The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and..

how close I’d come to losing an eye. The scars didn’t appear
to be a shade paler than my skin like before. They were the
same tone of pink as the rest of my face, and the flesh
didn’t feel as rough, nor did it look as jagged.
“I hadn’t noticed,” Casteel said, and my gaze shot to his
in the reflection. I…I sensed surprise from him. He spoke the
truth. He truly hadn’t noticed the difference because he
never really noticed the scars in the first place. They had
never been a thing to him.
I might’ve fallen even more in love with him right then if
that were possible.
“They are a little fainter,” he continued, his head
cocked. “It must’ve been my blood—how much of it. It
could’ve repaired some of the old wounds.”
I glanced down at my arm then and looked—really
looked. The skin was less shiny and patchy there.
“It amazes me,” he commented. “That the scars are
what you notice first.”
“Because the scars are what everyone seems to see
first when they look upon me,” I stated.
“I don’t think that’s the first thing, Poppy. Not before,”
he said, brushing a clump of my hair over my shoulder. “And
definitely not now.”
Definitely not now.
I lifted my gaze once more and looked beyond the scars
and the smattering of freckles across my nose to my eyes.
They were green, just like I remembered my father’s being,
but they were also different. It wasn’t exactly noticeable
upon first glance, but I saw it now.
The silvery sheen behind my pupils.
“My eyes…”
“They’ve been like that since the Temple of Saion,” he
said.
I blinked once and then twice. They remained the same
upon reopening. “This isn’t what they look like when they
glow, right?”