A Lick Of Frost   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

Without them to remind you that seriousthings had happened to this unaged man, you might mistake him for someone casual. Someone to be dismissed. He had certainly played that part for years at the court.

I traced the edge of the scarred area. Once he would have pulled away, but he knew now that, to me, the scars were just another texture on his body, just more things to touch and kiss.

He smiled down at me, and it made his face even more beautiful, in that way that a lover's face can suddenly shine down at you.

Not with magic, but simply with pleasure in something you said or did.

"What?" I asked, voice soft.

"In all the long years since they took my eye, you are the only person who ever touched me like this."

I frowned up at him, and laid my hand against his face, the edge of the scar just another area under my hand. "Like what?"

He gave me a look, as if I knew exactly what.

"We are Unseelie. Things that others consider imperfections are marks of beauty among us," I said.

"Only if you are not sidhe," Rhys said. "To be truly scarred and sidhe is to be a living reminder that their perfect beauty could be forever marred. I am the ghost in the mirror, Merry. I remind them that we are only long-lived mortals, not truly immortal."

"Me, too," I said.

He smiled down at me again, pressing his face harder against my hand. "It's one of the reasons I always thought we'd make a good couple."

I frowned at him. "What?"

"Don't you remember, I took you on a date when you were sixteen."

"I remember." I let my hand fall back to the sheet. "I remember that you tried to persuade me to have sex with you, which would have gotten us both executed."

"I didn't actually try for intercourse. I just wanted to see which flavor of your family you took after."

I was frowning harder. "What does that mean?"

He smiled, gently this time. "Depending on how you responded to my overtures — " He waggled his eyebrows at the last word, and made me laugh. "  — I would decide whether to approach your father."

I had an inkling of where this was going. "You asked my father if you could be my fiancé?"

"I asked him to consider me."

"You, or he, never told me that."

"It seemed clear from the beginning of all this that I wasn't a front-runner for your heart. You loved Galen more than me even when you were sixteen. Then your father gave you to Griffin, and if you had gotten pregnant that would have been that."

My face clouded over at the mention of my ex-fiancé. He'd dumped me after years.