She turned to look at him, and he was already looking at her. “I’m going to miss you when I wake up,” she whispered, because she realized that she must have fallen asleep under the sun. Arin was too real for her imagination. He was a dream.“Don’t wake up,” he said.

His dear face, dear to her, dearer still. how could she love his face more for its damage? What kind of person saw someone's suffering and felt her heart crack open even wider, even more sweetly than before? There was something wrong with her. It was wrong to want to touch a scar and call it beautiful.

She’d felt it before, she felt it now: the pull to fall in with him, to fall into him, to lose her sense of self.

An emotion clamped down on her heart. It squeezed her into a terrible silence. But he said nothing after that, only her name, as if her name were not a name but a question. Or perhaps that it wasn’t how he had said it, and she was wrong, and she’d heard a question simply because the sound of him speaking her name made her wish that she were his answer.

What did you tell the queen?""I told Inisha about you.""What, exactly?"He hesitated. "I'm afraid to say.""I want you to.""You might leave.""I won't."He stayed silent.She said, "I give you my word.""I told her that I belong to you, and no other. I said that I was sorry.