.” A smile flickers, determinedly summoned but not successfully held, “What's another scar, right? I had two eyes, I could spare one. I knew a one-eyed archer, and he won the Grand Tourney very handily. And he was handsome.”
And then he broke her heart at the battle of Ghislain, but that is neither here nor there.
It's stupid to care if people still think she's beautiful.