“Thank you.”
“I want you to feel safe,” he said. “It’s not because I don’t want to see you without it. I will look at your face, if you want me to, and I will let you touch... my right cheek.”
“Your right cheek?”
“It’s less mangled.”
“Can I touch your nose?”
A moment of hesitation. “Yes.”
“Your forehead?”
“No.”
“All right.” She would take whatever he was willing to give. “On the count of three, we turn toward each other?”
“All right.”
“One, two...” She counted slowly, allowing herself two breaths between counts.
This was hard. Harder than she’d thought. When she’d been arrested, they’d taken her scarf and looked at her face. The sergeant had backed away in repulse, and the watchmen had made sounds of disgust. But she didn’t care about them. It was better if she repulsed them. It was different with Rune.
“Three.”
They both shifted at the same time, something between a turn and a crawl, and they settled on their knees, facing each other. They were close. Their knees touched, and she could feel his warm breath on her forehead. He was tall, even if he was probably hunching so he wouldn’t tower over her. Instinctively, she lifted her chin as if to look up at him.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello.”
His voice was as kind as ever, and she didn’t sense him flinch. His knees were firmly pressed to hers, and his body didn’t jerk back in contempt. She smiled, and it was genuine. He wasn’t recoiling from her, and for that, she was willing to thank a saint or two.
“You’re not ugly,” he said.
Seraphina scoffed.
“You’re certainly not the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.” There was amusement in his voice.
She blushed, though she had no reason to. She lifted her hand but stopped inches from his chin.
“May I?”
She heard him swallow, and she could imagine the way his Adam’s apple bobbed in anticipation. Or regret that he’d agreed to this exchange. How mangled could he be, she wondered. More than she was? She doubted it.
Rune wrapped his hand around her wrist. Delicately. She felt how smooth the skin of his palm was. He guided her hand to his right cheek, and her fingertips came in contact with his warm skin. He didn’t let go of her wrist but allowed her to explore the strong line of his jaw and the arch of his cheekbone. Seraphina traced upward toward his temple, but his grip tightened and he moved her hand to the bridge of his nose, where she ran her index finger down the length of it, feeling the slight crook where it had been broken, possibly more than once. She stopped above his upper lip, traced toward the corner of his lips, then down to his chin, which she noticed was sharp-boned and covered in stubble.
Seraphina tried to picture him in her mind’s eye. He seemed to be young, his skin firm over protruding bones. He was thin, as she was, after having barely eaten anything for weeks.
“What color is your hair?” she asked.
“Dark.”
“And your eyes?”
“Blue.”
A slightly hysterical chuckle escaped her before she could stop it.
