Page 70 of These Immortal Truths
“Allow me,” he murmurs, gentle fingers reaching up to replace her own. She lets him—her hands falling uselessly to her side as he delicately pulls pin after pin from her hair. They disappear the moment they’ve been freed. “Magic is a tricky thing. Sometimesit’s stubborn.”
“Are you sure it’s not just your magic?”
His fingers pause, catching her eyes in the mirror. “Are you accusing me of stubbornness, Anna? Because I can assure you, it pales in comparison to yours.”
His tone is flat, but there’s the tiniest curve resting at the corner of his mouth that assures her he’s more amused than annoyed. “I suppose we’re both stubborn in our own way,” she concedes.
Khiran breathes a laugh, going back to removing the pins. “Hold out your hand.” He must have reached most of the magicked ones, because he starts placing them in her open palm. “Are you ready for me to remove the rest of it?”
The rest of it. The glamour he’s placed over her skin.
She reacts before she can remember to hide it, a wince so obvious she sees it in her reflection the moment he does.
“Anna—”
“Yes,” she blurts, eager to prevent whatever words sit on his tongue. She doesn’t want to hear them. “Yes, it’s fine. Just do it.”
She expects the magic to leave the same way he placed it, his palms skimming over her skin and a smooth, gentle warmth, but there’s no such warning. It fades with the same untheatrical ease as the pins. A single blink is all it takes before she’s faced with the pale patches of skin that have cursed her for centuries. She moves to turn away from her reflection.
Khiran doesn’t let her.
His hands are on her shoulders, pinning her in place. Anna screws her eyes shut and feels him sigh into her hair. “How will you ever see yourself if you never look?”
He’s a wall at her back—unyielding—but the way his arm crosses over her chest, hand fanning over her collar, feels nothing like a cage. Even though it should. Even though itis.
His words are a warm breath against her flushed skin, lips so close to her ear as they whisper. “Look, Anna.”
She whimpers, shaking her head.
“Yes,” he murmurs, a gentle command. His lips skim over the sensitive skin below her ear—prompting goosebumps in his wake. “Open your eyes.”
She does. She opens her eyes. Shelooks.
Her hair is a wavy mess, the blotched skin on her arms and chest made more prominent by the flush he’s inspired. Her first instinct is to turn away, to close her eyes and refuse to open them until long after he’s gone, but the sight of his long, tapered fingers cradled, possessively, around her collar makes her pause. There is a fire building, igniting her blood and burning her resolve. Over her shoulder, he meets her reflection’s gaze—the storm in his eyes dark and dangerous in ways that arouse anticipation instead of fear.
The hand at her throat drifts, finger hooking on the strap of her dress. A pause, a chance to run the way she has run for centuries. It shouldn’t be easier this way. Having him at her back, bearing witness to her shame as he exposes her, shouldn’t be easier than facing her reflection alone.
But itis.
Heavens, it is, because there is no disgust curdling his gaze. No mocking sneer. He has always seen her skin with a kindness she could never harbor herself. She swallows the fear, dips her chin in the tiniest of nods.
He slides one strap down, then the other. The weight of the dress hangs, just covering her breasts. His fingers slide, achingly gentle, over the largest of marks resting over her heart. “There are galaxies painted across your skin,” he murmurs. “Nebulas and universes mapped out like artwork, designed solely for one to get lost in.”
A single, burning kiss to her bare shoulder, so soft she could have imagined it, if not for the proof in their reflection. “Anna … You areexquisite.”
Her breath hitches, lips parted around words she can’t find. There’s a familiar heat dancing across her skin before settling low in her belly. There’s something open in his expression; a deep and desperate longing darkening his eyes and illuminated by the naked truth of the mirror’s reflection.
She turns to face him and it’s gone—wiped clean with a neutrality that begs her to believe it was never anything else. But she saw it. Even if it was only visible for the barest hint of a moment, it wasthere.
“You love me,” she breathes.
His gaze snaps to hers, piercing in intensity. She feels it so keenly she is little more than a butterfly on a pin. Then he grins—so crooked and charming it might have been distracting were she anyone else “My, the centurieshavemade you bold.”
It’s not a denial and they both know it. She steps closer—feels the heat of his chest brush her own as her eyes search his. “How long?”
His smile falters at the corners. “That’s enough, now. Cease this.”
“Why?”
