It made it easier for the messages she dispatched to go out, too. Whether the letter to Aedion and Lysandra would reach them was up to the gods, she supposed, since they seemed hell-bent on being their puppet masters. Perhaps they might not bother with her now, if Dorian was heading for the third key, if he might take her place.
She did not dwell on it for long.
The ship was a step above ramshackle, all the finer vessels commandeered for the war, but it seemed steady enough to make the weeks-long crossing. For the gold they paid, the captain yielded his own quarters to Aelin and Rowan. If the man knew who they were, what they were, he said nothing.
Aelin didn’t care. Only that they sailed with the midnight tide, Rowan’s magic propelling them swiftly out to the moonlit sea.
Far from Maeve. From her gathered forces.
From the truth that Aelin might have glimpsed that day in Maeve’s throne room, the dark blood that had turned to red.
She hadn’t told the others. Didn’t know if that moment had been real, or a trick of the light. If it had been another dreamscape, or some fragment that had blended into the very real memory of Connall’s death.
She’d deal with it later, Aelin decided as she stood by the prow, the others long since having gone to their own quarters belowdecks. Only Rowan remained, perched on the mainmast as he scanned every horizon for signs of pursuit.
They’d evaded Maeve. For now. Tonight, at least, she wouldn’t know where to find them. Until word spread of the strangers in that port, of the ship they’d paid a king’s fortune to take them into war-torn hell. The messages Aelin had sent.
At least Maeve didn’t know where the Wyrdkeys were. They still had that in their favor.
Though Maeve was likely to bring her army across the sea to hunt them down. Or simply aid in Terrasen’s demise.
Aelin’s power stirred, a thunderhead groaning in her blood. She ground her teeth and paid it no attention.
Everything relied upon them reaching the continent before Maeve and her forces. Or before Erawan could destroy too much of the world.
Aelin leaned into the sea breeze, letting it seep into her skin, her hair, letting it wash away the dark of the caves, if the dark of the prior months could not be eased entirely. Letting it soothe her fire into slumbering embers.
These weeks at sea would be endless, even with Rowan’s magic propelling them.
She’d use each day to train, to work with sword and dagger and bow until her hands were blistered, until new calluses formed. Until the thinness returned to muscle.
She’d rebuild it—what she had been.
Perhaps one last time, perhaps only for a little while, but she’d do it. If only for Terrasen.
Rowan swooped from the mast, shifting as he reached her side at the rail. He surveyed the night-black sea beyond them. “You should rest.”
She slid him a glance. “I’m not tired.” Not a lie, not in some regards. “Want to spar?”
He frowned. “Training can start tomorrow.”
“Or tonight.” She held his piercing stare, matched his dominance with her own.
“It can wait a few hours, Aelin.”
“Every day counts.” Against Erawan, even a day of training would count.
Rowan’s jaw tightened. “True,” he said at last. “But it can still wait. There are … there are things we need to discuss.”
The silent words rose in his animal-bright eyes. About you and me.
Her mouth went dry. But Aelin nodded.
In silence, they strode into their spacious quarters, its only decoration the wall of windows that overlooked the churning sea behind them. A far cry from a queen’s chamber, or any she might have purchased as Adarlan’s assassin.
At least the bed built into the wall looked clean enough, the sheets crisp and stainless. But Aelin headed for the oak desk anchored to the floor, and leaned against it while Rowan shut the door.
In the dim lantern light, they stared at each other.
She’d endured Maeve and Cairn; she’d endured Endovier and countless other horrors and losses. She could have this conversation with him. The first step toward rebuilding herself.
Aelin knew Rowan could hear her thundering heart as the space between them went taut. She swallowed once. “Elide and Lorcan told you … told you everything that was said on that beach.”
A curt nod, wariness flooding his eyes.
“Everything that Maeve said.”
Another nod.
She braced herself. “That I’m—we’re mates.”
Understanding and something like relief replaced that wariness. “Yes.”
“I’m your mate,” she said, needing to voice it. “And you are mine.”
Rowan crossed the room, but halted a few feet from the desk on which she leaned. “What of it, Aelin?” His question was low, rough.
“Don’t you …” She scrubbed at her face. “You know what she did to you, to …” She couldn’t say her name. Lyria. “Because of it.”
“I do know.”
“And?”
“And what do you wish me to say?”
She pushed off the desk. “I wish you to tell me how you feel about it. If …”
“If what?”
“If you wish it wasn’t so.”
His brows narrowed. “Why would I ever wish that?”
She shook her head, unable to answer, and stared over her shoulder toward the sea.
It seemed like he would close the distance between them, but he remained where he was. “Aelin.” His voice turned hoarse. “Aelin.”
She looked at him then, at the pain in his words.
“Do you know what I wish?” He exposed his palms, one tattooed, the other unmarked. “I wish that you had told me. When you realized it. I wish you had told me then.”
She swallowed against the ache in her throat. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Why would it ever hurt me to know the truth that was already in my heart? The truth I hoped for?”
“I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand how it was possible. I thought maybe … maybe you might be able to have two mates within a lifetime, but even then, I just …” She blew out a breath. “I didn’t want you to be distressed.”
His eyes softened. “Do I regret that Lyria was dragged into this, that the cost of Maeve’s game was her life, and the life of the child we might have had? Yes. I regret that, and I wish it had never happened.” He would bear the tattoo to remember it for the rest of his days. “But none of that was your fault. I will always carry some of the burden of it, always know I chose to leave her for war and glory, and that I played right into Maeve’s hands.”
“Maeve wanted to ensnare you to get to me, though.”
“Then it is her choice, not yours.”
Aelin ran a hand over the worn wood of the desk. “In those illusions she spun for me, she showed me variations on one more than all the others.” The words were strained, but she forced them out. Forced herself to look at him. “She spun me one dreamscape that felt so real I could smell the wind off the Staghorns.”
“What did she show you?” A breathless question.
Aelin had to swallow before she could answer. “She showed me what might have been—if there had been no Erawan, if Elena had dealt with him properly and banished him. If there had been no Lyria, none of that pain or despair you endured. She showed me Terrasen as it would have been today, with my father as king, and my childhood happy, and …” Her lips wobbled. “When I turned twenty, you came with a delegation of Fae to Terrasen, to make amends for the rift between my mother and Maeve. And you and I took one look at each other in my father’s throne room, and we knew.”
She didn’t fight the stinging in her eyes. “I wanted to believe that was the true world. That this was the nightmare from which I’d awaken. I wanted to believe that there was a place where you and I had never known this suffering and loss, where we’d take one look at each other and know we were mates. Maeve told me she could make it so. If I gave her the keys, she’d make it all possible.” She wiped at her cheek, at the tear that escaped down it. “She spun me realities where you were dead, where you’d been killed by Erawan and only in handing over the keys to her would I be able to avenge you. But those realities made me … I stopped being useful to her when she told me you were gone. She couldn’t get me to talk, to think. Yet in the ones where you and I met, where things were as they should have been … that was when I came the closest.”
His swallow was audible. “What stopped you?”
She wiped at her face again. “The male I fell in love with was you. It was you, who knew pain as I did, and who walked with me through it, back to the light. Maeve didn’t understand that. That even if she could create that perfect world, it wouldn’t be you with me. And I’d never trade that, trade this. Not for anything.”
He extended his hand. An offer and invitation.
Aelin laid hers atop his, and his callused fingers squeezed gently. “I wanted it to be you,” he breathed, closing his eyes. “For months and months, even in Wendlyn, I wondered why you weren’t my mate instead. It tore me up, wondering it, but I still did.” He opened his eyes, and they burned like green fire. “All this time, I wanted it to be you.”
She lowered her gaze, but he hooked a thumb and forefinger around her chin and lifted her face.
“I know you are tired, Fireheart. I know that the burden on your shoulders is more than anyone should endure.” He took their joined hands and laid them on his heart. “But we’ll face this together. Erawan, the Lock, all of it. We’ll face it together. And when we are done, when you Settle, we will have a thousand years together. Longer.”
A small sound came out of her. “Elena said the Lock requires—”
“We’ll face it together,” he swore again. “And if the cost of it truly is you, then we’ll pay it together. As one soul in two bodies.”
Her heart strained to the point of cleaving. “Terrasen needs a king.”
“I have no intention of ruling Terrasen without you. Aedion can have the job.”
She scanned his face. He meant every word.
He brushed the hair from her face, his other hand still clasping hers to his chest, where his heart pounded a steady, unfaltering rhythm. “Even if I had my choice of any dream-realities, any perfect illusions, I would still choose you, too.”
She felt the truth of his words echo into the unbreakable thing that bound their very souls, and tilted her face up toward his. But he made no move beyond it.
She frowned. “Why aren’t you kissing me?”
“I thought you might want to be asked first.”
“That never stopped you before.”
“This first time, I wanted to make sure you were … ready.” After Cairn and Maeve. After months of having no choices whatsoever.
She smiled despite that truth. “I’m ready to be kissed again, Prince.”
He let out a dark chuckle and muttered, “Thank the gods,” before he lowered his mouth to hers.
The kiss was gentle—light. Letting her decide how to guide it. So she did.
Sliding her arms around Rowan’s neck, Aelin pressed herself against him, arching into his touch as his hands roamed along her back. Yet his mouth remained featherlight on hers. Sweet, exploratory kisses. He’d do it all night, if that was what she wished.
Mate. He was her mate, and she was finally allowed to call him such, to let him be such—
The thought snapped something. Aelin nipped at his bottom lip, scraping a canine against it.
The gesture snapped something in him, too.
With a growl, Rowan swept her into his arms, never tearing his mouth from hers as he carried her to the bed and set her down gently. Off came their boots, their jackets and shirts and pants. And then he was with her, the strength and heat of him pouring into her bare skin.
She couldn’t touch him fast enough, feel enough of him against her. Even when his mouth roved down her neck, licking over that spot where his claiming marks had been. Even when he roamed farther, worshipping her breasts as she arched up into each lick and suckle. Even when he knelt between her legs, his shoulders spreading her thighs wide, and tasted her, over and over, until she was writhing beneath him.
But something primal in her went quiet and still as Rowan rose over her again, and their eyes locked.
“You’re my mate,” he said, the words near-guttural. He nudged at her entrance, and she shifted her hips to draw him in, but he remained where he was. Withholding what she ached for until he heard what he needed.
Aelin tipped back her head, baring her neck to him. “You’re my mate.” Her words were a breathless rush. “And I am yours.”
Rowan thrust into her in a mighty stroke as he plunged his teeth into the side of her neck.
She cried out at the claiming, release already barreling along her spine, but he began moving. Moving, while his teeth remained in her, and she moaned with each drive of his hips, the sheer size of him a decadence she would never be able to get enough of. She dragged her nails down his muscled back, then lower, feeling every powerful stroke of him into her.
Rowan withdrew his teeth from her neck, and Aelin claimed his mouth in a savage kiss, her blood a coppery tang on his tongue.
He went wild at that, hoisting her hips to angle himself deeper, harder. The world might have been burning around them for all she cared, all he cared, too.
“Together, Aelin,” he promised, and she heard the rest of the words in every place their bodies joined. Together they would face this, together they would find a way.
Release crested within her once more, a shimmering brightness.
And just when it broke, Aelin sank her teeth into Rowan’s neck, claiming him as he’d claimed her.
His blood, powerful and wind-kissed, filled her mouth, her soul, and Rowan roared as release shattered through him, too.
For long minutes, they lay tangled in each other.
Together we’ll find a way, their mingling breaths, the crashing sea, seemed to echo. Together.
CHAPTER 42
Lorcan was given the last watch of the night, which allowed him to witness the sunrise over the now-distant horizon.
Would he ever see it again—Wendlyn, Doranelle, any of that eastern land?
Perhaps not, considering what they sailed to in the west, and the immortal army Maeve had no doubt set on their heels. Perhaps they were all doomed to limited sunrises.
The others roused, venturing onto the deck to learn what the morning brought. Nothing, he almost told them from where he stood by the prow. Water and sun and a whole lot of nothing.
Fenrys spotted him and bared his teeth. Lorcan gave him a mocking smile.
Yes, that fight would come later. He’d welcome it, the chance to ease the tightness from his bones, to let Fenrys tear into him a bit.
He wouldn’t kill the wolf, though. Fenrys might try to kill him, but Lorcan wouldn’t do it. Not after what Fenrys had endured—what he’d managed to do.
Elide emerged from belowdecks, hair braided and smooth. As if she’d been up before the dawn. She barely looked his way, though he knew she was well aware of his location. Lorcan blocked out the hollow pang in his chest.
But Aelin spied him, and there was more clarity in her face than there’d been these past few days as she stalked for where he stood. More of that swagger in her gait, too.
The sleeves of her white shirt had been rolled to the elbow, her hair braided back. Goldryn and a long knife hung from her belt. Ready for training. Primed for it, judging by the bristling energy that buzzed around her.
Lorcan met her halfway, descending the small stairs.
Whitethorn lingered nearby, also dressed for sparring, the wariness in his eyes telling Lorcan enough: the prince had no idea what this was about.
But the young queen crossed her arms. “Do you plan to sail with us to Terrasen?”
An unnecessary question for dawn, and in the middle of the sea. “Yes.”
“And you plan to join us in this war?”
“I’m certainly not going there to enjoy the weather.”
Amusement glittered in her eyes, though her face remained grim. “Then this is how it’s going to work.”
Lorcan waited for the list of orders and demands, but the queen was only watching him, that amusement fading into something steel-hardened.
“You were Maeve’s second-in-command,” she said, and Elide turned their way. “And now that you aren’t, it leaves you as a powerful Fae male whose allegiances I don’t know or really trust. Not when Maeve’s army is likely on the move toward the continent at this very moment. So I can’t have you in my kingdom, or traveling with us, when you might very well sell information to get back into Maeve’s good graces, can I?”
He opened his mouth, bristling at the haughty tone, but Aelin went on. “So I’ll make you an offer, Lorcan Salvaterre.” She tapped her bare forearm. “Swear the blood oath to me, and I’ll let you roam wherever you wish.”
Fenrys cursed behind them, but Lorcan barely heard it over the roaring in his head.
“And what, exactly,” he managed to say, “do I get out of it?”
Aelin’s eyes slid over her shoulder. To where Elide watched, mouth agape. When the queen met Lorcan’s gaze again, a touch of sympathy had softened the steely arrogance. “You will be allowed into Terrasen. That is what you will get. Where you choose to live within Terrasen’s borders will not be my decision.”
Not her decision, or his. But that of the dark-haired female gawking at them.
“And if I refuse?” Lorcan dared ask.
“Then you will never be allowed to set foot in my kingdom, or to travel further with us—not with the keys in the balance, and Maeve’s army at our backs.” That sympathy remained. “I can’t trust you enough to let you join us any other way.”
“But you’ll let me swear the blood oath?”
“I want nothing from you, and you want nothing from me. The only order I shall ever give you is the one I would ask of any citizen of Terrasen: to protect and defend our kingdom and its people. You can live in a hut in the Staghorns for all I care.”
She meant it, too. Swear the blood oath, swear never to harm her kingdom, and she’d give him freedom. And if he refused … He would never see Elide again.
“I don’t have another choice,” Aelin said quietly, so the others might not hear. “I can’t risk Terrasen.” She still held her arm toward him. “But I would not take something as precious away from you.”
“What you don’t realize is that is no longer a possibility.”
Again, that hint of a smile and glance over her shoulder toward Elide. “It is.” Her turquoise eyes were bright as she looked back at him, and there was wisdom on Aelin’s face that he had perhaps never noticed before. A queen’s face. “Believe me, Lorcan, it is.”
He shut down the hope that filled his chest, foreign and unwanted.
“But Terrasen will not survive this war, she will not survive this war, without you.”
And even if the queen before him gave her immortal life to forge the Lock, to stop Erawan, Lorcan’s blood oath to protect her kingdom would hold.
“It’s your choice,” she said simply.
Lorcan allowed himself to look to Elide, foolish as it might be.
She had a hand on her throat, her dark eyes so wide.
It didn’t matter if she still offered him a home in Perranth, if the queen spoke true.
But what did matter was that Aelin Galathynius had meant her promise: he was too powerful, his allegiances too murky, for her to allow him to roam with her, to enter her kingdom unfettered. She’d let him go, keep him out of Terrasen, even if Erawan’s hordes were descending, just to avoid the other threat at their backs: Maeve.
And Elide would not survive it, this war, if all of them were dead.
He couldn’t accept it, that possibility. Foolish and useless as it was, he couldn’t allow it to pass. To have either Erawan’s beasts or her uncle Vernon come to claim her again.
Fool. He was an ancient, stupid fool.
Yet the god at his shoulder did not tell him to run, or to fight.
His choice, then. He wondered what the goddess who whispered to Elide made of this.
Wondered what the woman herself was going to make of this as he said to Aelin, “Fine.”
“Gods spare us,” Fenrys murmured.
Aelin’s lips curved in that hint of a smile, amused and yet edged with a touch of cruelty, as she glanced to the wolf. “You’ll have to let him live, you realize,” she said to Fenrys, lifting a brow. “No to-the-death dueling. No vengeance-fighting. Can you stomach it?”
Lorcan bristled as Fenrys looked him over. Lorcan let him see every bit of dominance in his stare.
Fenrys sent all of his raging back. Not as much as what Lorcan possessed, but enough to remind him that the White Wolf of Doranelle could bite if he wished. Lethally.
Fenrys just turned to the queen. “If I tell you he’s a prick and a miserable bastard to be around, will it change your mind?”
Lorcan snarled, but Aelin snorted. “Isn’t that why we love Lorcan, though?” She gave him a smile that told Lorcan she remembered every detail of their initial encounters in Rifthold—when he’d shoved her face-first into a brick wall. Aelin said to Fenrys, “We’ll only invite him to Orynth on holidays.”
“So he can ruin the festivities?” Fenrys scowled. “I, for one, cherish my holidays. I don’t need a misanthrope raining on them.”
Gods above. Lorcan cut Rowan a look, but the warrior-prince was watching his queen carefully. As if he knew precisely what manner of storm brewed beneath her skin.
Aelin waved a hand. “Fine, fine. You won’t try to kill Lorcan for what happened in Eyllwe, and in exchange, we won’t invite him to anything.” Her grin was nothing short of wicked.
This was the sort of court he’d be joining—this whirlwind of … Lorcan didn’t know what the word was for it. He doubted any of his five centuries had prepared him for it, though.
Aelin extended a hand. “You know how this goes, then. Or are you too old to remember?”
Lorcan glared and knelt, offering up the dagger at his side.
A fool. He was a fool.
And yet his hands shook slightly as he gave the queen the knife.
Aelin weighed the blade, a golden ring capped with an obscenely large emerald adorning her finger. A wedding band. Likely from the barrow-wight trove she’d pilfered. He glanced to where Whitethorn stood to the side. Sure enough, a golden ring lay on the warrior’s own finger, a ruby built into the band. And peeking above the collar of Rowan’s jacket, two fresh scars lay.
A pair of them now marked the queen’s own throat.
“Done gawking?” Aelin asked Lorcan coolly.
He scowled. Even with the holy ritual they were about to partake in, the queen found a way to be irreverent. “Say it.”
Her lips curved again. “Do you, Lorcan Salvaterre, swear upon your blood and eternal soul, to be loyal to me, to my crown, and to Terrasen for the rest of your life?”
He blinked. Maeve had intoned a lengthy list of questions in the Old Language when he’d sworn her oath. But he said, “I do. I swear it.”
Aelin sliced the dagger across her forearm, and her blood shone bright as the ruby in the sword at her side. “Then drink.”
His last chance to back out from this.
But he glanced toward Elide again. And saw hope—just a glimmer of it—lighting her face.
So Lorcan took the queen’s arm in his hands and drank.
The taste of her—jasmine, lemon verbena, and crackling embers—filled his mouth. Filled his soul, as something burned and settled within him.
An ember of warmth. Like a piece of that raging magic had come to rest inside his very soul.
Swaying a bit, he let go of her arm.
“Welcome to the court,” Aelin said. “Here’s your first and only order: protect Terrasen and its people.”
The command settled in him, too, another little spark that glowed down deep.
Then the queen pivoted on her heel and walked away—no, walked up to Elide.
Lorcan tried and failed to stand. His body, it seemed, still needed a moment.
So he could only watch as Aelin said to Elide, “I am not offering you the blood oath.”
Vow or no, he debated throwing the queen into the ocean for the devastation that clouded Elide’s face. But the Lady of Perranth kept her chin high. “Why?”
Aelin took Elide’s hand with a gentleness that cooled Lorcan’s rising temper. “Because when we return to Terrasen, if I am to be given the throne, then you cannot be bound to me.” Elide’s brows crossed. “Perranth is the second-most powerful House in Terrasen,” Aelin explained. “Four of its lords have decided that I am unfit for the throne. I need a majority to win it back.”
“And if I am sworn to you, it jeopardizes the integrity of my vote,” Elide finished.
Aelin nodded, and let go of her hand to turn to all of them. In the rising sun, the queen was bathed in gold. “Terrasen is over two weeks away, if the winter storms don’t interfere. We’ll use this time to train and plan.”
“Plan for what?” Fenrys asked, coming closer.
A member of this court. Of Lorcan’s own court. The three of them once again bound—and yet freer than they’d ever been. Lorcan half wondered why the queen didn’t offer the oath to Gavriel, but she spoke again.
“My task cannot be completed without the keys. I assume that their new bearers will eventually seek me out, if the third is found and they decide not to finish things themselves.” She glanced to Rowan, who nodded. As if they’d already discussed this. “So rather than waste vital time roaming the continent in pursuit of them, we will indeed go to Terrasen. Especially if Maeve is bringing her army to its shores as well. And if I am not allowed to lead from my throne, then I shall just have to do so from the battlefields.”
She meant to fight. The queen—Lorcan’s queen—meant to fight against Morath. And Maeve, should the worst happen. And then she’d die for them all.
“To Terrasen, then,” Fenrys said.
“To Terrasen,” Elide echoed.
Aelin gazed westward, toward the kingdom that was all that stood between Erawan and conquest. Toward Lorcan’s new home. As if she could see the dread-lord’s legions unleashing upon it. And Maeve’s immortal host creeping at their backs, a host Lorcan and his companions had once commanded.
Aelin merely strode to the center of the deck, the sailors giving them a wide berth. She unsheathed Goldryn and her dagger, then lifted her brows at Whitethorn in silent challenge.
The warrior-prince obeyed, unsheathing his blade and hatchet before sinking into a defensive crouch.
Training—retraining her body. No whisper of her power manifested, yet her eyes burned bright.
Aelin angled her weapons. “To Terrasen,” she said at last.
And began.
CHAPTER 43
Dorian began small.
First, by changing his eyes to black. Solid black, like the Valg. Then by turning his skin into an icy, pale shade, the sort that never saw sunlight. His hair, he left dark, but he managed to make his nose more crooked, his mouth thinner.
Not a full shift, but one done in pieces. Weaving the image together in himself, forming the tapestry of his new face, new skin, during the long, silent flight up the spine of the Fangs.
He hadn’t told Manon it was likely a suicide mission, too. He’d barely talked to her at all since the forest clearing. They’d left with the dawn, when she’d announced to Glennis and the Crochans what she planned to do. They could fly to the Ferian Gap and return to that hidden camp within the Fangs in four days, if they were lucky.
She’d asked the Crochans to meet them there. To trust her enough to return to their mountain camp and wait.
They had said yes. Maybe it was the grave the Thirteen had dug all day, but the Crochans said yes. A tentative trust—just this once.
So Dorian had flown with Asterin. Had used each frigid hour northward to slowly alter his body.
You want to go to Morath so badly, Manon had hissed again before they’d left, then let’s see if you can do it.
A test. One he was glad to excel at. If only to throw in her face.
Manon knew of a back door that only the wyverns took into the Northern Fang, along with any human grunts unlucky enough to be bound to this place. Asterin and Manon had left the Thirteen farther in the mountains before approaching, and even then they’d stopped far away enough from any scouts that they’d spent hours hiking on foot, taking Asterin’s mare with them. Abraxos had snarled and tugged on the reins, but Sorrel had held him firmly.
The two mammoth peaks flanking the Gap grew larger with each passed mile. Yet as he approached the southern side of the Fang, he hadn’t realized how massive, exactly, they were.
Large enough to hold an aerial host. To train and breed them.
This was what his father and Erawan had built. What Adarlan had become.
No wyverns circled in the skies, but their roars and shrieks echoed from the pass as he strode for the ancient gates that opened into the mountain itself. Behind him, led by a chain, Asterin’s blue mare followed.
Another trainer bringing back his mount after a trip for some air. The few guards—mortal men—at the gates barely blinked as he appeared around a rocky bend.
Dorian’s palms turned sweaty within his gloves. He prayed the shifting held.
He would have no way of knowing, though he supposed few here would recognize his natural face. He’d picked coloring close enough to his own that should the tapestry within himself unravel, someone might dismiss the altering of his skin tone, his eyes, as a trick of the light.
